Paralysis and free action

[Timo Pietilä]

As I said in my initial post, in my experience, paralysis is death. This is especially the case now that AC has been nerfed.

(Let me also point out that Timo's example was specifically a heavily-armored priest against ghouls, albeit surrounded. Given that ghouls only have 2d6+1d6 melee, that's still pretty heavily-weighted in favor of the player)

It wasn't priest (IIRC), it's just enough to have high enough saving throw. Hobbit or High-Elf mages have high initial saving throw too: high-elf mage starts with 50% saving and it gets to 70% by clvl 23 from clvl only, it's pretty much guaranteed to be perfect by clvl 50. Dwarf Priest starts with only 41% + WIS bonus, so they might be just as bad as mages or worse when paralyzis still is relevant.

My experiment was to find out can you break free from paralyzis at all if there are multiple attackers. You can. It is different and way faster when there is only one attacker, but Basilisks and Dracolisks and other high-level monsters like that kill you very fast, so melee-paralyzis is still pretty deadly. OTOH, fighting Titans without confusion resistance and confusion-proof escape is just as deadly, if not more deadly.

I think status quo is OK, if AC is changed back so that not all hits hit fighting white icky things.

[Magnate]

As I said in my initial post, in my experience, paralysis is death. This is especially the case now that AC has been nerfed.

Would you mind expanding on that? Maybe in a new thread? I'm struggling with this.

First, pre-3.1.x, heavy armour was totally pointless, as it added a tiny fraction of extra AC (which achieved very little) for a huge amount of extra weight. So in 3.1.something I extended the AC scale so that the extra weight gave a proportionate and useful increase in AC.

This had an unintended side effect of making high AC chars too hard to hit - leading to Eddie's famous account of Kronos (or Atlas, or whoever - one of the biggest melee hitters in the game) hitting him about one time in twelve.

So in 3.3 Jens readjusted the AC scale so that the highest ACs had about the same degree of protection that they used to have, while retaining the longer scale and proper weight proportions.

IIUC this ought to mean that light armour is effectively worse than it used to be (in 3.0.x), while heavy armours are about the same.

So how has AC been nerfed? Or do you simply mean it was not good enough in the first place? Or have we simply overcompensated?

The basic question is, what % chance to hit should the toughest melee baddies have on the highest-AC characters? (And I guess the corollary is what % to hit should kobolds and orcs have on starting chars?)

Jens has offered another version of his changes which might improve things. We'll try these in 3.4 dev versions and see what people think. I'm leaning more towards the evasion/absorption split myself though - I think this is the real solution to the AC problem. (But that's post-3.4)

[Magnate]

What if paralysis were split into two effects: one that prevented you from moving, and one that prevented you from acting? Lots of strategy games have something similar. Give the current paralyzers one or the other, with maybe a few uniques having both.

+1. I really like this idea.

[Timo Pietilä]

So how has AC been nerfed? Or do you simply mean it was not good enough in the first place? Or have we simply overcompensated?

I'd say you have overcompensated. Current endgame-quality armor leads to around 150-180AC, not any higher. That should be the AC that is equal in 3.3 and 3.0.

AC scale change haven't really changed gear people use that much. AC is still not worth the weight, you now only need to avoid heavy hitters more than you used to. I'd say one point of speed is easily worth 50 points of AC (or more, depending how close you are a breakpoints +10 and +20).

My current warrior is suffering from the fact that he can't really fight heavy hitters like Greater Titans, but all that that has actually done is tiny slowdown of game because of increased avoidance and much more boring fights, because now some of the more interesting fights do not happen. It certainly has not made game any harder just more boring.

[Antoine]

+1. I really like this idea.

I still don't see the problem with the paralysis-is-instadeath status quo

A.

[Magnate]

I still don't see the problem with the paralysis-is-instadeath status quo

Nor do I - but that doesn't mean that Gabe's idea isn't excellent in its own right.

[Magnate]

I'd say you have overcompensated. Current endgame-quality armor leads to around 150-180AC, not any higher. That should be the AC that is equal in 3.3 and 3.0.

AC scale change haven't really changed gear people use that much. AC is still not worth the weight, you now only need to avoid heavy hitters more than you used to. I'd say one point of speed is easily worth 50 points of AC (or more, depending how close you are a breakpoints +10 and +20).

My current warrior is suffering from the fact that he can't really fight heavy hitters like Greater Titans, but all that that has actually done is tiny slowdown of game because of increased avoidance and much more boring fights, because now some of the more interesting fights do not happen. It certainly has not made game any harder just more boring.

