Peewee Mod Fork 1.3.2

[Markus Ramikin]

That's a lot of good news! Will definitely give it a whirl once it's out.

I've simply stripped out any magic bonus to buff spells.

Ah, so they can't be handled individually.

tiers of spells corresponding roughly to magic levels

I quite like that idea. It definitely plays well with what I was talking about earlier, about the higher level spells becoming preferable once your magic is strong enough.

So no armor will ever protect more than 45%.

Fking knew it had to be something like that. I think I even posted about this not long ago.

However, it would probably be a bad idea to fix it, without upping enemy damage correspondingly. (And remember if you're reducing damaged suffered from 55% to 10%, that's more than 5x effective hitpoints, so that base damage increase for later enemies would have to be big). Enemy damage is already a joke as it is, at higher levels.

Infinite map fixed? Great.

If you were to do the same activity against all of the monsters, you'd gain such a rediculously high level that your hours of bashing would be worth it. I'm surprised you stuck with it long enough to get to level 7.

Hm. I don't know what you imagined I did. I generally just walked up to an enemy and did 1 steal attempt, 1 backstabb, then finished him off with a few fast hits, this took moments. Sure was faster than waiting out the aggro for a second backstab.

Thief activities do give a moderate XP boost but this was not the problem.

I'm level 16 now, doing third map of Lost City.

Now, picking a door is currently 4k xp - per try, and some secret doors can take a lot of tries! But okay, those are very limited opportunities.

Priam's guard gives me about 4k exp for a steal, 4k exp for a backstab, and 700 xp for a normal hit. 9k for just killing him, 13k for steal+kill. And that's if I only steal once. If someone wanted to farm...

I'll trust you that daggers were a factor too, but just sayin'.

Looking forward to the new installer!

[peewee_RotA]

Now, picking a door is currently 4k xp - per try

This requires a stealth of 120. I'm guessing you have all of the stealth rings. I've made changes to the xp bonus, but min-maxing characters breaks game balance. That's kind of the point of min-maxing.

[Markus Ramikin]

Uhm. In any other game, this wouldn't be min-maxing, it would be "normal playing". Wearing equipment appropriate to your class. You're supposed to do that, and when that breaks the game, something's not right. Min-maxing is when you take away from some areas to improve others, like, well, what you did with character statistics to create your new classes (80 magic stat at level 1, hello? ).

Not that I wanna argue definitions. And yeah, I only need 2 stealth rings at level 16, but I did wear 4 of them around quest 2-3 I think. I'm looking forward to seeing what you meant by "Fixed."

BTW, does translucency/invisibility help at 120 stealth? Is translucency the same as invisibility?

[peewee_RotA]

Made some more changes to help with the extra classes. Now you can rightclick a skill rune to see what it does. Also made another change to the confuse spell to make monsters flee for a short time.

Btw, I did make the suggested changes but I'm clarifying the difference of approach. (Also since we both have "just the facts" types of personalities I'm enjoying the conversation greatly. If I seem to respond harshly, it's just me being a typical robot.)

I think the thing we're missing here is that fun and balance are opposite ends of the spectrum. This can be argued back and forth but fact of the matter is that Paizo, Fate, and Apocalypse world DEVASTATED WotC's grip on the RPG world by understanding this. Minecraft indirectly caused high level COD developers to be fired. Angry birds made more money than many AAA titles. And words with friends changed gaming as we know it with no real effort to prevent cheating.

Balance and detailed knowledge is for competition, unbalance and imagination is for recreation.

Obviously players need a challenge, but the fact that you're pick pocketing monsters at level 16, instead of doing nothing but bashing them with sticks like the original, is not a result of balancing numbers. There's some fine tuning to be had but I think there's plenty of mitigating factors that it's not a clear cut case of broken vs fair.

As for invisibility. Yes, it has a minor effect at that point and a much greater effect to players with low stealth. The original would only grant true invisibility with translucency and invisibility both active. It was possible with a really high stealth score (about 100) and invisibility but hard to achieve. Since the frequency of stealth checks, activities that trigger agro, ability to lose track of a target, and other target finding code has been changed... 120 stealth is very close to being invisible, but not completely effective.

