Madscientist

There is one big difference between DnD and PoE: In PoE armor reduces the damage taken when you get hit while the defenses (def, fort, rex, will) determine if you get hit or not. In DnD armor does not reduce damage. Both dex and armor reduce the chance to get hit. There are some items or skills that reduce damage, but damage reduction is not part of any normal armor. In DnD 2nd edition, armor and dex did always stack, so a char in a plate mail would always have a better armor class than a char with the same dex in a leather armor (assuming both armors have the same enchantment). The only exception was, that some class kits did improve their armor class when they level up. ( I think monks, Kensai and swashbucklers ) In DnD 3.5 (NWN2) armor has a max dex bonus. This means a char in full plate can only get up to +1AC from dex while a char in a light leather armor can have a dex bonus up to +8. ( The numbers are just an example. ) A char with very high dex who also uses other methods to raise AC ( hallo Kaze No Kama ) can have a much higher AC than a char in the best heavy armor. None of these things affect the damage you take when you get hit.

Int does increase the number of ticks. There is one tick every 3 seconds plus a smaller tick at the end if the total duration cannot be divided by 3. If int increases the duration to a value above another multiple of 3 seconds, another tick will be added. The main problem is that we need to know the value of each tick, because DR is substracted from this value without a minimum damage.

I have an idea: - each point of dex above 10 gives a chance to evade a hit completely dependent on armor So per point of dex, you get 0% dodge in heavy armor, 1% dodge in medium armor, 2% dodge in light armor, 3% dodge in cloth and 4% dodge when naked. This is only for attacks that target deflection, it does not help agains attacks that target fort, ref, will - The bonus is lowered or lost when you suffer under effects that influence movement ( like only half the bonus when you are hobbled, no bonus when you are stunned) - There may be talents that influence this (modal talent "hyperactive": You can move very fast in combat, so your dodge chance is doubled. But sometimes your fast movement means that you jump into an enemies blade. So when you get hit by an attack that targets your defection, you suffer additional 25% bleeding damage fom the hit.) This is just an idea and I do not know if it is good or bad. The numbers mean nothing, I just used some numbers to present the general idea. At the moment, the advantage of armor is higher DR and their disadvantage is higher recovery time. If something like dodge was added, we need to change the whole balancing a lot.

According to the link from MaxQuest, int does increase the overall damage for some dots but not for all. This is mostly a problem for "dot lashes", that means things that cause x% damage over y seconds from the initial hit, such as wounding. In their case higher int reduces the damage per tick. "normal" dots are supposed to have about the same DPS with different int, but I have not tested it. MaxQuest, please help.

Sorry, but the system of tyranny is completely unbalanced. Please read this anylysis from MaxQuest ( I assume it is the same MaxQuest as in the obsidian forums): https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/feedback-on-game-mechanics.996876/ I have one more complain: - In tyranny physical defense ( dodge/parry) went up via training, up to a point that enemies could not hit you at all. Magical defense did not go up through use so they were very low and enemy attacks against them almost always succeeded. This means: - no talents where one defense replaces another (In tyranny everyone uses the talents where only one of dodge/parry is used for both - Keep the attributes fom PoE (in tyranny finesse is too powerful because it gives deflection and accurancy) - Talents or equipment that changes the hit type ( e.g. crit -> hit ) should be relatively rare. Otherwise you will never get crit while you crit all the time. And they should only affect one change ( like cit -> hit only). In tyranny deflection was way OP because it did all (crit -> hit, hit -> graze and graze -> miss). This is both for defensive and offensive talents. PoE has a good system with good balance. In tyranny the stat and combat system became much worse and balance went to hell. I liked playing tyranny and some things were better than PoE - The main story and the fact that you had several ways to go through the game. The pacing of the story was better. - I liked that there were more variation among weapons. Tyranny had e.g. different 2h weapons with different damage, speed and armor penetration. ( Although this was one of many reasons why the game was so unbalanced. ) summary: please keep the system from PoE for PoE2, with a few changes to make it more consistent and tranparent (see other thread)

I think we have reached a point where it would be nice to hear a comment from the devs who work on such things. Beyond the stuff I already said, I can only make guesses about the intended results of such mechanics.

