The No Bad Choices Thread

[PrimeJunta]

@Kveldulf and others: I don't like hard restrictions on gear. That kind of "gamist nonsense" irritates me far more than, say, the recovery speed penalty in P:E. 

 

If I wanted to design something more realistic with a mechanical trade-off for armor, I'd add a strong in-combat fatigue mechanic. Moving or meleeing in heavier armor runs up your fatigue meter faster, which puts penalties on your actions. This can be offset by training (talents) or innate ability (stats), and fatigue can be suppressed or restored by spells and potions.

 

Note that this would be different from the "strategic fatigue" in P:E which forces periodic rests.

Edited April 3, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Monte Carlo]

I don't give 2E AD&D any sort of pass - I think it's a fairly poor system. All game systems have their own internal logic. I'm not being inherently conservative or knee-jerk, I love systems like SPECIAL, I got my head around the cluster-procreation that was Dragon age 1 and I want to like this.

 

It just won't let me.

 

All of the systems grind at the edges of each other. On the one hand we have 'no bad decisions' and on the other we have such clearly defined roles, a la MMORPGs we're shoe-horned into certain builds.

 

I'm struggling in combat in this game not because it's hard, but because the systems (to) me make such little sense.

[Alweth]

I generally agree with the OP. Here are a few thoughts though...

- Regarding armor: I'm not sure it's as bad as you make it out to be. If you're going with a complete tank/DPSer strategy, which makes perfect sense, and probably is the best strategy, why wouldn't you have an armor setup like you described? If your strategy is to not get hit, why would you wear armor? For people who use other strategies, though, this system helps enable them. Also, in my experience, it's not always possible to keep all your characters from getting hit, unless you know everything about the fight ahead of time, or reload fights a lot. In those cases it's nice to have some medium armor in there somewhere, to keep your characters alive long enough for help or something. I like to have Kana wearing heavyish armor so that he can run interference when enemies slip by, since I don't think it affects chant speed. Having said that, I think this could be fixed by tweaking the attribute system. The BB system for armor does sound better than what they have now. Too bad they changed it.

- Regarding talents and abilites, I agree. I also think more options would have helped. Often times it doesn't feel like you have more than one or two good talent options. Some talents need to be made better, but I also think more interesting talents would have been nice.

- Weapons: Generally agree, but (maybe I don't have enough high-might characters) in my game only slow, hard-hitting weapons seem to do a significant amount of damage. Everything else seems to hit in the single-digits most of the time. I would think this is the direct result of the DR system.

- Stats: Again I agree, although I actually think the armor issue and stat issue could be solved in one blow by tweaking the stat system. Here's the stat system I'm currently favoring:
 

• Strength: +Melee Damage, +Bow Damage (not crossbows), +Fortitude, -Armor Penalty*
• Constitution: +Health, +Endurance, +Fortitude, +Deflection, +Duration of Abilities, +Heal
• Dexterity: +Melee Accuracy, +Non-Spell Action Speed, +Reflexes, +Deflection, +Disengagement Defense
• Perception: +Ranged Accuracy, +Spell Accuracy, +Reflexes, +Buff AoE, +Max Ranged Attack Range
• Intelligence: +Spell Speed, +Offensive AoE, +Duration of Abilities, +Will, +Interrupt, +Crit Damage**
• Resolve: +Spell Damage, +Wand Damage, +Concentration, +Will, +Endurance as a percentage of Health, +Max Ranged Spell Range

*Armor Penalty: based on the heaviness of the armor: -Combat Movement Speed, -Non-Spell Action Speed, -Reflexes, +Combat Fatigue Rate, -Sneaking (not Searching)
Armor penalty would be structured so that people with average strength would be able to wear light armor with no penalty at all.

