Hormalakh

It's actually only one single calculation. The actual equation doesn't really matter as long as the concept is understood and can be applied. But yeah, if all else is equal (which it wouldn't be) it comes down to what you said about "sword < dagger < mace" when considering DT. That was the point though, from the beginning. What mechanics equation do you propose? Val's?

Crushing doesn't negate armor. Only piercing does.

It's not a 0/1 binary for the slashing weapons. Even slashing weapons have a minimum threshold (10%). The crushing weapons just have a higher minimum threshold. So your slashing sword never does 0 damage. It does 15*10%=1.5. A mace (single-wield) would do at least 15*20%=3. Now if you mace or your sword have some "by-pass" power, this would help you tell which would be more effective. If you have a mace that has a by-pass power of 2, then you get 15-15+2=2. Since 3>2, since your mace cannot by-pass the armor, it does 3. Now let's say your sword has a by-pass power of 5. 15-15+5=5, Since 5>1.5, your sword with a by-pass will do 5 damage instead of 1.5. So it would seem that by-pass power (piercing) is the best right? Well, if mainly piercing weapons have the lowest damage output, there will be situations where you will want a slicier blade. It's never a simple 0/1 binary. The reason for this is that you never have a 0 minimum threshold. Also, your piercers never do the most damage. I don't know how to explain the magic stuff, because I don't know what their mechanics are. I think I explained your concern though. Let me know if it isn't clear.

I don't know to what exactly you are referring here. If you add what to DT? All I'm referring to is 2 factors: Damage and DT (basically negative damage). Negative damage and damage are always going to cancel out, lowering the final damage amount. So, changing the relationship between damage and DT seems overly complicated (Piercing essentially lessening the effects of DT, and crushing basically lowering it even further). I think maybe that's why the original system is unintuitive. You don't really have a side-by-side comparison of the damage types because the effectiveness works differently for each type. For example, the only bonus slashing gets is basically a higher base damage (because piercing and crushing weapons of comparable quality/level will always have lower base damage.) But you can't really see that in a side-by-side comparison. It's like saying "This sword does 10 damage, +7 damage. This dagger does 10 damage, plus 1 damage for every point of DT present, up to a maximum of 7. This mace does 10 damage, but can never do less than 5 damage." There is no single factor augmentation value that can be compared. In other words, it's not readily apparent, in looking at weapon stats, exactly WHAT the damage bonus is for a slashing weapon as compared to the damage bonus of a piercing weapon, because a piercing weapon has no damage bonus. It has a damage negation negation bonus, or a damage retention bonus. "Light, Medium, and Heavy" armors, and "Slashing, piercing, and crushing" weapons are really only tiers of potential damage values. If you add armor bonuses (like if a mail+1 adds 5 to DT) it doesn't work the same way across the board. The equation for damage is much more complicated than a simple subtraction. There are max() functions, some multiplications, and some subtractions. Piercing and crushing do not affect DT the same way. One by-passes it completely UP TO A POINT. This would be your piercer. Crushing weapon attacks but "may" by-pass armor. If you can hit harder by by-passing the DT, then you do. If you can't by-pass the armor with a crushing blow, then you can hit the minimum threshold amount. This is a MAX() function. Once again, they crushing and piercing do not work the same. Very very different. Also notice that crushing weapons always do more base damage than piercing weapons. Piercing weapons (like a knife) would always do less damage than one you can bash someone over the head with (a maul). You can't really compare them like you are. You have to look at the weapons in a different way. We are so used to looking at damage from a addition/subtraction view from PnP that it's sort of a little difficult to see it this way. ---- I'll try explaining again. You have to firstly move out of the DnD mindset for a second. "Young padawan, think outside the box." Weapons do not act in tiers. A hammer is not a screwdriver. Each weapon type has a certain area in which it's effective. Imagine that there are three qualities you can find in any weapon. How well it can pierce through a material, how well it can damage a person (with no armor), and if all else fails with bypassing an armor, it causes damage by knocking you around. These three qualities are piercing, slashing, and crushing respectively. Now depending on a variety of factors like the weapons that you have, the enemy you are facing, their armor, etc you will want to use different weapons in different situations. A crushing weapon works best against armors you can't by-pass. Piercing weapons work best if you can by-pass that material completely, and slashing weapons disembowel your opponents (they do the most damage outright). Using this idea, you pick your weapon that fits what you need done best. Now whether you have figured out the best "damage-output" depends on the factors mentioned above. It's quite complex, yes, but there are general rules that any padawan can follow to get a good idea. Only the best will master the secrets (i.e. you have a spreadsheet). But the tactical dabbler knows where to start and can be effective against his/her enemies.

Big brutes would have heavy armor. So what quality would you be looking for most in your weapon? (Crushing) Archers with low armor need to be cut down quickly. So what quality will you be looking for in your weapon? (Slashing) But you got archers with mail armor. Your sword does 10-15 damage, it has no armor piercing. Your mail-piercing dagger has 6-8 damage. Which one would you pick? (The mail-piercer).