The main problem with dots is, that higher int may cause lower damage because the damage done is distributed over more but smaller ticks. "noobs" may think that a dot with a long duration is better than the same dot with a short duration, but in fact they deal less damage because of DR. The text "ability a does b damage over c seconds" tells us the numbers without DR, it is not the actual damage done. The number in the combat log could still be wrong even if it would include DR (it does not), because DR can change during the duration of the dot and this message is only displayed when you apply the dot, not at every tick. suggestion: - normal lashes do x% damage of the initial hit and they are not influenced by any stat (stats only influence the initial hit of which the x% are calculated) - dot lashes (like wounding) do x% damage of the initial hit over 5 seconds and they are also not influenced by anything ( In that case normal lashes would always be better than dot lashes because of DR, but some weapon can have both) - For all other dots, might affects only the damage of each tick and int affects only the number of ticks. I think this may be the only way that higher int or mig lead always to higher damage. This may cause some work on the scaling of these stats so that high mig and int dotters are not OP.

Sorry, I am not a native english speaker. Is the term "tick" understandable? ( I do not mean the blood sucking animal.) When damage over time (dot) is applied, it is not applied continuously, but in intervalls. In PoE the default intervall is 3 seconds. So in the example (45 damage over 10.5 seconds), you do 10 damage when the ability hits ( at zero seconds), 10 damage after 3 seconds, 10 damage after 6 seconds, 10 damage after 9 seconds and 5 damage after 10.5 seconds (half the damage of the other times because half of the 3 seconds since the last damage has passed.) A "tick" means that a part of damage of the dot (damage over time) is applied. In this example we have 5 ticks: at 0 seconds, 3 seconds, 6 seconds, 9 seconds and 10.5 seconds. The first 4 ticks cause 10 damage each while the last tick causes 5 damage. This is important because the damage of each tick is reduced by 25% of DR without a minimum damage. example: You have a spell that causes 40 damage and the enemy has 20DR - If the damage is done over 3 seconds, you have 2 ticks of 15 damage = 30 damage total (enemy DR = 25% of 20 = 5, after 0 seconds you do (20 - 5) damage and after 3 seconds the same again - If the damage is applied over 21 seconds, you have 8 ticks every 3 seconds and no damage at all (40/8 = 5, so each tick would deal 5 damage, but this is prevented by the enemy DR. This is the reason why it is so importent to know the damage of each tick.

Regarding the dot lashes: Either the ability causes x% of the initial hit as dot, than it must not be affected by might or it is affected by might, than it does not cause x% of the initial hit unless might is 10. It is possible to create an ability that is influenced by the initial hit and might (we have it now), but it may be hard to explain this to most players. Until now I did not know that wounding is affected by might directly, because the description says 25% of base damage.

MaxQuest, one more thing to add to your list. Some spells profit from using a single weapon. When you have a weapon in one hand and nothing in the other hand you get +12 accurancy. Boeroer said that this bonus is applied to some spells, I remember talking about the dragon trashed chant. While I can understand when the shield penalty is applied (you are encumbered, you see your target less good when covering behind your shield, whatever) it makes no sense that weapon specific bonus is applied to anything else than weapon attacks. I talk about normal spells, not spell strike caused by a weapon effect. Could somebody test if this is working for all spells or just some of them? If I understand the trap link from Gromnir correctly, it might also be applied to traps. expected behaviour: Your equipped weapon should not affect spell accurancy unless the description says it does. By spell I mean every action that produces an attack roll and that canot be regarded as special attack with your weapon. Of course, special attacks with your weapon should use your weapon accurancy as base. suggestion: - every attack whose damage is influenced by your equipped weapon should use your weapon accurancy as base (flames of devotion, wounding shot, . . . ) - every attack whose damage is not influenced by your equipped weapon should use your spell accurancy as base and your equipped weapon should not affect such a spell in any case (most wizard, priest, druid, cypher spells, most chanter chants and invocations, traps, . . . I write most, because I do not know all spells and what they do.) - there are some cases where I am not sure if it is a spell or a special attack, e.g. knockdown

