DT and DR

[redneckdevil]

What's the deal with using both DT and DR ?

 

DR hasn't been mentioned once at all before

 

Seems to me like it would be better off using one or the other ?

Eh from fonv it seems like its better when both are going at same time instead of one or the other. DR by itself can do some wonky things where it really shines for higher dmg but lower dmg stays roughly the same. Crab does 1 dmg and a monster does 100 dmg, if u have 85% DR the monster is only doing 15 points of dmg but that crab is still doing 1 point of dmg. You are better protected against the monster but u are still as protected against the crab with 0 DR as u are with 85% DR.

thats where dt comes in. The DT fixes the short comings of the DR while DR fixes the short comings of DT.

in fixing the problem with DR, for example that crab that does 1 dmg would now not be doing ANY dmg because even though its uneffected by DR because of its low dmg, the DT steps in a blocks the low amount of dmg the crab did before its even applied the DR.

in fixing the problem with DT is i would say more inline with balance and/or appearance. What i mean is that with DT u have to guesstimate/predict the range of damage the between the low highs and the high higher dmg (aka low highs being the highest dmg a nondmg focus build is gonna be able to output and high high is what a dmg focus build is gonna be able to roughly do all on average) and then plan with that in mind. With very high dts only u will start to encounter situations where ur frontliners arent breaking a sweat but 1 hit to a nonfrontliner will end up with a instant death because the encounters are designed around "intimindating" the high DT wearers and the way to intimidate them is to be able to bypass that DT.

I guess long story short.

nothing but DR u will encounter wonky situations where low lvl enemies will still be doing same amount of dmg later ingame with much better armor whereas the heavy hitters will be the noticeable ones.

nothing but DT and it becomes where lower encounters are negated completely and high level encounters will be the only challenging ones but will come with the price of non high DT with very low survivability.

having both DR and DT means that its a mix between both. Instead of just having only both ends of the spectrum be damaging or only high end only, the DR/DT combo puts it near the middle where more things will be challenging across the levels but the challenge wont be as high.

 

Hope this makes sense and hopfully someone with better wording can explain it better than me.

[redneckdevil]

I will say this though, i do not like bleedthru. Either have it stop the dmg completely or whats supposed to do or not. I know its there to make it easier for players but i dont like the bleedthru mechanic. It seems like it defeats the purpose of having the whole DT/DR thing.

[Caladian]

unless all weapons are given some sort of DT lowering values, or fast weapons are given higher minimum dmg values, low dmg weapons suck.

[thelee]

I will say this though, i do not like bleedthru. Either have it stop the dmg completely or whats supposed to do or not. I know its there to make it easier for players but i dont like the bleedthru mechanic. It seems like it defeats the purpose of having the whole DT/DR thing.

 

I think it's for "fun" as well as so that there are no "ties."

 

Fallout 1/2 had no bleed-through, so you could easily end up in a stale-mate situation. I.E. I once had a martial arts character in FO2 and against aliens, it was always "no damage" " no damage" "no damage" back and forth. The only reason why I ever won those fights eventually is because I had the Better Criticals perk and occasionally I would get lucky and either get the "ignore all defenses" critical or the "instant death" critical hit. Those fights were not fun. Even if mathematically it would've been the same if those critical hits were instead spread out as marginal damage on every hit, at least viscerally you get the satisfaction of doing *something* each combat cycle, as opposed to essentially playing a slot machine.

 

As for ties, with bleed-through every fight has an inevitable ending. And while it hurts the player (no armor is impregnable), it also means the player can move forward in any fight (as oppossed to "good luck if you brought SMGs in FO2 to a mid-to-late game fight!").

Edited September 26, 2014 by thelee

[nikolokolus]

I feel like BRP/Runequest figure this out ages ago. Attack vs. Defense to determine a hit (and the severity) and Armor reduces the amount of damage taken. Clean and simple.

[Lephys]

@Captain Shrek,

 

With that line of thinking, everything shy of "roll for victory or defeat" is a passive mechanism to prolong combat.

 

What DT is is a combat factor. People deal damage, people deal varying amounts of damage depending on factors. It doesn't prolong combat any more than every single point of damage that your characters deal below infinity prolongs combat.

