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

[Juergen Kahnert]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2007 at 11:51:13PM +0300, Juha Jäykkä wrote:
> So we'd have AC, armour (resist_physical) and dodge? Three things? Not
> good, imo.

This just reflects the fact that a heavy armour will reduce your
mobility.  But as Mark said, keeping legacy values will cause problems.
A new value called "dodge" or whatever will work better.

Maybe we should do a body part table and think about protection values.
After the Wallace rule of nines, we have (for humans):

    head   1 x  9%
    arm    2 x  9%
    leg    2 x 18%
    torso  1 x 36%

For our body protection armour system we may use:

    body_head           1 x  9%
    body_arm            2 x  6% (12%)
    body_wrist          2 x  2% ( 4%)
    body_hand           2 x  1% ( 2%)
    body_leg            2 x 15% (30%)
    body_foot           2 x  3% ( 6%)
    body_torso          1 x 36%

The body_shoulder part is special.  A cloak covers body, legs, arms and
also the head with a hood.  So I would say a cloak is able to increase
the armour value by 11 (arms 2%, legs 4%, torso 4% and head 1%).  But no
armour should increase the maximum percentage for the body part.  This
leads into some calculations with the overlapping cloak.

For example a helmet is unable to increase your armour by more than 9%.
The same for other resistances.  Having a helmet which protects me by
100% against fire wouldn't burn my torso?  No, just the head is
protected against fire, which means 9% of the body.

The armour parts shouldn't offer more protection than the body cover
percentage.  This also makes the armour system more clear for the
players.  Now combining for example a +20% leg armour with a +30% torso
armour will result into +50%.

Maybe we could allow a cloak for other resistances than armour to offer
up to 87% protection (head 9%, arms 12%, legs 30% and torso 36%).  For
example a cloak of fire protection with 87% resist_fire combined with
fire protection bracers, gauntlets and boots will allow an overall
maximum resist_fire of 99%.

But combining a 87% resist_fire cloak with a 36% resist_fire torso
armour won't increase the overall resist_fire protection, because the
torso is already fully protected by the torso armour, the cloak can't
add anything else.  Having a 30% resist_fire torso armour with 87%
resist_fire cloak adds the missing 6% resist_fire for the torso part.

Because there are only 99% in the body table above, you can't ever reach
a protection of 100%.  This can be reached by magic for a period of
time or rings / amulets, but not permanent with armour.


Enchanting armour will work up to the maximum value out of the table
above.  So you won't be able to enchant boots over 6% (2 x 3%).  Adding
an option to add other resistances than physical, either by scrolls or
by smithery, will have the same limit.


What about rings adding resistances?  Well, they could either "fill up"
the missing points of armours.  Or there is an extra "slot" for magic
which always adds the resistance, no matter of the armour resistances.

The extra magic "slot" will allow resistances up to 100%, filling up
armour points just up to 99%.

I prefer the extra magic slot with the chance of 100% resistances.  And
this will be new, but easier to understand.  Adding resistances will
work linear.  Combining two rings of fire +30% will sum up to +60%.


> > Let us discuss a little bit more about a dodge skill.
>
> Perhaps we need that 10% XP pool, after all,

I still don't like this xp pool idea.  CF is not a pen & paper RPG.


> but make it allocatable ONLY to those skills which cannot advance in
> any other way, perhaps? Or even make the 10% player-selectable?

Make skills in a way that it's possible to gain xp in.


> Or simply let dodge gain XP from missing attacks?

That's better.


> Like 1 XP per missed damage?

Uh, how do you reach level 100?  Did you tried to level up hiding?  This
1 xp steps are a pain.


> One more thing: would dodge help evade things like magic missile?

No, just those you won't be able to run away from with normal movement.
You see arrows, bolts, magic missiles, ... coming and you're able to run
away from them.  No need to dodge them.  It's just for the melee combat.


On Fri, Aug 03, 2007 at 06:47:40PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
> Dodge skill:  I thought about the idea of dodge skill getting exp each
> time you dodge.

Same do I.


> Several problems - exp has to go up as character advances, otherwise
> dodge skill effectively maxes out at pretty low level.

Correct.  Same problem as with lockpicking, find / disarm traps, ...


> 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.

Than we have to make it not exploitable.

If a monster can't hurt you, you can't gain xp from it.  Again, we need
a system which decreases the xp gained from lower level monsters.

What about something like that.  You're unable to increase your dodge
skill level over the monsters level.  So you have to find a monster with
a higher level which should be able to hurt you to gain xp from dodging.

The lower the level difference is, the lower the xp gain is for dodging.
So you get more xp successfully dodging with a skill level 5 against a
level 10 monsters.  But you won't be able to gain xp with a level 10
monster after you reached level 11 in dodging.

So parking against a low level monster which is unable to hurt you won't
let you gain any xp.  Doing the same with a high level monster won't let
you survive if you're doing nothing else than sleeping.


> Now with the experience pool idea, dodge may be a bit more usable,

This xp pool just don't fit into a computer based RPG.  We should think
more about how to gain xp with the skills instead of a pool handling.


> For spellcasters, may be reasonable to have various spells (of
> different power) that give dodge bonuses.

I can't see why different spells should change the dodge ability.  How
do you explain this?

Getting xp out of a successful dodge will solve this problem.



> 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).

Yes, I also think so.


> 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

We have to change the system, not just the values. ;)

Wc is used as a percentage value.  Same for dodge.  For example wc 60%
against 35% dodge.  If you roll 1-60 on d100 you get the chance for a
hit.  Now the monster rolls on d100 and with 1-35 it evades.  If you
like a single "dice roll" you calculate 0.6 * (1 - 0.35) = 39% chance to
hit the monster.  But because it's a computer RPG we don't need to
reduce the dice rolls... ;)

We could think about if it's wise to let Wc > 100 reduce the dodge skill
of the monster by Wc - 100.  For example wc 135% against dodge 95% will
make an effective hit value of 60%.  This will allow higher level
monsters low level character can't hurt.

    Jürgen