Not really. A pentagram would be more appropriate. Hexagrams are less associated with the occult, and tend to symbolize positive concepts like balance and unity.
But apparently Artificial Intelligence isn't really capable of distinguishing the two.
I suggest watching a recent video about sigil stones from The Old Knight on youtube for better balance.
As a base, I would pick an effect as a gold standard and then balance other effects so that they are equivalent in value to it. For example, pick Fortify Magicka +50, as it is generally considered the strongest stone, and bring others to its value, as most of them are vastly inferior.
Fortify Magicka is nerfed in the Remaster because it no longer effectively buffs your Magicka recovery rate. So it's arguably one of the worst effects in my mod.
First, I want to say that I love the idea of the mod and am going to give it a try on my next playthrough! The idea for removing the useless effects is amazing in and of itself so thank you for releasing this! That said, I think that you are underestimating the power of an extra 450 Magicka. Obviously not as OP as 100% Chameleon at all times, but if you're High Elf, Atronach with Max Int and 9 +50 Magicka Enchants, you'll be sitting at 900 Magicka.
You're right that the change to magicka recovery makes this seem not as great, but Atronach can't recover anyway and Flax is everywhere, meaning Restore Magicka Potions are plentiful to make up for this and you can reach over 200 Magicka per second for over a minute at 100 Alchemy with 5 Flax. So pretty much every effect on this list combined can be replaced with a few 900 cost spells. The versatility that Magicka can achieve means the effects that aren't Magicka need to be stronger to be equivalent in value.
I've got about 150 hours of Vanilla Master difficulty and 50 hours of modded Master difficulty and can say with certainty that, unless you are playing Adept or specific mods to fix physical damage, Magic ALWAYS wins out over anything else and more Magicka just means more winning and more easily. What's severely lacking is power in non-magic aspects, and I think this mod could go a long way in fixing that by allowing Sigil Stones to bridge the massive gap in power.
If you want to rebalance to match what +50 Magicka can do, these would be my suggestions:
Fortify Attributes +25 - 25 Int is equal to 50 Magicka and so is a direct comparison that can be made and applied to all attributes.
Fortify Health/Fatigue +150 - 20 Endurance gives +79 Health. 25 End gives +98 Health and also give extra Health Regen. If you put this on 9 pieces then the +1350 Health would allow players to actually build tanks in Master difficulty without being so heavily reliant on magic. Fatigue would work in a similar fashion as 20 Willpower gives more than +50 Fatigue as it is. You wouldn't do much with it except to let Fatigue keep up with HP.
Resist Fire/Frost/Shock 75%- With Resist Magic 20%, why bother getting the resist element 40%'s? 2 Resist Magics replace all 3 of them giving the same effect as 6 for just 2. The Element Shields give 15% as well, and they give a Shield on top of that. 75% makes it so you still have to add some other effects to reach 100%, but it's still achievable.
Shield 30% - With Element Shields being almost as much, why ever even go shield at 20%? At least 30% lets you reach armor cap with 3 pieces of clothing instead of 5.
Fire/Frost/Shock Shield 20% - A 30s 15% Fire+Frost+Shock Shield can be cast for 54 Magicka and would be equivalent to 3 enchant slots for the price of 1. You can do 5% each with 10% Resist Magic for 120s and it only costs 142.
Weakness to Normal 150% 10s - Normal Weapon damage is SEVERELY lacking.
Weakness to Fire/Frost/Shock 300% 20s - 100% is already easily achievable on enchants and you can add Fire/Frost/Shock damage to them as well as Weakness to Magic 100%. The only way to balance this would be convenience over using multiple weakness spells.
Weakness to Magic 100% - Only reason I don't recommend more is that this one actually stacks on itself every hit. You can make a better enchant yourself but this one is pretty equivalent to the rest already.
Even if you don't make any changes, thanks for coming out with this! The removal of those useless effects alone makes the mod worth it.
Attributes can be 20-25, depending on their usefulness. For example, Willpower is clearly better than Intelligence.
A +150 health/fatigue bonus seems excessive, especially if you get it early at level 17, but +50 is clearly too little, so it requires testing with different builds.
Resist Fire/Frost/Shock should be around 75%, as three Resist Magic +20 would be universally better otherwise. Resist Magic provides resistance to all magical effects, including poisons, so it would still be preferable on many characters, as it can be easily capped with a mundane ring, for example.