[Markus Ramikin]

Yeah, I'm perfectly fine with an honest conversation like this.

Hm, I can't say I find your balance vs fun dychotomy convincing. The more unbalanced a game is, the more quickly it becomes boring, and this is true for single player as much as anything else. In W40k Dawn of War there's an Emperor mod, which lets you play a super unit that can obliterate entire armies. Very cool, definitely had to try it... but of course I played with it for 20 minutes and then never touched it again.

A game has to present a modicum of challenge or it's pointless. At least that's how it is with me. Maybe there are players out there - maybe even many of them - who don't care about that and they'll happily play a thief who basically makes the game look like it's set to Enemy AI = Off, or who gains xp at a rate far exceeding other classes.

But if you believe what you said, then this is a difference of preferences, so I guess we won't reach agreement by discussing logic or facts. Just to give you an idea of how much for me balance equals fun, let me link to a changelog of changes I made to someone else's mod to another game: here.

In any case, even if you're not aiming to improve balance, I would have thought that it goes without saying that tweaks to a game should not break what balance already exists in vanilla.

_{Disclaimah: all the above (and probably below) is of course written with the understanding that this is your personal mod and I respect that.}

[peewee_RotA]

(80 magic stat at level 1, hello? ).

I think you should try out the necromancer. The starting stats are no indication of how the class works.


Also, I'm definitely starting to realize how important the later level gameplay is. We've all beaten the original game a hundred times and are looking to do more with characters after the dragons are dead... not just keep restarting new characters. That being said I've implemented a XP penalty for dying much like some suggestions on the forum. (I also laid the groundwork for a system that gives the players a limited number of lives to complete each level, but I feel like the xp penalty is more fun.)

Here's the installer with all of the latest changes.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B53xwpRlaEsdTVQwYU1kU1B1ZGM

I'll update the OP shortly.

[Markus Ramikin]

Yay, installer.

Idea, not sure how good: would it be possible to make it so that only 1, or perhaps 2, sources of a given bonus (fire damage, strength, stealth, whatever) can be active at a time? This might make balancing easier and levelling progression more meaningful.

Also, small request: could your change list be a little more detailed on damage types vs armor types?

[peewee_RotA]

Also, small request: could your change list be a little more detailed on damage types vs armor types?

I'm not entire sure which damage types your talking about so here's info elemental types, special types, and monster type reduction
Special

• Push/Pull - Normal
• Berserk - Normal with fixed targeting problem
• Dispel Magic - Removes immunities
• Earthbind - Normal
• Confuse - Causes monsters to flee for a short time
• Slow - stops flying and causes slower monster ticks

Elemental

• Fire - Normal (+25% damage)
• Acid - Reduces melee damage by 20%, minimum of 2
• Poison - Normal
• Electricity - Normal (+25% damage for chain. +50% damage for plate)
• Mana Drain - Increases time between missile attacks for a period of time
• Piercing - Normal (~+50% damage for chain and ~+100% damage for plate. NOTE: Monsters have an armor type but they don't actually have damage reduction for armor. They just have massively increased HP to simulate armor.)

I've not written out the following before because it's way more fun to just discover these things through trial and error. That's how every single other classic RPGs made you figure it out... so I'm really kind of sad to spell it out.
Monster Types

• Undead - Double damage for blunt weapons, 1/3 damage for swords
• Plate Armor - +25% damage for axes, Half damage for swords
• Vs. Large - Double damage for Axes, Half damage for daggers

[peewee_RotA]

Keeping up the changelog of in development features...

- fixed a multiplayer bug with damage.
- stopped  splash damage from affecting the caster when casting special damage type spells
- added bonus to swords attacking low armor/no armor monsters
- fine tuned existing monster type damage reduction
- added base code to add "charm" features later (lingering effects on monsters)
- improved berserk chance to almost 100% by giving it a "charm" features
- created "Factions" so monsters are less likely to target like types
- Added XP small bonus for special damage type spells
- Rewrote monster type damage reduction to be easier to update
- Added healing area of effect for Rejuvinate and Heal spells
- Added "splat" feedback for special damage types and area of effect spells/skills.
- Lowered armor penalties
- Doubled push/pull power

[Markus Ramikin]

stopped  splash damage from affecting the caster when casting special damage type spells

Good idea! Would be nice to be able to cast slow on fast melee chasers, such as Priam's Guards and shadows, without risk of slowing yourself as well.


