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Post by sareth675 on Jul 19, 2015 13:03:16 GMT -5
Making a thread for people to post their irks / suggestions with how combat is currently handled and how it could be improved perhaps.
I'd like to start with a few questions about the combat system so some stuff can be cleared up, cos I don't really know how its handled in game.
1) How does armor work? I mean, sometimes plate armor does nothing, sometimes it blocks 30 points of critical damage. What gives?
2) How do monsters calculate their dodge / armor? Do skeletons stack their natural armor values with armor they spawn with? Do they retain their natural dodge values even when wearing heavy armor? Cos right now armored mobs seem to be a complete bastard to kill compared to the heavy armored player characters who just get walloped mostly.
3) Is it hardcoded that NPCs don't have to use the same reloading system as players? Cos it seems mobs with crossbows / guns just keep on firing without the need to go through the process that players do to reload.
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Jul 19, 2015 13:19:23 GMT -5
1. Your armor value gets rolled every time you're hit. If it's at 30 you get 0-30 DR against each attack.
2. Skeletons/bandits/human type enemies use the same stats generating rules PCs use.
3. I'd like to get this sorted eventually but right now it's just set so that NPCs take attack and damage penalties with ranged weapons to compensate.
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Post by shrewdcrow on Jul 19, 2015 14:35:06 GMT -5
0-30 roll, shouldn't it be better odds the more armor you get so 5-30, 10-30 etc. Crits would be the hits that get under and in between the armor parts. If you compensate for someone hitting harder then others that's the people who get past that first 5 or 10 buffer etc.
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Post by sareth675 on Jul 19, 2015 14:42:53 GMT -5
Thanks for the quick reply Psionic, that's cleared up some stuff nicely. I'm in agreement with shrewdcrow though, I feel that if you wear heavy armor, there should be some way of having a minimum armor roll? Perhaps through abilities (maybe there is I just ain't looked) or just from your proficiency? Say every 10 points in a proficiency increases your minimum armor roll by 1 for light armor, 2 for medium and 3 for heavy? Characters will at least benefit somewhat from their choice of armor and levelling in it as well. Weapons have a minimum damage after all, can't armor have the same sort of thing?
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Post by kingofaquilonia on Jul 19, 2015 16:02:33 GMT -5
there are some abilities that increase your minimum armor roll but not by much from what I've seen. I saw one that increased it by 2 , that was it.
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jakunen
Gumshoe
Developer
Posts: 81
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Post by jakunen on Jul 19, 2015 16:02:36 GMT -5
Another irk/question/something-or-other.
Guns. Awesome idea, and I have no idea how to maximize their efficiency. Note that for all of the below, I have a marksmanship skill of 9 and primarily use a carbine (which is level 4 right now)
Some questions:
1. What exactly does the "ranged penalty" do? Does it lower your chance to hit? Lower the damage dealt?
2. All armor that I have seen so far has a ranged penalty to it. Can it be possible to find some armor (ex., light armor) that does not have a ranged penalty on it?
3. When equipping a gun, my character's AB on the character sheet drops to +1/-4. Unarmed, it is +5/0. Wielding my rapier and small buckler, it is +5/0. Where is the -4 to my AB coming from? If it is the above "ranged penalty", I should only have -2 (because of my armor). Where's the other -2 coming from?
4. When/How is progress in the marksman skill applied? Is it when something is successfully hit by a ranged attack? If the marksman gets the kill shot? If an attack is made, regardless of whether it hits?
5. Guns seem to appear as loot far less often than other weapons. This a bug or intended?
And now, some irks/complaints about guns:
1. I can't hit the broad side of a barn. When grouped with people using melee weapons, they're getting in all the hits and doing all the damage. I'm just wasting money and ammo. My 1-hand and shield skill is lower and yet I still feel like I'm hitting more often and doing more damage.
