Derakon's combat revamp

[sethos]

Actually, I'd argue in favor of derakons original idea that all weapons require some blend of power and finesse to be used well: a dagger still needs to be driven home, as does a rapier, and you need to be able to recover well after swinging a great maul, or you'll be open to a counter attack.

BTW - This is my D&D experience talking again, but I don't see # of blows as meaning that you swing the weapon X number of times in a combat round, but meaning that you saw and took advantage of x number of openings during a combat round. D&D put it something like this:

In the course of combat, both combabtants are assumed to be parrying, blocking and completely engaged in battle, with a combat round equaling 6 seconds (That's a D&D round, not neccissarily an angband round), the more skilled warrior may take adavantage of, or even create, multiple "Good" chances to strike - though armor and chance can still negate even an otherwise good swing.

so 6 blows just means that you had 6 good chances to get in a hit- that would be my main problem with light weapons getting more "Blows" than a heavy weapon. a dagger may be quicker, but you have to get a *LOT* closer in to strike with it than you do with a longsword.

meh. Anybody else ever beat up (and get beat down by) their friends with bokkens and kendo sticks? it's pretty awesome.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Actually, I'd argue in favor of derakons original idea that all weapons require some blend of power and finesse to be used well: a dagger still needs to be driven home, as does a rapier, and you need to be able to recover well after swinging a great maul, or you'll be open to a counter attack.

I fully agree here! Please interpret "pure power" in my posts as 85% of power and 15% finesse.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

My intention was to replace Melee with Finesse and to add Power as a separate skill. Bows should probably remain their own skill so that rangers can be amazing archers without also being amazing dagger fighters.

I realized I don't understand exactly what you mean here. There are several interpretations.

1) Power affects both melee and ranged weapons. Finesse affects only melee weapons, and Bows is basically Finesse for ranged weapons. This I like very much!

2) Power and Finesse affect both melee and ranged weapons. Bows adds to to-hit with bows. This feels clumsy.

[Derakon]

To be honest I haven't given that much thought to ranged combat. The big problem is that we have both bows and crossbows, and realistically they have different mechanics -- for bows, your physical strength determines how heavy a draw weight you can pull, which in turn determines the speed of the projectile (which we map to the projectile's damage for simplicity's sake). For crossbows, however, your strength determines more how rapidly you can cock the bow, with it having a fixed power after that.

Of course, in Angband they're just treated identically except with different ammo types. I don't want to completely rework ranged combat -- melee's more than enough to wrestle with -- so I'd really like to leave that as-is as much as possible. At least, there doesn't seem to be a good way to unify missile and melee combat completely without either a skill explosion (separate finesse and power skills for both ranged and melee) or making rangers be amazing dagger fighters.

My intent, therefore, is to have things work out this way:

* The player has a Melee Finesse skill. This is used for melee only. Their "applied finesse" is given by (weapon multiplier) * (Finesse skill + DEX mod + race mod + level * class mod + mods from all non-bow equipment).
* The player has a Power skill. This is also used for melee only. Their "applied power" is given by (weapon multiplier) * (Power skill + STR mod + race mod + level * class mod + mods from all non-bow equipment).
* The player has a Missile Finesse skill. This is used for missile combat only. Their firing speed is given by (Missile skill + DEX mod + race mod + level * class mod + mods from all non-weapon equipment). On non-weapon equipment, finesse bonuses apply to both melee and ranged combat. In current Angband terms, they would affect the "Fight" stats on the character screen.
* Ranged damage uses the multipliers on the weapon instead of a Power stat.

[sethos]

I think that derakon is saying that main problem with having one skill that would affect both ranged and meele combat is that we currently have classes that excel in archery, but not in meele. (Ranger).

if we unified those skillsets, then either the ranger would have to become a less apt archer (in which case we could come up with a different name for the class) or would gain the ability to become a fantastic fighter with light (finesse dependant) weapons. The second option does fit in with a classic ranger archetype (robin hood style!) but would likely be unbalancing, given the ranger's other qualities.

EDIT: or, something could be done to make power dependant weapons more reliable, thus making a light weapon wielder a bit less deadly than a heavy weapon wielder. this could come in the form of damage reduction on some monsters, or by tweaking the formulas and balance so that heavy weapons average out for more damage/ round.

ugh... so much to consider - it makes my head spin.

[Prismatic]

You could make longbows the Finesse version of a ranged weapon and crossbows the Power version. (Slings could be in the middle.) Crossbows focus on single big hits that punch through armour, longbows are more for speed and accuracy. Then, you could also give a Melee and Ranged rating to classes for accuracy purposes.

After this, you'd have four basic classes of weapons: melee power, melee finesse, ranged power, ranged finesse. Power/finesse would be on a scale; melee/ranged is binary (a weapon is melee or ranged but not both... unless that's what you make throwing weapons).

