Thoughts on damage types

[NothingToSeeHere]

And yeah. Like Josh said, it's unlikely you'll remain perfectly grounded the whole time in combat...

 

 

*sigh* OK, I'm getting a little tired of repeating this, but being grounded should not even enter the discussion. I guess I'll go into this in a little more detail (inspired by AGX-17's poison chemistry up there!).

 

"Grounding" is an approximation. Metals have a very low resistance as compared to non-metals. When you have an unbroken link of low-resistance material to the "ground" (the place where all stray electricity goes) then you can approximate the potential at the top of this link to be the same as the ground, i.e. zero. This means that any electricity striking the top of this link is effectively going straight into the ground, ignoring any other alternative paths (through your adventurer's body). This protection is not going anywhere just because a piece of the metallic link to the ground is replaced by a non-metal. The approximation only becomes a lot worse. The metallic parts of your armour are still much lower in resistance than the human body, however sweaty. You will get shocked at those points in the link where the "grounding" is broken, but you will not feel a thing in those parts which are covered by metal. Contrast this to an adventurer wearing Enchanted Elven leather armour - the sweaty human body is probably always a lower resistance pathway for electricity than the armour. The more metal your armour contains, the fewer the parts of your body that get shocked. Sit in a car in a thunderstorm - the metal protects you from a significant amount of HP damage even though cars have rubber tires.

 

Josh's point about Accuracy bonuses is not exactly valid IMO. True, the more metal your armour contains, the more attractive it becomes to being struck by a bolt of electricity. But it also provides more protection from damage, even if it is not grounded. If the accuracy bonus translates into a DT penalty, the "protection" I'm talking about should translate into a high DR bonus. Does a DT penalty cancel out a DR bonus? I have no idea. I don't see how it leaves you with a net DT penalty though.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Why is only plate subject to a Shock modifier? What about other metal armors such as chain and scale?

 

I don't remember all of the modifiers off the top of my head, but all armors have some sort of damage type weakness to them.  Mail's big weakness is crush damage.  It may also have a shock modifier, but I don't remember for certain.

[rjshae]

 

And yeah. Like Josh said, it's unlikely you'll remain perfectly grounded the whole time in combat...

 

Josh's point about Accuracy bonuses is not exactly valid IMO. True, the more metal your armour contains, the more attractive it becomes to being struck by a bolt of electricity. But it also provides more protection from damage, even if it is not grounded.

 

Another perspective is that an ideal suit of metal armor creates a constant electric potential throughout the enclosure. If there is no difference in electrical potential, then no charge will flow. It's the principle of the Faraday cage.

 

[Lephys]

Yeah... well, if magic lightning wasn't a little different, then every time a mage tried to blast chain lightning out of his palms, it would just travel back through his own body straight to the ground instead of hitting that plate-wearing warrior 30 feet away, would it not?

 

I think we can deal with the abstraction. Again, it's not as if the plate is making you somehow MORE susceptible to shock than if you simply removed the plate. You're still getting more protection from the plate than from nakedness. I'm not any more worried about how full plate doesn't somehow Faraday Cage all electrical damage around your body than I am about how a Mage can even channel/direct electricity in the first place, to be honest. Maybe the metal heats up and burns you a bit? Maybe the Mage is able to forcibly alter its path to the ground? Who knows. How much does it truly matter?

 

If it means 2 (example number) damage types being boss in a lot of different situations, and a handful of others being pretty much useless and/or hardly ever having their own, unique weaknesses to take advantage of, then I'll take the abstraction any day, in the interest of something like shock damage actually being significant within the combat system. That's just me, though.

 

For what it's worth, I appreciate the in-depth explanations of the workings of electricity, and admit being a bit of a noob at that topic. I'm not trying to brush off the importance of how things actually work in reality. I know it's not a choice between perfect simulation of reality or complete and utter throw-physics-out-the-window abstraction. I just don't think being quite so accurate with it, in this particular case, is really all that useful. Especially considering the possibilities, as I've pointed out (mages' unnatural control over electricity, etc.)

[NothingToSeeHere]

...It's the principle of the Faraday cage.

 

Faraday cages have been mentioned before - the argument invoked was that suits of armour are never perfect. An imperfect suit of armour will still provide "safe" conduction channels while not acting as a Faraday cage.

 

In all honesty (as I've said a couple of times before), I understand that this is an abstracted system and actually don't mind a minor DT penalty just to add variety. Lephys seemed to suggest that there might be circumstances where my Plate-clad Black Knight might take more damage from a shock attack than my Spandex-clad Dark Knight, which was what I was objecting to in my previous post. The actual numbers are of course up to the devs, but this scenario seemed a little inane to me.

[rjshae]

In all honesty (as I've said a couple of times before), I understand that this is an abstracted system and actually don't mind a minor DT penalty just to add variety. Lephys seemed to suggest that there might be circumstances where my Plate-clad Black Knight might take more damage from a shock attack than my Spandex-clad Dark Knight, which was what I was objecting to in my previous post. The actual numbers are of course up to the devs, but this scenario seemed a little inane to me.

 

Yes, one might make the hand waving argument that the spell magically creates a large positive charge on the targets that draws in the electron discharge. In effect, the targets briefly become more attractive than the ground. The plate armor then draws away part of the charge potential during the brief interval the charge reaches the target, reducing the effect by the designated amount.