Poll: do you want to change combat mechanics for heavy weapons?

[Hariolor]

You want radical? Separate monster defense into evasion and armor, with armor absorbing damage. Then you prefer multiple attacks with a light weapon against lightly armored foes, and even a single attack with a big weapon against heavily armored foes. 10 attacks with a dagger don't help if they cannot pierce the armor absorption.

Obviously, this requires a lot more work than just incorporating O combat.

+1

deflection(or evasion, as you will)+absorbtion for armor, both @'s and foes'

this has been in my "if I ever learn enough code to work out my own variant" list

I would lovelovelove to see it happen. I also realize it is to radical to ever actually come about.

[Derakon]

As far as I can tell, monsters don't currently get any damage reduction from armor. It should be straightforward to add, though. We'd want to modify monster memory to display the degree of damage reduction they receive, though (which in turn would help communicate to the player that their own AC provides DR). "It has an armor rating of 100 and takes 40% less damage from non-magical attacks."

Hm, actually, looks like AC damage reduction was changed recently; I see it maxing out at AC 240, which gives 60% DR. Used to max at 150. I guess this happened when all the body armors got their AC boosts.

EDIT: though I now realize what Eddie was suggesting was a constant damage reduction, not percentile. Percentile DR affects all weapons equally, after all. Constant DR would be simple to implement too; just have them take, say, AC/10 less damage per strike. NPP creeping diamond gems (AC 15) would be damned near impossible...

[PowerDiver]

EDIT: though I now realize what Eddie was suggesting was a constant damage reduction, not percentile. Percentile DR affects all weapons equally, after all. Constant DR would be simple to implement too; just have them take, say, AC/10 less damage per strike. NPP creeping diamond gems (AC 15) would be damned near impossible...

You cannot just go from AC to absorption. A grandmaster mystic has lots of evasion and no armor. A colossus has no evasion and lots of armor absorption. Also, it doesn't have to be constant. It could be 3d6 damage reduction per hit or something even more complicated.

[Hariolor]

Though it would start making things sound alot like recent iterations of D&D, the implementation of damage reduction would have the side-effect of making slays that much more meaningful. The extra multiplier from the slay becomes vital when fighting harder foes.

I can envision titans, archliches, etc having such absurd damage reduction that fighting them without an appropriate slay or *slay* would be an exercise in futility. Not to mention the majority of uniques...

[PowerDiver]

Though it would start making things sound alot like recent iterations of D&D, the implementation of damage reduction would have the side-effect of making slays that much more meaningful. The extra multiplier from the slay becomes vital when fighting harder foes.

I can envision titans, archliches, etc having such absurd damage reduction that fighting them without an appropriate slay or *slay* would be an exercise in futility. Not to mention the majority of uniques...

I think in this framework, rather than multiplying dice, slays should mean to ignore armor. So that 1d4 dagger of slay dragon still hurts the dragon even if a normal 3d4 attack could not pierce the armor.

[Magnate]

You want radical? Separate monster defense into evasion and armor, with armor absorbing damage. Then you prefer multiple attacks with a light weapon against lightly armored foes, and even a single attack with a big weapon against heavily armored foes. 10 attacks with a dagger don't help if they cannot pierce the armor absorption.

Obviously, this requires a lot more work than just incorporating O combat.

You call that radical? Never tried Crawl? ;-)

Seriously, that's an excellent suggestion and one with which I fully agree. The concept of "AC" which combines evasion and absorption is intrinsically stupid and contradictory - another legacy from D&D. (The other big one is the concept of hp which combines fatigue and injury.)

You are right that it would be more work than just changing +dam mechanics and rebalancing all weapon dice and weights. But it might be worth it - especially as the immediate replies have all been positive. Maybe a new poll is in order ...

Something to discuss during 3.3 development. If I'm going to be publishing a "new combat" branch, no reason why it shouldn't attempt this as well as the O stuff.