Shield as a sigil enchant is mostly useful on pure mage characters, as defense caps at 85% anyway and can be achieved by simply wearing armor. So, three sigil stones would be a sufficient enough penalty for roleplaying and not wearing actual armor.
All weapon enchants are still inferior to what can be achieved with an enchanting altar, while sigil stones are supposed to be superior.
I appreciate your expertise/experience with the game, Maketh. But I think you're failing to realize that it gives you a rather skewed perspective.
Vanilla Master difficulty is ridiculous. The notion of balancing elements of the game FOR Master difficulty is even more ridiculous. People only contend with it via exploits like Conjuration and Poisons, or by leaning on stacked custom potions/spells. Most people aren't interested in playing that way; it's unsurprising how popular the Difficulty mods are which tone down the DRASTIC default multipliers.
For example: "+1350 Health would allow players to actually build tanks in Master difficulty without being so heavily reliant on magic." This much Health would also make you IMMORTAL at the default difficulty. You probably already feel as though it's impossible to die on normal difficulty, which is why you should realize that dramatically buffing sigil stones to make the game even easier is simply a bad idea.
Yeah. Magic/Alchemy is OP. Making OP sigil stones isn't the solution to that issue.
"With Element Shields being almost as much, why ever even go shield at 20%?"
Because Sigil Stones are random rewards. You talk as though you can pick whichever effects you want, and easily stack 3, 5, or even 9 of the same one. I'm well aware that you CAN technically do that- but you're cheating. The compulsion to save-scum is precisely what motivated this mod in the first place.
Anyway, addressing severe Skill imbalances via randomized enchanting rewards (which are gated behind relatively challenging dungeons) is just silly. You clearly overlooked the fact that I authored the Proportional Weapon Damage Scaling mod, which makes weaponry much more competitive inherently.
Now. Regarding some relevant feedback:
Yes, 25 Int would be equivalent to 50 Magicka. But Intelligence is relatively bad in the Remaster. 25 Willpower or Endurance would be REALLY good, and necessitate buffing Fortify Health/Fatigue even more.
I strongly considered giving different values to the different attributes, which could enable better balancing. But counteracting the fundamental imbalances of the game isn't the goal of this mod, as we've already discussed. There's nothing wrong with minor imbalance in randomized loot, and there's value in numerical consistency, as well as parity with the base game.
I'll likely buff Resist Fire/Frost/Shock some more. I started conservatively with the numbers, but you make a good case to raise them. Like with attributes, I'm still reluctant to buff effects more than 100% over the original values. But there's a lot of room between 40% and 70%.
Regarding Shields, I just don't think it should be easy to hit armor cap without actually wearing armor or casting Defend spells. Stronger Shield enchantments seems like a great way to buff unarmored mages relative to armored swordsmen.
Regarding Normal Weapon Damage, please do check out my other mod. I'd love to get your opinions on it.
I'll reevaluate the Weakness effects. Their tuning is what I was least certain about, since I didn't have starting values. It's been years since I dabbled with custom enchantments in TES. These numbers are based on Magicka costs of equivalent spells, relative to the costs of other effects. IIRC I made the Transcendent effects around 100-120 Magicka.
I'll definitely check out the other mod. Remastered made some changes to reach that weren't great and I see that you addressed that. And the lackluster weapon damage is something that transcend difficulty.
I didn't mention my hours on Master difficulty as some kind of flex, I brought them up to show that I understand the game, it's mechanics and it's balance. The thing is, balancing mods around expert/master is the only time it actually makes a difference. I did a quick test to see if I'm the one with the skewed view. I just now got on one of my level 25 characters, took off all my gear and went into the nearest Oblivion Gate. I was attacked by Daedroth dealing 40 points of damage(no mitigation) and it took 11 hits to kill me(410 Health), so the numbers on UESP are correct. Naked with no buffs and no fighting back. Armor Cap of 85% would make them deal 6 points of damage, taking 69 hits to kill you. Even base Daedric makes them take 42 hits to kill you. Why even bother with enchantments if you're wearing full armor in adept? In Expert and Master though, it turns useless into useful.
