Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[T-Mick]

For what it's worth, using a robe or cloak to conceal your exact body position is a legitimate and historical technique in duels, and would be a good justification to give robes +1 evasion.

[locus]

I think it would be a good idea for robes to provide +1 Evasion to make them equivalent with cloaks. You would not need to give rags +1 Evasion: in this manner, you could make robes actually better than rags, which they currently are not and it's sort of silly.

[intently]

Ok, I'll stop being silly now & just say, I prefer it the way it is now. I know you don't really mean it the way I've put it above, just exaggerating for emphasis.

I shouldn't have tried to recommend a "fix", but should instead have left my "least liked feature" to stand on its own

[wobbly]

I'm with taptap & Infinitum on this one. I find the penalty to evasion representing the weight of armour aesthetically pleasing & the fact that Sil doesn't go the whole cool! MEGA BONUS STUFF path one of it's major attractions.

I played TOME 4 a bit & while it's a great fun game, having thousands of hp and doing hundreds of damage points wore thin on me. The day Sil starts having SUPER HIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (ok, ok it does have criticals!!!) & FEEL GOOD BONUS!!!!. YOU ARE A SUPERHERO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MEGA MOVE!!! WOW!!! kind of stuff is the day it loses it's charm for me.

Ok, I'll stop being silly now & just say, I prefer it the way it is now. I know you don't really mean it the way I've put it above, just exaggerating for emphasis.

[Philip]

But that's just inflation. You'd have to make every effect that query's evasion or attack stronger and you'd be almost exactly where you started, except suddenly characters have 5500 HP (I'm looking at you, void-diving TOME). There might be a slight personal effect, but it's just not worth rebalncing around.

[intently]

Why is it more fun to gain melee and evasion by wearing rags instead of being naked? I simply do not understand this. I really try, but how is that related to any kind of fun? It actively removes choices from the game - no point in staying away from the awkward great helm or the gauntlets with melee penalty anymore, the first armour is always an upgrade then.

I agree, it doesn't make sense that rags would be better than being naked. If one were inclined to pursue this direction of modification, it would make sense to give an explicit evasion and to-hit bonus for naked characters.

[taptap]

My overall point is that it is less fun to trade off penalties than to trade off bonuses. I'd rather choose between [+2,1d4] and [+0,2d5] than between [-1,1d4] and [-3,2d5], even though the choices are functionally equivalent.

Why is it more fun to gain melee and evasion by wearing rags instead of being naked? I simply do not understand this. I really try, but how is that related to any kind of fun? It actively removes choices from the game - no point in staying away from the awkward great helm or the gauntlets with melee penalty anymore, the first armour is always an upgrade then.

D&D derived games usually have no armour penalties, because evasion and armour is represented by the same abstract number "armour class" - so you can't really model a trade off with that. That these systems are so common is not due to superior design, but due to path dependency (just like qwerty-keyboards).

[intently]

The way the Sil system ties simple mechanics to simulation is beautiful and should not be changed under any circumstances. Besides, the early game is chancy enough without making early armor even more important than it currently is.

As for items only providing positives "making you feel awesome" and "being good game design".. eh. To each his own I suppose; I quite like weighing pros and cons against eachother, and having a naked player character as the baseline makes more sense than an arbitrary maximumally cumbersome armor or whatever.

Sure, I can see how these design choices make sense for the Sil player community. And I understand that the goal is to make a game that "some people love", rather than "lots of people like".

But there's a reason that most games don't have gear and abilities with lots of penalties to balance against each other

[Infinitum]

The way the Sil system ties simple mechanics to simulation is beautiful and should not be changed under any circumstances. Besides, the early game is chancy enough without making early armor even more important than it currently is.

As for items only providing positives "making you feel awesome" and "being good game design".. eh. To each his own I suppose; I quite like weighing pros and cons against eachother, and having a naked player character as the baseline makes more sense than an arbitrary maximumally cumbersome armor or whatever.

[intently]

Why would you for a "flavour"-change tremendously unbalance the game and make early smithing a required pick? What is the point of that apart from seeing higher numbers in the game?

I agree, my proposed change is messy... it was meant mostly as an example. I agree that it wouldn't be good game design.

