Critical Damage Balancing/ mitigation....

[Void3dge]

multiplicative bonuses are bad. Burn them!

yep

[gnoemli]

ohm what does this mean if there's something like + 20% firedamage on a weapon?

+20% base damage (in the example NCarver 10) or +20% after all the damage calculation (26.9) ? 

Edited January 13, 2015 by gnoemli

[tdphys]

Revolt!!!!

[tdphys]

Really,  the difference between additive and multiplicative modifiers,  is that getting more small multiplicative modifiers is better then one large one.

 

1.2*1.2*1.2  >  1.6  or   1+ .3 + .3 

 

And , it's easier to eyeball, or mentally sum additive 

bonuses

 

1 + .3 + .2 + .15 = 1.65

 

Then multiply them 

 

1.3 * 1.2 * 1.15  = 1.7939999.... ?

 

To get a damage estimate from your bonuses.

 

Balancing multiplicative modifiers is gonna have to make them smaller and more confusing,  and imho less cool....  kind of like percentile stats vs int ones....  or figuring out DR and DT... etc...

 

With one caveat,  I think base damage mode should be multiplicative

 

weapon damage * mightmodifier    = base damage

 

Everything else should be additive ( I think this is what Josh said on tumblr)

Edited January 13, 2015 by tdphys

[illathid]

With one caveat,  I think base damage mode should be multiplicative

 

weapon damage * mightmodifier    = base damage

 

Everything else should be additive ( I think this is what Josh said on tumblr)

 

So (Weapon Damage*Might)*(Crit+Fine+Sneak Attack+etc.)-DR = Total Damage

 

I'm not sure why you want one thing to get multiplied and not the others. It seems like it makes the calculation harder to manage in your head.

[tdphys]

because thematically I see stats as a more fundamental aspect of damage calculation.  All of the other stuff is situational.

 

I guess the question is... what's base damage?

 

I'd say it's stat + weapon.

[archangel979]

And I would say one thing is as important as another. Being stronger or having a higher quality weapon contribute about the same to your battle skill. Lots of nations of the past dominated only due to having a higher quality weapons.

[tdphys]

I'd agree with you there...  and I'd be fine with including the quality of weapon as a multiplicative multiplier.

 

In other words,  multiply the physical reality of the damage,   the things that don't change per hit...  or per encounter  (stats, weapon bonus).  

 

And leave circumstantial stuff as additive (crits and buffs, engagement bonus).

 

My preference for design,  would be to calculate all the initial damage  , might bonus, weapons bonus, min damage and rolls  and armor reduction  as integer values,  like might gives +1 bonus  damage for every level past 10  ( I'd add a +1 dt bonus for every 2 const or so ).  This would allow a person to get a quick hang of what base damage would be just from looking at stats, weapons and armor  values.     Then I'd have additive-multiplicative modifiers on the net damage for things like crits,  class powers, buffs  etc .  (as opposed to multiplicative-multiplicative modifiers  )

 

I think that such a system would be much easier to balance,  and easier to comprehend for the player.

Edited January 14, 2015 by tdphys

[Sensuki]

I'm also okay with Might multiplying base damage, same with the weapon property like Fine/Exceptional.

[Hormalakh]

Thats fine as long as deflection/intelligence works the same way.

 

and accuracy/dex

Edited January 14, 2015 by Hormalakh

[tdphys]

Thats fine as long as deflection/intelligence works the same way.

 

and accuracy/dex

 

I really like how the to hit mechanics work in POE.   I also think that percent chance is easily understood by most people.   It's a better abstraction then the D20 with everything combined with dexterity , strength , armor etc all rolled into one die roll, though for pnp that makes sense.   So there you go...

 

Percentile to hit.

 

Integer base damage values (stats and weapon bonuses) and damage reduction

 

additive mulitpliers for crits,backstabs and buffs on net damage.

Edited January 14, 2015 by tdphys

[archangel979]

I'd agree with you there...  and I'd be fine with including the quality of weapon as a multiplicative multiplier.

 

In other words,  multiply the physical reality of the damage,   the things that don't change per hit...  or per encounter  (stats, weapon bonus).  

 

And leave circumstantial stuff as additive (crits and buffs, engagement bonus).

 

My preference for design,  would be to calculate all the initial damage  , might bonus, weapons bonus, min damage and rolls  and armor reduction  as integer values,  like might gives +1 bonus  damage for every level past 10  ( I'd add a +1 dt bonus for every 2 const or so ).  This would allow a person to get a quick hang of what base damage would be just from looking at stats, weapons and armor  values.     Then I'd have additive-multiplicative modifiers on the net damage for things like crits,  class powers, buffs  etc .  (as opposed to multiplicative-multiplicative modifiers  )

 

I think that such a system would be much easier to balance,  and easier to comprehend for the player.

And I want 0 multiplicative

[illathid]

Yeah, I dont really see any reason to make any of damage bonuses multiplicative. Plus if you did have some as multiplicative and some as additive you'd need to label them differently, it would be misleading if an additive modifier and a multiplicative modifier were labeled the same way.

[wertu234]

My two cents is that all multipliers should be additive instead of multiplicative. It should cut down on the importance of crits and and reduction given by grazes which I think are too imporant right now.

[archangel979]

THANK YOU OE for fixing critical hits!

 

what am I talking about?

Here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/pillars-of-eternity-beta-release-thread.93694/page-301#post-3700350

[archangel979]

Now we just need to get them to increase spellcaster (and wizards especially) survivability and crowd control power.

[Luckmann]

THANK YOU OE for fixing critical hits!

 

what am I talking about?

Here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/pillars-of-eternity-beta-release-thread.93694/page-301#post-3700350

 

Oh, look, more information from SomethingAwful that really should be conveyed through the official forums, shocker.

 

That being said, fixing percentage modifiers to be additive instead of multiplicative should solve a lot of wonkyness.

[illathid]

Well so that no one has to sully themselves by going to RPG Codex:

 

 

This is all part of the tuning process. Other notable changes we've been playing with locally:

* Crits are now 101+ (were 96+)
* Grazes are on 16-50 (were 6-50)
* Misses are on anything below 16 (were below 6)
* Crits add 25% to damage instead of 50%. This might seem strange, but with DR it usually feels much more significant. However, we may tune this yet again since...
* Yesterday, Tim fixed a bunch of exponential growth functions with damage multipliers. Percentage modifiers were always supposed to be additive with each other but many were not. Rogues could get especially ludicrous once they had five, six, or seven modifiers.

The net result is that damage output is more stable, having a lower Accuracy than the target defense is worse (since Grazes are in a narrower band), and we don't wind up with quadratic rogues.

 

 

I'm very happy about the change to damage calculation. I'll be interested to see how the changed miss/graze/hit/crit ranges end up working out. Not sure about the change to the crit multiplier though...

Edited January 17, 2015 by illathid

[Shevek]

I would make might multiplative and everything else additive or just make everything additive.

[tdphys]

So long Quadratic Rogue, we barely knew thee...

 

I really like the additive balancing and graze interval reduction.

 

Really looking forward to this game... Looks like I know where my birthday moneys going in April.