The buffs I suggested aren't about making the game easier or making them OP, they are about making the effects worthwhile to have. As you said, it already feels impossible to die on Normal difficulty, so why balance specifically around it? Instead, as Anako said, balancing around a gold standard effect makes more sense. +50 Magicka is the strongest not-game-breaking effect on your list and so it makes sense to either balance around it, or reduce it to match your chosen gold standard effect. A good way to think about it isn't "How useful is this one effect?" but instead "How much can be done with this one effect?". Something 30% Shield can't do much compared to 50 Magicka, nor can 50 Health, 50 Fatigue, 40% Resist Fire, etc... That's why 30% Chameleon is broken, if you can get to 100% you resist the game, and why more Magicka is so strong, you can use it for too much.
You mentioned balancing the effects around approximately equivalent magical effects, but the entire reason for my reply is that most aren't even a little equivalent. You mention how 25 Intelligence isn't nearly as good as 25 Endurance or Willpower but that's what I'm trying to explain, you underestimate Magicka too much. A Fortify Endurance/Willpower 25pts for 69s costs 50 Magicka. At 100 Willpower, you get that 50 Magicka back in 5 seconds so now you have both effects. A Fortify Health 50pts for 120s costs 50 Magicka. The Fortify Endurance 20pts effect gives 79 Health and higher recovery. The Fortify Health and Fatigue already need a major buff because they already don't match up with Endurance and Willpower.
You say the point of the mod is to remove the compulsion to save-scum, but it won't really accomplish that for anyone that was going to save-scum anyway. As I said, it is useful for the fact that removes the entirely useless enchantments and with only 60 chances without save-scumming, reducing the bad effect pool helps a lot. But almost all of these effects are still useless by the time you get them. 20 Strength? Why carry things? You're already rich and only Shield Bash damage scales. Agility? More fatigue is basically useless. 50 Health? You're already immortal in Adept and in Master that is equal to another 2 hits, you still won't survive melee with that. Better to just use a 24 Magicka enchantment from a Grand Soul since they're everywhere at this level.
Yes, Sigil Stones are random rewards, but Grand Souls aren't and if they can't even compete with 24 Magicka, why use them? I talk about them as though you can easily stack them because you can. You've got 19 effects on that list and there are 60 Sigil Stones. Endurance and Fortify Health can go together. Fire/Frost/Shock Shield, Resist Magic/Fire/Frost/Shock, Shield and, to a lesser extent, Spell Absorption can be mixed and matched with spells/other enchants/armor. But as they are, it just makes more sense to not use them and use a 24 Magicka enchant instead to get the same effects at the expense of a little duration.
Difficulty sliders aren't the solution to higher difficulties as they don't address the disparity between magic and melee. At that point, just turn down the difficulty if you can't handle it. Their only use case is for people who want to not be immortal on Adept but don't know enough about the game play anything higher. If you don't want your mod to make melee able to compete with the +50 Magicka effect, that's fine, it's your mod, but at the moment the imbalances aren't minor and you severely underestimate how strong more Magicka is just because the recovery isn't percentage based anymore.
Once again, thanks for releasing this mod, it is an overall great mod for those of us who don't want to cheat with save-scumming or choosing Sigil Stones. But I hope you'll take my words into consideration because most of the effects just aren't needed for Adept or worthwhile for anything higher.
This is brilliant! You got rid of the weaker / less generally-useful effects and made the whole effect pool way more appealing!
This is exactly what I was looking for. The mod that allowed me to select an effect felt as cheaty as save scumming, whereas this feels like a great solution. Thanks!
You defenantly did alot of work and its impressive. This is personaly just me i see no need for single enchantments in oblivion, morrowind, or skyrim 2 is my lowest limit and if this mod added sigil stones with multiple fortify enchantments effects and damage effects lore freindly of course i probably would have downloaded it. Personaly i find it unfair that i cant put the same amount of enchantments on a hood than the devs can.
That is the core issue w/humanity right now, we don't get choices that we need and it is only getting worst w/45-47 in the White house. Your basic control freak ego manics with a whole lot of Narcisstic toxicity? Of course I downloaded this mod as anything that gives me more choices and juice. ty vm
not going to lie grundvigs, that came out as self projecting right there.
you never know hexmod could be using a different sigil stone mod like this or this one. while liking the idea of this one, it isn't enough for him to change mods and cause potential problems in his save file, and just pointed out one thing that would make he install this mod
@Grundvigs69 For the love of god leave politics out of your nexus comments. It is so easy to do so while getting your point across in a balanced manner.
