Having fun with v4

[Pete Mack]

So, to get back in practice, I set up the old standby easy character: Rogue, High Elf. I had to go pretty deep to get anything going.
* RBase at dl 1550', cl 21 (Arvedui). Had to carry !rHeat in case of Hell Hounds.
* Free action at 1850', Maul of Gondolin (ESP) Also found Taratol.
* TO at 2800' (rod. Wand came at 2950)
* RoSpeed(+9) (2950') First speed item.

And finally:
* Feanor at 3000', (Barahir)


Each of these had pretty significant impact on gameplay....

Edit: Also found Caspannion and Hithlomir, both of which helped a lot. I used Hithlomir for several levels just for the Stealth and weight, before finding RoSpeed.
And now: Cloak of Magi (pStun)

[Magnate]

Interested in your views on the combat system, which is by far the most radical change from V ...

[Pete Mack]

Interested in your views on the combat system, which is by far the most radical change from V ...

I'm finding that out now, but it is hard to know with the broken weapon descriptions, and the non-functional archery.

If you can tell me what the changes need to be, I'll be happy to make them.

Also, why does a Sharp Spear +0,+29) do essentially the same damage as an ordinary spear? Is there a description of how melee works in a user's guide somewhere?

[Magnate]

I'm finding that out now, but it is hard to know with the broken weapon descriptions, and the non-functional archery.

If you can tell me what the changes need to be, I'll be happy to make them.

Also, why does a Sharp Spear +0,+29) do essentially the same damage as an ordinary spear? Is there a description of how melee works in a user's guide somewhere?

Sorry, I didn't manage to fix descriptions (though combat does actually work, even though the numbers shown aren't the ones it uses). I tried to encapsulate the combat calcs so that the description code could use them (instead of approximating), but never quite got there.

We experimented with 10x granularity for v4 combat, so +29 is basically the equivalent of +3. Derakon has reverted to V-style plusses for Pyrel because he felt that it was too big a change for people to cope with. (I disagree but Pyrel is a benign dictatorship not a democracy.)

(And yes there is a long description of the new melee system in a v4 forum thread.)

[Derakon]

I think the only documentation is in old threads on the forums, sadly. But I can recap; it's pretty simple.

You have a base 1 blow/round that deals (weapon damage dice) damage. You get bonus blows based on your finesse score:
# blows = 1 + (total Finesse score / 100) * (weapon's Balance)

You get bonus damage based on your prowess score:
Damage/blow = (weapon dice value) * (1 + (total Prowess score / 100) * (weapon's Heft)

The numbers in v4 are overinflated because of that 100 divisor; really they ought to be divided by a factor of 10 across the board and the divisor similarly modified. That's where your confusion is coming from. (EDIT: regarding Magnate's post above, I initially agreed with him, but felt that it wasn't worth fighting this battle since basically every other RPG in existence keeps their pluses down to between +0 to +30 or so; the aesthetic value of having a nice even 100 in a formula doesn't make up for the cost of having to retrain every new player)

Your chance to hit is 75% - (monster evasion), and your damage per blow is reduced by 1 for each point of absorption the monster has. These values replace monster AC; the idea is that finesse characters are good against evasive monsters since they get many blows and evasive monsters tend to be fragile; meanwhile prowess characters must waste more blows and then massively overkill when they do land a hit. The reverse is true against absorptive monsters: finesse characters land many scratches that don't make much progress, while prowess characters land a few big hits that readily overcome the damage reduction.

Spears have a base 2d3 damage dice, a balance of .75, and a heft of .25. As a result of that .25 multiplier, any prowess bonuses on them are going to be comparatively ineffectual -- they're built for multiple light blows rather than a few large blows. For example, if your character has a total 300 finesse and prowess each, then you would have 1 + 300 / 100 * .75 = 3.25 blows/round, and each blow would deal 2d3 * (1 + 300 / 100 * .25) = 7 damage on average.

Your Sharp Spear gives you a 29-point increase to Prowess, which means functionally a (29 * .25 = 7.25)% increase in each blow's damage. That's why you don't see much of any difference.

[Pete Mack]

I think the only documentation is in old threads on the forums, sadly. But I can recap; it's pretty simple.

I looked for a while and gave up. I saw one post called "Estimated damage", but it did not include any details about what the bonus numbers do, or about what "finesse" means, or about what it means to use 60% of your prowess.''

Perhaps an update to the Sticky FAQ is in order, including this?

Also: WHat is "of protection?"
What is the range of monster AC (evasion rates?)

[Magnate]

Also: WHat is "of protection?"
What is the range of monster AC (evasion rates?)

That's a good question - I don't actually know, but

grep ^I monster.txt | sort -n -k 5 -t :

will tell you.

All the affixes are described in ego_item.txt - from memory, of Protection is simply magical bonus AC but I could be wrong.