Update #81: The Front Line: Fighters and Barbarians

[J.E. Sawyer]

 

Why are single weapon attacks made with a static bonus rather than a proportional one?  Just curious.

 

Accuracy progresses linearly and Miss/Graze/Hit/Crit windows are static.

[Mor]

• Confident Aim - 20% of a fighter's Grazes are converted to Hits. Additionally, the minimum damage for any melee weapon they use is increased by 25% of the range between the minimum and maximum.
• Crippling Guard - When a fighter Hits or Crits with a Disengagement Attack, the target is automatically Hobbled for a brief duration.

Weapons minimum-maximum damage range? Is it a random roll that determines the weapon damage before all the modifiers applies (i.e. Damage type and Miss to Crit range) or upper/bottom bounds to possible damage output?

 

What benefits(or disadvantages of its done to me) being Hobbled brings, and is there anyway to defend vs that effect or remove it?

Edited June 25, 2014 by Mor

[Beholder]

Remember, even Arnold's Conan used a shield and heavier armor when he and Subotai had their final stand against Thulsa Doom's elite henchmen.  Also, Frazetta did a few paintings of Conan with a shield, so it's not out of place, IMO.

 

http://www.rehupa.com/OLDWEB/images/lancers_conan_conqueror_painting.jpg

 

Awesome picture ! Conan was my favourite movie when i was like 13, and i still have a special feeling for this movie. I see you know that movie very well, hehe !

Edited June 25, 2014 by Beholder

[lolaldanee]

the portrait is just great

[Meepalasheep]

Are weapons exclusive to certain categories, or do they cross over in some situations? E.g. a category that includes both swords and blunderbusses?

[Galomtala]

It might be already answered, but I could not find it.

 

Can I play every class as male and female? Do they have different stats for battle?

 

And while the fighter sounds nice, I think I'm still going with a Ranger as my first PC.

[SnakeX]

Damn, prior to reading this update I was pretty set on having a Fighter over a Barbarian in my theorized party but now I'm torn. Still leaning towards a Fighter as my go-to front-line man/woman, but those Barbarian skills sure sound fantastic.

 

I guess this is what multiple playthroughs are for (aside from seeing the story in different ways of course); different party setups! 

 

Great stuff as always, Pillars of Eternity is easily still my #1 most anticipated game right now. 

 

EDIT:

 

It might be already answered, but I could not find it.

 

Can I play every class as male and female? Do they have different stats for battle?

 

And while the fighter sounds nice, I think I'm still going with a Ranger as my first PC.

 

 

99% certain that there are no gender limitations for classes. Same deal with stats.

Edited June 25, 2014 by SnakeX

[J.E. Sawyer]

Weapons minimum-maximum damage range? Is it a random roll that determines the weapon damage before all the modifiers applies (i.e. Damage type and Miss to Crit range) or upper/bottom bounds to possible damage output?

 

What benefits(or disadvantages of its done to me) being Hobbled brings, and is there anyway to defend vs that effect or remove it?

 

Weapons "roll" damage between their min and max before applying other modifiers.  The upper end of the damage ranges is higher than it is in A/D&D but not by a huge factor.  The lower end of the ranges is much higher, typically a little over half of the max.  E.g. pollaxes do 18-28.  A fighter with Confident Aim would do 20.5-28 damage with the same weapon (we do track fractions).  A fighter with Confident Aim who is specialized in that weapon would do 20.5-28 base +15% (23.6-32.2).

 

Hobbled reduces the target's Dexterity, movement speed, and Reflexes defense.  Many attacks that inflict Hobbled will attack the Fortitude defense as a secondary attack.  The fighter's Crippling Guard automatically inflicts Hobbled if the Disengagement Attack (vs. Deflection) hits.  Disengagement Attacks are inherently more accurate than standard attacks and fighters have the highest melee Accuracy, so they tend to land those hits very regularly.  If they Graze and have Confident Aim, 20% of those Grazes are converted to full Hits.

[J.E. Sawyer]

It might be already answered, but I could not find it.

 

Can I play every class as male and female? Do they have different stats for battle?

 

You can play any class as male or female.  Our character creation screens briefly describe the different roles men and women play in various societies of Eora, but they do not inherently differ in stats or capability.

[Galomtala]

 

It might be already answered, but I could not find it.

 

Can I play every class as male and female? Do they have different stats for battle?