The net effect, as best I can see:

Ranger: High Finesse, high Ranged, middling Melee, lower Power. Great with longbows. Okay with fast, light weapons and crossbows. Should probably not be using melee ultra-power weapons like a maul.

Rogue: Finesse is highest, which helps with bows too. Bad Power, though, so they don't use heavy melee weapons and prefer not to use crossbows.

Paladin: Melee, not ranged. Probably power over finesse.

Warrior: Why not give them pretty much all four? This is kind of what they do.

Priest, Mage: Not so great with any of them. Priest has better Melee and mage Ranged. Priests probably have a tolerable Power too just because most of the 'priest weapons' are heavy.

[Derakon]

Prismatic: so, to get your applied melee finesse rating, you'd do ((player finesse + DEX mod + other mods + etc.) * (player melee bias)) * (weapon modifier)? That would work, though I worry about making the calculations too obtuse.

The thing about bows is that realistically, you need Power to draw them, and Finesse to aim them. The best way I could see to implement this would be to institute a minimum Power level to effectively use a given bow, after which point further Power is moot. That minimum level would scale with the multiplier on the bow, so you'd really need godlike Power to use an x6 longbow.

I'd still rather push that back to "version 2" if possible, though.

[bio_hazard]

Ranged finesse could affect "to hit".

Ranged power could affect damage, and maybe also shooting speed? Bigger bows and especially bigger xbows might take > 1 turn to draw if you are not very good at it, while the extra shots of rangers could come from their higher ranged power skill.

To be honest, I'd be OK with only a single ranged skill. I think I'd want more subtlety added to ranged attacks in general to make it worth to differentiate between slings, bows, and xbows. And certainly beefed up options for thrown objects.

[sethos]

yeah, without going into some ad-hoc way of handling archery, I thing that you'd need at least one more skill for archery(shooting), if not two (Range power / Range Finesse) or more (Throwing skill / Bow Skill / Xbow skill / Sling Skill) The latter would be most useful for fine tuning (hobbits use slings well, warriors and trolls throw things well, rangers and elves are good with bows, etc.) bot the most complicated to implement (not to mention understand!)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

For flavour and simplicity, I'd like this option the best:

Pure Strenght determines your Power for both melee and ranged weapons.

Melee skill determines your Finesse with melee weapons, and Bows skill your Finesse with missile weapons. Your dexterity, class, race, and level affect these skills.

Unfortunately we hit the Strength ceiling in the end game again, but that might be possible to fix.

[Prismatic]

Prismatic: so, to get your applied melee finesse rating, you'd do ((player finesse + DEX mod + other mods + etc.) * (player melee bias)) * (weapon modifier)? That would work, though I worry about making the calculations too obtuse.

The thing about bows is that realistically, you need Power to draw them, and Finesse to aim them. The best way I could see to implement this would be to institute a minimum Power level to effectively use a given bow, after which point further Power is moot. That minimum level would scale with the multiplier on the bow, so you'd really need godlike Power to use an x6 longbow.

I'd still rather push that back to "version 2" if possible, though.

I'm not familiar enough with Angband's internals to give a proper method, but something like that. I don't think it's too obtuse, since while it is a little complicated internally, what the player mostly need to worry about is 'is this melee or ranged?', and 'how much does it favour finesse vs power?'.

Realistically, bows would need power to draw, but I didn't pay attention to that because it /does/ make it a little more complicated and they do use power at least a little bit in their formulas as is.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Prismatic: so, to get your applied melee finesse rating, you'd do ((player finesse + DEX mod + other mods + etc.) * (player melee bias)) * (weapon modifier)? That would work, though I worry about making the calculations too obtuse.

It would be simpler if Melee and Ranged skills only affected to-hit chance and perhaps critical hit probability.

If we'd change to-hit to really mean something (even in the end game), that would be enough. This doesn't necessarily mean hitting less often; you could also have very high to-hit chances result in critical hits far more often (like I did in Fay).

The best ranged weapons should be designed so that ranger is the best class at using them. Using a longbow would require both Power and Finesse (ideal for rangers), and a shortbow would require more Finesse than Power (ideal for rogues).

Longbows would also have greater range than shortbows, and shooting far would require far more Ranged skill than shooting near. Only classes with really good Ranged skill could hit an enemy at extreme range.

[Estie]

After a night of sleep, my thoughts on the matter have congealed....

The critical point where every new suggestion for a combat system breaks is the transition from early to late game. In the former, any amount of changes is welcome, but the latter is constrained by the request to let stats (that is str and dex) not differ for varying classes/races (in a matter that would affect combat).

