[crossfire] Balance changes

[Nicolas Weeger]

>   While I haven't adjusted bow combat, from the basic uses I've done so
> far, it seems to be somewhat reasonable - the fire/kill rate is somewhat
> close to to melee - big advantage is that you're not right next to
> creature.  Big disadvantage is you need to carry thousands of arrows about.
>  A thought here is to greatly reduce the odds of arrows (at least non
> special ones) being destroyed, so you can at least get back most of the
> arrows you fire (special ones, like the assassinating whatever should still
> be one shot).

Agreed on one shot assassination, but it does need to do real extra damage, 
else no need for them - I'd rather carry/make 3 regular arrows than take the 
time to find all ingredients for a special one!

>   Spells are the next thing to tackle. I think I'll go down the route of
> elemental spells, as discussed.  Some additional quick thoughts:

Discussion seemed ok.

> 3) In order to make these low level spells effectively, I think the damage
> on them needs to ramp up pretty quickly (creatures hp goes up about
> 10/creature level, so level 1 creatures have 20 hp, level 5 about 50 hp,
> level 10 around 150 hp).  To counter this, max damage/range/whatever type
> things are added, so at level 15 (lets say) that firebullet you get a first
> level doesn't get any better.

*nods*

> 4) Related to this, better version of low level spells can be put in the
> game. At level 10, maybe give out 'medium bullet' type of thing, which
> costs more than the small one, but does more damage and also scales up to
> higher level.

Please, no.
No "small fireball", "medium fireball", "large fireball", "extra large 
fireball", "xxx fireball", "mega fireball", "guaranteed most powerful 
fireball".
I'd rather have just damage/range gain for levels.


>   I've also had some thoughts on other classes:
> Thief/Rogue - crossfire doesn't really have much like this.  One thought to
> make this a more viable class is to remove the search and disarm traps from
> other classes - most game systems does not allow a mage to disarm traps. 
> This doesn't help as much in standalone, but helps in party play (having
> that thief to find and disarm traps would be useful).  I think the trap exp
> needs to be adjusted for this to be more playable.  We should probably also
> allow thieves to make traps, and if they kill a monster with that trap, get
> the appropriate exp for it.  I also think traps should probably be made
> deadlier.  A trapped door or trapped chest isn't all that dangerous if a
> character at full hit points will never die from it (an alternative is
> maybe longer term affects - we have discussed the idea of some spells
> lasting hours of real time.  Imagine you get hit with a trap which depletes
> a stat or slows the character that that lasts half an hour - you can't just
> run out of the dungeon and wait it out, like you can with most cases of
> poison or damage).  The last is hiding and sneak attacks - if player is
> hidden and attacks a creature, give them extra damage, and if they kill the
> creature, maybe split exp between hiding and the weapon skill?) Likewise,
> letting rogues steal from shops should perhaps be allowed, but if caught,
> they are tossed in the town jail for some amount of time.

Could be fun, but then you need to really tune traps.
Until you have many hp, you can easily die to one trap on a door (not sure how 
much damage it does, maybe 50?). So that's a one kill shot for players...

> Item creation classes - if someone wants to play a blacksmith and make
> weapons all day, who am I to say no?  But with other balance changes, we
> can know how this works - that blacksmith needs raw ore, and the facilities
> and time.  Maybe there is a mine near by he can go to get the ore - but if
> it takes 5 minutes realtime for him to get a load of stuff, that help
> factor out exp gain. Likewise, if he gets 50 exp for making a sword, it
> means he has to make a lot of swords to gain a level, and if an actual time
> delay is put in there (lets say it takes 10 seconds realtime to make a
> sword), it probably means that such a character will not gain levels any
> faster than any other class, so IMO would be considered in balance.  The
> only issue here is that I think such long time (10 second) actions need to
> be interruptible - in a sense, it is almost like the run on stuff - the
> character keeps making the sword unless he chooses to do something else. 
> And there is some chance at failure - a first level blacksmith maybe only
> has a 50% chance to successfully make a sword for example.

Needs tuning, as well as alchemy. Ideally, almost all classes should be able 
to do that, though maybe at a lower level.

>   I think clerics/priests are basically OK.  Any other thoughts out there?

Probably ok, depending on balance we put.
I'd also think party spells could be useful - mass protection, this kind of 
things.

-- 
http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de 
l'aléatoire !]
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