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general_azure

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Everything posted by general_azure

  1. general_azure
    True, concentrating the weight of your weapon at the tip makes them rather unbalanced. Such specialized equipment gotta have drawbacks after all. And I really think this labeling into slash/pierce/blunt is rather misleading outside of highly abstracted gameplay mechanics.... you can pierce both with a stabbing weapon like a dagger or the pointy spike on your polearm, yet it's a totally different kind of attack. And when exactly would slash (cutting would be a better name imho) and pierce turn into blunt? When the target's armor does not rupture? The distinction is rather fluid, I guess.
  2. general_azure
    Well, since the skill to open locked stuff seems to be available to all classes anyways (with a bonus to rogues).... just go ahead and call it "break lock" instead of "pick lock", and make it use whatever is higher between your str and dex values. Now all you berserker types can imagine you smashed that thing to pieces, while it's still business as usual for rogues.
  3. general_azure
    That larger weapon surface area is actually decreasing performance, put a good pointy spike on that hammer and you'd get a real armor killer. Same total energy/momentum transfer with the added chance of penetrating plate due to increased shear stress. Though this might have trouble with getting stuck in the armor or the spike breaking off if it's too thin/sharp , so not sure how viable that would be. Don't try on your friend, in any case.
  4. general_azure
    Someone called for a physicist? =P Basic mechanics say the two straightforward ways to protect against pretty much any impact are large stiff plates (to increase the area pushed against your chest, decreasing pressure) and padding (to stretch the timeframe in which momentum is transfered to your squishy parts, which is equivalent to reducing force). The former should make a larger difference due to quadratic scaling, but that doesn't mean padding can be ignored. Note that total energy and momentum transfer doesn't care about either one, it just increases the space/time in which that transfer has to take place. Kevlar without ceramic or metal plate inlays is usually a bad idea, the kevlar mesh will keep the weapon from entering your body, but it will barely absorb or distribute the impact. Meaning your chest will have to do that instead. Should work well against cutting though.
  5. general_azure
    Is this about the unlock spell for casters or the ability to actually, physically knock on doors instead of having to break and enter when you want to talk to someone inside? o.0
  6. general_azure
    Every time I see a thread worth commenting on, it has already degraded into a string of way too long posts raging about something with barely any connection to the original topic Since this is somehow about LOTR power levels now: AFAIK Aragorn is about 80 years old at that time, with at least 60 years combat experience, while Gandalf is some sort of minor godling. Neither one is in any way a normal human being. Boromir, being actually human, drops to his knees with every arrow he gets and stops fighting at all on the third (at least in the movie version, too lazy to get up for the book). Now I think what our paladin here wants is something like the DSA p&p system (known as realms or arkania or something like that in the rest of the world, used in drakensang among other things)... the power curve there is usually rather shallow, especially concerning hitpoints and armor. A critical attack from the ominous lvl 1 brigand can instantly bring down your lvl 10 fighter if you screw up your parry roll (or let yourself get surrounded, as your number of parries per round is limited). Works well in actual p&p imho, but I don't think we'll see anything like that in PE.
  7. general_azure
    To answer the original question: As long as it's bound to stat requirements (dex for pretty much everything, str for heavy stuff) and comes with some penalties due to the coordination required, you can dual wield even scythes for all I care. It just shouldn't be the style to end all styles. Now to read those other 6 pages...
  8. general_azure
    I usually bring a thief along just for that very purpose ^^ But yeah, knocking is probably the more "lawful" solution, if you just need to talk to the owner. And gives an indication whether the building is occupied if you plan to break and enter. Looks like everyone profits...
  9. general_azure
    Judging from your use of ignorant jurors, I'll assume you're refering to US law. Over here (Germany), you don't have to prove any of those though.. the "owner" of the internet access is legally responsible for anything done via his connection. WiFi with anything less than WPA2 encryption is legal suicide. And already owning the product does not help at all, since the illegal part is the distribution of the material (your upload). Usually this stuff doesn't even get to court, people just get some blatantly overpriced payment order to cover the "cost" of the legal firm sending them said payment order. Of course you won't make any money that way (that law is made specifically by lawyers for lawyers imho), just pointing out the options. Also, piratebay is offering free VPN by now. No idea how they finance that stuff.
  10. general_azure
    I've never seen any game that could not be cracked or at least tricked into accepting a digital disc image... though it might take some time with less popular titles. Imho DRM so far has only succeeded in annoying people who have to deal with it (thats paying customers, not pirates btw). Hell, I've even cracked games I bought just to get rid of the stuff. IP fishing at popular torrents might still have some success though, a lot of pirates are kids I think and don't really bother with stealth. At least until all those filehosting sites that went down with megaupload are back...