2. My marksmanship skill seems to rise so slowly, despite all the bonus xp I have from RPing. I have kept my skill tab open during combat to watch it move. Many fights with multiple mobs, that skill doesn't ever budge. (I don't have the same problem with other skills like stealth, detect, or my armor skill). This ties directly back to question 4 above. If I only get a bump in skill progress when I hit, I'm rarely getting them because I can't hit anything before the better-skilled melee people kill it. If I need skill to gain skill, I'm stuck in a cycle I can't get out of.
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Post by kingofaquilonia on Jul 19, 2015 16:07:47 GMT -5
1 ) Ranged Penalty is a penalty to AB 2 ) I'm not sure if there are any armors that don't have a ranged penalty... maybe padded? but I know scale only has a -1 3) when you equip your gun and are checking that AB were you moving around? You take another -2 for moving once you are standing in place it evens out 4) marksmanship skill progress should be going up with each hit. 5) I dunno, I haven't found many guns either.
I have noticed marksmanship to raise much slower than other skills though , I feel you on that.
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Post by sareth675 on Jul 19, 2015 16:08:12 GMT -5
Thanks King for pointing out the abilities do exist for minimum armor roll, I don't use heavy armor, I use light so I didn't check into that too much, but I know heavy armor fighters are what you want upfront, and whilst they're doing an admirable job thus far, I feel that as more difficult areas get introduced, our front line might end up getting pasted too fast due to bad rolls rather than bad proficiencies, even with just a +2 to their minimum armor check.
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Post by kingofaquilonia on Jul 19, 2015 16:10:18 GMT -5
Yea I understand. Axel has a 20 armor and I get hit by monsters using longswords for 15-25 damage all the time. I have a feeling going lightarmor with sword and board might actually be the best tank in higher levels with all the dodge bonuses.
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jakunen
Gumshoe
Developer
Posts: 81
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Post by jakunen on Jul 19, 2015 16:11:59 GMT -5
1 ) Ranged Penalty is a penalty to AB 2 ) I'm not sure if there are any armors that don't have a ranged penalty... maybe padded? but I know scale only has a -1 3) when you equip your gun and are checking that AB were you moving around? You take another -2 for moving once you are standing in place it evens out 4) marksmanship skill progress should be going up with each hit. 5) I dunno, I haven't found many guns either. I have noticed marksmanship to raise much slower than other skills though , I feel you on that. Then I'm getting more penalty to AB than I should... Great. I was standing still when I checked my AB. Seems to me like there is still a gap between what should happen and what is happening. The slow skill gain is absolutely painful. But thanks!
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ree
Just Wandered In
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Post by ree on Jul 19, 2015 16:19:43 GMT -5
there is armors that have no ranged penalty. Check out the light armor chain shirt . This is what i use since i pretty much only use guns. I agree though... building marksmanship skill is really slow
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Post by electrohydra on Jul 19, 2015 16:37:57 GMT -5
3 - There is currently a bug that affects (all? Some? I get it too) guns and gives them all a -2 to hit. 4 - Misses never make any skill go up (weapon, armor, block even.) 5 - I have seen a few drop, but they are quite rare indeed. Not sure if that's intended or not.
Complaints!
1 - Hiting with a gun is indeed quite hard at low levels, especially with the above-mentioned bug. Pick up the +1 to hit skill ASAP, then once you reach 10 in firearms if you have a level 10 gun your AB should be comparable to those of melee users. It get easier and easier from then on, because there are a lot of ways to increase your AB with guns. Also, flanking! Love it, use it!
2 - You are getting a high xp decrease from having a gun that's too low level for you, and combine that with the fact that you aren't hitting a lot, and that explains the lack of xp gain. Guns are hard to increase at first, but they do catch up once you get going.
And... questions!