This is an interesting approach. I would like to see a re-balance of sigil stones but this one doesn't meet what I'm looking for. Feather 125 is top of my list, and this mod removes it. Fire/Frost/Shock Shield 25 is a close 2nd, and this nerfs it. The rest of the effects that I look for are either unchanged or removed by this mod. I don't even look at offensive effects. You can enchant game-breakingly strong weapons without sigil stones. On the other hand, Fortify [attribute] 20 instead of 12 makes those stones actually useful. If you could break this out into 2 or 3 mods, other players might be able to tailor it to their styles. In the meantime, there's a "Sigil Stone Selector" mod, or just save-scum right before you grab the stone.
Yeah, I deliberated a lot over Feather. Ultimately I removed it for a few reasons, despite the fact that it's strong: - Feather effects don't work properly on enchantments. Often you'll need to unequip and re-equip the enchanted item in order to make the Feather effect actually "kick in". - It's redundant with Fortify Strength, which I both buffed and duplicated. 20 Strength nets you 120 carry capacity, in addition to melee damage and some HP. - With Burden gone, Feather is missing its counterpart.
Elemental shields having 25% is crazy. It invalidates the regular Shield completely, and generally outclasses elemental resistances as well. Hitting the 85% Damage Resistance cap is not difficult, and doesn't need to be made any easier by OP Sigil Stones.
If you're the type of player to chase exclusively the optimal, overpowered effects and "game-breakingly strong" equipment, then you're simply not whom I'm designing for. My goal is chiefly to balance games such that players no longer feel compelled to use particular builds, items, exploits, etc.
18 comments
But apparently Artificial Intelligence isn't really capable of distinguishing the two.
As a base, I would pick an effect as a gold standard and then balance other effects so that they are equivalent in value to it. For example, pick Fortify Magicka +50, as it is generally considered the strongest stone, and bring others to its value, as most of them are vastly inferior.
Fortify Magicka is nerfed in the Remaster because it no longer effectively buffs your Magicka recovery rate. So it's arguably one of the worst effects in my mod.
You're right that the change to magicka recovery makes this seem not as great, but Atronach can't recover anyway and Flax is everywhere, meaning Restore Magicka Potions are plentiful to make up for this and you can reach over 200 Magicka per second for over a minute at 100 Alchemy with 5 Flax. So pretty much every effect on this list combined can be replaced with a few 900 cost spells. The versatility that Magicka can achieve means the effects that aren't Magicka need to be stronger to be equivalent in value.
I've got about 150 hours of Vanilla Master difficulty and 50 hours of modded Master difficulty and can say with certainty that, unless you are playing Adept or specific mods to fix physical damage, Magic ALWAYS wins out over anything else and more Magicka just means more winning and more easily. What's severely lacking is power in non-magic aspects, and I think this mod could go a long way in fixing that by allowing Sigil Stones to bridge the massive gap in power.
If you want to rebalance to match what +50 Magicka can do, these would be my suggestions:
Even if you don't make any changes, thanks for coming out with this! The removal of those useless effects alone makes the mod worth it.
Attributes can be 20-25, depending on their usefulness. For example, Willpower is clearly better than Intelligence.
A +150 health/fatigue bonus seems excessive, especially if you get it early at level 17, but +50 is clearly too little, so it requires testing with different builds.
Resist Fire/Frost/Shock should be around 75%, as three Resist Magic +20 would be universally better otherwise. Resist Magic provides resistance to all magical effects, including poisons, so it would still be preferable on many characters, as it can be easily capped with a mundane ring, for example.
Shield as a sigil enchant is mostly useful on pure mage characters, as defense caps at 85% anyway and can be achieved by simply wearing armor. So, three sigil stones would be a sufficient enough penalty for roleplaying and not wearing actual armor.
All weapon enchants are still inferior to what can be achieved with an enchanting altar, while sigil stones are supposed to be superior.
I appreciate your expertise/experience with the game, Maketh. But I think you're failing to realize that it gives you a rather
skewed perspective.
Vanilla Master difficulty is ridiculous. The notion of balancing elements of the game FOR Master difficulty is
even more ridiculous. People only contend with it via exploits like
Conjuration and Poisons, or by leaning on stacked custom potions/spells.
Most people aren't interested in playing that way; it's unsurprising
how popular the Difficulty mods are which tone down the DRASTIC default
multipliers.
