Halls of Mist 1.3.0

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I refined my new armor idea a bit.

In melee, monsters may attack high, middle, or low. (All monster melee attacks have one of these in the monster.txt file. An ogre might have one middle attack and one high attack.)

High: Make a Parry skill check to reduce damage by your shield's armor rating. In addition, either your helmet or body armour reduces damage, chosen randomly.

Middle: Make a Parry skill check to reduce damage by your shield's armor rating. In addition, either your gauntlets or body armour reduces damage, chosen randomly.

Low: Make a Jumping check to evade the attack completely. If you fail, either your boots or body armour reduces damage, chosen randomly.

Ranged attack: You may choose to either Jump or Parry. If you succeed in Jumping, evade the attack completely. If you succeed in Parrying, reduce your shield's armor rating from the damage. Choose randomly one piece of armour that reduces damage: helmet, gauntlets, body armour or boots.

Cloaks don't help against physical attacks, but they have resistances and special abilities.

In real medieval combat, shield was perhaps the most important factor in defense. I've always felt that they don't get enough respect in *band combat systems.

[ekolis]

You choose to jump or parry? A prompt for every individual attack, or just as a tactics option similar to the Karate/Wrestling toggle in Sangband? I would prefer the latter, as the former could be annoying!

[buzzkill]

Any possibility of implementing the shift-K command to destroy and squelch an item, or some other way to squelch without going into the options menu.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Any possibility of implementing the shift-K command to destroy and squelch an item, or some other way to squelch without going into the options menu.

Try 'k'ill and then !. There's also auto_squelch in the squech options menu.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

More armour ponderings.

I want armour to be the most important defense against melee, just like in Angband. I don't think I really need a Parry skill. The classes that would get high Parry would the same ones that have lots of hit points. Introducing any kind of dodge mechanic that depends on class or stats would force me to rebalance all the classes and stats.

Hit points is an abstract mechanic that already includes parrying, dodging, good stamina, etc. No real need to have separate skills for those.

So, how about this simple system for defense:

Whenever a monster makes a "normal" attack against you, reduce your body armour's rating from the damage. Against "high" attacks, reduce your helmet's rating, and against "low" attacks your boots' rating. In addition, you have a 50% chance of blocking any melee attack with your shield.

Against most normal attacks, shield + another piece of armour is enough to block all damage. Very big monsters may get damage through even then.

Ranged attacks may be dodged with a successful Jumping check. If you fail, choose randomly your helmet, body armour, boots or shield to block the damage.

EDIT: perhaps against normal attacks you would apply either your body armour (70%) or gauntlets (30%). "Normal" attacks would probably be very common, and having an extra random element would make them more interesting.

[half]

More armour ponderings.

I thought of doing something a bit like this for Sil, with no categories of attack height, but just a 50% chance for body armour, 20% for shield, 10% for gauntlets etc. This way you could have armour ratings for them based on material type, with leather gauntlets and leather armour having the same rating, the former being less relevant just because it is less likely to be hit. This would make more sense than additive armour values.

However, I just didn't think it would work without a detailed body-part damage system, as it is silly if you die from a hit to the hands or feet. If players weren't being told where they were hit, this would alleviate the problem, but would make the system less engaging (why model this stuff?) and wouldn't let them learn what they were doing wrong. These problems would go away if, say, helm, shield, body, were the only armour slots, but I like the idea of assembling the full kit of armour, so I just went with additive.

Hit points is an abstract mechanic that already includes parrying, dodging, good stamina, etc. No real need to have separate skills for those.