  11. general_azure
    Ah, another paladin topic. I'll try and make my stay short this time. Yes, I do like the current concept of paladins in this game. As a non-paladin (formerly rather "chaotic") type, having them described as "armed and dangerous fanatics" fits my view quite nicely. =P
  12. general_azure
    Gotta agree with the other guys in here, this post needs links to the actual polls as well as the results. There's stuff on that list I can't remember ever voting on and some where I'm rather suprised how the consensus supposedly turned out.
  13. general_azure
    Looks like I'm somewhat late to this particular party, but here goes anyway =P Mathematically, the amount of armors that are viable in a given system is limited by the amount of (relevant) parameters each armor has. As you noticed in the example, the jump from one to two stats (AC to AC and dex modifier) made a previously scrappy type of armors suddenly useful. With even more parameters (stuff like DR, DT, stamina usage, penalties to block/parry and/or attack are examples that come to mind), it becomes quite hard to say that some specific armor is simply better than the rest.
  14. general_azure
    That split second might be all the difference between parrying with your blade or parrying with your face. The weight does not have to turn you completely sluggish to decrease your performance in close combat.
  15. general_azure
    Just to get this DT/DR definition right, actual damage taken would be something like (weapondamage-DT)*(1-DR) ? I agree that balancing is slightly more complicated with DT in the system, as you risk making armor either useless or utterly impenetrable/overpowered. There is some good middle ground though, otherwise there wouldn't be PnP systems successfully using it. And there's certainly no way to make it work well with "large number systems" where your damage scales from 10 to 999 during the game or "tiered equipment", but I don't think we'll have to bother with those anyways. The main reason I'm against pure DR is that it makes all weapons pretty much equal. If someone slaps on pure 50% DR it does not matter at all whether you use a warhammer or a teaspoon to attack him, it takes twice as long as before either way. If you look at your example from a slightly different angle, this is why I'd like most of the protection to come from DT, with just some slight DR as added padding: With your numbers (like full plate DT at 8 maing you pretty much immune to long swords), 34 points of damage from a non-crit is probably something like a ballista bolt to the face or a dragon stepping on you. This is not something you should expect to just shrug off, even when wearing plate. In this case, being the agile fighter and trying not to get hit at all might be a better idea.
  16. general_azure
    Excellent... he may proceed
  17. general_azure
    I'd prefer parrying/blocking/dodging (as trainable skills) to avoid being hit, while armor absorbs damage if you fail with those. Flat out absorption that is, no % reduction. No special treatment needed for crits, with their increased damage the flat reduction from armor becomes less effective anyways. If you've come into contact with the DSA ruleset, this probably sounds familiar =P
  18. general_azure
    I'd love to see shields using seperate mechanics instead of just adding to armor, maybe something like "can block up to x attacks coming from a cone of y° in front of you, at a chance of z%". Always felt it was weird treating shields as just another layer of plate, as if the damn thing was bolted to my back.
  19. general_azure
    You might consider this a "new thread +"
  20. general_azure
    You obviously forgot about those dialogues in Torment that could trigger some old memories for massive xp.
  21. general_azure
    If you can do the exact same thing over and over again, then this either means the quest had no effect on the gameworld and was utterly pointless, or it's some "go forth and gather berries for todays pie, oh mighty warrior" stuff. Either way, those quests just suck as far as I'm concerned. Skyrim tried to randomize some aspects of those quests, but I wasn't really impressed by that either. And why am I allowed to vote both yes and no ? =P
  22. general_azure
    Doh, everyone knows you have only one finger per hand that can support magic rings. It's even named accordingly =P
  23. general_azure
    What Fade said, sometimes it's just necessary to simply whack someone who may or may not deserve said whacking. Still amazed they even let me cut Vivec to pieces back then. Need to make sure important NPCs are not killed by random monsters this time though, damn cliff racers broke more than one quest for me in Morrowind. And I prefer getting a warning when someone really important dies, hidden game overs where you search half the world for some guy who is no longer there are just mean imho.
  24. general_azure
    The only problem I had with potions in IE were when they ended up debuffing you, setting AC to 0 becomes pointless rather fast. Not very hard to avoid this particular issue though. And the potion of cure disease is one of the most essential items in all of morrowind as far as I'm concerned. Levitation, water walking/breathing, infravision or healing attributes ain't bad either. Being able to craft potions with any magical effect at any strength doesn't mean they should all be awesome.
  25. general_azure
    Can't decide here... character backgrounds were neat, but so were the various ways dialogue adapted to your character. Also, bonus points for actually being able to slap a manservant outfit on the guy hauling my stuff.
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