some questions

[Madscientist]

I am a scientist and I like to analyze things to death. I read the menual of every game I buy and I find it satisfying to know why something just happened in the game. (Maybe thats why I am not the best player in the world ).

 

I read the wiki and I know how attacs with weapons work, but some things are still unknown to me:

 

1.) What determines the "hit chance" of spells?

 

The enemy has a defense value. What is your attac value you roll against the enemy defense. For weapon attacs you have your melee or ranged accurency. In NWN your char had a DC that was dependant on his main casting stat. I did not see any hint in the wiki for this. Does that mean each spell hits automatically and has a fixed attac value? Like your confusion spell has an attac value of 40 and every enemy with a will defense of 39 or lower will be affected and all other enemies not? If your spell was dependant on your accurency with weapons you would miss very often because casters use to have a rather low hit chance (They want to cast, why should they train with a weapon?). By "spell" I mean every ability that targets one or more hostile creatures and that cannot be described as attac with a weapon. Spells on friendly targets (buffs) always hit of course.

 

2.) Is there some kind of aggro system?

 

If a monster wants to bash your mage, does your fighter have any chance to attract his attention? Dragon age origins showed that a single player RPG with aggro system is possible.

 

3.) If I understand the engagement system correctly it means: As soon as a party member and an enemy come close to each other they cannot move at all unless:

-one of them dies

-one of them uses an ability that causes disengagement

-one of them is willing to take an disengagement attac (which has higher hit chance and damage than a normal attac)

[morhilane]

1) All "hit chance" are calculated with Accuracy vs Defense (Deflection, Reflex, Fortitude, Will). Many spells have accuracy bonuses and they can miss, graze, hit and do critical like weapons do. Buffs can also crit (increase duration), not sure if they can graze though.

 

2) No taunts, there was none in the IE games and backers "voted" against it in the kickstarter.

 

3) Sorta, all characters have engagement limits (default is 1). So if you are facing 2 enemies, only one of them is engaged, the other can leave without getting hit. There are talents and the fighte have an ability that increase the engagement limit.

 

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

#1: Quoted myself.

 

Accuracy is compared against a defense statistic. That difference is then added to your d100 roll, which determines the hit quality type (miss, graze, hit, critical). Damage threshold and damage resistance are then applied to the outcome (if applicable). So:

 

First, the Accuracy is determined. While this does determine if it hits, anything that does strike uses this same value for determining ultimate damage. (Accuracy - Defense + d100 Roll) Let's say that this outcome was a graze. The damage would then be calculated at: Damage Roll - 50% - Damage Threshold - Damage Resistance Percentage. Anything that does not use damage merely omits the Damage Threshold and Resistance subtractions.

 

It is all one roll though. Just think of a miss as a -100% modifier, rather than a separate ranged touch attack type component.

 

#2: No taunts or aggro, but AI may be including some "aggro-lite" evaluations in the upcoming patch.

 

#3: They can move, but any movement or action that had been in process will be interrupted when engaged. Should the engaged character move away, they will be subject to a free "disengagement attack".

[Madscientist]

1.)This means all magic is a ranged touch attac. Like the eldrich blast of the warlock in NWN2.

 

Example with arbitary numbers:

You have a weapon that can poison on hit and you have a damage spell that can poison. Your ranged and melee accurancy is 10, the sword and the spell have no bonus accurancy and you roll a 60 on your d100. Your enemy has a deflection of 10 so you hit. If his fortitude defense is also 10, he will get poisoned, if it is 30 he will get poisened half of the time and if it is 60 he will not be poisened. There is no difference if you use a sword, a bow or the spell.

 

2.) Assuming you have char A, Char B and a monster and each of them can engage exactly one enemy. All use a melee weapon. Char A attacs the monster. The monster attacs Char A. Char B attacs the monster from behind. Now the monster wants to move. Does it get a disengagement attac from both chars?

 

3.) Back to aggro question: The monster attacs the mage. Your fighter uses a successful knockdown on the monster. The mage walks away from the monster without being hit. If the monster stands up and wants to chase the mage it gets a disengagement attac from the fighter.

