[crossfire] tavern combat server, was Re: Project: Slow down combat

[Mark Wedel]

Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote:
> Started an elven sorcerer a day or so ago... and have put in a
> couple of hours on him by now (mid-level 4).  He has no melee
> combat skills except punching.  I was very surprising/fun and
> very playable.  In fact, it was almost too easy ... and resulted
> in a death or three from overconfidence while adjusting to the
> new playing style.

  It should be noted that the fact that spells have not been changed may mean 
that they are more powerful than before relative to melee combat.

  Creatures have more HP now (at least some of them), which make them tougher. 
But the fact that combat has been slowed down, but spells have not been weakened 
or slowed down likely does make them a bit more effective.

> 
> I have to say that the increased regeneration rate while "resting"
> is a huge improvement.  A lot of the old games let you 'sleep' for
> this effect.  It has a huge impact on being able to hit-n-run with
> a pure magic user, and I would vote it a resounding success.

  It always struck me that sitting outside whatever dungeon waiting for your 
hp/sp/whatever to go back up wasn't particularly interesting, so speeding this 
up seemed like a good idea.

  Also, the way regen rates work in crossfire is that they are more or less 
tuned so that the amount of time it takes to go to 0 to max is about the same, 
no matter what max hp/sp/grace happens to be.  With a higher total starting at 
low levels, this does mean that regain rates are effectively faster - takes same 
amount of time to go from min to max, but the time to get 5 hp back should be less.