Types of damage

[Atreides]

Slashing, crushing, piercing damage - are they worth implementing and to what degree? Creatures or armour may be more vulnerable or resistant to different types of damage.

 

If it's in, it could encourage party diversity, but does switching between different kind of weapons discourage weapon specialization?

[Tamerlane]

There will be slashing, crushing, and piercing damage. I forget the specifics (and of course, such things are subject to change), but I think the main difference is how well they deal with heavy armour.

 

Weapon specialization will be less narrow than the IE games or NWN2. An archer might switch from a broadhead arrow to a bodkin to deal with an armored target, a swordsman might put away his claymore and pull out an estoc for the same task, etc.

[rjshae]

I think you really just need impact and penetration damage; slashing is just a combination of the two.

[Lephys]

I don't get it. The only two types of damage we need are "high" for your characters, and "low" for all your enemies. Anything else requires effort and is annoying, u_u.

 

. In all seriousness, I think the best way of handling this is to allow different types of damage to have multiple potential effects in different scenarios. When you limit it to a change in the amount of damage (simple resistance system, and nothing more), it's not very exciting. Sure, it's better than a lack of that and nothing else, but why not add some utility?

 

A good example would be the one I made regarding skeletons in the situational skill-effectiveness thread. Cold/ice damage may slow living, fleshy enemies (and inflict damage because of the effects of extreme temperature on skin/organs, etc), whereas it may not slow a skeleton down at all (no muscles to slow the movement of... but maybe a bola [i think that's what that rope with a weighted ball on each end is called] or entangling skill could still slow the skeleton's movement). However, it could cause the bones to become more brittle, allowing for a higher critical hit chance, and or easier limb shattering (if you shatter his arm, he drops his weapon.) Maybe it still does damage, depending on the specific ability (if it's the physical impact of a weapon or spell projectile, or simply a magical or nom-magical change in temperature). That's another overlap of different damage types and their effects I hadn't really thought of when I began typing this. Physical impact and cold/freeze.

 

In this same manner, the heat of a fireball may do nothing to a fire elemental (or a stone golem/earth elemental), whereas the physical, forceful impact of a fireball could still stun, knock back/down, or even simply briefly interrupt the elemental's actions.

 

I guess a simple way of putting it is this: Instead of "Is this damage type effective in this situation?," I'd like to see a system that asks "HOW is this damage type effective in this situation?"

[AGX-17]

does switching between different kind of weapons discourage weapon specialization?

 

What do you mean? I'm safely assuming there are going to be restrictions on what classes can use which weapons. A typical Ranger might not see a red lettered "YOU CANNOT EQUIP THIS ITEM" message next to a warhammer, but they might see "You lack the strength to wield this weapon, you lack the skill to wield this weapon, you lack the training to wield this weapon" etc.

 

 

I guess a simple way of putting it is this: Instead of "Is this damage type effective in this situation?," I'd like to see a system that asks "HOW is this damage type effective in this situation?"

 

The entire point of a game is to have rules, and it's the game designers who decide that "this type of damage is effective against this type of enemy or defense." What you're going to get with wanting a CPU to ask itself "how is this damage type effective in this situation?" is a crashed process. The game systems/rules aren't there to ask questions, they're there to answer them. A computer program is a set of instructions for a static, logic-based system. Computers don't ask questions unless told to by a program, and if they're not provided with possible outcomes they're just not going to work. You can't ask a game to design itself.

[Jojobobo]

I'd like to see a sitaution of crushing damage doing more stamina and less health damage (if you are heavily armoured, it effectively knocks the wind out of you but is unlikely to bust a rib unless the person hitting you is very strong) and piercing or slashing damage doing more health and less stamina damage (if you've been skewered they may have hit a vital organ, but they haven't fatigued your body as a whole).

[Jobby]

I'd like to see a sitaution of crushing damage doing more stamina and less health damage (if you are heavily armoured, it effectively knocks the wind out of you but is unlikely to bust a rib unless the person hitting you is very strong) and piercing or slashing damage doing more health and less stamina damage (if you've been skewered they may have hit a vital organ, but they haven't fatigued your body as a whole).

 

Arcanum did this very well, it actually meant you could knock people out instead of killing them if you so desired, but then again in Arcanum your stamina didnt regenerate, perhaps heavy/blunt weapons could also cause status ailments like you hinted at e.g. crit hit causes winded which prevents stamina regeneration for xx seconds etc..

