Boo says:
Holds should stack. It doesn’t appear that grappling attacks “stack” to slow down enemies. If I’m surrounding a foe, I should be able to have three of my characters grapple the foe and have all their grappling effects be cumulative. Instead (it appears, anyway), it looks like the most recent grapple is what takes effect, negating the grapples from previous characters.
My Response: Effects in general do not stack, they overwrite. The reasons behind this are precisely so that players cannot do what you suggest – tie an opponent up to the point that they cannot move or act, for example. Remember that anything a player can do, an NPC can do as well. Imagine how frustrating it would be if a bunch of NPCs held one of your characters down. Some effects in particular would be quite overpowered if allowed to stack.
There are a variety of effects out there – as long as it’s not the same effect, you can layer as many as you want on an opponent. I admit that some effects might be candidates for stack-ability as they “make sense” (as in your example with the holds) while others (say for example, a cloud of acrid smoke) definitely should not stack. If some effects were allowed to stack, there would still probably have to be a limit of some kind.
How do we all feel about that? Should some effects be allowed to stack? Or is there enough variety of effects to keep it the way it is? Maybe the game would be better improved by keeping effects un-stackable and just coming up with even more variety?
commander_saavik adds:
Think about it: How many people does it take to immobilize someone? How many people can effectively grapple a single person without interfering with each other? If grappling attacks ‘stack’, no more than 2 people can effectively restrain someone in a battle situation.
Before you decide to implement effect stacking, we should make and agree on a list of effects that should stack (and a reasonable limit for each) and a list of effects that shouldn’t stack. If no one bothers to contribute to those lists (or most people agree stacking is a bad/not-worth-using idea), then you don’t need to worry about it.
I suggest the first person with an idea for stacking/not stacking should start a new, dedicated thread for the list. No chit-chat or extraneous messages allowed.
I tend to agree. If Boo or anyone else feels passionate enough about stackable effects, can you please start a thread under Suggestions and call it “Possible Stackable Effects”? Any other thoughts on the matter can be posted here, as a reply to this thread. Thanks.