[Philip]

I hadn't voted before because I didn't care enough before, and now I refuse to vote because I feel eddie's idea is awesome. I hope it makes it into 3.3 and as soon as possible. We have to make a new poll including this idea.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think in this framework, rather than multiplying dice, slays should mean to ignore armor. So that 1d4 dagger of slay dragon still hurts the dragon even if a normal 3d4 attack could not pierce the armor.

Also critical hit could bypass absorbion completely or partially so that even weak weapon when hit to a critical spot it makes some damage. Soft underbelly of dragon. That tiny unarmored spot in Smaug that Bard hit with the black arrow.

[pampl]

I like Crawl quite a bit, but I don't think I'd want to see Angband become more like it. Admittedly, seperating AC from evasion is a relatively minor step, but still.. OTOH I was the only one who voted against fractional blows so I might just be more reactionary than the average 'bander.

[ewert]

Heh, seems the ageold roleplaying problem of realism versus gamedesign in depicting HP, wounds, fatigue, divine intervention, luck, damage, armor etc. is rearing its head.

There's Rulemaster, err, Runemaster. Then there's D&D. But the beauty of computerized RPGs is that the underlying rules don't matter that much, because you don't have to roll the dice or hassle with the numbers so much. The end results matter.

Heavy weapons vs good evasion and light weapons vs good armor being worse than the other way around sounds a good gamedesign goal though. Going deep into the "what HP is" doesn't sound like such a good way to spend limited time on though. It's and endless swamp ...

[Derakon]

I'm inclined to agree with ewert here. Unless you want to go the Dwarf Fortress route of modeling damage to individual body parts (and, at this point, modeling damage to the tissues that make up those body parts), you may as well just settle for generic hitpoints that cause spontaneous existence failure when they hit zero (or, in Angband's case, -1).

[Magnate]

I hadn't voted before because I didn't care enough before, and now I refuse to vote because I feel eddie's idea is awesome. I hope it makes it into 3.3 and as soon as possible. We have to make a new poll including this idea.

I don't think it requires a poll so much as a branch to playtest. Let's get 3.2 up on rephial.org and I'll get to work on it.

[PowerDiver]

Also critical hit could bypass absorbion completely or partially so that even weak weapon when hit to a critical spot it makes some damage. Soft underbelly of dragon. That tiny unarmored spot in Smaug that Bard hit with the black arrow.

Bard's hit on Smaug is something that needs to be dealt with somehow. I agree with the idea that criticals should bypass some armor, but then is a critical hit on an iron golem even possible?. Modeling specific weak points may be too fine a detail. You could call that attack a critical hit, or you say the black arrow has slay dragon, I like the idea that the black arrow is +100 to hit in conjunction with the "critical is determined by hit roll" idea I've suggested before.

Anyway, this is all just handwaving about something vague. I've never thought of anything specific that had the feel of "that's definitely the right way to do it".

[Magnate]

Bard's hit on Smaug is something that needs to be dealt with somehow. I agree with the idea that criticals should bypass some armor, but then is a critical hit on an iron golem even possible?. Modeling specific weak points may be too fine a detail. You could call that attack a critical hit, or you say the black arrow has slay dragon, I like the idea that the black arrow is +100 to hit in conjunction with the "critical is determined by hit roll" idea I've suggested before.

Anyway, this is all just handwaving about something vague. I've never thought of anything specific that had the feel of "that's definitely the right way to do it".

My implementation of this would be like Pete Mack's "infinite variance" in gold drops, or the pvals on rings of speed. Basically for the best tier of critical hit, there's an ever-decreasing but nonzero chance of increasing damage, so you could potentially do MAX_INT damage on a top-tier critical. Bard's shot at Smaug was that one-in-a-million critical.

[PowerDiver]

Bard's shot at Smaug was that one-in-a-million critical.

No way. It was the best master of the time using the best equipment. It was not unbelievable when you read it. Whether it was 50% I don't know, but it should not be modeled as extreme luck.