POE1 has a serious lack of defense for finesse types

[PizzaSHARK]

 

One way to balance between armor and deflection would be, as 1varangian pointed out, to introduce a deflection penalty to armor, but in addition rework how deflection as a defense works. Consider that you're being attacked, and need to dodge and parry blows that are made against you. The faster you get attacked, the more difficult it becomes to retain your balance and keep deflecting the blows. This could be simulated with a character getting a stacking deflection penalty every time he or she gets attacked, and have that penalty cleared if he or she gets sufficient breathing room to recover, ie isn't being targeted by attacks for X amount of time (this could be influenced by dexterity). With this sort of system, the heavy armor would be superior against weaker opponents with faster attacks, and multiple opponents obviously, but high deflection and mobility would be superior against single foes wielding a slow big-ass sword. You could then build your defense around being swift and agile or being heavily armored, allowing for both styles to shine while making them distinct enough for the choice to be meaningful.

 

EDIT: another thing this approach achieves would be that when making a character, you wouldn't have to focus on BOTH, which would give you a lot more room in designing your characters, and it would make it easier for every character to have some way of being able to stand their ground, freeing up a lot of room for different party compositions that don't necessarily have to include a highly specialized front-liner.

An easy solution would be to impose a cumulative Deflection penalty for each opponent beyond the first who have engaged you in melee. In addition to flanking.

 

That would also make hordes of low level minions a relevant threat for high level characters. Especially those in light armor. Most RPGs face the problem of low level foes becoming completely irrelevant later in the game and high level PCs have to be challenged with lore-stretching amounts of powerful monsters where giants become as common as goblins. A system where low level monsters in large numbers can be threatening for high level PCs would be better.

 

 

The problem there, though, is that these low level creatures still have low level stats.  You can throw 40 goblins at a high level Wizard, but they're still all going to melt when he flings a Fireball at them or the Barbarian starts cleaving through them.

[1varangian]

And roasting them will be very satisfying but still cost you resources.

[Ninjamestari]

The problem there, though, is that these low level creatures still have low level stats.  You can throw 40 goblins at a high level Wizard, but they're still all going to melt when he flings a Fireball at them or the Barbarian starts cleaving through them.

 

 

That depends on spell interrupt mechanisms; perhaps concentration checks could also be made to suffer a stacking temporary short term penalty every time a roll is made, so that if you're swarmed you really won't be able to get any spells out. Also, if flanking penalties were cumulative instead of just a boolean switch, swarms of low level monsters could be made into a relevant threat even at higher levels.

[DigitalCrack]

 

 

I think what QuiteGoneJin means is that there's nothing like "Dodging" where you don't use shield or weapon to parry, but using your speed, perception and agility to dodge and evade melee attacks instead. So, if you would want to carry the Tyranny stuff over to PoE2 you would have to invent a talent or ability that lets you use reflex instead of deflection against melee attacks. As QuiteGoneJin said, this would be a bit OP. Once you create such mechanics where you can dump one defense completely players will abuse this to create OP-builds - which is understandable.

 

I personally found the mechanic of tyranny quite interesting where you could either increase your defensive conversions (crit to hit, hit to graze, graze to miss) with certain talents and also with certain "light" items while heavy stuff gave you more damage reduction but no conversion and could be boosted with other talents (making you less slow like Armored Grace does).

 

I could also imagine a talent like "dodging" or "evasion" for nimble builds that'll give you an evasion bonus for all defenses, based on the type or armor. So basically wearing clothes would give you the full bonus while heavy armor would give you zero.

 

We have the rogue ability that raises the chance to avoid attacks which target reflex. But only AoE attacks target refles in PoE, so it's not too useful. Something like that but for deflection would be nice.

The simplest way to deal with this would be to implement a Pathfinder-like system of touch AC, and have certain spells and attacks target touch AC rather than total AC. (Well, it'd be Deflection here, but you get the idea.)

 

This is a balancing factor for a lot of things, though it can be silly at times (a pistol resolves against a great wyrm dragon's godawful touch AC rather than its formidable total AC.) Because touch AC is derived from, among other things, a character's Dexterity bonus to AC, this tends to mean that light and nimble characters have a relatively high touch AC while the Fighter stomping around in full plate probably has a rather low touch AC.

 

This just ties into Pillars being perhaps a little too simplified, though. I'm not intimately familiar with 5E, but maybe they did something there as well. I know 5E is said to be a lot more accessible than other editions.

I like this and its a similar Idea to what many are wanting in this thread. A way to have heavy armor keep its relevance but give light armor users a better chance in melee. General idea being light armor users may not get hit as often as a heavy armor user but when they do its business as normal and your gonna take appropriate damage for light armor deflection. A touch deflection or similar idea is the perfect way to go. Edited April 11, 2017 by DigitalCrack

[1varangian]

I always felt like the "graze to hit" and "hit to crit" and similar modifiers were unnecessary additions to the miss/graze/hit/crit system. Modifiers to accuracy and defenses already accomplish similar results. With these extra layers of modifiers on top it is quite difficult to get a feeling just how much of an impact they really have.

 

DnD games work just fine being as simple as hit or miss. The feedback this gives to the player about the relative power level between their characters and their opponents is a lot clearer. I would only add damage reduction on top of that because of the tactical depth it adds to combat.