 

You can play any class as male or female.  Our character creation screens briefly describe the different roles men and women play in various societies of Eora, but they do not inherently differ in stats or capability.

 

 

Sounds great, thank you!

[Lephys]

Lovely update! ^_^

 

That human portrait is quite splendid. I think Sensuki pointed out that it's different from most of the others (at least from Kaz and Polina) but it looks the exact same style as the Eder portrait. And I don't know why people are always talking about the proportions being off ("lips are too wide" or something like that), since humans have WILDLY different facial proportions (whoever thinks those lips are too wide, look at Steven Tyler's youngest daughter's mouth, or Sandra Bernhard's mouth, ).

 

I noticed the Fighter gets three skill bonuses, as compared to most other classes getting only two. I take it that's counter-balanced by the fact that they are more minor than the other classes' two. Interesting.

 

@Karkarov, the Barbarian gets "effectively double HP," true, but he can still be taken out of the fight if his Stamina hits 0, no matter how much HP he has left, AND he gets by far the most Deflection detriments (while being specialized in wading into the fray -- a.k.a. into the most dangerous areas, as opposed to, say, a Wizard or something, who might not have very good Deflection, but also isn't really designed specifically to leap at a group of enemies).

 

 

The Fighter's abilities that convert 20% of grazes to hits and incoming crits to hits, respectively... do those simply shift the Attack Resolution thresholds for the duration, or do they re-roll every graze/crit to see if it remains what it is or becomes a hit? Just curious.

 

 

The classes are all lookin' good! I look forward to the next update, and to getting a taste of some gameplay action as soon as we get the chance, ^_^

Edited June 25, 2014 by Lephys

[Bryy]

 

Can the barbarian's carnage-type attacks damage nearby allies?

 

No.

 

What is this? Come kind of casual iPhone game? 

[J.E. Sawyer]

I noticed the Fighter gets three skill bonuses, as compared to most other classes getting only two. I take it that's counter-balanced by the fact that they are more minor than the other classes' two. Interesting.

 

The Fighter's abilities that convert 20% of grazes to hits and incoming crits to hits, respectively... do those simply shift the Attack Resolution thresholds for the duration, or do they re-roll every graze/crit to see if it remains what it is or becomes a hit? Just curious.

 

Yes, the fighter's skill bonuses are all minor.  Abilities like the fighter's Critical Defense are applied passively to each incoming attack.  In the combat log, it doesn't display anything special unless a conversion occurred.  If Sassy attacks Squorzel and Squorzel has Critical Defense but the conversion roll didn't succeed, it would just display this way: Sassy Crits Squorzel for 48 Slash damage.  If the conversion does succeed, it displays something like this: Sassy Crits Squorzel... but Critical Defense converts it to a Hit for 32 Slash damage!

 

That's not the exact text or format, but it's something like that.

[mstark]

Any chance we could get a simple text preview of what the current "text or format" for combat looks like? Do you have comeplete(ish) templates for feedback messages? #thehype :D

[ashtonw]

I love the new portrait, I really like the artist's brushwork. I'm happy they're holding off on a video right now, I think spending that coin too early would hurt the build up of anticipation to the game's release. And I don't want my brain over-saturated with info til I'm sick of the game before it's even out. that said.... i'm soooo excited and i can't wait. everyone working on this project is so great and you guys have all my faith. 

[J.E. Sawyer]

What is this? Come kind of casual iPhone game? 

 

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but the IE games had plenty of foe-only AoEs.  More recently, NWN, NWN2, and ToEE all had Whirlwind Attack, Cleave, etc. which were "selective fire" as well.

[Bryy]

 

What is this? Come kind of casual iPhone game? 

 

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic

I am a feisty minx.

[mstark]

[...] the IE games had plenty of foe-only AoEs.

Could you give an example of what you have in mind?

[J.E. Sawyer]

Could you give an example of what you have in mind?

 

The most obvious are Horrid Wilting and Teleport Field in BG2.

[ryukenden]

I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask but what is the estimated length of the game you guys are aiming for?

 

Oh and by the way, josh if you are in costa mesa area, there is a Titan Arum exhibit (the corpse flower) at orange coast college. It bloomed on Monday but you can still see the plant (free).

Edited June 26, 2014 by ryukenden

[Lephys]

If the conversion does succeed, it displays something like this: Sassy Crits Squorzel... but Critical Defense converts it to a Hit for 32 Slash damage!