For example: "+1350 Health would allow players to actually build tanks in Master difficulty without being so heavily
reliant on magic." This much Health would also make you IMMORTAL at the
default difficulty. You probably already feel as though it's impossible
to die on normal difficulty, which is why you should realize that
dramatically buffing sigil stones to make the game even easier is simply
a bad idea.
Yeah. Magic/Alchemy is OP. Making OP sigil stones isn't the solution to that issue.
"With Element Shields being almost as much, why ever even go shield at 20%?"
Because Sigil Stones are random rewards. You talk as though you can pick
whichever effects you want, and easily stack 3, 5, or even 9 of the same
one. I'm well aware that you CAN technically do that- but you're
cheating. The compulsion to save-scum is precisely what motivated this
mod in the first place.
Anyway, addressing severe Skill imbalances via randomized enchanting rewards (which are gated behind
relatively challenging dungeons) is just silly. You clearly overlooked
the fact that I authored the Proportional Weapon Damage Scaling mod,
which makes weaponry much more competitive inherently.
Now. Regarding some relevant feedback:
Yes, 25 Int would be equivalent to 50 Magicka. But Intelligence is
relatively bad in the Remaster. 25 Willpower or Endurance would be
REALLY good, and necessitate buffing Fortify Health/Fatigue even more.
I strongly considered giving different values to the different
attributes, which could enable better balancing. But counteracting the
fundamental imbalances of the game isn't the goal of this mod, as we've
already discussed. There's nothing wrong with minor imbalance in
randomized loot, and there's value in numerical consistency, as well as
parity with the base game.
I'll likely buff Resist Fire/Frost/Shock some more. I started conservatively with the numbers,
but you make a good case to raise them. Like with attributes, I'm still
reluctant to buff effects more than 100% over the original values. But
there's a lot of room between 40% and 70%.
Regarding Shields, I just don't think it should be easy to hit armor cap without actually
wearing armor or casting Defend spells. Stronger Shield enchantments
seems like a great way to buff unarmored mages relative to armored
swordsmen.
Regarding Normal Weapon Damage, please do check out my other mod. I'd love to get your opinions on it.
I'll reevaluate the Weakness effects. Their tuning is what I was least
certain about, since I didn't have starting values. It's been years
since I dabbled with custom enchantments in TES. These numbers are based
on Magicka costs of equivalent spells, relative to the costs of other
effects. IIRC I made the Transcendent effects around 100-120 Magicka.
I didn't mention my hours on Master difficulty as some kind of flex, I brought them up to show that I understand the game, it's mechanics and it's balance. The thing is, balancing mods around expert/master is the only time it actually makes a difference. I did a quick test to see if I'm the one with the skewed view. I just now got on one of my level 25 characters, took off all my gear and went into the nearest Oblivion Gate. I was attacked by Daedroth dealing 40 points of damage(no mitigation) and it took 11 hits to kill me(410 Health), so the numbers on UESP are correct. Naked with no buffs and no fighting back. Armor Cap of 85% would make them deal 6 points of damage, taking 69 hits to kill you. Even base Daedric makes them take 42 hits to kill you. Why even bother with enchantments if you're wearing full armor in adept? In Expert and Master though, it turns useless into useful.
The buffs I suggested aren't about making the game easier or making them OP, they are about making the effects worthwhile to have. As you said, it already feels impossible to die on Normal difficulty, so why balance specifically around it? Instead, as Anako said, balancing around a gold standard effect makes more sense. +50 Magicka is the strongest not-game-breaking effect on your list and so it makes sense to either balance around it, or reduce it to match your chosen gold standard effect. A good way to think about it isn't "How useful is this one effect?" but instead "How much can be done with this one effect?". Something 30% Shield can't do much compared to 50 Magicka, nor can 50 Health, 50 Fatigue, 40% Resist Fire, etc... That's why 30% Chameleon is broken, if you can get to 100% you resist the game, and why more Magicka is so strong, you can use it for too much.
