Monster AC -> absorption + evasion

[Magnate]

is it? Current formula is:

Roll a number from 1 to the player's to hit total. If it's greater than the AC (or evasion) it is a hit. There's also an automatic 5% chance to hit or miss.

This seems pretty simple to me. What makes this complicated from a player perspective is to calculate the to hit value you need to know your class values and your racial bonuses (from the edit files). Your bonuses from weapons are helpfully displayed but you need to remember to multiply them by the arbitrary constant 3. (I want to put the full value on the character screen.) And yeah, the monster AC needs to be multiplied by the even more arbitrary constat 3/4. (I'm fixing this).



current formula to hit becomes 1 - (Monster AC)/(to hit) or if you factor in the 5% to hit or miss it becomes.

0.9 * [1 - AC/(to hit)] + 0.05

For the absorption, play testing will be absolutely necessary. Epicman's approach is about as good as a straight subtraction of damage and I think we'll just have to try one and play around with it.

I think we're at cross-purposes. I said EpicMan's formula was a big departure, not yours. Putting monster EV in the denominator radically changes the behaviour of the formula. Yours is very simple, and has the added advantage of making "critical hit quality" trivial to calculate: to-hit roll minus EV, i.e. the extent to which you surpassed the necessary roll.

[PowerDiver]

Before getting into the formula, there needs to be a basic decision. It has seemed to me that when I encountered evasion in a variant, the monster had a fixed chance to evade irrespective of the skill of the attacker. I didn't like this, but that's just a personal preference.

Should a CL50 warrior be able to laugh at a plain old mystic's attempts to evade? For example, by anticipating the move before the mystic makes it. I think so, but I can see arguments on the other side.

I think my viewpoint would lead to something like using evasion additively upon the attacker's skill. Then there is still the question of how often you hit if you skill exceeds the opponent's evasion by 23, but there is a formula for everything. The point is to decide on what you are trying to do before you worry about the details of the formula.

[d_m]

I think my viewpoint would lead to something like using evasion additively upon the attacker's skill. Then there is still the question of how often you hit if you skill exceeds the opponent's evasion by 23, but there is a formula for everything. The point is to decide on what you are trying to do before you worry about the details of the formula.

I may have misunderstood what is happening (and if so, everyone should ignore me) but I understood the following:

1. AC is being turned into evasion (which ends up influencing whether a player hits a monster or misses it, and which is what we're familiar with).

2. Deflection/Absorption is being added which reduces the damage of a hit by soaking up damage (currently no monster has any sort of absorption ability).

I think the eventual plan is to move slow, bulky, armored monsters from dodging attacks (which is what happens now) to just not being hurt by hits. But in the short term, I think the big change is tearing out the old D&D idea of AC (which conflates nimbless/quickness and padding/shielding/armor).

[PowerDiver]

I may have misunderstood what is happening (and if so, everyone should ignore me) but I understood the following:

1. AC is being turned into evasion (which ends up influencing whether a player hits a monster or misses it, and which is what we're familiar with).

You understand. The question is *how* does evasion affect whether a player misses it.

Some variants, I believe, implement it as a mystic is 50% likely to evade a hit. So a CL50 warrior or a CL1 mage, doesn't matter, you miss half the time. There would have been a hit roll against AC first, but we are removing that IIUC. I think the CL50 warrior should usually do damage despite the moderate evasiveness, and a CL1 mage should almost never hit.

Doing things additively might make it so that a CL50 warrior attacking a mystic is equivalent to a CL25 warrior attacking a drunk. The other extreme is that a CL50 attacking a mystic is only marginally more likely to avoid the evasion than a CL25.

I don't have details, and I'd bet my desires aren't mainstream, so I don't want to attempt to provide direction for any details. However, I think it would be useful to talk more about what is being attempted before throwing formulae around. Of course, if there is a consensus on the goals, I'd be happy to attempt to create a template for a formula to match.

[PowerDiver]

The simplest method is to adjust AC a bit, and leave the code for hitting a monster unchanged. Then add in armor absorption code. I thought people were interested in something more complicated.

[Magnate]

The simplest method is to adjust AC a bit, and leave the code for hitting a monster unchanged. Then add in armor absorption code. I thought people were interested in something more complicated.

IIUC this is pretty much what fizzix is doing: use the old formula for to-hit, but removing the ridiculous 3/4 factor and replacing mon_AC with mon_EV. This means adjusting some high AC monsters downwards because they don't evade (e.g. golems, mumaks).

Don't confuse this kind of evasion with the Sangband/Eyangband "evasion" which is basically dodging - a post-hoc chance to "avoid" an attack that actually rolled a successful to-hit. That's a halfway attempt to remove the D&D conflation of evasion and absorption in AC. We're going the whole hog and basing to-hit on evasion, so if you hit, you hit. If you miss, the monster evaded. Then we get into how much damage is absorbed (mumaks and golems will do well here).

So I don't think you are thinking much that is different to the rest of us - but that is often my position, and you often disagree.

A cl50 warrior *should* hit a plan mystic with relative ease - far more easily than a cl1 mage, who should never hit one (or only the basic 5%). So I for one agree with you: there should be quite a bit of distinction between the to-hit chances of the different classes, including at higher levels. This will mean that warriors can make better use of heavy weapons, being more certain of hitting, while mages will want light weapons (if they rely on melee at all) to maximise their chances of hitting via extra blows.