My overall point is that it is less fun to trade off penalties than to trade off bonuses. I'd rather choose between [+2,1d4] and [+0,2d5] than between [-1,1d4] and [-3,2d5], even though the choices are functionally equivalent.

From a game design perspective, penalties on gear or skills should be rare and should be used to balance out exceptionally powerful abilities. This isn't realistic, but it makes for a better player experience. In order to create trade-offs for the player without having penalties everywhere, you can "simply" scale your bonuses to make the penalties "invisible".

[taptap]

Again, you'd have to balance it by increasing enemy evasion.

Or by a significant dexterity reduction for everyone.

Why would you for a "flavour"-change tremendously unbalance the game and make early smithing a required pick? What is the point of that apart from seeing higher numbers in the game?

[locus]

It would be more psychologically pleasing if light weight items were shown with to-hit and evade bonuses rather than showing heavy items with to-hit and evade penalties, even if the net result were the same as now.

So I know this change might introduce other problems But one of the things I like least about the gear selection is how everything has penalties. Putting on new gear should make you feel awesome, not ambivalent. Trade-offs make for compelling game-play, but you should trade-off benefits against each other, not penalties.

For example, here are some armors now:

Robe
Leather Armor [-1,1d4]
Mail Corslet (-1) [-3,2d4]

And here's how it would look with my proposed change:

Robe (+1) [+3]
Leather Armor (+1) [+2,1d4]
Mail Corslet [0,2d4]

Obviously this change would mean that a character would hit and evade better while wearing a robe than while naked, which isn't very realistic... however, no one walks around with empty gear slots anyway except at the very beginning of the game.

Boots and cloaks are already pure-upside like this.

I dunno, it seems really weird to me that putting on a heavy mail corslet should give you +1 to evasion just because it's lighter than a hauberk which would give you +0. Even if you made it mechanically equivalent (possibly by allowing the player to start the game with a set of ordinary clothing), I think it would hurt the flavor more than it would help the psychological aspects.

I might be in favor of giving all body-armor +1 to evasion, so that Robes would have equivalent stats to Cloaks, and then Leather Armor, at least, would be all-upside. You could balance this pretty well by giving all monsters outside the first 150' a +1 to hit.

You might also give all handwear +1 accuracy, and then you wouldn't have any weird items that didn't do anything (except Crowns I guess, but those are supposed to be ornamental). Again, you'd have to balance it by increasing enemy evasion.

[intently]

It would be more psychologically pleasing if light weight items were shown with to-hit and evade bonuses rather than showing heavy items with to-hit and evade penalties, even if the net result were the same as now.

So I know this change might introduce other problems But one of the things I like least about the gear selection is how everything has penalties. Putting on new gear should make you feel awesome, not ambivalent. Trade-offs make for compelling game-play, but you should trade-off benefits against each other, not penalties.

For example, here are some armors now:

Robe
Leather Armor [-1,1d4]
Mail Corslet (-1) [-3,2d4]

And here's how it would look with my proposed change:

Robe (+1) [+3]
Leather Armor (+1) [+2,1d4]
Mail Corslet [0,2d4]

Obviously this change would mean that a character would hit and evade better while wearing a robe than while naked, which isn't very realistic... however, no one walks around with empty gear slots anyway except at the very beginning of the game.

[skadefryd]

The main motivation behind the way the gorged status works is the 'realism' aspect. We don't want players to be able to eat all their food all at once rather than having to hold it in their inventory. We do want herbs and potions to help stave off starvation in an emergency, so they are folded into the food system.

Thanks for bringing the problem up.

Is the realism all that critical? It's unrealistic anyway that one quaffs a potion or eats an herb and immediately benefits from its effects––if realism were the goal, they should all take time to kick in.

[absolutego]

i forgot danger which is arguably the most important one, but also the easier to fix: curse it, give it a good ability. ideally ("imo") there would be one cursed, "mixed blessings" ego type on each slot and none that are just plain bad. (jewellery items with negative enhancers should go too; i think half's mentioned this at some point).

a while ago i had a branch where i played with this stuff but there was no way to get any traction so i got bored and dropped it. seemed doable though.