If you add it to DT, it isn't an armor bonus across the board: it affects piercing weapons more than any other weapon type the equation works that way. Adding armor bonus as a DT removes armor bonus's distributive property. The older mechanic gives each weapon sort of like a "character" with its own stats. Look at SunBroSolaire's description. If you are fighting a heavy armored person, you want the most "crushing" character that you can get. Mid armor, get the most piercing you can get. Low armor, get the most slashing you can get. This general rule holds true. When several attributes start changing, for a new weapon, you can start asking yourself, do I want a weapon that's more slashy, crushy, or pointy? Each one plays well with certain armors, but obviously has drawbacks. No weapon is considered as a specific type. Like real-life every weapon has qualities that distinguish them and make them suitable for certain problems. You are told these qualities as a function of how "slashy/crushy/pointy" they are. The players should learn: slashing damage characteristics do the most damage. Piercing damage characteristics bypass up to a certain armor (weapons are slated as to up to what materials they can pierce (as I described a DT bypass of 25 wouldn't be called "piercing: 25" it'd be called "mail piercing." So the player knows that it can pierce up to mail armor)). Crushing damage increases your minimum value regardless of armor.

The way I explain Bonuses on armor is this: A better chain mail is a better chain mail regardless of what weapon attacks it. wrt scaling, he's talking about outrageous numbers that just become whacky when you start changing the numbers too much. This is true. If you go outside your range, the numbers become "OP." The game shouldn't very suddenly become easier/harder because you went out of the DT armor range.

Bingo! It's actually a very beautiful mechanic and I've never really played a game like this before. It would be amazing, it just has to be presented to the players well enough (which I'm sure GAME DESIGNERS know how to do ). Please Josh, don't drop this mechanic. It's really good.

Hi! It's a little difficult to explain, but ultimately SunBroSolaire did a good job explaining it. Basically think of a piercing weapon as something like a knife, a crushing weapon as something like a club, and a slashing weapon something like a scythe. If you get hit with a scythe, that thing has disembowel you so it it stands that it could do a lot of damage. A knife however is really more of a "stabbing" weapon. It's great for bypassing medium sized armors and low armors. Think about how you'd use a knife. You can stab through something like scale or leather, but at some point, you just can't stab through a material like steel or iron. The numbers just work out that way and intuitively that's how you think of a knife. A club however, doesn't disembowel you or stab you. It basically knocks you around. The damage done really doesn't care much about what armor you're wearing. If the armor is heavier, you still get knocked around. So MDTDT acts as a "floor" for damage. This is your crushing weapon. It doesn't matter what armor you're wearing, it'll always knock you around and yu'll have a minimum "threshold" for damage. DMG acts as your scythe. If you aren't wearing armor, you get disemboweled. If you wear a little armor, you get less disemboweled. If you wear plate, you don't get disemboweled at all. Finally DT- acts as your "stabby protection." If you wear a paper thin armor, you can stab through that with a knife. A scale armor is harder, and a piece of metal is practically impossible. I don't think the problem is too many variables. It's the the variables are being adjusted improperly when describing weapons. When you have a better knife, you can cut through thicker materials. A samurai blade (thin blade) compared to a scythe might increase its DMG slightly, but it increases "stabby potential" more significantly (i.e. you increase the DT-). Thus your samurai blade goes through heavier armors, but it wouldn't disembowel anyone but the unarmed. But it might not go through plate mail. So TL;DR: weapon characters must fit their variables. You don't have too many variables. You have just the right amount. You just have to be careful to change the right variable when you're trying to "improve" a weapons particular characteristic.

Hi Josh, So I've looked at the weapons/mechanics and I think that you don't need to change a thing. You just have to present it to your players differently, and you have to set some ground rules for your weapon designs. As a general rule, it seems that better slashing weapons should increase DMG*, better piercing weapons should increase DT-, and better crushing weapons should increase MDTDT. Individual weapons can have slight alterations in any of the other variables that you want, but the majority of the changes should be made in their respective "character," i.e. a "better" piercing weapon can have a 1-5% increase in damage output, but it's main improvements should be in DT-. Similarly with the other weapons. Then when you want to show this information to your players, make your weapons have "characters." Slashing character, crushing character, piercing character. If players want to have a weapon that fights better against mid-level armors, they'll want something with more "piercing character." Heavy armor? Add to the "crushing character." etc etc. The other suggestion that I have is to change the way you "add" to your armors. Don't add straight to the DT if you have a +1 mail or something like that. Make any efficiencies in your armors be straight across the board. A better chain mail is a better chain mail regardless of what weapon strikes it. So instead of doing a (dmg subtracted from ((DT+armor bonus) subtracted from DT-). Make the armor bonus a percentage across the board. armorbonus*(dmg - (dt - DT-)). A +1 would give something like a minimal amount up to whatever maximum you want (+5?). For example, a +1 through a +5 would give 5%, 9%, 13%, 16%, 20% damage reduction across the board, respectively.. Edit: Other ideas: When you describe weapons, specifically piercing weapons, instead of stating what DT- the piercing weapon has, make it an "attribute." For example, a "leather-piercing" dagger starts with a DT- of 20 (or whatever it is for leather armor). A mail piercer starts at the DT- of 30 (35? I can't remember.) Finally, if you want a player to make a "real" decision between a mail+1 and a regular mail, what you can do is get your mail+1 to have that 5% reduction but then drop the DT down a few points. It's still in the same range, so a scale armor would be +25 DT, but a scale+1 would be 5% armorbonus, +21-24 DT. Hope these ideas are things you haven't tried yet and I hope that these help the situation be a little more intuitive for your players. I'll keep playing with these numbers Good luck Everyone else, let me know what you think about this idea: do you like it, hate it, not understand it?