**Crit Damage is a flat bonus to damage rather than a percentage

Another option for stats that I think would be good would be a talent-like system at character creations where you would have a number of points to spend on character attributes which would have mechanical and roleplay impact, with the basics like "Weak, Muscular, Very Muscular", and normal ones like "Skinny, Fat", "Ugly, Good-looking", "Big, Petite", "Tall, Short", "Unfit, Fit", "Sickly, Healthy", and exotic ones like "Gentle Soul, Forceful Soul" (a Might parallel). Most of these would have both positive and negative effects. For example, being Very Muscular would make you strong, but you would have a lower Reflex Defense due to muscle binding. If you wanted to be someone who hits hard and was flexible, you could take the Very Fit attribute, but that wouldn't come with as high of a Fortitude bonus as Very Muscular. You could also offset the Reflex penalty of Very Muscular by adding Very Agile, but then you're running out of attribute points or you might have to take a mostly negative one like Stupid. Everyone who didn't have an attribute affecting something would be assumed to be average in that category.

[PrimeJunta]

@MC: Are you actually trying to understand the systems? Or are you just throwing your hands in the air and going "too complicated! too complicated!"

 

'Cuz I'm finding the combat enjoyable, varied, and challenging, and not at all like how you describe it.

 

I think it's at least possible that if you did make the effort to read up on the systems, experiment with how they interact, and then attempt to apply them effectively, you too could find this fun. Basically it sounds to me like you're doing your best not to make this fun for you, despite claiming that you're trying to enjoy it.

 

Start here:

 

(1) How is an attack resolved? What determines damage and duration?

(2) What are the defenses?

(3) What are the status effects, and what are their effects on the defenses?

(4) How do I apply the above knowledge to murder my enemies with verve and aplomb?

Edited April 3, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[PrimeJunta]

@Alweth, what strategy other than tank/damage would you recommend?

[Monte Carlo]

 

 

Basically it sounds to me like you're doing your best not to make this fun for you, despite claiming that you're trying to enjoy it.

 

Why in the name of Crom would I do that?

[PrimeJunta]

 

Basically it sounds to me like you're doing your best not to make this fun for you, despite claiming that you're trying to enjoy it.

 

Why in the name of Crom would I do that?

 

I don't know! Wet blankets puzzle the hell out of me, but there's always one out there somewhere.

[Hatred]

 To anyone who says you can do 'acrobatics' in full plate ... I say no not really. You can make a modern reconstruction of something which looks somewhat like full plate and then do somewhat limited acrobatics sure. Full plate isn't something you can be an acrobat in. I agree it isn't so heavy that you cannot move or fight (if that was the case no one would have used it eh) but it is heavy enough that no one would spend a whole day in it unless they were getting ready for an imminent battle. Certainly no one has any records of anyone traveling around the countryside with full plate on of their own free will. No historical precedent at all. I actually wish they would do away with Plate in these kinds of games because of just how silly it is and how boring it is too.

[Alweth]

@PrimeJunta I've heard that all tanks with healing auras works really well. You can also do a tank + off-tank strategy (which is what I use) where my off-tank is my main-character Paladin who's tanky enough (due to tanky stats) that he can afford to melee one or two guys with his two-handed sword while wearing almost anything from light to heavy armor (currently wearing light). When he's wearing lighter armor he relies on his increased DPS to increase his survivability. Typically he's tanking the creature my DPSers are targeting anyway, so he doesn't take that many hits. Is this strategy as good as a straight-up tank/DPSers strategy? I don't think so, but this is my first time playing and I kind of forced my character into this role because I didn't know what I was doing, and it's working fine on Hard.

[Katarack21]

My off tank is a split tank/DPS build who leans a little more tanky in his stats (specifically a high-Might, high-Con, high-Resolve barbarian) but a little more DPS in talents.

It's a...unique....build, but so far it's working quite well for the intended purpose (tanking whatever Eder isn't).

[dmhancock]

I agree with a lot of things in this thread, I'm also really enjoying it.

 

What about, armour specific, if heavier armours reduced deflection slightly? I suppose that would be similar to the dexterity limit in never winter nights etc... I wasn't a fan, just throwing it out there.

[Longknife]

I think on stats and armor it's important to note that this is practically a truth of reality. What I mean is, I can theoretically make, for example, a Cipher with 3's in Constitution and Resolve while maxing out every other stat, and I would get nothing but benefit from doing so so long as I keep people off him. The same can be said of him wearing robes or running around naked.  It's ideal, but the risk is that if anything breaks past my fighters and so much as touches him, he's going to go down quick, and then the conventional average-joe Cipher would be superior in that scenario because he can at least tank a bit, buy time, and continue attacking while being attacked.

