Derakon's combat revamp

[Magnate]

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.

I am half with you here. I completely agree that revisiting ranges and caps and so on, with a view to more race/class distinction at endgame, is a good thing. I'm not convinced that having gains/boosts affect different races/classes differently is worth the trouble. I think there are plenty of levers to distinguish races and classes without making stats that complicated. But happy to hear more.

[Derakon]

"Weapon speed" under the proposed system is functionally identical to the weapon's finesse multiplier. So yes, a whip would be a very light weapon that nonetheless isn't especially fast, because it would have a low finesse multiplier. And probably a lower power multiplier. Whips just aren't really meant for combat.

So it sounds like the proposal to have finesse and power have secondary effects on to-hit / criticals isn't liked. Remember that my original intent was to have to-hit be replaced by finesse, and likewise to-dam replaced by power. Does that still make sense? If so, how do we calculate the player's chance to hit something without having a to-hit value? If not, are we going to have three separate plus values on each weapon? (to-hit, to-finesse, to-power) Or are we going to do away with on-weapon bonuses of that type? I mean, imagine this:

A Giant Longsword of Quickness (3d5) (-2,+4,+10) [+5] <+2>
40% finesse, 60% power
It is unusually large, favoring brute force over skill. 
It is skillfully crafted and easy to maneuver.
It is designed with an eye towards defense. 

It increases your searching by 2, so I can stick a pval on this thing.

Here I'm imagining the "Giant's" affix modifying the base dice, tweaking the finesse/power ratio by 10%, and adding to Power while reducing to-hit and Finesse. Meanwhile, "Quickness" gives a straight Finesse bonus. So that's -2 to-hit, +4 to finesse, +10 to power. Is that too many numbers to keep track of for the weapon's primary display?

As for stat caps, that should really be in its own thread IMO.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Has someone thought about how to balance the races with the new combat system?

The problem I see is that most races that would thematically be good at Finesse are currently good in archery and bad in melee, and most good warrior races clearly excel in Power. So we'll either end up having more points in Power than in Finesse overall, or we have to alter the game balance.

One other option, which I wrote about in an earlier post, is to make Finesse somewhat more important in ranged combat, and Power more important in melee.

I think we should have at least a vague idea about the place of archery in the new system before actually coding it.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

"Weapon speed" under the proposed system is functionally identical to the weapon's finesse multiplier. So yes, a whip would be a very light weapon that nonetheless isn't especially fast, because it would have a low finesse multiplier. And probably a lower power multiplier. Whips just aren't really meant for combat.

In Rolemaster, whip is a very good weapon choice for unskilled characters (against lightly armored opponents), but skill increase doesn't really help much. Sounds exactly like your whip, except the base damage should be higher! I think every weapon should have at least a niche use.

So it sounds like the proposal to have finesse and power have secondary effects on to-hit / criticals isn't liked. Remember that my original intent was to have to-hit be replaced by finesse, and likewise to-dam replaced by power. Does that still make sense?

Yes, definitely get rid of plusses to-hit and to-damage.

I favour having two Finesse skills, one for melee weapons and one for missile weapons. Both skills would also help you hit things. I think we agree here, too.

I would prefer having pure Strength handle the Melee Power part of the equation. That way we wouldn't need to invent any secondary effects for the Power skill or add any new skills to the character sheet. Besides, STR needs to be really important here for balance reasons, because DEX already affects both melee and ranged skills.

[Derakon]

STR is already important for carrying capacity. It's the most overloaded stat in the game right now (to-dam and blows and carrying capacity and minimum weapon weight). Making it a bit less important is a good thing.

And don't think for a minute that there's no skill behind knowing how to apply a lot of force behind your blows. Having Power be a class skill makes sense for realism reasons in addition to for game balance.

[Estie]

Hmm I kindof liked the approach to let weapon weight handle speed, and str/dex attack speed, at least if it was done intuitively and not "more str gives more attacks with the dagger". However, its not that important, good bye.

The longsword sample:

(to hit, to finesse, to dam), %finesse, %power ...do we really need the option to have plain adders to both to hit and finesse ? What would one give that the other cant ?

Also, the sum of finesse and power is 1; only the ratio is relevant. While changing that for certain weapons might look intersting, is it different enough from changing the base damage dice to warrant another number ?

Coming from playing v4, i am worried about increasing the length of item descriptions. The presented sample obviously has entries wherever possible to show the extremes. However, I very much dislike that in v4 almost all weapons have a ton of entries about things that have little or no impact on gameplay.

When I come upon a new weapon, I first and foremost need to decide wether it is an upgrade or not. Given a longsword 2d5 (+5,+8) thats easily done at a glance. Given a Dwarven longsword of Agility 2d6 (+5,+8) <+1,+2> [+4] with 3 lines of additional information it becomes annoying.