I think hit points is actually quite a bad abstraction for these things, which is why in Sil it is just an abstraction of the raw physical damage you can take (HP doesn't increase with experience in Sil). I'm really glad I chose to do this, as I think so many RPGs get this wrong. If a monster fails to wound you (because you dodge or parry), but your HP goes down, that is really very strange. Why does resting or healing magic help you regain whatever it was that you lost? Players imagine that HP represents physical damage and so they mis-imagine what is going on if the designed didn't intend that. Why not fold AC into HP at that point? Call it 'combat endurance'. I think that would be a more natural abstraction than the D&D style which has some dodging in HP and some in AC, but I'd only use it for something that needed to be very simplified (e.g. a wargame rather than an RPG).

[Mikko Lehtinen]

That's very useful, half.

OK, hits to head and body are lethal.

Shield and gauntlets are both used for parrying, to push the attack away from the critical areas. We can keep them in the game as the "first line of defense" with a parry mechanic. (Let's say 40% chance for shield parry, 20% for gauntlet parry, and 40% for no parry.)

Cloak is useful for resistances, not for protection from physical damage.

What about boots? We could still have boots if only some special kind of attacks targeted your legs: snake poison, slowing strikes, etc. Or we could simply remove them from the game.

[fizzix]

That's very useful, half.

OK, hits to head and body are lethal.

Shield and gauntlets are both used for parrying, to push the attack away from the critical areas. We can keep them in the game as the "first line of defense" with a parry mechanic. (Let's say 40% chance for shield parry, 20% for gauntlet parry, and 40% for no parry.)

Cloak is useful for resistances, not for protection from physical damage.

What about boots? We could still have boots if only some special kind of attacks targeted your legs: snake poison, slowing strikes, etc. Or we could simply remove them from the game.

I'd be careful about getting both too literal and too realistic. Especially if it comes at the expense of player fun.

Half is absolutely right that gradually increasing HP is an awful realistic concept. However, it's a reasonably good concept for gameplay. That's why it appears fairly commonly across many rpg genres. It's also one that players are used to and understand well, which means you don't have to ask much of a player to understand HP. They already do.

Bodily injuries are less common because they're a hell of a lot harder to make both fun and realistic. If someone breaks your sword arm, you're done fighting unless you can heal. Similarly if someone hamstrings your leg, you pretty much cannot move or dodge anymore, you're dead. Also immediately lethal injuries such as head shots are probably to be avoided in roguelikes. Remember, that realistically even the most pitiful kobold archer is going to have something like a 0.1% chance of hitting your neck (instant death). There will likely be far more than 1000 of these 0.1% chances of instant death, which means your player should never realistically survive. IMO a system like this would win on realism but lose awfully on gameplay.

The only advice I have is to not get too distracted with the aesthetic appeal of the system and instead continue asking yourself (and others) "is this fun?".

[Starhawk]

Ouch.

You usually can't beat uniques in Mist by playing fair. You need to confuse or blind them, and then keep striking critical hits at them. Bless, Heroism, and Berserk Strength all help in getting ambush criticals while the target is distracted.

Standing on a table might help.

I only drink Speed potions when I'm either about to die or fighting against a really tough unique. One potion of Speed might be all the buff you need.

Used up all my powders and either missed or he wasn't affected... used up all my recovery, healing, and escape items, and there wasn't a table in range. The character saw one Speed potion in his career and used it to beat the Forest Hag unique (who blinks a LOT!!!).

I feel like melee is quite weak in Halls of Mist compared to Vanilla. I'd expect a LV25 warrior with passable gear to be able to handle Azog in melee one-on-one, given the use of a couple consumables. I burned every consumable this character was carrying and was still torn to shreds.

[Derakon]

I feel like melee is quite weak in Halls of Mist compared to Vanilla. I'd expect a LV25 warrior with passable gear to be able to handle Azog in melee one-on-one, given the use of a couple consumables. I burned every consumable this character was carrying and was still torn to shreds.