Have you actually played your version of the Paladin lately? If you haven't, I'd like to report that the armor maluses aren't really working out well, much as I predicted earlier. I feel like I am better off just running around in leathers instead of my intended class armor! At least until Adaminium, which I want for the acid reduction, and which I get late enough not to care about maluses.
By wearing, say, steel plate armor (gained in Q2),
* I gain 11-12% damage reduction compared to steel leathers (36% - 13% stated on screen, *1/2 in the actual calculations). This is nothing.
* I take a significant hit to speed (I would be okay with this alone)
* I take a significant hit to magic, so I can't buff myself up with Wolf Speed, and casting a magic map or blood shield is a PITA, so is knocking on doors etc...
...unless I drop the armor every time I want to buff myself or knock on doors. Which is annoying, and it's bad game design when a game encourages you to do that sort of a thing.
So plate and chainmail seem pretty much worthless to a caster-melee mixed class like the paladin. I count that as a Bad Thing.

I see two ways to improve the situation:
1. Nix the magic malus.
The speed malus is plenty powerful on its own, considering the mechanics of Speed in this game.
Also the malus makes me want to use Wolf Speed, which is a good thing.
2. Keep the malus, but make the armor worth it.
- I'd make armor give the stated absorption, not stated/2.
- given that, I'd also rework the armors so that even iron plate armor gave no less than 50% (making it worth wearing plate, even in early game where the %s are lowest but the maluses hit the most painfully), but adaminium I'd nerf to 80%, and everything else should be in between.
- then I'd increase enemy late-game damage x2 - x2.5, to balance that out.

Any solution that keeps the magic malus should involve some way to stop the player from going around it. Make it impossible to change armors in-game, for example.

I won't keep harping on this topic, but I thought I'd give my thoughts now that I've put in more time into the class.

[peewee_RotA]

stopped  splash damage from affecting the caster when casting special damage type spells

Good idea! Would be nice to be able to cast slow on fast melee chasers, such as Priam's Guards and shadows, without risk of slowing yourself as well.

Have you actually played your version of the Paladin lately? If you haven't, I'd like to report the that magic and speed maluses - at least taken together - aren't really working out well, much as I predicted earlier. I feel like I am better off just running around in leathers instead of my intended class armor! At least until Adaminium, which I want for the acid reduction, and which I get late enough not to care about maluses.
By wearing, say, steel plate armor (Q2), I gain
* 11-12% damage reduction compared to steel leathers (36% - 13% stated on screen, *1/2 in the actual calculations)
* I take a significant hit to speed (I would be okay with this alone)
* I take a significant hit to magic, so I can't buff myself up with Wolf Speed, and casting a magic map or blood shield is a PITA, so is knocking on doors etc...
...unless I drop the armor every time I want to buff myself or knock on doors. Which is annoying, and it's bad game design when a game encourages you to do that sort of a thing.

So unless armors become as good as stated (and of course enemy damage would have to be upped to balance that out), plate and chainmail become pretty much worthless to a caster-melee mixed class like the paladin. I count that as a Bad Thing.

I'll definitely give it a try.

[peewee_RotA]

I have an idea I'm chewing around for making the armor more significant. If monsters all had an attack types than certain armors would provide more protection from certain attacks. For example, plate armor would protect more from blade attacks but other armors would protect more from blunt attacks.

This would instantly lead into changing the way that magic shields work. Probably having little effect to physical damage but great effect to magical damage.

I hesitate to make the change because monsters don't have too much verity in actual weapon types... but I see room for small advantages. Like plate protecting slightly more against fire damage. So it may be a big change with very little in result. Plus melee enemies at the end of the game damage through armor.

