The end of "effect immunities."

I wouldn't like to call this a rant, but a concern to draw attention to a trend I noticed a while ago as I was making a lineage. And that is the rise of people adding an ability that passively ignores or removes effects from people without any cost. It concerns me that with lineages or magics that allow this without cost dampens the access to creatively fighting them, leading us to having just straight damage.

Yes, effects should be watched with discretion but at the same time it's just bad rp if you can't deal with someone else's effects in their magic. It's not good for the site to allow people to make a blanket ability in lineages or in magic that allows them to ignore everything someone else can do in their magic besides their damage.

It's just a thought I had, before we turn into a site where everyone is immune to everyone's hard work at making creative and useful spells...

I have to admit that the idea of someone being flat out immune to non-damage effects is not really something I approve of.

Granted, I do acknowledge that sometimes it just makes sense. If your character is a golem or something you aren't going to care for most effects which are aimed to hinder living beings.

Overall though full immunities are tricky things which should be watched with care. For example with Slayers, who in the manga/anime are basically immune to their own element, the immunity has been replaced with a scaling percentage resistance to keep elemental mages from just feeling completely useless.

Also there's the fact that some things are just harder to be immune to than others. For example, it's easy to imagine someone not being slowed down by frost because they're a construct or their magic automatically keeps their body above a certain temperature. In contrast, being immune to something like being ensnared is going to be a bit trickier, since having supernatural constitution or an unusual body structure doesn't exactly do anything about the fact that there's something wrapped around you keeping you in place. Even the aforementioned golem is still going to be ensnared if the material used is strong enough. Granted if you're a ghost or something physical bindings aren't going to hinder you but logically speaking you would also be unable to interact with anything else physically.

This of course is merely an example, but I partially agree with Nao in the sense that I believe that sometimes immunity to certain effects make sense, but overall flat out immunity should not be used unless it really just makes too much sense not to use it. Otherwise you'd be better off with resistances which reduce the effects but don't outright No Sell them.

Of course, I'm not exactly sure how many lineages grant immunity to non-damage effects. I'm mostly throwing in my two cents on that I believe that real immunity should be rare and unusual.

To avoid me ranting, I'm just gonna throw in my support for the above comments lol

I feel like it can make sense to have immunities to like one type of non-damm thing or type of bonus damage per lineage ability/UA. Like if someone makes a golem, they're generally immune to any sort of mind effecting things, since they have no mind to effect. Boom, there's one of their magic/lineage UA/abilities, immunity to just that one type of thing. If you want to have a bunch of immunities, that can be your thing, but you won't really get any other neat stuff that most people do, which is your choice, since immunities can be pretty defining characteristics for most characters. The cost of course is that you have a UA that is rather situational since you won't always be encountering that thing you're immune to.

So yeah, your golem character is immune to mind effecting abilities, because golem. But that's a fairly situational thing they're immune to that you've used up a UA on. Mind effecting spells/abilities are pretty rare, so sure, it'll make you good against the mind control/illusion type guy, but do nothing for any other style of mages.

I myself have never seen staff just approve nonsensical effect immunity. It's always has a base in the character's existence, a logical reason behind it and thus I don't approve of getting rid of or limiting them too much myself, you claim having these removes people's hard work, but people work hard on their characters stories, and sometimes those things just come with the story. So I myself can't get behind removing them, because it would negate the hard work and creativity people can/do put into their character's.

I partially agree it need's a certain element to control on it, a give and take or such, but far as I've seen it is controlled and reasonable.

All constricting it will do is make people try and find more clever ways to surpass it in my opinion. It won't really change much.

Just my two cents~

@Almyra, I believe that Nao's concern is mainly that people who use custom lineages sometimes use the fact that custom lineages are the most unrestricted bonuses you can get to grant themselves a whole bunch of immunities, which basically makes it very hard to use effects on them which aren't just 'I deal X damage' without it even requiring them to sacrifice Unique Ability slots.

Actually, now that I think about it, I believe I once saw a custom lineage which both grants immunity to basically every debuff while also passively negating any immunities other people around the owner might have...

Akeya wrote:I have to admit that the idea of someone being flat out immune to non-damage effects is not really something I approve of.

Granted, I do acknowledge that sometimes it just makes sense. If your character is a golem or something you aren't going to care for most effects which are aimed to hinder living beings.

Overall though full immunities are tricky things which should be watched with care. For example with Slayers, who in the manga/anime are basically immune to their own element, the immunity has been replaced with a scaling percentage resistance to keep elemental mages from just feeling completely useless.

