Bug with ego armor

[PowerDiver]

I'm convinced by this thread that restoring the to-hit penalty for egos is definitely the wrong solution. Now that we have fractional blows in nightlies we can experiment with EPB penalties for armour instead - this would remove the breakpoint effect of DEX penalties. With those you could sometimes wear heavy armour with impunity, and sometimes not - that makes no sense.

I think dex penalties are better than straight EPB penalties even with fractional blows. With a lower dex, you will then be inclined to use heavier weapons. At least that is true with the formulas I proposed. I don't know how close your current formula is to that mechanic.

IMO if wearing heavy plate changes things so that you prefer a two-handed flail to a dagger because your dex is lower, that would be a good thing. If it reduces your #blows by 20% regardless of weapon weight you do not get the same effect.

[Magnate]

I think dex penalties are better than straight EPB penalties even with fractional blows. With a lower dex, you will then be inclined to use heavier weapons. At least that is true with the formulas I proposed. I don't know how close your current formula is to that mechanic.

IMO if wearing heavy plate changes things so that you prefer a two-handed flail to a dagger because your dex is lower, that would be a good thing. If it reduces your #blows by 20% regardless of weapon weight you do not get the same effect.

The fractional blows implementation I did smoothed out the STR/DEX breakpoints in the "blows table" but didn't fundamentally alter it: it's still used instead of any continuous formula. Which is why I think that EPB changes are easier to balance than DEX penalties. But the latter are easier to implement initially and more intuitive, so maybe they're better. This is one of those Eric Raymond "bazaar" issues where whoever codes it first is likely to end up dictating how it works, as nobody will bother to re-do it unless it's terrible.

Eddie - now that we're all active on github you should get yourself an account and start pushing your really radical stuff out there. I have a suspicion that takk would snap quite a lot of it up.

P.S. I opened ticket #1205 for this and #1207 for displaying the info.

[PowerDiver]

A different option is to include a percentage of body armor and glove weight with the weapon weight before doing the table lookup, which would also affect light weapons much more than heavy weapons. However, that might be too inscrutable.

[Derakon]

I like that, actually. Fold the weapon weight, all of the glove weight, and a percentage of the body armor weight into a "attack weight" value, which is used as your weapon weight for EPB and critical hit calculations. Then you display "This item increases your attack weight by N" on those items, and on weapons say "Your current STR, DEX, and attack weight mean you need X energy per blow".

[Timo Pietilä]

I've said before that I'm very happy to see "You have X% chance to hit this monster in your current state" added to monster recall, but I am concerned that this may be criticised as "making the game too easy" as it's info that traditionally has been kept hidden. Timo, are you here?

That's something I have absolutely nothing against. If you know the monster AC your *char* should be able to tell if it is hard to hit or not, so it is perfectly logical to have some indication how hard it is. But I do like to have it require that AC info. Just looking at unknown monster without probing or fighting should not reveal this.

[Magnate]

That's something I have absolutely nothing against. If you know the monster AC your *char* should be able to tell if it is hard to hit or not, so it is perfectly logical to have some indication how hard it is. But I do like to have it require that AC info. Just looking at unknown monster without probing or fighting should not reveal this.

Excellent - glad we agree on that. When I get a chance I'll add that to the monster info at the same time as AC is learned.

Like Derakon, I quite like Eddie's idea that epb is determined by the sum of body armour, glove and weapon weights. We will have to be careful though, or we will end up with mages getting more blows than other classes and warriors deliberately wearing light armour and light weapons. Time to reopen the O-combat debate, I feel ...