[crossfire] Redo wc/ac/armor (+dodge)

[Mark Wedel]

Quick followups:

AC: if this change is adopted, one really can't just say 'make what is currently 
AC a dodge penalty' - that will result in lots of broken items (certain items 
that currently give high AC and shouldn't give that as dodge penalty).  Plus, it 
becomes confusing - if I've learned one thing, having these legacy values is a 
bad idea.  Instead, a dodge (or dodge_adj) field should be added.  It may be 
that AC is a good starting point for that, and anything that has AC set is 
converted into -dodge_adjustment.  Another reason a new field is good is that it 
then makes it very easy to see if the item has been updated - if you see that 
the item has a dodge_adj set, you know it is up to date/current.  If you don't 
change the field name, impossible to know if you have some legacy object that 
needs to be updated, or if it has been rebalanced.

Dodge skill:  I thought about the idea of dodge skill getting exp each time you 
dodge.  Several problems - exp has to go up as character advances, otherwise 
dodge skill effectively maxes out at pretty low level.  I think such a simple is 
open to easily exploited abuses - I park myself by a monster I know can't damage 
me (say high regen + high resistance to its attack type).  I let it sit 
overnight, and next morning, I've got bunch of dodge exp.

Now with the experience pool idea, dodge may be a bit more usable, but I'm still 
not sure if one would be able to funnel enough exp into it to be useful - if the 
creatures WC is 50, having a dodge of 30 vs 20 makes no difference - the 
creature is going to hit you all the time.

For spellcasters, may be reasonable to have various spells (of different power) 
that give dodge bonuses.  So you have a 40th level spell that gives you a 30 
dodge bonus - good enough to avoid being damaged most of the time.  An advantage 
of this is that this is also quite easy to tune - if a character is a pure spell 
caster, his spellcasting skill is effectively his overall level in some sense, 
so what level spell he casts really determines what creatures he can kill, and 
thus, what level of protection he can get from those spells is of direct relevance.

Enchanting armor:  Exactly how much improvement each scroll gives is an 
implementation detail.  However, one has to be careful - if one is able to 
enchant all pieces of armor to resist_armor 50, that character will have an 
overall resist_armor 99.  So you need some mechanism to say something like 'max 
enchantment on boots is 10, max on gloves is 5, max on armor (suits) is 60', 
just to keep things in balance.

I would say enchant armor would only improve resist_physical.  That said, adding 
other spells to increase other resistances is I think reasonable (enchant armor 
- protection from fire, etc).  But still in this case, the max total 
enchantments of all the different types of attacks can not exceed the max 
enchantment values.

And those max enchantment values are really only for player controlled 
enchantments.  Artifact/special armor may go above that, but those max values 
should be used as baselines.

d20 vs dother: That could be changed - has to be thought on how to do it. 
Percentage system would be fairly consistent with rest of game (percentages for 
resist values, etc).  A problem however is steps of increase - if you increase 
say dodge and wc 1% per level, then actual level doesn't make a huge different - 
wc + d100 > dodge + 50 makes the dodge and wc skills not especially important - 
that d100 is what will primarily make a difference - in that above example, 
suppose creature has dodge 30, so wc + d100 > 80 to hit.  If character has wc of 
0, hits 20% of time.  Wc if 20 means 40% of time - twice as much.  This system 
may be reasonable, but really does de-emphasize wc and dodge.

Other issue is that currently a weapons bonus (sword +1) affects wc.  If 
switched to a percentage system, that +1 sword means diddly squat.  One could 
change it so that each plus of a weapon is 5%, but now you're looking more like 
a d20 system again, just everything multiplied by 5.

Dodge for spells: It should perhaps for certain spells.  One could follow that 
AD&Dv3 systems of 3 saving throughs - reflex, fortitude, and willpower, and 
dodge will really equate to reflex - sort of goes beyond original start of this 
discussiong, but discussing saving throws perhaps makes sense.