1. How do knockdown attempts work?
2. Can you use skills like Shield Bash while using a handgun and shield?
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Post by Sobriquet on Jul 19, 2015 22:26:46 GMT -5
How does the dodge bonus scale with armor? As it stands, weapon AB keeps going up with better weaponry, so I'd imagine later on light armor would become less effective later on near end game if the dodge bonus didn't go up as well, even with the feats. Of course, this is just conjecture until it's actually played out, but right now it seems like it doesn't make too much sense to go light armor if you intend to melee. Maybe that's meant to be intentional, though. You can try to be sneaky about it, but most mobs'll turn their attention on you, and in PvP, people are smart enough to target the lightly armored one.
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Post by drunkensolamnic on Jul 20, 2015 8:27:05 GMT -5
Dodge bonus is your AC value in the DnD sense. Your dodge value is that number they have to hit to hit you in the first place. Your armor is your DR, what it reduces when you are hit. You're basically given a choice to be harder to hit, but take almost full damage when something gets through (light), be easy to hit, but absorb most damage (heavy), or a balance of the two (medium).
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Post by mireigi on Jul 20, 2015 9:24:44 GMT -5
I for one think that the DR is way too high early on. Considering that all skills start at level 1 (or is it 0?), you have no specialization, and there is nothing you are even remotely efficient at. It is quite frustrating to battle a single Sewer Wolf for nearly four minutes as a brand new character, due to DR negating almost all the damage half the time that attacks actually hit.
I've been playing with a few numbers, and have come up with a progression which I think is far more appropriate. It's not perfect, but it's a start, and is based on both armor value as well as armor skill.
Armor type modifiers (T): Light -- 1 Medium -- 2 Heavy -- 3
A = Armor value S = Skill value
DR = (T + (A /(500 / S))) to ((T + A / 10) + ((A * S / 160) * T) / 2)
This creates a system where having a low skill, but high Armor results in less DR than what the armor is capable of. As the skill increases in level, more of the armor contributes to the DR.
Heavy armor will, once the skill is high enough (85+) begin to provide DR higher than what the total armor value is listed as.
The values could still use some tweaking, but it would prevent some of sillyness that is slapping on a big suit of armor with no knowledge of how to properly wear it, and immediately be granted very high protected. This should of course translate to monsters as well in some fashion, likely by giving them a fixed skill level depending on the difficulty.
Examples
A = 14 S = 19
Light DR = (1 + (14 /(500 / 19))) to ((1 + 14 / 10) + ((14 * 19 / 150) * 19) / 2) DR = 1.494 to 3.29
Medium DR = (2 + (14 /(500 / 19))) to ((2 + 14 / 10) + ((14 * 19 / 150) * 19) / 2) DR = 2.532 to 5.17
Heavy DR = (3 + (14 /(500 / 19))) to ((3 + 14 / 10) + ((14 * 19 / 150) * 19) / 2) DR = 3.532 to 7.06
Increasing the skill (S) to 70 the DR becomes
A = 14 S = 70
Light DR = (1 + (14 /(500 / 70))) to ((1 + 14 / 10) + ((14 * 70 / 150) * 70) / 2) DR = 2.96 to 5.67
Medium DR = (2 + (14 /(500 / 70))) to ((2 + 14 / 10) + ((14 * 70 / 150) * 70) / 2) DR = 3.96 to 9.93
Heavy DR = (3 + (14 /(500 / 70))) to ((3 + 14 / 10) + ((14 * 70 / 150) * 70) / 2) DR = 4.96 to 14.2 Increasing the armor (A) to 20 instead the DR becomes
A = 20 S = 19
Light DR = (1 + (20 /(500 / 19))) to ((1 + 20 / 10) + ((20 * 19 / 150) * 19) / 2) DR = 1.76 to 4,27
Medium DR = (2 + (20 /(500 / 19))) to ((2 + 20 / 10) + ((20 * 19 / 150) * 19) / 2) DR = 2.76 to 6.53
Heavy DR = (3 + (20 /(500 / 19))) to ((3 + 20 / 10) + ((20 * 19 / 150) * 19) / 2) DR = 3.76 to 8.8
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