Derakon's combat revamp

[Magnate]

I think Derakon's combat revamp is a huge step forward and am very excited to see it in action. My only concern is that (unless I'm misundertsanding it), it could create very arbitrarily pre-determined characters in terms of fighting style and which weapons they should be using. For example, (in my opinion) warriors should be just as capable as paladins if they want to wield large heavy weapons, while paladins (being simililar to a knight) should be able to choose to effectively use weapons such as long swords, rather than being arbitrarily forced to use humongous weapons.

My suggestion is to allow the player to have a limited degree of prowess vs. finesse customizatoin during character creation, based on their race and class combination (seems logical that warrior would have the widest range to select from). For example, a half troll warrior might have the option select a ratio within a range from 100p/0f down to 60p/40f. On the other hand, a halfling warrior would only be able to select anywhere in between 60p/40f and 20p/80f. However, once they select a provess vs. finesse ratio, they have to stick with it for the entire game

A human warrior might be able to select a ratio from 70p/30f to 30p/70f. A dwarf warrior however,would be more biased towards prowess, so they might be allowed to select anywhere from 90p/10f to 50p/50f.

The same logic would go for paladins. A human paladin might be able to select anywhere from 70p/30f to 40p/60f (not quite as big of a range as warriors and a little more biased towards prowess). A dwarf paladin might be anywhere from 90p/10f to 60p/40f. A halfling paladin might be able to select a range from 60p/40f to 30p/70f.

The same logic would apply for the other classes as well.

The purpose would be to allow the player to choose what type of character they want to create.

We could indeed bring a great deal of complexity into character creation, starting with the innocent selection of prowess and finesse scores within race- and class-determined minima and maxima. I wouldn't be averse to that if someone coded it up after Derakon is done. But finesse and prowess are also significantly affected by STR and DEX, which you can already choose at birth. So if you want to make a high-DEX warrior or paladin, you're exercising exactly the choice you describe. Since birth will no longer be about DEX breakpoints for blows, this should be a much more meaningful choice than it is now. In the opposite direction, people could choose to be prowess-heavy rogues by putting lots into STR. I can well imagine half-troll rogues maxing STR and wielding heavy weapons, and hitting more often because of the class's great finesse.

[tg122]

I think Derakon's combat revamp is a huge step forward and am very excited to see it in action. My only concern is that (unless I'm misundertsanding it), it could create very arbitrarily pre-determined characters in terms of fighting style and which weapons they should be using. For example, (in my opinion) warriors should be just as capable as paladins if they want to wield large heavy weapons, while paladins (being simililar to a knight) should be able to choose to effectively use weapons such as long swords, rather than being arbitrarily forced to use humongous weapons.

My suggestion is to allow the player to have a limited degree of prowess vs. finesse customizatoin during character creation, based on their race and class combination (seems logical that warrior would have the widest range to select from). For example, a half troll warrior might have the option select a ratio within a range from 100p/0f down to 60p/40f. On the other hand, a halfling warrior would only be able to select anywhere in between 60p/40f and 20p/80f. However, once they select a provess vs. finesse ratio, they have to stick with it for the entire game

A human warrior might be able to select a ratio from 70p/30f to 30p/70f. A dwarf warrior however,would be more biased towards prowess, so they might be allowed to select anywhere from 90p/10f to 50p/50f.

The same logic would go for paladins. A human paladin might be able to select anywhere from 70p/30f to 40p/60f (not quite as big of a range as warriors and a little more biased towards prowess). A dwarf paladin might be anywhere from 90p/10f to 60p/40f. A halfling paladin might be able to select a range from 60p/40f to 30p/70f.

The same logic would apply for the other classes as well.

The purpose would be to allow the player to choose what type of character they want to create.

[fizzix]

Yes, but then we need to rescale breath attack calculations, spell damage, ranged damage, etc. I suspect that keeping melee damage at roughly the same level as before is the simpler path.

Yes, this is the simpler path. But if monster hp, breath multipliers and spell damage need to be scaled it can. Don't view this as a limitation if your finding it too difficult to match current damage outputs.

