Suggestion for racial affixes

[Obsilium]

Now that we have a new finesse/prowess system, it seems reasonable for the racial affixes to affect the percentage modifiers, i.e. gnomish weapons would sacrifice prowess for finesse, elven weapons might just add finesse while trollish weapons sacrifice a lot of finesse for a reasonable amount of prowess.
This would at least make the racial affixes more interesting if they weren't just intended to be junk.

[Magnate]

Now that we have a new finesse/prowess system, it seems reasonable for the racial affixes to affect the percentage modifiers, i.e. gnomish weapons would sacrifice prowess for finesse, elven weapons might just add finesse while trollish weapons sacrifice a lot of finesse for a reasonable amount of prowess.
This would at least make the racial affixes more interesting if they weren't just intended to be junk.

Yes, this is an obvious extension of the affix system - it's a little bit of work to facilitate affixes that affect fin/prow, but it's possible.

The racial affixes weren't intended to be awesome on their own though, just a little flavour and variation, a la Ey. Hey, that reminds me - with the new percentile slays I can finally re-create the minor slay bonuses from Ey too.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

The racial affixes weren't intended to be awesome on their own though, just a little flavour and variation, a la Ey. Hey, that reminds me - with the new percentile slays I can finally re-create the minor slay bonuses from Ey too.

In Fay, I've made many of them a little bit more powerful, especially if they are very narrow. If they are too minor, they end up being just meaningless noise.

It's especially fun that prefix slays cumulate with ego/artifact slays. How about in V4?

[Magnate]

It's especially fun that prefix slays cumulate with ego/artifact slays. How about in V4?

Well, it's not quite the same. Ey kept the standard V ego types and added prefixes as a little extra flavour/boost. v4 goes quite a lot further and uses affixes to replace egos - though all the top-end egos are available as themes. Yes, slays/brands from any affixes will stack with those applied by a theme.

Artifacts don't yet use affixes or themes (even randarts), so the question doesn't apply. The next incarnation of the randart generator will do though, and yes they will stack then too.

[d_m]

I have to say, I am not a fan of (this kind of) racial affixes.

The problem is that you get a kind of weird multiplier effect, e.g.

"Halflings are small. Thus halflings take a penalty to strength/prowess. Thus the "halfling" racial affix also applies this same kind of penalty. Thus, halflings are EVEN WORSE when fighting with halfling weapons."

Ideally racial affixes would not penalize the eponymous race.

Other than making racial affixes strictly better than unaffixed weapons I don't have a great idea of how to do this. I could imagine that they give the eponymous race bonuses that others don't get... thus the halfling weapon is weaker for e.g. dwarves but *not* halflings.

(Signed, the guy who plays halfling warriors sometimes.)

[Derakon]

I would assume more that racial affixes would give +X to one multiplier and -X to the other, leaving them balanced in their overall damage. Thus halflings would favor halfling weapons because they'd be more finesse-oriented and halflings would tend to prefer finesse weapons anyway. For example.

[Gorbad]

Or that they do not affect the race whose affix it is, but only the rest.

I.e. no penalty/bonus for a halfling wielding a halfling sword, but a (+10,-30) for any other race.

[Derakon]

Or that they do not affect the race whose affix it is, but only the rest.

I.e. no penalty/bonus for a halfling wielding a halfling sword, but a (+10,-30) for any other race.

That amounts to having good odds that any given weapon will be functionally useless, since the odds of your race matching the race of the weapon are rather low. We don't need more junk.

[d_m]

I would assume more that racial affixes would give +X to one multiplier and -X to the other, leaving them balanced in their overall damage. Thus halflings would favor halfling weapons because they'd be more finesse-oriented and halflings would tend to prefer finesse weapons anyway. For example.

I guess I don't have as good a handle on the new equations, so maybe +finesse/-prowess makes halflings more deadly and -finess/+prowess makes e.g. half-trolls more deadly. But I had assumed (maybe wrongly) that past a certain point that trade becomes worse not better.

[CunningGabe]

I guess I don't have as good a handle on the new equations, so maybe +finesse/-prowess makes halflings more deadly and -finess/+prowess makes e.g. half-trolls more deadly. But I had assumed (maybe wrongly) that past a certain point that trade becomes worse not better.

I think you're right that at a certain point, the trade becomes worse, assuming we ignore evasion and absorption. But I don't think it becomes much worse. A halfling fighter with a halfling weapon soon learns to take on lightly armored and nimble monsters (since he has a higher to-hit and more blows), while a half-troll fighter with a half-troll weapon takes on the tanks that will just sit there and take punishment.

(Of course, halfling fighters and half-troll fighters should already do that, more or less).

[Derakon]

I guess I don't have as good a handle on the new equations, so maybe +finesse/-prowess makes halflings more deadly and -finess/+prowess makes e.g. half-trolls more deadly. But I had assumed (maybe wrongly) that past a certain point that trade becomes worse not better.

I don't think it's easy to quantify. Finesse gives you extra blows and prowess gives you extra damage per blow, but they give exactly the same multipliers -- +100 finesse is +1 blow, effectively doubling damage over 0 finesse, and +100 prowess is an extra x1 multiplier, also doubling damage over 0 prowess. Having +50 in each is better (1.5 blows at 1.5x damage gives 2.25x normal damage overall), but you pay a penalty in your crit chance. The crit calculation favors being at an extreme. I believe the math is currently given by

crit chance = (finesse ^ 2 + prowess ^ 2) / 5000 + 1

At +50 each your chance is 2%; at +100 to one and +0 to the other it's 3%. Of course these are low values; it gets more extreme as you level up and get better gear. +200 to each gives a crit chance of 17%; +400 to one gives a chance of 33%.

Note that in all of this I've been dealing with the applied finesse and prowess, that is (finesse * weapon balance) and (prowess * weapon heft). If you're a finesse-biased character wielding a prowess-biased weapon, of course you're going to be doing bad damage. Currently the only biases built into the races are via their stat mods; trolls have +STR and -DEX so they're slightly prowess-biased, while hobbits have -STR and +DEX so they're slightly finesse-biased. The impact from class is, I suspect, rather more important though. Rogues would tend to favor hobbit weapons while paladins would favor troll weapons.

[d_m]

OK, well, I will stop editorializing about things that I haven't fully understood.