[Lephys]

The entire point of a game is to have rules, and it's the game designers who decide that "this type of damage is effective against this type of enemy or defense." What you're going to get with wanting a CPU to ask itself "how is this damage type effective in this situation?" is a crashed process. The game systems/rules aren't there to ask questions, they're there to answer them. A computer program is a set of instructions for a static, logic-based system. Computers don't ask questions unless told to by a program, and if they're not provided with possible outcomes they're just not going to work. You can't ask a game to design itself.

 

I'm... not really sure where that came from. *Confusion*. I never suggested in any way, shape, or fashion that a CPU should be asked a question. o_o. I was merely comparing questions to ask when constructing a damage-type system... questions for humans to ask... humans who design games. I apologize if something about the way I said it caused a misunderstanding.

 

EDIT: Ohhh, I see now. By "a system that asks," I merely meant figuratively asks. As in "a system designed with this question in mind." I am very sorry about that. I see how you read that the way you did.

 

Using the damage-type-versus-resistance-type system, you end up with just various different ways of calculating damage. But you're always simply calculating different amounts of damage. So, by allowing different damage/attack types to potentially produce multiple different affects (aside from just damage), the resistances can then allow, prevent, or lessen any one effect or combination of any number of affects tied to that damage/attack type. It's more work, but it's a more robust system.

 

Other games have used more effects than simply damage, but the system is usually 90% designed around damage, with various effects (chill, poison[which is still only affecting damage/HP, really], burning, stun) sprinkled in. If you design the system around the effects AND the damage at the same time, you give the player a lot more ways for combat to be tactically affected, rather than simply "make sure your attacks are doing high damage (by matching damage-type to low resistance) instead of low damage (by matching damage-type to high resistance)."

Edited December 18, 2012 by Lephys

[Tanos]

I'd like to see a sitaution of crushing damage doing more stamina and less health damage (if you are heavily armoured, it effectively knocks the wind out of you but is unlikely to bust a rib unless the person hitting you is very strong) and piercing or slashing damage doing more health and less stamina damage (if you've been skewered they may have hit a vital organ, but they haven't fatigued your body as a whole).

I very much like this suggestion. Different types of enemies should rely more on one or the other (stamina/health) and should make the damage type a more tactical choice in battles.

[ShadowTiger]

Well, he just answered this question... but how much do you want to export the strategy to outside of battle and how much should it be about how you spend your precious few actions/round?

 

I think some basic things like bring fire resistance to kill the dragon is great, as well as send the hammer guy to fight the earth elemental while the dagger guy goes and stabs the wizard.

 

I don't really want to say, gosh, this next area has a bunch of heavily armored guys with swords, so I am going to wear X armor and wield Y weapon on all of my characters. That is just tedious and lessens the fun/challenge. I also choose my gear based on role playing and not really on what is optimal (though I optimize every other aspect : P )

 

So I would say, minimize the amount of pre-battle prep you have to do and focus more on whats going on inside the battle. Let most of the outside strategy be constrained to elemental resistances or avoiding status effects.

Edited December 19, 2012 by ShadowTiger

[ogrezilla]

Well, he just answered this question... but how much do you want to export the strategy to outside of battle and how much should it be about how you spend your precious few actions/round?

 

I think some basic things like bring fire resistance to kill the dragon is great, as well as send the hammer guy to fight the earth elemental while the dagger guy goes and stabs the wizard.

 

I don't really want to say, gosh, this next area has a bunch of heavily armored guys with swords, so I am going to wear X armor and wield Y weapon on all of my characters. That is just tedious and lessens the fun/challenge. I also choose my gear based on role playing and not really on what is optimal (though I optimize every other aspect : P )

 

So I would say, minimize the amount of pre-battle prep you have to do and focus more on whats going on inside the battle. Let most of the outside strategy be constrained to elemental resistances or avoiding status effects.

ya hopefully most areas have a combination of armor/weapon types so you can't just equip the whole group with the "best" equipment for that location.

[Lephys]

Well, look at it this way... Say you don't want to swap weapons and armor every time you fight a different cluster of foes. Also, for the purposes of this example, you are flying solo (expanding the example to cover the entire party would take forever, and the point remains the same, I promise.)