[Derakon]

Note that the monhp gradient could be changed as well, so there are several ways to solve this problem.

Yes, but then we need to rescale breath attack calculations, spell damage, ranged damage, etc. I suspect that keeping melee damage at roughly the same level as before is the simpler path.

[Magnate]

Regarding slays: I fully expect the current multipliers to be overpowered with damage coming entirely from dice under the new system, which is why I went ahead and multiplied everything by 100. Fortunately this at least is easy to tweak. I'll leave the effects of slays on EvAbs to you guys, though if there's somewhere I need to leave room open to make your job easier, please do let me know.

I think it will be ok actually. With the new granular multipliers, we can base the slay or brand damage on the weapon's damage if we want, without worrying about not having enough control over the numbers. (There's nothing to stop us using multipliers of 0.75 for additional damage from the slay, for example.) I like fizzix's idea of adding it later, after subtracting absorption from the weapon damage. So in fact I don't think there's any need for either EvAbs or slays to hold you up.

Regarding to-hit: I agree with Magnate that having a constant that we deviate from for specific monsters is pretty elegant. Magnate went ahead with specifying a bunch of possible factors, though, so I want to ask:

1) Are we planning to make player's chance to hit any monster = X% +- specific monster modifiers?
or,
2) Is it X% + a*(player level * 2 - monster level) + b*(finesse - evasion)?

Hmmm. Ok. It seems obvious that for a given midgame monster, a cl50 player should have a better chance of hitting it than a cl1 player (given the same race, class and weapon). So it seems to me that the basic X% chance must be modified upwards as well as downwards. But if clev increases finesse (at a different rate for each class), then this is already taken into account. So #2 can be rewritten as

X% + finesse - evasion

where the finesse term isn't necessarily a positive number for low-level characters of finesse-poor classes using prowess-preferring weapons ...

Note that this assumes that evasion numbers scale with mlev, rather than being absolute. If they're absolute this becomes (assume appropriate scalar constants)

X% + finesse - (evasion + mlev)

Finally, regarding damage dice: we need to figure out how to scale these across the course of the game. Currently, a broadsword is a 2d5 weapon, average output 6 damage. There's no way that we're going to make that able to deal 400 damage/round without getting absurd numbers of blows/round and/or absurd damage multipliers (with implicit absurd stats on the player and on the weapon). For example, at 6 blows/round we'd need a prowess multiplier of 11! However, if we increase the base dice then early damage dealt will be too high.

It seems likely we need some way to model the impact that +to-dam has on weapons in the current system, where you simply can't find or buy high base damage weapons early on, but they become readily more available as the game goes on. We have affixes that add to dice or die sides, so that's one possible route to take -- scale that broadsword up to be 5d5 or whatever and it becomes more viable (at six blows/round, prowess multiplier is 4.4). Do we have any concern about basically requiring endgame-quality weapons to have gotten a certain number of bonus dice?

Incidentally, the Big Three weapons (blades of chaos, scythes of slicing, maces of disruption) have high base dice and are excellent candidates for endgame weapons under this system for that reason. Especially since their unusual weight is less of a barrier to them being used effectively since that no longer impacts #blows.

I'm pleased to say that this is a problem solved very nicely by affixes. We can arrange ego_item.txt so that weapons start getting extra sides first, and then dice, in a smooth progression down through the dungeon, so that a 2d5 broadsword will be most likely to end up at (for example) 3d6 at 2000' and 4d7 at 3000' and 6d7 at 4000' ... or whatever numbers are needed to address the issue. At the moment extra dice and sides are much rarer than this, but this is all configurable.

Note that the monhp gradient could be changed as well, so there are several ways to solve this problem.

[Derakon]

Here's todays change list:

* Weapon bonuses are now applied in combat. Off-weapon bonuses aren't, though, so that still needs to be fixed. One of these days I'll get it right!

