Revamping combat

[fizzix]

Many games make weapons relevant by restricting or heavily penalizing use to some classes. For example, D&D which angband is based off of, restricted priests to blunt weapons, and restricted mages to daggers, darts and quarterstaves. Similarly, rogues and rangers could not wear heavy armor, mages could only wear robes. In this way light weapons are useful because certain classes are restricted to using them.

I think outright restrictions are a very bad idea for angband, but penalties are a good idea. We already have these in place, with mages getting a SP penalty if their armor is too heavy, and priests getting a penalty for using a sharp weapon. We could add to the penalties/bonuses. Paladins could get a bonus using heavy weapons, Rogues for light weapons, warriors are very good at all weapons, etc. Mages get a penalty for heavy weapons, priests for sharp weapons. I don't have specifics for how this would work, just a general idea.

There's yet another option which involves going back to splitting AC into absorption and evasion. I tried this once, and it didn't make much difference. But I know why, and can adjust accordingly. The effects refactor will help this.

The general idea is the following. Let's say you have two weapons. A dagger and a war hammer. With the dagger you get 3 blows per round with an average damage of 10 per blow, for 30 damage per round. With the hammer you get 1.5 blows per round with an average damage of 18 for 27 damage per round. The dagger is the better weapon for damage output. Now, let's say that you're fighting a monster that absorbs 6 damage every time you hit it. The dagger now only gets 4 damage per blow and 12 per round, and the hammer gets 12 per blow and 18 per round. The war hammer comes up on top for battling armored creatures. This gives a distinction between light and heavy weapons. You could envision early on having an edged weapon that does no damage to many monsters.

In addition, you could imagine monsters being hard to damage with certain types of weapons. Jellies could be strong to blunt weapons, skeletons to edged weapons, and I'm sure someone could come up with a class of monsters that would be strong to piercing weapons.

Lastly, you could envision monsters that are immune to all physical damage, and only take damage from magical pluses and brands. Making these monsters painful to warriors, but a piece of cake to mages. High HP monsters like orc groups are easy for warriors but hard for mages.

I don't actually think that asymmetric LoS, pillar dancing, etc. I also don't care about off-weapon bonuses distinction. Although I would like to distinguish between magical pluses and non-magical pluses.

[Derakon]

[*]EDIT: of course, if we get this right, there's no reason you can't build a dex-based warrior instead of a str-based one ...You are right, I had forgotten. It's a smaller effect than it ought to be, though.

That's fine. I want the same combat rules to apply to everyone. They're free to make differing decisions based on their own situation. Everyone shouldn't have the same optimal approach, but they should all be playing by the same rules.

So sure, if you want to make rogues much more DEX-heavy, and tweak combat so DEX and STR are opposite sides of the same coin, that'd be fine. Artificially saying "rogues get bonus damage when using weapons <5 pounds" is the kind of thing I'm arguing against.

[Magnate]

If you're going to marginalize light weapons for the warrior types, then the only way I can see to making them still have a relevant place in the game is to make artificial class-based restrictions, which basically amount to "rogues and rangers get bonuses when using light weapons". Personally I really like how combat works basically the same for every class though, so I'd rather not see that happen.

I still don't think the lightweight-weapons thing is as big a deal as some others here are making it out to be, since it generally only rears its head in the early game for race/class combos that can really push their STR and DEX. That sounds like a chargen issue to me (or possibly an issue with how blows are calculated), not a combat balance issue. But if you're going to fix this, then you need to have a plan in mind for all of the weapons. If there's no room in your design doc for a character that wants to use daggers, then something's wrong.

I'm happy to agree with you there. I don't think there's anything wrong with everybody using light weapons - even warriors - in the early game. But IMO warriors need to grow out of them a lot more quickly, while other classes do so at slower speeds.

I think you are in a minority about liking combat being the same for all classes: at least, changing that is a fairly fundamental aim for v4. Rogues in particular should fight in a different way to warriors. If I recall d_m's views correctly, they were about making STR and DEX much more significant in choice of weapon, so rogues would lean towards dex-based weapons (fast and/or complicated, if not all necessarily light), while warriors would prefer str-based weapons (big, heavy, slow things[*]). One of the issues with this is that STR is such a universally important stat, for both +dam and carrying capacity, that we'd need to look at this too.

[*]EDIT: of course, if we get this right, there's no reason you can't build a dex-based warrior instead of a str-based one ...

Incidentally, to-hit does affect criticals at some level, IIRC. You can drink Heroism / cast Bless and see your damage numbers increase slightly, even though they only affect your to-hit, not your to-dam.

You are right, I had forgotten. It's a smaller effect than it ought to be, though.

[Derakon]

(This thread is a response to Magnate's post in the roadmap thread)

One quick question: when are light weapons like daggers and whips expected to be used? The classes that are bad at melee (especially priests) are currently encouraged to use heavy weapons to get as much damage as they can out of their weak stats. If you disallow heavy weapons for them in the name of creating a use for lightweight weapons, then you've really made the early game hard for them. On the flipside, if heavier weapons are still allowable, then I can only see lightweight weapons getting used in edge cases ("Wow, this dagger is badass!") or as stat sticks ("I'm never going to swing this whip, but who cares? It has +4 INT!").

If you're going to marginalize light weapons for the warrior types, then the only way I can see to making them still have a relevant place in the game is to make artificial class-based restrictions, which basically amount to "rogues and rangers get bonuses when using light weapons". Personally I really like how combat works basically the same for every class though, so I'd rather not see that happen.

I still don't think the lightweight-weapons thing is as big a deal as some others here are making it out to be, since it generally only rears its head in the early game for race/class combos that can really push their STR and DEX. That sounds like a chargen issue to me (or possibly an issue with how blows are calculated), not a combat balance issue. But if you're going to fix this, then you need to have a plan in mind for all of the weapons. If there's no room in your design doc for a character that wants to use daggers, then something's wrong.

Incidentally, to-hit does affect criticals at some level, IIRC. You can drink Heroism / cast Bless and see your damage numbers increase slightly, even though they only affect your to-hit, not your to-dam.