The question I asked myself is _why_ this is the case. What is the advantage or effect of everyone having the same maxed stats ?
Well, it means that everyone, be he mage or warrior, halfling or troll, wants the same gear. The best weapon is always Deathwreaker, followed by Ringil etc.

Obviously this makes it easy to balance the endgame, gives everyone the same bragging rights if he finds Ringil and so on.

In this light, the combat system suggested by Derakon tries to break the uniformity of endgame combat by introducing new stats in finesse and power, which presumably make the wants of a hobbit and a troll different for the lategame, without changing the stat cap.

But....if that is going to happen anyway, and we need to provide for two different wants (finesse and power endgame weapons), what is the point of keeping current stat cap ? Wouldnt it be easier to just let str, dex and weapon weight handle everything (albeit changed in functionality, so the big troll wants a hammer early on and not a dagger) while keeping the stat diversity throughout the game ?

The question I have been asking over and over: what are lategame numbers going to look like ? - can thus be reduced to: will trolls and hobbits, mages and warriors, want _different_ weapons for lategame ?

If the answer is "yes", then I think its best to just modify the str/dex effect of weapons to give the troll his hammer. If the answer is "no", then Derakons finesse and power can solve the early game combat, but _they must not have any effect for lategame_ .

This, I think, is the crux.

[Magnate]

This new combat system will make finding good weapons much more dependant on luck than before. In the current system, most any good weapon will do; after the change, you will have to find a good weapon that is suitable for your combat style.

Yes and no. As Derakon pointed out earlier, many weapons will have only minor preferences for power or finesse (the dagger and maul being extreme examples) - finding a really good longsword should be a good thing whatever your combat style, really. But yes, *optimising* will be more difficult than it is now - I wonder if that will upset people ...

So, I've missed a ton of posts, but I've read them all. Some brief thoughts:

- we should absolutely break this up into chunks, which means not touching missiles at all in the first instance. (Personally I think the mechanics ought to be very different for the three launcher types, and I know d_m wanted to make throwing weapons competitive in their own right.)

- changing the stats system is on the to-do list for v4, but shouldn't impact on Derakon's proposal. When STR/DEX are recalibrated, we can adjust their impact on Finesse and Power accordingly. (I disagree that stats should be the sole determinants of Finesse and Power. Part of the point is to make races and classes more distinct.)

- one thing we *should* bear in mind is that AC will be split into Evasion and Absorption, as discussed earlier this year (this is exactly the kind of change v4 was created for). This will actually work very well with Derakon's proposals, since Finesse will make it easier to hit monsters with high evasion, and power will make it easier to damage monsters with high absorption

- similarly, we should be open-minded about changes to the way slays, brands and extra blows work. Slays/brands can be re-worked around evasion and absorption, and the OF_BLOWS flag can be an adjustment to the blows calculation (e.g. increasing effective weapon speed, or finesse, or whatever) rather than adding to the result

- I agree with the point about criticals being rare, and not the primary mechanism for power increasing damage. Often a 'critical' hit is an exceptionally well-placed one, not a hard one (i.e. Finesse over Power).

- I agree that these changes will mean more differentiation between endgame characters (especially combined with changes to stats). I think this can only be a good thing, and the answer to Estie's question is a resounding Yes. Ringil will continue to be an awesome weapon for just about anybody, but hobbit rogues may end up better off with Aglarang than Deathwreaker, for example.

EDIT: I forgot one. I think we need to distinguish between a weapon's weight and its speed. A whip is light but very slow. The blows calculation needs to use a weapon's speed, not its weight. (And in fact this solves the question of what to do about OF_BLOWS: it simply increases a weapon's speed rating.)

[buzzkill]

- changing the stats system is on the to-do list for v4, but shouldn't impact on Derakon's proposal. When STR/DEX are recalibrated, we can adjust their impact on Finesse and Power accordingly. (I disagree that stats should be the sole determinants of Finesse and Power. Part of the point is to make races and classes more distinct.)

I've probably suggested this before (or something vaguely similar). Late game stat and race/class stat differentiation can be accomplished by adding a finer granularity to stats and having stat potions and stat boosts affect different races and classes differently (without necessarily the need for finesse and power). A base hobbits might only get 1/3 of a point of STR form a potion, or a full 1 point boost for a ring of STR+3. A hobbit warrior maybe twice as much. For a hobbit mage it would be insignificant. As with the system being currently discussed, further balancing would be required, probably an expansion of the min/max stat range and forced to conform to a curve where the extremes are not only unattainable, but practically probably not worth attaining (else scumming will rule). Custom character birthing would be a problem too.

EDIT: I forgot one. I think we need to distinguish between a weapon's weight and its speed.

This has been a long time coming and will work well, but probably not before the split of movement speed and attack speed. Start thinking of extra attacks not as extra attacks but as extra attack speed. Fractional and further modified by the weapon and finesse/DEX.