I don't think you are in the majority there though. We were dealing with people (more than one) who had AC up over 300 in the endgame, and that was making titans a pushover.

But we agree that there is definitely some more balancing to be done.

[Timo Pietilä]

I don't think you are in the majority there though. We were dealing with people (more than one) who had AC up over 300 in the endgame, and that was making titans a pushover.

But we agree that there is definitely some more balancing to be done.

Eddies guestimate of why they got that high AC was that they were playing with randarts.

Getting over 200 AC in endgame with standarts is really hard.

Max combo would be:

Gondrigam [+50]
Elessar [+10]
Bladeturner [80,+35]
Luthien [6,+20]
Gil-Galad [20,+20]
Hammerhand [9,+20]
Fingolfin [4,+20]
Thror [7,+20]

+318, but that would not be very smart combo: that weapon is very weak, you lack speed and you aggravate, leave that weapon out and you are under 300. Change Bladeturner to Isildur or Caspanion and you are close to 200. Swap Gil-Galad to Thorin, Luthien to something more probable like Colluin or ego-Elven cloak and Fingolfin to Cambeleg and you are way under 200.

I'd say problem was in randarts. Or that assumptions were made from very small set of games.

You could change AC calculations so that you reduce the effect of it non-linear at the top end of the values, a bit like speed is done. Anything over 150 gets reduced benefit and whole thing maxes at 200 or so.

[fizzix]

You could change AC calculations so that you reduce the effect of it non-linear at the top end of the values, a bit like speed is done. Anything over 150 gets reduced benefit and whole thing maxes at 200 or so.

I don't like the maxing at 200. I'm also confused to what your complaint is. Is your complaint that it's too hard to waltz up to a greater titan and melee it? If so, that seems more like a feature than a problem.

[d_m]

Also remember that some classes can cast shield. My recent Rogue winner used Shield a ton to get +50AC which helped a LOT against some of the hard-hitting uniques.

[Timo Pietilä]

I don't like the maxing at 200. I'm also confused to what your complaint is. Is your complaint that it's too hard to waltz up to a greater titan and melee it? If so, that seems more like a feature than a problem.

Problem is that it is now a lot harder to melee Greater Titan than it was in 2.9. Overcompensation. Also, preventing melee against hard-hitters (unless you have absolutely insane, practically unobtainable AC) makes game just less fun. Game is supposed to be fun.

[Timo Pietilä]

Also remember that some classes can cast shield. My recent Rogue winner used Shield a ton to get +50AC which helped a LOT against some of the hard-hitting uniques.

If that is the source of the problem of too high AC, then solution is simple: remove shield spell.

[Magnate]

If that is the source of the problem of too high AC, then solution is simple: remove shield spell.

Or simply adjust it. It is true that the ACs of over 300 to which I was referring all included the Shield spell IIRC. So we're talking about 250 from gear, which is achievable without randarts - don't forget you don't have to be wearing all artifacts - a decent cloak of Aman can have more AC than artifact cloaks.

It's true that the change was based on a small sample of games (another example of me overreacting to criticism from Eddie I'm afraid), and I'm happy to accept the charge of overcompensation.

My suggestion is that we playtest Jens's second set of changes for 3.4, and look to overhaul AC completely in 3.5.

[Derakon]

My comments about the nerf were based on what I've read on the forums, not on any actual playtesting. My most recent experience with lacking FA was during the time when AC was more powerful; during that time I lost two characters to melee paralyzers. Both were playing basically as fighters at that stage -- too stupid to cast spells usefully so I was perfectly happy to toss them into the heaviest armor I could find.

[fizzix]

Problem is that it is now a lot harder to melee Greater Titan than it was in 2.9. Overcompensation. Also, preventing melee against hard-hitters (unless you have absolutely insane, practically unobtainable AC) makes game just less fun. Game is supposed to be fun.

greater titans are the hardest hitting (non-unique) monsters in the game. I don't understand why you think they should be melee-able for all but the most powerful characters. Even if titans represented a monster that you didn't ever allow to melee you, that's fine. A player has many ranged weapons at his disposal, including the reasonably powerful drain life and annihilation. These work against titans.

I played 2 games with standarts (both by accident) and I noticed that monsters were doing more damage, but it felt like they were doing the correct amount. I don't think the fact that I was unable to easily tackle every monster in the dungeon made the game less fun. It was just as much fun. I don't think I had AC over 200 for one of those games, but that meant that I was doing more ranged attacks and less melee.