[Lephys]

1.)This means all magic is a ranged touch attac. Like the eldrich blast of the warlock in NWN2.

 

Example with arbitary numbers:

You have a weapon that can poison on hit and you have a damage spell that can poison. Your ranged and melee accurancy is 10, the sword and the spell have no bonus accurancy and you roll a 60 on your d100. Your enemy has a deflection of 10 so you hit. If his fortitude defense is also 10, he will get poisoned, if it is 30 he will get poisened half of the time and if it is 60 he will not be poisened. There is no difference if you use a sword, a bow or the spell.

For what it's worth, all spells don't target Deflection, whereas that's mainly what physical attacks target.

 

So, in that they can all hit or miss, etc., yes, all spells are like ranged touch attacks. But I wouldn't say there's no difference between a sword or a bow or a spell.

[Chilloutman]

3.) Back to aggro question: The monster attacs the mage. Your fighter uses a successful knockdown on the monster. The mage walks away from the monster without being hit. If the monster stands up and wants to chase the mage it gets a disengagement attac from the fighter.

Correct

[Madscientist]

 

1.)This means all magic is a ranged touch attac. Like the eldrich blast of the warlock in NWN2.

 

Example with arbitary numbers:

You have a weapon that can poison on hit and you have a damage spell that can poison. Your ranged and melee accurancy is 10, the sword and the spell have no bonus accurancy and you roll a 60 on your d100. Your enemy has a deflection of 10 so you hit. If his fortitude defense is also 10, he will get poisoned, if it is 30 he will get poisened half of the time and if it is 60 he will not be poisened. There is no difference if you use a sword, a bow or the spell.

For what it's worth, all spells don't target Deflection, whereas that's mainly what physical attacks target.

 

So, in that they can all hit or miss, etc., yes, all spells are like ranged touch attacks. But I wouldn't say there's no difference between a sword or a bow or a spell.

 

 

What I wanted to say with my example is also, that you use one attac role for all effects of your attac. Because Mr. Magniloquent said: "It is all one roll though. Just think of a miss as a -100% modifier, rather than a separate ranged touch attack type component."

 

For the example with the poison sword means that: If you hit an enemy with a poison sword he will always be poisoned on hit unless his fortidude is higher than his deflection. (In my example you roll 70 against defection for the hit and 70 against fortitude for the poison)

 

my conclusion:

Casters should have a high ranged accurency so their spells crit often. This should make them good archers (or gunners) too.

[Lephys]

Well, they don't have high just-plain-ranged accuracy, but they basically have "high" accuracy via bonuses to individual spells. So, I dunno that it's across the board, but a lot of spells bestow "high" accuracy (not sure exactly how it compares to non-caster accuracy with various weapons and with various talents), but it's relatively higher than base with many spells. It also depends on the defense that the spell targets, I think. Or, it will, eventually. I don't think all those numbers have been tuned much, yet, until they get a solid baseline.

[Madscientist]

I got some more questions:

 

- There are many debuffs. Can defenseses and accurancy go down to negative values?

 

- Does a char die at once when one of his primary attributes is reduced to 0? According to the wiki one status effect (I think it was petryfy) reduces dexterity by 100.

 

- Do you get a penalty when you use a ranged weapon in close combat? In DnD this causes a defense penalty and you can become victim of attacs of opportunety. A bow is very useless when somebody stabs you with a sword.

 

- According to the wiki, being prone reduces deflection. In DnD prone chars are easier to hit with melee weapons but harder to hit with ranged weapons. The DnD effect makes more sense to me.

 

The more I read about this game the more I want to play it. I really like what I see and I will pre order it as a cristmas gift to myself. Of course on gog because I hate DRM. Nobody should need an internet connection for a single player game. There were several times when I could not use a program because somebody elses server had a problem.

[Lephys]

- There are many debuffs. Can defenseses and accurancy go down to negative values?

 

- Does a char die at once when one of his primary attributes is reduced to 0? According to the wiki one status effect (I think it was petryfy) reduces dexterity by 100.

Not sure on those two. I think maybe defense and accuracy can, but I don't know about attributes (such as Dexterity). Seems a little strange for something to have less than no Dexterity.