Also there's the fact that some things are just harder to be immune to than others. For example, it's easy to imagine someone not being slowed down by frost because they're a construct or their magic automatically keeps their body above a certain temperature. In contrast, being immune to something like being ensnared is going to be a bit trickier, since having supernatural constitution or an unusual body structure doesn't exactly do anything about the fact that there's something wrapped around you keeping you in place. Even the aforementioned golem is still going to be ensnared if the material used is strong enough. Granted if you're a ghost or something physical bindings aren't going to hinder you but logically speaking you would also be unable to interact with anything else physically.

This of course is merely an example, but I partially agree with Nao in the sense that I believe that sometimes immunity to certain effects make sense, but overall flat out immunity should not be used unless it really just makes too much sense not to use it. Otherwise you'd be better off with resistances which reduce the effects but don't outright No Sell them.

Of course, I'm not exactly sure how many lineages grant immunity to non-damage effects. I'm mostly throwing in my two cents on that I believe that real immunity should be rare and unusual.

Basically said all I would here, Wolfy. Only thing is the slayer immunity part. There have been times in the anime where Natsu has been hurt by fire and yes of course, he comes out on top in the end but he did get hurt by the attacks still. Its weird to think that Natsu is like the only one who has fought his own element really.. lol.

But yeah immunities should be something obvious like the mentioned golem example but I think there should be weaknesses to having those like said above. Its all just a balancing thing which staff does do but sometimes things do get passed because it is overlooked or something. Staff is only human after all. If anything they will see this and be more cautious about it because they will see it is being noticed as a possible issue. So good call Nao.

This reminds me of the 'Elemental Body' craze that happened not too long ago on here where we had to define how they should work so they weren't completely OP because everyone had it so they were unaffected by magic because they became ethereal. #ramblesofanoldmember

Akeya wrote:@Almyra, I believe that Nao's concern is mainly that people who use custom lineages sometimes use the fact that custom lineages are the most unrestricted bonuses you can get to grant themselves a whole bunch of immunities, which basically makes it very hard to use effects on them which aren't just 'I deal X damage' without it even requiring them to sacrifice Unique Ability slots.

Actually, now that I think about it, I believe I once saw a custom lineage which both grants immunity to basically every debuff while also passively negating any immunities other people around the owner might have...

Honestly, the things you can get away with in a custom lineage in general are rather ridiculous. I've always been of the opinion that they need more well-defined rules/guidelines for grading them, something more along the lines of magic rules.

Well, I do think that allowing people to not have to work within a specific template for their lineage is good since a lineage can help create more unusual but interesting effects.

However there's unusual and interesting effects and there's just using the custom lineage freedom to break the game.

I think an easy way to already make custom lineages more bearable is to not allow them to include raw stat boosts which push the owner into the next Rank or even more (so no buffs which say stuff like 'strength far above that of any human' or just a 100% or higher stat boost) unless that is by far the most important part of the lineage, and be very careful with effects which automatically affect others, unless once again that's the real main purpose.

Well, that and be wary of immunities.

I noticed this for a while myself and put some thought into it. Yes I do believe immunities are these strong aspects of a character that should be regulated and given plenty reason. And to have blanket immunities? Aweful, especially if they are not fair(in the spoiler below I put the conditions of what I think makes a immunity trait fair).

Spoiler:

And while yes, grading staff are very good in keeping watch in grading apps most of the time(they are human, and all of us are flawed of course), custom lineages do allow for this surprisingly. No I don't think lineages should be graded the same way as other apps are, but for very powerful effects I feel their needs to be a limit on that. Say you have a immunity to all heat based debuffs without a drawback, then I feel that should be it for that whole lineage since that is very strong by it's own. (NOTE: when I refer to immunities, i'm also including abilities that reduce the duration of debuffs to one post as well)

Now I will agree with eris, the ability to take away and negate abilities can be just as unfair as immunities if not balanced. Admittedly I don't know how you would regulate those, my best guess would be follow the guide I wrote for immunities. But I feel those wouldn't be as bad unless their was reason, and I believe if those became more and more common then it would be because of the popularity of unregulated and unfair immunities.

But in all honesty, even if nothing is done about this(for whatever reason), then there is a solution. Ignore the people who have the unfair abilities. I mean to simpily ignore or to not rp with them is a good deterrence to allow more of those abilites to be created. Would you rp with me if my character had the ability to one shot your character, regardless of what your app may say? I would hope not, and I wouldn't either. So just to know who has them and ignoring them can be the solution to this(mind you it may take a long time by itself, but it can work). And if you may say that this won't work because it won't make sense story wise, realize that their is no requirement to acknowledge other's stories save for site wide events.

I would finally like to point out that bias is always a thing that can allow this stuff to happen. No we shouldn't hate the graders for having it sometimes(because we are all capable of being bias), but we should point it out and try to correct it if it needs correcting so badly.