Thanks MaxQuest - You said: "Yeap, Tyranny did show you your recovery duration. It didn't show attack duration. But it was displaying weapon average damage, and it's current dps. In theory that should be enough to calculate attack duration... E.g: att_duration = avg_dmg / dps - recovery_duration But the data didn't compute: avg_dmg = 49.5 12 dps @ 3.2s recovery 32 dps @ 1.2s recovery 39 dps @ 1.0s recovery" It is nice that you can calculate attack duration, but if they show recovery duration it would be better if they show attack duration as well. I would like to know how long the attack with a huge axe is compared to the attack with a dagger. In PoE they solved this by having only the speed categories slow, medium, fast for melee weapons (which is wrong as one can se in your first post). I liked that the weapons of tyranny felt more unique (e.g. different 2h weapons have different speed and damage), but they should have communicated it better. - you also said: " - Elemental lashes benefit from might indirectly. Might increases the damageRoll of weapon attack. And lash uses 25% of that vs 25% of related elemental DR. - Raw lashes (i.e. wounding enchant-property) benefits from might both indirectly AND directly. The direct part is related to the fact that wounding is a damage over time effect and it's damage is increased by might. So for example you deal 60 damage to a zero-DR enemy. If you have 10 might, wounding would deal 15 damage. If you have 20 might, wounding would deal 19.5 damage. This post might be useful on how is lash damage calculated." The first point makes sense to me. I thought it is like this for all lashes. The second point is confusing. The tooltip says that wounding does 25% damage over 5 seconds. I wish they would change the effect in a way that the tooltip is correct, so the lash itself is not affected by might and the duration is fixed (to prevent DPD loss with higher int). - I have a more general question to everybody: Do you think it was a good idea to have all stats and talents are a modifier to base damage? This feels like it strongly favours weapons with a high base damage. Tyranny shows this in the most extreme way. so: + In PoE1, is dual wielding sabres always better than any other 1h or dual wielding option unless the other weapon has a special unique effect? + In PoE1, is a 2h weapon always the best choice when fighting an enemy with high DR? I do not think the basic damage formula will be changed, I just like to know what you think about it.

@gromnir: You are correct about several things - PoE2 will be more complex than PoE1 (multi classing and sub classes alone do this, plus tons of other things) - The PoE system is good. What we discuss here is solving some problems of a good system. We do not try to invent something completely new. - It should be more transparent what everything does. I have studied physics engineering. In engineering there is one rule: as simple as possible, as complex as necessary If you do it too simple it becomes primitive. Regarding CRPGs this means you are limited in your choice. This is bad. If you do it too complex it will become buggy as hell. Each thing you add can a) have a problem in itself and b) interact with all other things in ways that nobody would have guessed which can lead to really strange results. And if you find a bug in a complex system, it can be very hard to find the reason for this behaviour. I would call NWN2 an example for a game that was buggy because of too much complexity. some examples: - Under some conditions you could have more than 2 cleric domains - under some conditions some prestige classes allowed you to advance in arcane and divine casting at the same time - one level of one class allowed you to become invisible whenever you want - tons of other things When I started NWN2 I created a fighter/berserker with lots of strengh and a huge sword. I finished the game with him, but the result was underwhelming. Later I did some reading (The character creation guide is harder to understand than some PhD thesis.). I played the game again with this "fighter" http://nwn2db.com/build/?180624 This is not really optimized, but this "priest" is a much better "fighter". So clerics and bards can fight much better with a weapon than most fighter ever could.

Damage is calculated like this: damage done = ( base damage * ( 1+ modyfier1 + modyfier2 + . . . ) - target DR ) example: base damage = 10, you get +50% from crit, +50% from sneak attack, + 20% from might and the target has 5DR damage = ( 10 * ( 1 + 0,5 + 0,5 + 0,2 ) - 5 ) = ( 10 * 2,2 ) - 5 = 22 - 5 = 17 Edit: You will always do 20% min damage, which would be 3,4 in this case. So if the enemy has more than 14DR, you will always do 3 damage. Sorry, I do not know the answer to your second question.