 

It's a sort of risk-vs-reward mentality where objectively yes, the build you named provides the highest potential result, and so long as things go according to plan, you've named the most efficient setup imagineable.

 

 

It starts to be less picture perfect when the game provides scenarios in which keeping things picture perfect is not feasible or next to impossible. Then suddenly it's a case of that Cipher being superior for most fights, but inferior for the tougher ones, aka half as long, twice as bright.

 

I don't really know a feasible way to fix this by tweaking stats because regardless of how you tweak them, a Meta will prevail. In that regard, I don't know that I would name this a flaw of the armor and stat systems, but rather a flaw of the content encountered. This to me suggests an effort needs to be made to try and make battles more diverse and more challenging. Perhaps tweak AI on bow users for example to be more liable to target casters in the back and prod their defenses. Perhaps provide a decent amount of instances in game in which you are approached from behind or from all sides, making protecting your back units a little more difficult. Such variety would create more demand for compromise and middle-ground builds, as the middle ground builds where the Cipher does get medium armor and a decent amount of Resolve are the ones holding a plan B card. 

 

It's tough to say really, but I'm just not sure if there's a way they could feasibly fix those two problems otherwise.

[Kveldulf]

 To anyone who says you can do 'acrobatics' in full plate ... I say no not really. You can make a modern reconstruction of something which looks somewhat like full plate and then do somewhat limited acrobatics sure. Full plate isn't something you can be an acrobat in. I agree it isn't so heavy that you cannot move or fight (if that was the case no one would have used it eh) but it is heavy enough that no one would spend a whole day in it unless they were getting ready for an imminent battle. Certainly no one has any records of anyone traveling around the countryside with full plate on of their own free will. No historical precedent at all. I actually wish they would do away with Plate in these kinds of games because of just how silly it is and how boring it is too.

 

Well as far as any historical texts depicting the long term use of wearing armour in the field/theatre, that's up for debate, and it heavily depends on the period, endurance training and type of harness. If you are speaking of a full harness, sure, you're not going to be wearing that as long, but when you start going into 3/4 harness, thats a different story. Even today's modern infantry carry more than what mid to late period plate was weighing (thought they were shorter on average, but still in ratio, is dramatically less - I reckon). You're right in that you're ability to do hand stands and cart wheels will be hindered, but by how much depends on a few things. Here's a video of a fellow doing hand stands in milanese plate:

 

As I side note, Hollywood and a Twainism has really portrayed armour in a very very poor light. Its all too common to see 'suits of armor' erroneous depicting articulation and range of movement, hideously or worse: some would even decapitate the wearer.

 

Oh and here's a great video documentary from met museum on misconceptions of plate & chivalry... a bit lengthy but enlightening:

[Monte Carlo]

I gave my 2H barbarian padded armour and switched him to hatchet and sabre, dual-wielding. He has highish Might and not-bad Dex. As soon as I put him in leather armour I notice impact on performance  - the 30% for light armours seems unduly harsh.

 

He now chops things up a lot better. The two-handed sword is just too slow and doesn't do chunky damage.

[InfiniteEternity]

I think we can all agree that the stat system is a bit...sub par.

 

Stats like Might that give overall +dam% and Intelligence that give +AoE to *all* abillities...doesnt make any sense.

 

 

The stat system is too hybrid. This is why people love the classes and the strengths around them.

[JFSOCC]

Personally I'm surprised at the lack of opportunities to build around attack speed and interrupt. My rogue might get to that point when she reaches level 12 where interrupting is more of a viable strategy. I Also expected more ways to debuff the enemy as a rogue, though luckily my party is helping out there.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Interesting point, SOC, I wonder how this system will scale to high and (even) epic levels?

 

Because of course meta-theory-crafting will explode because you'll start planning from level one.

[Caerdon]

Stats

 

Fail. The intent was to reduce the incentive to minmax and make every ability useful for every class. The outcome is that now there are pretty much two optimal stat distributions -- one for DPS characters, another for tanks. DPS takes MIG, INT, DEX, tanks take CON, PER, RES. Support characters and some gimmick hybrid builds can tweak these a little, but that's about it. I.e. it ended up in the same minmaxing place AD&D started from, except that now there's no optimal stat distribution for each class, but for each build. 