 

Also, I have no idea what you mean by "the chance to NOT graze is 1 in 20." It sounds like you are misunderstanding what grazing is. That, and Graze is just a potential outcome tied to a range within Attack Resolution. If you just always had the exact same chance to graze, it wouldn't contribute much to combat, other than serving as a point halfway between missing and hitting. But you don't. Depending on Accuracy - Opponent'sDefense, you can have a lesser chance to Graze and a greater chance to Hit, a greater chance to Crit, no chance to Miss, a greater chance to Miss, etc.

 

But, again, according to your arbitrary "it just prolongs combat so it's bad" logic, misses prolong combat, and hits (compared to critical hits) prolong combat, so the best combat would be "all you can do is critically hit." Then, beyond that, would be "you hit for more damage, because doing less damage prolongs combat."

 

You need some further criteria than "combat would be faster without that" to determine that something is bad.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Lephys

[Matt516]

I'm a fan of bleedthru. DT is already powerful enough against low damage weapons.

[Lephys]

What is bleedthru, Matt? (Probably a silly question).

[DCParry]

Personally, as someone who absolutely loved Fallout 2, I heartily welcome the re-introduction of DT/DR (in one cohesive system, unlike the ad-hoc random DR in F:NV) back into a game system.

 

I hope this means we expect to see the equivalent of hollow-point and armor-piercing weapons (i.e. more than that one stiletto mod that gives it 5 DT penetrating), and potentially interesting non-standard armor (i.e. 0 DT but high DR, or high DT but no DR or negative DR to a specific damage type).

 

It also opens some opportunity for particular class talents to add variety (think things like Shotgun Surgeon from FONV). Certain attacks could bypass DT abd/or DR, or attacks with a certain weapon type could reduce DT. 

 

After relatively recently getting through FONV with the jsawyer mod I am mildly excited to see the DT/DR system return (even though I will never forgive whoever made the change to Barton Thorne. 12 piles of green goo and 12 reloads until that monotone marauder died!).

[Lephys]

I feel like BRP/Runequest figure this out ages ago. Attack vs. Defense to determine a hit (and the severity) and Armor reduces the amount of damage taken. Clean and simple.

Then you just enjoy the 30+ purely-cosmetic differences in all the weapons in the game, atop all their subtle base dmg/weapon speed variance. WOOT!

 

Ultra-simple isn't wrong, but it's also not defaultly right.

 

Complexity isn't bad. Too much complexity is bad.

[Matt516]

What is bleedthru, Matt? (Probably a silly question).

 

Oh sorry - it's what a few people in this thread had taken to calling the "minimum damage" thing. DT (and DR as well, I think) cannot reduce an attack's damage below 10% of the raw damage.

[mutonizer]

I'm a fan of bleedthru. DT is already powerful enough against low damage weapons.

Try as you might, you're not gonna hurt someone in full plate armor with your toothpick, unless you land a precise perfect hit in the joints/eyes/etc (ie: a critical hit). That's what I'd like to see is all.

Low damage weapons are usually there because of faster/shorter animations and they become really, really good against some weakly protected enemies but I think they shouldn't do anything, unless via critical hits, against big slow heavy armors.

 

 

A mechanic that wasn't discussed in this regard was "post DT penetration damage multiplier". Might over complicate things further, but it's an option. Can only go hand in hand with full DT absorption though of course.

Edited September 27, 2014 by mutonizer

[Azrael Ultima]

 

I'm a fan of bleedthru. DT is already powerful enough against low damage weapons.

Try as you might, you're not gonna hurt someone in full plate armor with your toothpick, unless you land a precise perfect hit in the joints/eyes/etc (ie: a critical hit). That's what I'd like to see is all.

 

You're not going to hurt anybody with even remotely serious armor with a toothpick. I don't think that is something that should be handled with DT/DR mechanics, toothpicks should just have a "can't hurt armored peeps" passive.

[Captain Shrek]

@Captain Shrek,

 

With that line of thinking, everything shy of "roll for victory or defeat" is a passive mechanism to prolong combat.

 

What DT is is a combat factor. People deal damage, people deal varying amounts of damage depending on factors. It doesn't prolong combat any more than every single point of damage that your characters deal below infinity prolongs combat.