With the new system we get even more numbers. That by itself is, I think, not a problem, as long as there is some restraint when applying all the new options.

What I mean is this: when deciding about a new ego or property, first ask "does it have enough impact to matter". A [+3] to AC does not, and hence shouldnt be on every other weapon found. In the current vanilla, it comes with the defender ego which itself is so rare that the (useless) AC adder doesnt matter. If a sizable percentage of weapons is "dwarven" (or whatever), it shouldnt spam the information line with [+3] or [+4].
If there is to be an ego with bonus to AC, make it [+30] so its noticable and rare to keep balance.

In all the v4 threads, I havent seen this topic surface, so I am wondering if its just me and everyone else is happy.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

STR is already important for carrying capacity. It's the most overloaded stat in the game right now (to-dam and blows and carrying capacity and minimum weapon weight). Making it a bit less important is a good thing.

That still leaves carrying capacity and maximum weapon weight in the new system. Maximum weapon weight will probably be less important in the new system, would you think, with low-STR characters preferring light weapons anyway?

Clearly STR is too important in Angband when compared to WIS, INT, or CHR. But warrior characters tend to minimize all those stats anyway and choose between STR and DEX. So I'd pay attention to the balance of those two stats.

DEX will have number of blows in melee, number of shots with missile weapons, to-hit in both melee and ranged combat, and miscellaneous other effects. But maybe it's ok for DEX to be twice as important in combat than STR, because carrying capacity really is important. You're probably a better judge here than I, since I've messed up my perceptions by playing too much FayAngband.

And don't think for a minute that there's no skill behind knowing how to apply a lot of force behind your blows. Having Power be a class skill makes sense for realism reasons in addition to for game balance.

I tend to not think very much about realism when I'm designing games, I just want everything to be as simple, elegant, and tactically interesting as possible. So we just have a very different point of view. From the realism point of view, I agree completely.

Game balance can really only be judged when we see the whole puzzle, archery and all, and what's the role of STR and DEX there.

A single skill for Power is elegant design. But having a different Power skill for ranged weapons (if that is necessary) starts to get messy.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I don't want to appear overly critical here. This is a cleverly designed combat system. Thinking about it gives me joy and makes me want to play Vanilla again.

I trust most issues will get solved eventually. Once the basic mechanic is coded, balancing and rebalancing should be relatively easy. The core parts work.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Here's a suggestion that might seem counter-intuitive at first, but seems to work really well in practise. I tested it in Fay, which has a quite similar combat system to what is proposed here, only with STR and DEX in place of Power and Finesse.

Have Power increase to-hit chances in melee, and Finesse to-hit chances in ranged combat!

The flavour of Power and Finesse would change slightly. Combatants specializing in Power would be very good at smashing through opponent's defences and connecting with single, heavy hits. Combatants specializing in Finesse would jump around opponents, making several quick attacks, relentlessly and opportunistically seeking openings in their opponent's defences.

My playtesting revealed that those flail-wielding lizardmans really want to connect with their single attack. On the other hand, gnomes with dirks don't really mind if one or even two of their four attacks misses.

And on the ranged combat front, having DEX or Finesse associated with archery makes perfect sense.

EDIT: You'll probably want to keep both skills focused in melee combat. How about making Power increase your to-hit chances in melee, and Finesse your parrying, dodging, and shield block chances in melee.

[Derakon]

My concern with tying hit chance to Power is that it's unintuitive. I'll grant it might work well mechanics-wise, but it doesn't seem like being good at landing blows with a lot of force would make you better at landing blows, period.

On that note, we need a new name to replace "Power", since it's pretty lame and, as mentioned already, we already have Rings of Power in-universe. "Force" is the best I've managed to come up with, but if you can think of a term that would work well as a damage multiplier and also for affecting your chance-to-hit, then by all means, suggest away.

I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations for using just DEX to determine hit rate. If we assume:
* Linear returns on DEX vs. hit chance.
* Melee-relevant DEX scores range from around 15 to 40 (i.e. below that and you shouldn't expect to be able to hit anything reliably)
* Acceptable hit chance should match monster AC

then we end up with endgame monsters being around 5-6 times harder to hit than monsters right at the beginning of the game. By comparison, currently Jackals have an AC of 3 and Morgoth an AC of 180 -- a factor of 60.

It may be we'll be able to switch to just using DEX sometime in the future, after some hypothetical stats revamp, but currently it doesn't look all that feasible.

EDIT: a suggestion from d_m is to re-use the Finesse / Power ratings on the weapon. That is, your to-hit is based on Finesse * finesse multiplier + Power * power multiplier. Daggers rely heavily on your Finesse skill to hit, Mauls rely heavily on your Power skill. It's a double-whammy -- if you're bad at one of the skills, then you'll be really terrible with weapons that use that skill -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing. He also suggests "Prowess" as a replacement for Power.