You mentioned balancing the effects around approximately equivalent magical effects, but the entire reason for my reply is that most aren't even a little equivalent. You mention how 25 Intelligence isn't nearly as good as 25 Endurance or Willpower but that's what I'm trying to explain, you underestimate Magicka too much. A Fortify Endurance/Willpower 25pts for 69s costs 50 Magicka. At 100 Willpower, you get that 50 Magicka back in 5 seconds so now you have both effects. A Fortify Health 50pts for 120s costs 50 Magicka. The Fortify Endurance 20pts effect gives 79 Health and higher recovery. The Fortify Health and Fatigue already need a major buff because they already don't match up with Endurance and Willpower.
You say the point of the mod is to remove the compulsion to save-scum, but it won't really accomplish that for anyone that was going to save-scum anyway. As I said, it is useful for the fact that removes the entirely useless enchantments and with only 60 chances without save-scumming, reducing the bad effect pool helps a lot. But almost all of these effects are still useless by the time you get them. 20 Strength? Why carry things? You're already rich and only Shield Bash damage scales. Agility? More fatigue is basically useless. 50 Health? You're already immortal in Adept and in Master that is equal to another 2 hits, you still won't survive melee with that. Better to just use a 24 Magicka enchantment from a Grand Soul since they're everywhere at this level.
Yes, Sigil Stones are random rewards, but Grand Souls aren't and if they can't even compete with 24 Magicka, why use them? I talk about them as though you can easily stack them because you can. You've got 19 effects on that list and there are 60 Sigil Stones. Endurance and Fortify Health can go together. Fire/Frost/Shock Shield, Resist Magic/Fire/Frost/Shock, Shield and, to a lesser extent, Spell Absorption can be mixed and matched with spells/other enchants/armor. But as they are, it just makes more sense to not use them and use a 24 Magicka enchant instead to get the same effects at the expense of a little duration.
Difficulty sliders aren't the solution to higher difficulties as they don't address the disparity between magic and melee. At that point, just turn down the difficulty if you can't handle it. Their only use case is for people who want to not be immortal on Adept but don't know enough about the game play anything higher. If you don't want your mod to make melee able to compete with the +50 Magicka effect, that's fine, it's your mod, but at the moment the imbalances aren't minor and you severely underestimate how strong more Magicka is just because the recovery isn't percentage based anymore.
Once again, thanks for releasing this mod, it is an overall great mod for those of us who don't want to cheat with save-scumming or choosing Sigil Stones. But I hope you'll take my words into consideration because most of the effects just aren't needed for Adept or worthwhile for anything higher.
This is exactly what I was looking for. The mod that allowed me to select an effect felt as cheaty as save scumming, whereas this feels like a great solution. Thanks!
Sounds like we're of similar minds. I was also reluctant to use those workarounds. Enough so to go make a mod, I guess. 😅
Your basic control freak ego manics with a whole lot of Narcisstic toxicity?
Of course I downloaded this mod as anything that gives me more choices and juice. ty vm
you never know hexmod could be using a different sigil stone mod like this or this one. while liking the idea of this one, it isn't enough for him to change mods and cause potential problems in his save file, and just pointed out one thing that would make he install this mod
For the love of god leave politics out of your nexus comments. It is so easy to do so while getting your point across in a balanced manner.
Feather 125 is top of my list, and this mod removes it.
Fire/Frost/Shock Shield 25 is a close 2nd, and this nerfs it.
The rest of the effects that I look for are either unchanged or removed by this mod.
I don't even look at offensive effects. You can enchant game-breakingly strong weapons without sigil stones.
On the other hand, Fortify [attribute] 20 instead of 12 makes those stones actually useful.
If you could break this out into 2 or 3 mods, other players might be able to tailor it to their styles.
In the meantime, there's a "Sigil Stone Selector" mod, or just save-scum right before you grab the stone.
- Feather effects don't work properly on enchantments. Often you'll need to unequip and re-equip the enchanted item in order to make the Feather effect actually "kick in".
- It's redundant with Fortify Strength, which I both buffed and duplicated. 20 Strength nets you 120 carry capacity, in addition to melee damage and some HP.
- With Burden gone, Feather is missing its counterpart.
Elemental shields having 25% is crazy. It invalidates the regular Shield completely, and generally outclasses elemental resistances as well. Hitting the 85% Damage Resistance cap is not difficult, and doesn't need to be made any easier by OP Sigil Stones.
If you're the type of player to chase exclusively the optimal, overpowered effects and "game-breakingly strong" equipment, then you're simply not whom I'm designing for. My goal is chiefly to balance games such that players no longer feel compelled to use particular builds, items, exploits, etc.