rjshae

"Are we there yet?" No. "Are we there yet?" No. "What about now?" ... Noober, the sword of heya.

Yeah, the SoZ system was decent. But remember it did run on a 3D landscape; I'm not sure how plausible implementing that would be for PE. Besides, the Day/Night system on the overland map was completely wonky.

I'm all for adding in terrain effects on movement and concealment. Flooded areas are nice for a little paranoia effect; you never quite know what's going to leap up and bite you.

Another really nice option is an overland map that is sub-divided into regions. Kind of like this screen shot from Eador: Each region would have it's own environmental conditions, movement costs, hazards, and so forth. Within some of these regions are clickable destinations, or maybe just abstracted sites such as inns or villages.

I'd hope that these will almost never happen to a competent warrior. Having a critical miss on one in twenty swings just seems way too high: the fighter's skill should play a big part in the outcome.

Sigh, I hate to do this, but.... It's rogues, not rouges. Rogues are devious people; rouges are powders that eighteenth century french prostitutes used to put on their cheeks. Fighters wear full-plate; they know where to shove the pointy thing. Also, can I suggest using a recent version of Firefox so you've at least got a spell checker available? I get the feeling he's not a natural English speaker. Not too huge an issue so long as he's trying and you can more-or-less work it out. A spell checker won't help with things like "rouge" and "where" and the Firefox spell checker says that "mages" isn't a word, anyway. Well, my apologies then, but the use of "rouges" just keeps recurring up so I wanted to make a small point of it.

Sigh, I hate to do this, but.... It's rogues, not rouges. Rogues are devious people; rouges are powders that eighteenth century french prostitutes used to put on their cheeks. Fighters wear full-plate; they know where to shove the pointy thing. Also, can I suggest using a recent version of Firefox so you've at least got a spell checker available?

By itself, a "critical miss" always seemed like a silly thing; intended more for the gamer's amusement than for anything constructive. What I wouldn't mind seeing is a "critical miss" that allows the opponent a favorable opening. If an enemy attacks me and flounders badly from my crafty block, then that should leave me a brief, favorable opening. Perhaps even give me an opportunity attack (or opportunity counter-attack, as it were). Otherwise... shrug. I can live without a "critical miss".

As the player you're essentially doing the thinking for six different characters. The only way to realistically play it as a "twitch" game would be to slow the action down to one-sixth normal, which wouldn't be fun at all. So no, even on hardcore mode, I still want my pause button. If you want to play hardcore mode without a pause, then do so... and good luck to you.

Ranged defense could be treated as a "Concealment" effect (with suitable adjustments for player skill). That would provide a "hit or miss" binary. Once you score a success, you can then check the result against the Concealment success range to see what type of hit you got.

It sounds like a type of mini-game. Not really high on my list of gaming interests.

I'm thinking the benefit is primarily for attackers with low odds to hit. Take, say, 1d6+1 non-absorbed damage (for average 4.5 or 1 point half-minimum) and a 10% chance to hit: With min dmg of 1: .9*1 + .1*4.5 = 1.35 average With no miss dmg: .9*0 + .1*4.5 = 0.45 average That's a 1.35/0.45 = 300% damage improvement rate. Now take the same damage and a 50% chance to hit: With min dmg: .5*1 + .5*4.5 = 2.75 average With no min dmg: .5*0 + .5*4.5 = 2.25 average. That's a 2.75/2.25 = 22% damage improvement rate.

The degenerate case where the "always hit" mechanic makes less and less sense is when the defender becomes exceedingly small. If you're fighting, say, a tiny but powerful sprite that is moving around rapidly, then logically you'd have a decent chance of a clean miss. Said tiny sprite may only have a single health point, meaning a single swat could take it down. If you're wielding a powerful weapon with a decent magical modifier, then the sprite goes down pretty quickly even if you keep missing.

An 80% chance to hit is a 20% chance to miss; IIRC, three consecutive misses is (.2)^3 = 0.008, or 0.8%.

Few must be new to this forum...

Hopefully the game will allow a Concealment-type effect to cause a complete miss during melee. I.e. such as when the defender is invisible, the attacker is blinded, either is fighting in pitch darkness, or there is a magical blur/displacement effect.

A "miss" against any defense translates to half minimum damage inflicted or half minimum duration on any sort of status effect. I.e. there aren't "full" misses, but mitigated effects. A hit is the standard damage/duration. A hit that is within the critical hit range does 150% max damage or duration. There's something I'm unclear about here. Is he saying that if the opponent would have scored a hit against you if you were not employing any defenses, then you will always receive some minimal amount of damage? Or is he saying that just waving a sword in your general direction will always cause some damage? If it is the former then that would make at least some sort of sense. However, then latter seems completely illogical; it's just too much of an abstraction for me to be happy about.

Well-disciplined opponents can also perform a fighting withdrawal; performing a coordinated retreat to a defensible position, for example. But that would require excellent AI.

Oh sure, stick one hand in boiling water and the other hand in ice water, then on average you're comfortable... But then I suppose the "hit point total" as such is kind of a fake damage counter anyway.

I can live without 'em. The few I've seen have all been made borderline psychotic; presumably because that's the only way the developers could give an otherwise inert object a persona. Besides, there will already be enough interactions with the other party members. If they must put an intelligent weapon in the game, then I hope they make it a likeable persona without a radical agenda.

In many ways, shaman and druids are not dissimilar. I suppose one might think of druids as cultural descendants of shaman.

The one comment I have is that I wish in-game reputation would act more like a spreading meme than a world-wide news flash. That would allow my party to exploit the element of surprise, at least for a little while. But I suppose the meme approach would be much more difficult to code.

I'm hoping not to hear too much about the plot's particulars while the game is in beta, so a private forum at that point would be much preferred from my little knot-hole perspective.

I guess you meant "react to".

^^^ I like your point, but from another sense it seems like a cheap way to game the system: at first level just put a single point in each of the class skills you want to advance. Would it be better to use a point-matching scheme for the first three points you assign to a class skill (at any level)?