Wow! Thanks A. Backer. Congrats Obsidian! That's awesome! *crack* Now back to work!

Oh wow.. I completely missed the DT- column! Back to the drawing board.. eDIT: Ok got it working... Now let's see what we have here.

Along with color, use a different "shape" or pattern. Unlikely as it may be, players who are completely color-blind can still be albe to tell.

I sort of agree. It's not that there are too many inputs, it's that the inputs are unintuitive in how they change the system. I quickly knew what to do to get the right equation for your slashing and crushing weapons. But when it came to piercing, I got stuck. It wasn't intuitive.

I thought Piercing weapons were supposed to have the capability to ignore some DT. And crushing ignores more of that DT: hence why MDTDT is higher for crushing than for piercing. I could be seeing this whole thing wrong though...

So Josh, i've been playing with your excel sheet. Which of these are dependent and independent variables? Which one of these deals directly with the general type (piercing/slashing/crushing) of weapon you choose and which of these deals with the specific weapon you use? I realize min-max will be different for specific weapons (independent variable). Everything else is a dependent variable, right? -(Rate is dependent on whether it's Fast, one-handed, two-handed ONLY) -MDTDT is dependent on whether it's F/1H/2H AND whether crushing/non-crushing -DWF is dependent of whether it's 1H/2H. The reason I ask this, is will this change significantly between weapons of the same type/handling? Will there be Fast Slashing weapons with rates that aren't 0.9, DWF that isn't 1/2, and MDTDT that isn't 0.1? Are you changing weapons only based on DMG*? One issue I recognize immediately, is that the equations you're using for your crushing/slashing vs. piercing is different. I would try to find something that has the same equation all around, but where the dependent variables give you the nice gradients you're looking for. The first that came to my minds was Michaelis-Menton equations for me (but that's because I work with these everyday) Finally, it's really non-intuitive how your piercing weapons do the least damage and yet you have some sort of middle armor tier that it works out for. It would make more sense to have your crushing weapons do the least damage, with the highest MDTDT (it's weird that it goes all the way up to 0.6 - I tried 0.45-0.5 and it worked better. Sorry if I'm overstepping here All the best.

Most of them are highly experienced and have worked on previous games. These guys are professionals. I wouldn't worry about the art. Iit's also why I looked into it: I wanted to know that the art staff was awesome. I was not disappointed. Rooting for you guys.

They've already answered this a while back. Actually I think that information is in this very update. Actually I haven't read all through this, but I believe he only called out specific folks. I can't imagine there only being like 3-5 artists. Even the tiny mobile game studio I started marketing on had 2 artists, and quickly grew to like 4-5. I've done the calculations, but I can't find them right now.... It's something like 8-12 artists. Rob mentioned most of the people in this update, except 1 or 2 that will be coming on later. They weren't set in stone, but one is Brian Menze. Anyway, most of teh artists and their respective departments were mentioned. edit: found it Kien Tran Dimitri Berman Polina Hristova Rob Nesler Hector Espinoza James Chea Sean Dunny Mark Bremerkemp Antonio Govela

Thanks all for the thoughts. It's clear that this isn't favored by most people. Undoubtedly there will be a mod (as there was in BG2) that will work this in for those interested.

Ohhhh. this would be good. The sword never gets killed. You have to strike the cipher to make him break concentration so that the spell is broken. It would be a great way to have them in the background concentrating, while you've got him surrounded with your party members and not lettign anyone through. It's like football. You got your linemen and the cipher is the quarterback. American football that is. Not futbol/football/soccer.

They've already answered this a while back. Actually I think that information is in this very update.

I'd rather see them all at the same time: right now! But I'll make do with whatever you got.

Hi Rob, Any word on when we'll next see the Orlan/Aumaua concept sketches?

I really like these two. I like that the Cipher can have non-combat abilities like The Shadow Knows. It might be a nice way to get information from enemies about patrols in the whereabouts and maybe some information about enemies in the area. The second one is like a "hold on until the paladin gets here! Kind of thing. Very cool idea.

I think the balancing issues will work out during game testing. I would love it if these mechanics/inspiration threads would be places where we would write abilities/talents that would be interesting for the devs to add to the game. I'd just suggest people keep the posts short and suggest one ability/talent at a time, so that people can read them separately and reply to them separately.