I don't know how comparable Mists is to Vanilla, but Azog is nontrivial to melee in Vanilla. He's fast and hits hard -- 3x 5d5 hits per turn (so theoretically up to 150 damage in one player turn!). He also has 800HP, which takes awhile to wear down. He's definitely a unique I either put off or require !Speed to take down.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Even if melee was weaker than in Vanilla in some ways, it's stronger in other respects. You can fight two enemies at the same time, get defensive benefits from furniture, and get criticals much more easily.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Half is absolutely right that gradually increasing HP is an awful realistic concept. However, it's a reasonably good concept for gameplay. That's why it appears fairly commonly across many rpg genres. It's also one that players are used to and understand well, which means you don't have to ask much of a player to understand HP. They already do.

I'm not planning to change hit points in any way. I just want an armour system that is more transparent than the current system.

The discussion is helping me refine what I want from the system.

Most importantly, I want armour to provide clear probabilities for hits and misses. I want hit and miss to be armour-based, not skill-based like in some other games.

My newest idea:

Shield and gauntlets together define your Parry percentage. If you make your Parry roll, the attack simply misses. (With the best possible equipment Parry score may raise to 70% or so. Usually it's somewhere between 10% and 60%.)

Helmet, body armour and boots have an armour rating that is reduced from damage. Maybe they all have a die like in Sil. The armour dice are all rolled together.

Possibly high Strength might give a small bonus to Armour, and/or high Dexterity to Parry.

[Nick]

I think hit points is actually quite a bad abstraction for these things, which is why in Sil it is just an abstraction of the raw physical damage you can take (HP doesn't increase with experience in Sil). I'm really glad I chose to do this, as I think so many RPGs get this wrong. If a monster fails to wound you (because you dodge or parry), but your HP goes down, that is really very strange. Why does resting or healing magic help you regain whatever it was that you lost? Players imagine that HP represents physical damage and so they mis-imagine what is going on if the designed didn't intend that. Why not fold AC into HP at that point? Call it 'combat endurance'. I think that would be a more natural abstraction than the D&D style which has some dodging in HP and some in AC, but I'd only use it for something that needed to be very simplified (e.g. a wargame rather than an RPG).

I find this very interesting, because I have recently come to the opposite conclusion.

A bit like fizzix, I came to the conclusion that any actual injury in battle is most likely death. Given that, the important thing is actually the player's ability to avoid (by whatever means) taking physical damage. My plan, then, was to rename HP to something like Physical Capacity - rather like your combat endurance concept. Your point about AC is then a good one.

That said, the fact that your approach led to the Sil combat system is a powerful argument in its favour.

OK, Mikko, you can have your thread back now

[buzzkill]

Try 'k'ill and then !. There's also auto_squelch in the squech options menu.

! just toggles the view. It doesn't actually allow you to designate something as "squelched" which is the functionality I'm looking for... without entering the option menu, without the RNG determining on my behalf what is worthy of squelching (auto-squelch).

Other random thoughts for your consideration (take em or leave em).

• For novice townies, how about "This shady stranger currently inhabits the town" rather than "He lives in the town". Gives more of a hint of danger.
• Bumping into a statue should probably say "there is a statue in the way", not "wall in the way".
• When you receive a blessing, a message could be given a stating the blessing "Foo, the foo, has bestowed a blessing of foo". I know to look at the character sheet, but I imagine a lot of people might wonder.
• Maybe magic circles could rarely start out intact, maybe 10% chance.
• And if that... then maybe there could be a rare scroll that would break a completed circle.
• Maybe a chance for a mortal wound (death) every time you die. I find myself playing too fast and loose with my first death because it doesn't seem to matter all that much. As a result, I usually die for the first time within the first five dungeon levels. I know it boils down to playstyle... but knowing that the first one is (relatively) free makes me push the envelope often.

Almost forgot... I can't attack ghosts in walls. I thought this was fixed? Is there a command?

[jujuben]

Pretty sure this is intentional - part of the push towards combat in rooms vs. corridors. There is at least one wand that I've found, and possibly some other spells/specials that let you to attack things in walls, but otherwise, the solution is to get away from the wall.