You could conceivably do the same thing for critical chance and critical power too.

[tg122]

On that note, we need a new name to replace "Power", since it's pretty lame and, as mentioned already, we already have Rings of Power in-universe. "Force" is the best I've managed to come up with, but if you can think of a term that would work well as a damage multiplier and also for affecting your chance-to-hit, then by all means, suggest away. sarily a bad thing. He also suggests "Prowess" as a replacement for Power.

How about "Lethality"

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Lethality and Prowess both sound good to me.

It's probably not a good idea to let either Finesse or Power skill increase your to-hit chance alone. Having STR increase to-hit chance works well in Fay because Fay still has Melee and Ranged skills, and plusses to-hit on weapons. In my playtesting, STR was really not the main source of to-hit in melee.

I kind of like d-m's double-whammy solution. Take a square root of that if you want to reduce double-whamminess, and do the same for all monster ACs. The player doesn't need to really understand what is happening here -- if you want, you can show to-hit chance in percentages in monster status line, like I've done in FayAngband.

Some other (self-evident) options:

- Keep Melee and Bows skills. If you remove to-hit bonuses from weapons, innate skill from class and race would matter more.

- Have both Finesse and Lethality skills increase to-hit chance in melee. (This is the classic EyAngband solution, by the way: both STR and DEX increase to-hit chance.)

- Replace Dexterity with two stats, Quickness and Agility. Agility would help you hit.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Here's another option:

As long as you can get at least two blows (2.0) with a weapon, you may use Finesse for hitting monsters. As long as you can get at least double damage with a weapon, you may use Prowess for hitting.

If you can get neither two blows nor double damage, use the lower skill. If you can get both two blows and double damage, use the higher skill.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Yet another. Use Prowess for to-hit for your first blow, and Finesse for to-hit for all the blows after the first. It's dead simple and it works!

The flavour is that your first attack is usually the one with most motion and strength behind it. After that the combat turns to quick attacks and counter-attacks that mostly require quick and accurate reactions.

[Magnate]

Coming from playing v4, i am worried about increasing the length of item descriptions. The presented sample obviously has entries wherever possible to show the extremes. However, I very much dislike that in v4 almost all weapons have a ton of entries about things that have little or no impact on gameplay.

When I come upon a new weapon, I first and foremost need to decide wether it is an upgrade or not. Given a longsword 2d5 (+5,+8) thats easily done at a glance. Given a Dwarven longsword of Agility 2d6 (+5,+8) <+1,+2> [+4] with 3 lines of additional information it becomes annoying.

With the new system we get even more numbers. That by itself is, I think, not a problem, as long as there is some restraint when applying all the new options.

What I mean is this: when deciding about a new ego or property, first ask "does it have enough impact to matter". A [+3] to AC does not, and hence shouldnt be on every other weapon found. In the current vanilla, it comes with the defender ego which itself is so rare that the (useless) AC adder doesnt matter. If a sizable percentage of weapons is "dwarven" (or whatever), it shouldnt spam the information line with [+3] or [+4].
If there is to be an ego with bonus to AC, make it [+30] so its noticable and rare to keep balance.

In all the v4 threads, I havent seen this topic surface, so I am wondering if its just me and everyone else is happy.

While this is a slight digression from combat, it's worth answering. Yes, people are concerned about the length of item names in v4 - Nomad is working on an improved naming system, but with hit/dam, AC and multiple pvals there will still be problems. These will get worse if the new combat system means that slays and brands end up as two-digit pvals.

But we don't limit design decisions for good gameplay around what fits on a 70-character item title. Instead, we change the rendering of the item title to provide the best info we can for the new gameplay.

By this I mean that information like a weapon's speed factor, or its finesse and power multipliers, will not be added to its title. They will be visible in its 'I'nspect screen (which I suspect will have to be split into two screens: one for combat info and one for everything else).

So we don't actually have to worry about adding more stuff to item names, and in fact your suggestion of not displaying AC on weapons is a good one. In fact we could choose not to display any numbers at all in an item title (or just base dice for weapons and base AC for armour). There's lots of room for experimentation to find what works.

But the basic issue is that the Inspect screen will become the primary source of information about an item. One thing to make this easier would be to move to the noun-verb model of item usage, so that when you press 'i' for inventory or 'e' for equipment, your next keypress automatically displays the 'I'nspect screen for the item (defaulting to the combat screen for weapons and the non-combat screen for everything else), and then the following keypress can be a command (use, take off, throw etc.).

This is off the top of my head and might have drawbacks, but it would help avoid RSI from pressing shift-i all the time ...