 

With all the iterations the stats have gone through, by now I'm kinda convinced that a six-stat system is just plain bad. There's no way to make one that's at the same time intuitive, non-minmaxy, and genuinely impactful. As it is it doesn't really bother me but considering all the angst the discussion caused, they might as well have gone with STR-CON-DEX-INT-WIS-CHA and left it at that.

 

I think you're being just a bit overly critical here. Yes, there are definitely a couple optimal ways to distribute stats - however, deviating from that optimum is not nearly as devastating as it was in IE games. A tank might not benefit from MIG the way it benefits from CON, but it still benefits from it. As a result, min-maxers will still min-max, but other ways of building a character can still be used to build perfectly viable characters that don't actually waste any points.

 

That said, the stats definitely have some problems, but what surprises me is that the majority of people (and devs, apparently) still can't see what the true, underlying reason for those problems is (my opinion, of course, but I don't think I'm wrong here).

 

You see, no matter how much you move bonuses around, no matter how you rename stats, there will be min-maxing. Why? Because if stat A is better than stat B for class/build X, then a point spent in A is always more beneficial than a point spent in B. It's as simple as that. I said that about the early beta, and it's still just as true.

 

The only way to fix that is to make stats give you diminishing returns. In simple terms, going from 5 to 6 in a stat should give you more bang for the buck (either by giving larger bonuses or having smaller "cost") than going from 18 to 19. This way even if stat A is more preferable for you than stat B, there would come a point at which you wouldn't want to raise A on B's expense anymore. A major benefit of this system is that there'd be no obvious threshold at which point this happens, everyone had to go with what they prefer on a personal level instead of a no-brainer, clear-cut best build.

[Monte Carlo]

They should have adapted S.P.E.C.I.A.L and gone classless.

 

Said it ages ago.

 

T'would have been all sorts of awesome.

[gkathellar]

You see, no matter how much you move bonuses around, no matter how you rename stats, there will be min-maxing.

 

That's not the problem. The problem is that there is only one kind of minmaxing, and it is unintuitive and dumb.

 

As for IE game tanks, PJ is being slightly disingenuous. Even super-armoured -15 AC characters in ToB take constant damage. IE game tanks require a tradeoff of Hit Points / damage output / AC and resistances to survive.

 

... that's mostly just because Thac0 started scaling faster than AC once you get into ultra-high levels. Very simple math issue, having little to do with the structure of gameplay. If anything, tanking can be at its most effective by ToB by using the plethora "exotic" defenses such as Stoneskin and Mirror Image, which don't interface with numerical stats in any meaningful way.

 

On the other hand, for 90% of SoA, AC remains totally relevant and AC tanking is a viable strategy against lots of opponents.

[Hatred]

They should have adapted S.P.E.C.I.A.L and gone classless.

 

Said it ages ago.

 

T'would have been all sorts of awesome.

 I feel like the maybe could have gone for a compromise between fallout style and classes. I definitely feel like the weapons and armour  would be a lot better off fallout style. Having stats effect the damage you do with a weapon is a slippery slope.

[Ondb]

I would add:

 

Resting, camping 

FAIL

the mechanic is just hurting Wizard (druid, priest). On its own the traditional casters and their spells are OK, the problem is that you are auto-attacking 90% of the time. The limited resources are just hurting them too badly.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Ondb

[PrimeJunta]

@Ondb Whatever you may think of the resting mechanic, that doesn't have much to do with the "no bad choices" design intent. Also, there's another thread for that.

[Caerdon]

 

You see, no matter how much you move bonuses around, no matter how you rename stats, there will be min-maxing.

 

That's not the problem. The problem is that there is only one kind of minmaxing, and it is unintuitive and dumb.

 

Well, I think all min-maxing is dumb, but whatever floats your boat.

[Katarack21]

THACO! Goddammit, do we really have to go around spitting out THACO and **** again?

I kind of want to burn anybody who asks me to compute THACO ever again. >.<

Edited April 3, 2015 by Katarack21