 

So, pretend you love light armor and swords, for whatever reason. You encounter a group of enemies... an un-armored Mage (magic), a lightly armored archer (piercing), and a heavily armored greatsword guy (he sure is great at being a sword-guy). Let's just assume for now that spell damage always ignores armor and not worry about the possibility of magic resistances, just to keep it simple. Well, you're probably going to want to go for the Mage first, and the archer second, and avoid the heavy guy, in general. The mage and the archer will require a much shorter duration to dispatch, because of your damage effectiveness against them, so you don't have to worry about equipment swapping to make sure they aren't 7,000 times more difficult to take on than with "the right" gear. The heavy guy is going to take a bit more doing, and you'll probably have to utilize your combat skills as best you can to keep him away from you (as he has a large, slashing weapon that will ultra-harm you, and you can't do full damage to his armor.)

 

If you were, instead, a heavy armor guy with a mace, 'cause you just like that sort of thing, and you encountered the same group, you'd probably go in the reverse order (or you might take the mage first, still, because of his full-damage capability). So, it might be more difficult to take him on with your mace, as opposed to a sword, like before, but the strategic decisions involved with getting to him and taking him down FIRST and as quickly as possible sort of alleviate that difference.

 

And now, say you're the latter guy, but you encounter THREE mages. o_O, oooOOOOoooooh... this is gonna be bad, right? Well, I'm going to cheat here and break my "you're alone instead of a party" bit, because my example, whilst serving the simplicity of my point, cannot directly address this bit... Since you WILL have a party (assuming you don't bestow upon yourself, willingly, the challenge of taking on the whole game alone), the odds of you having 6 heavily-armored mace-wielders in the face of a group of nothing-but-mages (who we're still assuming will bypass ALL your armor, and are unarmored so that it would be much better to have swords) are pretty much zero. And, if you DO have that party, then, well, you chose to restrict yourself that hard. They can't design the game to where you can simply drop a live, struggling fish onto the keyboard and its keystrokes will get you through combat. It's going to require some amount of effort, in one form or another. So, you're going to have elements in your party that are GREAT at taking care of the mages (such as a mage, or people who actually have a sword and aren't wearing bulky heavy armor).

 

So, whether you put more work into making sure you carry around the proper equipment all the time and match it to the occasion, or you put the work in later to make sure you strategically pick your targets and have less-situationally-effective members support the others, one way isn't really BETTER than the other. Unless they completely misbalance the game... 8P

 

Equipment is just one factor in combat, so you'll always have your class abilities and positional strategy to use to offset "our equipment is hindering our ability to swiftly smite!" circumstances.

[Adhin]

I personally like Sawyer's answer in the recent video to damage types. Partly because outside of trying to model out different wounds and all that (such as heavy internal bleeding vs external that clots)... it works fine. They're using damage threshold like they did in New Vegas. Ultimately it means regardless of weapon type you'll always do a % of your damage if the DT ends up removing to much. Usually it's something like 10% or 20%, forget what new vegas' was.

 

Other games have used this setup before, and there is usually a wide enough range of enemies that there is rarely a reason beyond being more efficient to always swap weapons. My Barbarian will pretty much always dual wield his swords, may have a maul as backup just in case there is some extremely strong enemy that happens to also be heavily armored. Your average enemy that's also heavily armored, the only major difference will be the fight will last a bit longer due to me using the swords vs the maul. But in those instances the archers using piercing and mages can make up the difference if need be.

 

Now I can see with difficulty jacked to max with all the hardcore and insanity related toggled turned on you'll be pausing and doing a fair amount of weapon swapping but with weapon set slots (like in IWD2/other infinity games) that's not much of a chore in the end. Piercing makes good middle ground if you don't want to swap often, Slash/Blunt swap makes best use for most situations.

 

It's simple, it allows for tactical depth - I like it.

[Atreides]

does switching between different kind of weapons discourage weapon specialization?

What do you mean? I'm safely assuming there are going to be restrictions on what classes can use which weapons. A typical Ranger might not see a red lettered "YOU CANNOT EQUIP THIS ITEM" message next to a warhammer, but they might see "You lack the strength to wield this weapon, you lack the skill to wield this weapon, you lack the training to wield this weapon" etc.

Since we've gotten more info on the subject, I could see my fighter carrying a one-handed weapon of each damage type to go with her shield. Depending on the opponent, she'd switch weapons for better results. That (encouraged?) versatility would make me less inclined to specialize in swords or invest in blade/sword-specific skills for example.

 

Maybe if the skills were laid out by style - sword/shield, 2-handed, long weapons etc there's still specialization with flexibility.