I do not know much about how computers work and I have never played PnP RPG, but I think about how would it be if I have to sit at a table and roll some dice myself to get a result. I did a run in the park and did some thinking: - talents that give +20% fire damage give this bonus to all fire damage (same for all other elements) - add talents that gives +20% slash/crush/pierce damage (for balancing. If you say it would be OP because you attack more often with a weapon than with an element, just reduce this number to e.g. 10%) (EDIT: I did some thinking if this amkes sense and I came to the conclusion that it does not make more or less sense than having a talent for elemental damage) - If you make an attack that uses the best of 2 (or more) damage types: 1.) look at the target DR 1a) If the DR for both damage types is different, use the damage type with the lower DR 1b) If DR is the same, select randomly which damage type is used (to avoid a systematic bias towards one type, as we have it now with bittercut vs. durance staff) 2.) Calculate the damage with the selected damage type This rule would be easy to understand. Under some conditions it might be possible that the other damage type would have caused a bit more damage. But if we have a system that checks tons of conditions in order to select something, most players will not understand it at all.

This would be very easy to solve though: when you attack with a dual damage weapon the game should make its roll, then check how much damage this would result in for both damage types (factoring in all modifiers and the enemy's DR), then resolve at whichever came out higher. In this case the game has to calculate the damage for both types, compare them and use the bigger one. I assume ( I do not know ) that the game selects first what damage is used and then it calculates the damage. I assume the game wants to calculate as little as possible in order to save computer resources.

We are captured by a warlord. He imprisons us and sentences us to death. The main char must fight some animals in the arena alone and naked. After the victory I have to fight some guards. Then I fight or sneak my way through the inside of the arena, get my things back, free my companions and finally we attack the bad guy. This can be avoided when you meet them the first time. You could fight his army right away or you help them and sell them slaves for the arena.

Regarding the problem that all missle weapons cause piercing damage: add slings

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3807509&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=149#post469964944 One solution would be, that the damage+ talent (like scion of flames) is always applied when the elemental damage is used (including dots). But in this case it would lead to a different problem. Lets assume an enemy has 10 crush DR and 11 fire DR and you attack with durance staff (when scion of flames works). The game would use crush damage because of the lower DR, but fire damage would be higher if the +20% produces more than 1 point of damage. So at the moment I do not see a system that will produce consistent results every time. Anyway, I think it is bad that the effect depends on the order in which the 2 damage types are listened. I also like this topic to be pinned.

- about attack speed: I think tyranny showed the total recovery time for your current equipment (base+weapon+armor). Unfortuanatly it did not tell you how long the attack animation is. So you still do not know the time for a full attack cycle (attack+recovery) - I think dots are not so bad the way they are now. Int adds more ticks and both mig and int increase the total number. The problem is to communicate it better.

Thanks a lot: - about modals: Yes, that was very confusing. In the beginning I thought I could have only 1 modal at a time. So I asked in the forum if my char should take savage attack or vulnerable attack because both were offensive modals. The answer was: Take both. - about attack speed: What does "Attack Variation" mean in the table? - about dots: As written in the other thread, it should be describes as "Dot of Doom causes 10 points of fire damage every 3 seconds over 10.5 seconds (=45 damage total)" instead of "Dot of Doom causes 45 fire damage over 10.5 seconds." Since each tick is reduced by 25% of the DR, it would be nice to know how big each tick is and when they are applied. ( All ticks are applied at 0sec, then every 3 seconds and if the duration cannot be divided by 3 there is a smaller tick at the end. But I know this only because of MaxQuest, not because of any information in the game.) The problem with stacking comes on top of that. - about immuneties: What do you mean with the last sentence? "- (Optional) If the target is immune anyway, maybe it would make sense to make it impossible to try to apply related effect, which results in a waste of charge/spellusage/casttime." When it is immun, the effect is not applied and it cannot be applied, because this is the definition of immunity. Maybe you mean that no roll is made in that case, it just shows that the target is immun. examples (I do not know an example in PoE, so I create my own): 1.) There is a weapon that causes poison on hit and you attack a target that is immun to poison. The combat log says: You caused 10 pierce damage, poison failed (target immun) 2.)There is an earthquake spell that causes crush damage and can knockdown the target. You cast this spell on a bird. (Birds fly so they are not hit by the earthquake) I have no Idea how to say this in the combat log. I had such a situation in some Final Fantasy games, but there is no combat log. There was only the word "missed" visible at the enemy instead of a damage number.