* Rescaled the bonuses to finesse and prowess from stats:

    -30 /* 3 */,
    -25 /* 4 */,
    -20 /* 5 */,
    -15 /* 6 */,
    -11 /* 7 */,
    -7  /* 8 */,
    -3  /* 9 */,
    0   /* 10 */,
    3   /* 11 */,
    6   /* 12 */,
    9   /* 13 */,
    12  /* 14 */,
    15  /* 15 */,
    18  /* 16 */,
    21  /* 17 */,
    25  /* 18/00-18/09 */,
    30  /* 18/10-18/19 */,
    35  /* 18/20-18/29 */,
    40  /* 18/30-18/39 */,
    50  /* 18/40-18/49 */,
    60  /* 18/50-18/59 */,
    70  /* 18/60-18/69 */,
    80  /* 18/70-18/79 */,
    90  /* 18/80-18/89 */,
    100 /* 18/90-18/99 */,
    110 /* 18/100-18/109 */,
    120 /* 18/110-18/119 */,
    130 /* 18/120-18/129 */,
    140 /* 18/130-18/139 */,
    150 /* 18/140-18/149 */,
    160 /* 18/150-18/159 */,
    170 /* 18/160-18/169 */,
    180 /* 18/170-18/179 */,
    190 /* 18/180-18/189 */,
    200 /* 18/190-18/199 */,
    220 /* 18/200-18/209 */,
    240 /* 18/210-18/219 */,
    260 /* 18/220+ */

This may be a bit excessive, but we'll see. My current experience with v4 is that stat boosts are hard enough to come by that you can't max out a stat without significant sacrifice, so the +260 at the high end doesn't bother me much.

* Unified the chance-to-hit logic under a single function, which currently just returns 80%. This can be tweaked later, especially once evasion and absorption are considered.

* Changed the 'C'haracter display screen to show Finesse and Prowess skills as numbers instead of textual descriptions. They could easily be figured out by examining your 'Fight' or 'Melee' numbers anyway since those numbers are just skill + stat bonuses + equipment bonuses.

* Changed temporary buffs: Bless -> +30 finesse; Heroism -> 15 each finesse and prowess; Berserk -> -15 finesse, +60 prowess.

* Made up a bunch of numbers for all of the weapons so they aren't all using 50/50 splits now. This was done in maybe five minutes so someone's welcome to go through with a bit more care to clean it up.

[Derakon]

Yeah, unfortunately we already have a bunch of terms in-game that mean "I'm powerful!" so finding a new one for hitting things harder was a bit tricky. If you have a better suggestion then I'm all ears. "Power" was vetoed at least in part because we don't want there to be Rings of Power that weren't forged by Sauron.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I'm not sure what a better term would be to use - I'd suggest "power", but it appears that that was the original one that got vetoed and replaced by "prowess"...

Might? Potency? Peppiness? Punch? Forcefulness? Oomph?

[buzzkill]

I'm not sure what a better term would be to use - I'd suggest "power", but it appears that that was the original one that got vetoed and replaced by "prowess"...

I thought so from the first moment it was mentioned, but didn't care enough to buck the trend as the whole renaming issue was mostly settled by the time I ran across it. How about "funk" (finesse) and "ker-plunk" (power).

[LostTemplar]

Too low dice and too high pluses is exectly the problem in vanilla combat. So increasing dice and decreasing pluses may fix it. I dont see in your post any argument against this.

[ekolis]

Am I the only one who doesn't like the term "prowess" in this context? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the definition of the word, but I thought "prowess" means just "skill" or "aptitude". So a "weapon prowess skill" seems rather redundant to me, and it doesn't necessarily have anything at all to do with pounding monsters harder; it could be that you know their weak spots or even that you have "finesse"!

I'm not sure what a better term would be to use - I'd suggest "power", but it appears that that was the original one that got vetoed and replaced by "prowess"...

[Derakon]

dont you think, that such change may fix problem in original combat system too.

Compare Ringil's damage as a 4d5 weapon vs. as a 2d5 weapon. How much do the dice matter compared to the +25 to-damage enchantment? Not so much in either case. In both cases the dice are less than half the damage you're outputting. In more extreme cases, it's not that uncommon to have a character wandering around with a 1d4 dagger or 1d6 rapier that's been enchanted to +12 or more to-damage.