Ahh, spiffy! So the game doesn't just say "Oh, I see that roll against you was a 90. That would've been a critical hit, but since you've got Critical Defense active, only this foe's attack rolls above 95 are crits, as opposed to above 85 (example numbers...)". Good to know. I like it better applied to each roll, instead of just being applied to that foe's attack resolution table.

 

 

What is this? Come kind of casual iPhone game?

 

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but the IE games had plenty of foe-only AoEs.  More recently, NWN, NWN2, and ToEE all had Whirlwind Attack, Cleave, etc. which were "selective fire" as well.

 

Yeah. Also, it seems like it's more of the Barbarian (at least in the case of Carnage) sort of wildly/violently striking at each of the targets, and not just "my blade is producing a nova of melee damage that radiates out from me, striking everything in its path."

 

In a lot of other games (usually action RPGs, but still...), you end up with that "magical AoE damage" -- if you hit, other things around automatically just take damage as if they're standing in fire or something. However, it seems Carnage simply makes actual attack rolls against them, meaning some form of attack (albeit kind of sloppy, as is evident by its lack of extravagant Accuracy) is occurring versus those targets, meaning that you're not just blanket-striking all physical matter within a radius of you.

 

So, it at least makes a good bit of sense that it's foe-only.

[Nonek]

Erm not a Fighter specific question, more combat based, but can Ciphers and Monks have a somewhat symbiotic relationship? For example the Cipher wounds the Monk to power his abilities, and the Monk absorbs that damage to power his, a high risk method of preparing for combat if you will?

[J.E. Sawyer]

Ahh, spiffy! So the game doesn't just say "Oh, I see that roll against you was a 90. That would've been a critical hit, but since you've got Critical Defense active, only this foe's attack rolls above 95 are crits, as opposed to above 85 (example numbers...)". Good to know. I like it better applied to each roll, instead of just being applied to that foe's attack resolution table.

 

Yeah, the way we display the non-verbose final roll is always relative to the standard ranges: Miss on =96.  Defense is subtracted from Accuracy and then applied as a modifier to the roll itself.  E.g. the attacker has 52 Accuracy and the defender has 30 Defense.  The difference is 22.  Three attacks happen in sequence.  The actual rolls are 65, 43, and 84.  Those are modified to 85 (Hit), 65 (Hit), and 106 (Crit).  There are two exceptions to this: a natural roll of =96 can never be worse than a Hit, no matter how much the table gets skewed.

[Lephys]

Very informative! Thank you, ^_^

 

That makes a lot of sense, as the player never needs to worry about variance in the thresholds when they're looking at the number they're seeing. *Thumbs up*

 

So long as the fact that your roll is "taking a hit," so to speak, is quite readily apparent. That's the only good thing about simply adjusting the ranges. If I roll a 70, and it's a Graze, I intuitively know that my target's Defense must be at least 20 beyond my Accuracy, and that I'm going to need to roll above 70 (at least) to get anything but a Graze, even though I don't intuitively know the exact threshold value yet.

 

That "-22" just needs to be pretty apparent every time my low-accuracy character attacks that high-defense foe, or I'm just going to think, at a glance, that I'm rolling crappily.

 

I mean, I understand that it's there, in the log and such. I'm just emphasizing the player's tendency to focus on the final number. Or, what a lot of us are used to, rather. There were things in D&D that obviously applied penalties to our rolls, but standard To Hit versus AC (functionally the closest thing to Accuracy versus Defense) just had the goal number (what will actually produce a hit instead of a miss) change, rather than our roll. You roll a 15, and you miss, rather than always needing an 11 or above and just having all your final roll numbers take AC into account.

 

Just a "for what it's worth." I'm not under the illusion that this isn't something you haven't considered.

 

/endramble

Edited June 26, 2014 by Lephys

[Stun]

 

 

• Confident Aim - 20% of a fighter's Grazes are converted to Hits. Additionally, the minimum damage for any melee weapon they use is increased by 25% of the range between the minimum and maximum.
• Critical Defense - 20% of all incoming Crits against a fighter are converted to Hits.

 

Just to be clear, these are 'passive' abilities that the fighter gains, yes... and not 'per encounter' or per day?

 

 

 

 

Also I have a question about Carnage. We know its AOE is dependent on the Barbarian's intelligence score. Does weapon reach also affect the AOE? (ie, will it have a larger area of effect if the Barbarian is using a spear than if he's using, say, a dagger?