I must say that I also liked Drakensang. For those who did not play it: When you got hit and you took more damage than your constitution value, you must make a saving throw with your self control value (not sure about the english name, I played in german) and if it failed you got a wound which lowered all your stats. Sounds like spiral of death. It is. That means if you get a wound you should heal it ASAP or soon you will have more wounds. It means you should always have a healing spell and some herbs ready when you go to combat. Makes sense to me. This is a good way to kill ogres or other enemies with lots of HP but little defense. And just in case: No, I do not suggest adding this system to PoE2.

I must say that I also liked Drakensang. For those who did not play it: When you got hit and you took more damage than your constitution value, you must make a saving throw with your self control value (not sure about the english name, I played in german) and if it failed you got a wound which lowered all your stats. Getting more than 4 wounds killed you in any case. So if I liked this, why am I against the changes in PoE2. Well, it is not the case that I hate injuries in principle. Its just that I like health/endurance system from PoE1 and I see no reason to remove it. So lets make a compromise: We take the health/endurance system and also have injuries (Which is actually the system of PoE1)

- I liked the health/endurance system of PoE and I see no reason to change it. - I disliked the injury system in Tyranny. I made a suggestion in the tyranny forum to make it better. At least you should see at which point will you get an injury. - I agree with the OP. DA:O had an injury system and I always reloaded when a char got K.O. unless it was in a long boss battle and I was about to win (Don´t want to have the whole cut szene and the long battle again.) - The health/endurance system forced you to think more about stategy. You could not put one tank in front of the dragon and let him drink 100 large potions in a row. He would run out of health at some point. I think this is good.

OK, looks like different people like different things (Amazing, who would have thought that.) So once again, for me the game became much more boring once I hit max level because I lost a reward I got used to get. I was surprized that somebody managed to finish the game at lv8 (I read this in one thread somewhere). I was not surprized because the battle is so difficult, but because he managed not to hit max level before the game ended. I played WoW for some time. I enjoyed making quests and leveling up my char. Once I hit max level, the game changed from fun to work. Make the same dungoens and quests again every day so you get equipment for the raid. Then do the same raid again every week so you are able to do the same thing on a higher difficulty. It became so boring that I quit playing. I do not understand why people rush to max level and then do the same stuff again and again every week. I have played a lot JRPG. In many of those game you finish the game at lv50 when you follow the main story but max level is 99 and there are some optional bosses ( omega weapon ) where you need a really high level to unlock and finally defeat them. This is what I think of when I think about max level content. PoE had such optional hard fights (bounties, dragons) and they were great. So my problem is not that you can hit max level, my problem is that you will hit max level anyway long before the game is over unless you actively avoid making quests or fighting enemies. I dislike grinding (which is often present in JRPG) and I have voted to have a bit less trash mobs in PoE2, but I think a player who did all side quests should feel stronger than a player who did only the main quests. If you have max level and equipment from the expansions, what reason do you have to do sidequests in twin elms?

And it shouldn't. Scaling XP may sound good on paper but there's only one advantage to it and even that one advantage is questionable. What i'm talking about is ability to quickly lvl up low level party members. Why is it questionable? Because it's a good candidate for money sink. You pay gold and get XP for your companions. It should be obvious that you can't buy more XP than your PC has but i'll say this just in case. It's bad because smaller parties do not have lvl advantage over larger ones they should have. I made 4 man (woman, actually) party in IWD2 and their lvl was, like, 1 higher than lvls of full 6 person party. Not what i expected. Another problem is that is controls your level way too much. From what i gathered players were finishing Divinity 2 at average level of 35. I've done all possible content, skipped fortifications (XP from them do not scale) until all enemies were dead and my level at the end of the game was 36. Sure, designers love such feature because it allows them extreme control over player but games are for players, first and foremost. I'm not saying control over player level is a complete evil, some of it is fine but it can be achieved with just XP curve. - I do understand that many people do not like exp scaling. Looks like I like it a bit more than others. I play Divinity2 at the moment. - I think that NWN2 did it just right. You reached max level near the end of the game. - Why do you think that smaller parties should have a much higher level? I have not played IWD2. In most IE games, the exp were divided between all chars, but there is no law that says every game must do this. In PoE a full party could reach max level long before the end of the game and solo players reached max level earlier.