We had a discussion about this stuff years ago back on RGRA, I think when O combat was first making its debut. I mentioned the +15 dagger and someone else called it a "pie in the face of reality". I always liked that phrase.

[LostTemplar]

scale that broadsword up to be 5d5

dont you think, that such change may fix problem in original combat system too.

[Derakon]

Thanks for the positive feedback, guys. I want to make it clear that while it appears I've made a lot of progress, I've been doing the easy stuff so far -- diving into the code, ripping things apart, and then doing positive testing ("does my new stuff work?"). The negative testing ("does anything else not work?") hasn't been done yet, and in my experience is a big part of any change. Also, props to everyone on IRC for helping me out when I was looking for a function and didn't know what it was named, let alone where it was.

Now.

Regarding slays: I fully expect the current multipliers to be overpowered with damage coming entirely from dice under the new system, which is why I went ahead and multiplied everything by 100. Fortunately this at least is easy to tweak. I'll leave the effects of slays on EvAbs to you guys, though if there's somewhere I need to leave room open to make your job easier, please do let me know.

Regarding to-hit: I agree with Magnate that having a constant that we deviate from for specific monsters is pretty elegant. Magnate went ahead with specifying a bunch of possible factors, though, so I want to ask:

1) Are we planning to make player's chance to hit any monster = X% +- specific monster modifiers?
or,
2) Is it X% + a*(player level * 2 - monster level) + b*(finesse - evasion)?

Finally, regarding damage dice: we need to figure out how to scale these across the course of the game. Currently, a broadsword is a 2d5 weapon, average output 6 damage. There's no way that we're going to make that able to deal 400 damage/round without getting absurd numbers of blows/round and/or absurd damage multipliers (with implicit absurd stats on the player and on the weapon). For example, at 6 blows/round we'd need a prowess multiplier of 11! However, if we increase the base dice then early damage dealt will be too high.

It seems likely we need some way to model the impact that +to-dam has on weapons in the current system, where you simply can't find or buy high base damage weapons early on, but they become readily more available as the game goes on. We have affixes that add to dice or die sides, so that's one possible route to take -- scale that broadsword up to be 5d5 or whatever and it becomes more viable (at six blows/round, prowess multiplier is 4.4). Do we have any concern about basically requiring endgame-quality weapons to have gotten a certain number of bonus dice?

Incidentally, the Big Three weapons (blades of chaos, scythes of slicing, maces of disruption) have high base dice and are excellent candidates for endgame weapons under this system for that reason. Especially since their unusual weight is less of a barrier to them being used effectively since that no longer impacts #blows.

And fizzix asked me to post the current damage formula here, so here it is:

Damage/blow = (dice damage) * (slay multiplier) * (weapon heft * prowess + 1)
Damage/round = (damage per blow) * (weapon balance * finesse + 1)

Balance + heft = 1, barring exceptions.

[fizzix]

The other thing I wanted to ask is why EvAbs needs to wait until after the effects refactor. It doesn't matter if it does, I just want to understand. Since Derakon's work is all about redefining the algorithms for to-hit and damage, now is exactly the time to do EvAbs. Otherwise Derakon will produce something vaguely balanced, and then we'll have to mess with it all over again.

Well it doesn't. One of the main difficulties I had previously with evasion/absorption was that absorption became negligible if you had a slay/brand. In the last attempt, if the monster was vulnerable to a slay, I divided the absorption value by 3, making it meaningless for all monsters that you had a slay for. This, admittedly, was a ham-fisted approach, but I felt that it was better than reducing fire damage to a monster that was did not resist fire.

What I would prefer is to send the damage from the slays/weapons separately. So that at the point of combat, I could say that the player gives 20 damage from weapon impact, 20 damage from xxx brand and 10 damage from xxx slay. Then absorption reduces the damage from impact. For example, resist fire would reduce the fire damage by 1/3. Immune fire would take no damage from fire. Vuln fire would double the damage from fire only.

This part can be separate from splitting absorption/evasion but it was the major problem with the first splitting attempt.