 

- Do you get a penalty when you use a ranged weapon in close combat? In DnD this causes a defense penalty and you can become victim of attacs of opportunety. A bow is very useless when somebody stabs you with a sword.

 

- According to the wiki, being prone reduces deflection. In DnD prone chars are easier to hit with melee weapons but harder to hit with ranged weapons. The DnD effect makes more sense to me.

True enough. That would be nice if prone folks actually got bonuses to ranged defense.

 

Of course on gog because I hate DRM. Nobody should need an internet connection for a single player game. There were several times when I could not use a program because somebody elses server had a problem.

If Steam isn't your cup of tea, that's fine. However, I'm not sure why any game that doesn't inherently require an internet connection would require one via Steam. I play games on Steam a lot without an internet connection, and they work just fine. I think the very first time you launch a game on Steam, it usually needs an internet connection to finalize installation/verify the game validity or something (which... it's understandable if you don't want to have to do that. But then, if you didn't have an internet connection, how did you download the game in the first place to even be able to launch it? *shrug*). But, if your games on Steam are requiring an internet connection, and they're offline games, you should probably check the Steam forums or something to figure out what's going on. That's not normal.

[Grape_You_In_The_Mouth]

My thoughts are: can't you just watch Sensuki's videos and find out yourself?  He's pratically half of the posts on this forum

[Lephys]

My thoughts are: can't you just watch Sensuki's videos and find out yourself?  He's pratically half of the posts on this forum

Heh. He does have quite a significant contribution of useful text on here.

[Madscientist]

My thoughts are: can't you just watch Sensuki's videos and find out yourself?  He's pratically half of the posts on this forum

 

You mean there is a video that explains most game mechanics without giving spoilers?

 

The only video I watched was somebody going through all options of character creation for over 30 minutes. I did not watch any lets play videos because I don´t want spoilers.

 

I read the wiki but not the parts that are about story, the world or people in the world (such as quest givers or companions).

 

I like to analyze mechanics, but regarding the story I want to let myself surprise of what the game throws at me when I have it in my own hands (or better on my own harddisc, maybe I get an empty box of this game to hold it in my hands).

[Lord Wafflebum]

@MadScientist

 

You'd like Sensuki's videos then. He knows the game mechanics on a very deep operational level. His videos are at least partly aimed at the devs, and if you want an in-depth analysis of mechanics you will not be disappointed chatting it up Sensuki. 

[Madscientist]

I watched his videos and it was very interesting. He can explain things very good. some comments:

 

- The indicator that shows the area of AOE effects has two circles. The difference between the inner and the outer ring seem always the same (he uses different spells with different area shapes and sizes). What does this mean?

 

- Your character portraits are shown on the botton of the screen. In the IE games they were on the side. Can you change the position of UI elements?

 

- The boxes that show a chars buffs, debuffs or active modes seem very tiny to me. In NWN1+2 they were bigger. It is good that they do not cover your portrait like in the IE games.

[PrimeJunta]

I watched his videos and it was very interesting. He can explain things very good. some comments:

 

- The indicator that shows the area of AOE effects has two circles. The difference between the inner and the outer ring seem always the same (he uses different spells with different area shapes and sizes). What does this mean?

 

- Your character portraits are shown on the botton of the screen. In the IE games they were on the side. Can you change the position of UI elements?

 

- The boxes that show a chars buffs, debuffs or active modes seem very tiny to me. In NWN1+2 they were bigger. It is good that they do not cover your portrait like in the IE games.

 

(1) The yellow circle is the spell's base AoE. The green circle is the bonus you get from pumping Int. The zone between the yellow and green circles has no friendly fire (if applicable).

 

(2) Currently, no. Moving them would also require moving the ability/spell pop-up from them, so it's not entirely trivial to change (e.g. via a mod).

 

(3) I don't find them problematic; they're small but you can still see what they are.

[Nakia]

Personally I like the portraits on the bottom.  I found the ones in IE games distracting.  I did have several quibbles about the IE games especially the D&D ones.  The feel to me is more the depth of the games, the story, dialogue, characters, choices not the mechanics.