 

Also, I have no idea what you mean by "the chance to NOT graze is 1 in 20." It sounds like you are misunderstanding what grazing is. That, and Graze is just a potential outcome tied to a range within Attack Resolution. If you just always had the exact same chance to graze, it wouldn't contribute much to combat, other than serving as a point halfway between missing and hitting. But you don't. Depending on Accuracy - Opponent'sDefense, you can have a lesser chance to Graze and a greater chance to Hit, a greater chance to Crit, no chance to Miss, a greater chance to Miss, etc.

 

But, again, according to your arbitrary "it just prolongs combat so it's bad" logic, misses prolong combat, and hits (compared to critical hits) prolong combat, so the best combat would be "all you can do is critically hit." Then, beyond that, would be "you hit for more damage, because doing less damage prolongs combat."

 

You need some further criteria than "combat would be faster without that" to determine that something is bad.

 

 

Graze is an attrition mechanism that speeds it up.

 

The entire point is that Graze and DT do not really add anything to the game than an additional number to look out for. I think the origin or at least the most pronounced use of these mechanisms is in MMOs where there are huge number of trash mobs. Their use in SP games does not make a lot of sense.

 

As to misses doing the same thing: Miss is a very intuitive idea that needs to be broken into two parts: If you have a good defense then you would EVADE damage. While if you have good armour you will shrug off damage. This would mean that the Defense attribute should control evasion and armour should give DR. Age of decadence does it quite well. 

 

Right now DT and graze are just feng-shui over a bare bones D&D. 

Edited September 27, 2014 by Captain Shrek

[sb5]

There should be feats or traits for light melee and ranged weapons to ignore DT but not DR. A skillful fighter looks for openings in the armor to bring the pain or stabs/shoots the unprotected neck.

[mutonizer]

There should be feats or traits for light melee and ranged weapons to ignore DT but not DR. A skillful fighter looks for openings in the armor to bring the pain or stabs/shoots the unprotected neck.

 

That's critical hits, which usually light melee and ranged weapon users can do more often (rogues, rangers, etc) due to higher ACC (and talents and whatnot). Critical hits, due to their high damage nature, make DT less of a factor, and instead make DR more important.

 

Not saying it's perfect or anything, just that it's the way it is

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I would like it better if they went for either DT or general DR instead of both. IMO DT would be the best as there would be a reason to use high Damage weapons instead of going High DPS for everything.

 

There should be feats or traits for light melee and ranged weapons to ignore DT but not DR. A skillful fighter looks for openings in the armor to bring the pain or stabs/shoots the unprotected neck.

Stilettos and Maces already have that. Not sure if any other melee weapons have it.

[sb5]

Ignore DT totally I meant.

Estocs ignore DT as well as Stilettos.

Edited September 27, 2014 by sb5

[mutonizer]

Since crit multipliers are applied before DT calculations, without DR, critical hit would totally destroy you. Add to that the fact that most light armor wearers have also **** for DEF, they'll get crit more often, meaning close to instant death constantly. DR again mitigates this somewhat.

 

Now, why they apply the crit multipliers before factoring in DT? No idea but my rogue's enjoying nearly one shotting everything on sight.

Edited September 27, 2014 by mutonizer

[swordofthesith]

I have no problem with understanding DT. It's the difference between attacking an armored and unarmored target. Deflection though, I find confusing.  But I do see Sens critique. With the current system it is much easier to simply use weapons with extremely high damage thresholds against any kind of target. Why muck around with Low DT speed weapons when you have to switch them around during every engagement? 

Edited September 28, 2014 by swordofthesith

[mutonizer]

I have no problem with understanding DT. It's the difference between attacking an armored and unarmored target. Deflection though, I find confusing.  But I do see Sens critique. With the current system it is much easier to simply use weapons with extremely high damage thresholds against any kind of target. Why muck around with Low DT speed weapons when you have to switch them around during every engagement?

High damage, low damage, doesn't really matter. What matters is: can you hit and critical hit. If you can, then start thinking about weapons, if you can't, delete and start another character.

My dual rapier wielding fighters are destroying everything on sight at incredible pace. So are my Great Sword wielding Rogues. Barbarians however, can't do ****, no matter the weapon you give them.