[peewee_RotA]

I totally forgot... I planned on doubling or tripling regeneration gained from items. I'll do this tonight and test it a little bit and get an installer for all the most recent changes. Markus Ramikin, you have a really good eye for these kinds of details so I'd love some feedback when this one is out.

[peewee_RotA]

Newest installer updated in original post.

[peewee_RotA]

I am working on a branch of pwmod to fine tune things a bit better (a big thanks to Markus Ramikin for the suggestion to do more playtests. You've been awesome!)

One change was to redo the monster type damage calculations. The axe had become way too powerful because roughly 50% of enemies in the game have plate armor or are "vs large" which gave a bonus. Many unexpected enemies have this armor type including Eastern Archers, Most Barbarians, and the Lost City guards. It seems like this was done as a balance to make sure that lightning and piercing damages could act as the largest bonuses for melee characters. It's also why the lightning spell does so much damage. So it's a great feature in the original game, but the monster type calculations kind of suffered because there is very little variation throughout the game.

So I fine tuned the bonus and also added small bonuses to elemental damage types even if they have an alternative effect. But I feel like there is a better approach to the damage modifiers.

What if different weapons used different random spreads? Many tabletop games use this concept to differentiate weapon damage types. For example:
d12 is 1-12 with an even probability for every result
d10 +2 is 3-12 with an even probability spread but a higher minimum.
2d6 is 2-12 with a high chance for a 7 and a low chance for a 2 or a 12.
3d4 is 3-12 with an even higher chance for 7's but a very low probability for 12 and 3

These many different approaches help to make different types of weapons a different experience. Kind of a customization thing.

So some details on how the melee damage calculation works. The base damage possible with each swing is Weapon Damage * Strength / 2. (Knights, sailors, and mercenaries get a bonus on top of this). Every individual swing does between this base damage and twice the base damage by doing (d100%) * base damage + base damage. Then accuracy is used to determine if it is a critical hit. You have half your accuracy % chance do a crit, which doubles damage. There is a slight change to the crit calculation in pwmod... but it's basically the same concept.

I think it would be better to do the following for weapon types:

Blades	base + d100% damage (normal)
Axes	base + (d50% + d50%) damage
Blunt	base + (d25% + d25% + d25% + d25%) damage

Here's a chart showing how the randomization is distributed for these
http://anydice.com/program/7f5f


There is also an opportunity on top of this. Games like RoleMaster used different critical charts for different weapon types. Long story short, swords had a low chance to crit but all crits were pretty devestating. Maces had high chance to crit but very few crits were devestating, most just added some damage.

So there is room for even more customization. Perhaps daggers only do base + d50% but have double the chance to do a critical. Perhaps maces are twice as likely to crit but only add half damage. I'm not sure on how to apply this detail yet, but it's a very powerful concept. I think I'll do a play through with different concepts applied to see how it goes.


But before I move on I did want to touch another concept that comes up from time to time. The calculation uses strength only to get melee damage. What if it were half strength and half speed for swords? Well.. this is a mathematical conundrum that is not very obvious. Let's take the Ultima franchise as an example here because they did this. So in Ultima 6 swords do damage equal to 1/4th STR + 1/4th Dex. That means that at 20 STR and 20 DEX you do 10 damage. Alternatively maces do half strength. So a Str of 20 and a Dex of 20 does 10 damage.

Now let's gain some levels and visit some shrines. We add 10 strength to get 30 STR and 20DEX. Now our sword does 12.5 damage and our mace does 15 damage.

But what if we were to focus on both? Instead we added 5 to strength and 5 to dex to get 25 STR and 25 DEX. Now our sword still does 12.5 damage and so does our mace.

This is because we're contributing to an average not to a sum. So the ratio of 1/2 in STR is directly summed. The 1/4 in STR and 1/4 DEX for the sword is actually increased on the average before applying a ratio. If we view it as a ratio it's STR / 2 for the mace but (STR + DEX) / 2 / 2 for the sword. A step to average two sums before taking the ratio.

So I just wanted to add an aside that I always consider partial stat contributions but am aware of the limitations.