[ewert]

Static avoidance % is just "absorbtion" in a granular form with a different name. As such, IMHO it makes no sense except as pure "thematics", which prolly is not high on the list of things to spend time on.

I reiterate though: unless we give light weapons more +hit and heavy more +dmg (heavy already has more +dmg due to dice, but light weapons do not have any +hit), the system does not do for example what Magnate said just up there. Only dmg/rnd will matter, because the mage will do just as much dmg on average versus evaders with that heavy lesser #hit weapon. And maxed mage, who gets max blows, won't touch light weapons still.

So, IMHO, we need to look at giving light weapons +hit. Maybe once they get over the max blows amount, they could instead get some extra +hit from more stats.

[Derakon]

Either the light weapon needs to be better at hitting, or the multiple blows you get from light weapons need to, in aggregate, deal more damage/round against non-absorbing foes than the single blows you get from a heavy weapon. For example, getting 4x 10 damage/round vs. getting 1x 30 damage/round. Then light weapons are preferable against monsters with low absorb, which will tend to be the monsters with high evade. Of course, if you're fighting a monster that absorbs 8 damage per blow, then the light weapon is nearly useless in this example.

[PowerDiver]

For this to actually make a difference, it is necessary to do O-Style rebalancing. For the absorb to make a difference for light vs heavy, there has to be a real difference in the damage. If you've got +30 in damage rings and strength mods, it will be obvious to choose more blows.

I don't mind a +9 dagger beating a longsword, since I have no idea what a +9 dagger even is, and if you adjust the rarity gameplay is not hurt, but I think off-weapon damage bonuses would have to go away for this scheme to work. I don't much like the deadliness percentage bonus idea but I suppose that wouldn't break anything.

[Magnate]

For this to actually make a difference, it is necessary to do O-Style rebalancing. For the absorb to make a difference for light vs heavy, there has to be a real difference in the damage. If you've got +30 in damage rings and strength mods, it will be obvious to choose more blows.

Well, you didn't quite go so far as to say "I agree with magnate" or "this is what magnate has been trying to say forever", but it'll do for me. Thank you.

[ewert]

Don't focus so much on having more blows with the light weapon guys. It's all about dmg/100 energy. As long as lighter still has more blows, then offweapon +dmg mods work out to up the dmg/100, so the end result might be that it works as the plan is: lighter weapons will do more dmg than heavier ones against evaders, and the other way around (only because light ones will hit more often for slightly less dmg, and static absorption values will skew this ratio so that eventually the hard hitter will surpass the light one).

Remember though, for a very important part of the game, you are hitting max blows with most weapons. THEN the system breaks down, relating light weapons as useless again. I thought part of the plan was to get light weapons as useful against evaders even in the end-game? This plan won't do that.

[PowerDiver]

Well, you didn't quite go so far as to say "I agree with magnate" or "this is what magnate has been trying to say forever", but it'll do for me. Thank you.

Hey, you haven't been talking about these things in the context of armor absorption forever, have you? Sorry, but I couldn't help poking you.

In any case, _I agree with magnate_.

[fizzix]

My first task of removing the 3/4 multiplier in the player-to-hit-monster calculation is complete. (along with rescaling of the monster AC). I separated the monster to hit player (and I guess the trap to hit player) calculation, that one retains the 3/4 multiplier to AC

I'm going to try to get absorption for melee up and running tomorrow.

I don't know yet what I'm going to do about absorption for missile weapons. suggestions?

[Magnate]

My first task of removing the 3/4 multiplier in the player-to-hit-monster calculation is complete. (along with rescaling of the monster AC). I separated the monster to hit player (and I guess the trap to hit player) calculation, that one retains the 3/4 multiplier to AC

I'm going to try to get absorption for melee up and running tomorrow.

I don't know yet what I'm going to do about absorption for missile weapons. suggestions?

IMO missile weapons should use the same damage mechanic as melee weapons, and have their dice rebalanced if necessary. I don't think it will be though: since one shot is equivalent to ~4 melee attacks, absorption will make much less difference to missiles. It's likely to be high EV that's a problem for missile guys.

[fizzix]

Ok, absorption exists and is on git. It's currently linear, although this might not be good enough based on some cogent objections posted in this thread. It's something to try though.

Here's how it works.

Absorption is given as a constant value. If you do N damage to a monster that has absorption A, you wind up only doing N-A damage (floored at 0). Absorption and evasion both get displayed in monster recall if you know them.

If you have a slay or a brand you bypass some of the absorption. What I hacked up currently is that the absorption strength gets divided by the slay or brand value. Slays on light weapons are useful, and slays may be necessary to kill some tougher monsters.

I also futzed with shooting to_hit values. Since there are a large number of monsters that are now sitting ducks for archery, I wanted to toughen up the high evasion monsters. This has been accomplished by halving the player to hit value for archery. (This works, but I did it in a very hacky way, and will have to fix it up if it seems good)

One last change is that I artificially lowered the absorption values on some of the golems and angels. Angels are problematic because no slays are applicable. Too high absorption makes them impossible to kill. Now they'll just be merely as annoying as anything else. Some golems also have very few slays/brands applicable (minus the hardest: bone and bronze).

Except where noted above all monsters had their previous AC split between absorption and evasion. The absorption value was divided by 5 to give the current value.