Baseline for skill system

Yes, I remember them making escape artist be usable to shoot up someone's anus and burst out, Alien style to kill enemies. With pretty much no chance of failure, I believe. If they can do that, I'm sure they'll end up finding something to abuse about our system.

So, our basic resolution machine looks like this:

Our (SKILL+ABILITY+MOD) - their (SKILL+ABILITY+MOD) = the number we need to roll under in order to succeed. For opponents of similar skill, ability and equipment this number would be very, very low, and if they're better, in the negatives. I hope I am missing a crucial detail...

Well it makes sense that there would be a point where you simply can't do anything. You can't slay vivec at level one, it simply isn't feasable. With enough mod from potions and magic and items though, you might be able to overcome enemies that are naturally stronger than you.

For instance, you wouldn't be able to sneak around someone so sneaky as to blow you out of the water. However, you could blind them, chameleon yourself, or even just go invisible.

I think the fact it would be a party game might allow for more chance to work together in the face of stronger enemies.

Slotha Sil wrote:So, our basic resolution machine looks like this:

Our (SKILL+ABILITY+MOD) - their (SKILL+ABILITY+MOD) = the number we need to roll under in order to succeed. For opponents of similar skill, ability and equipment this number would be very, very low, and if they're better, in the negatives. I hope I am missing a crucial detail...

This does get tricky. How do we keep it so that the PCs have a reasonable chance of success?

Well, that could be the baseline but it doesn't always have to be the formula. For instance, with sneaking. It would be your (SNEAK+AGILITY) -(SNEAK+MODIFIER). They're agility wouldn't factor in, because being agile doesn't really help you detect a thief, only knowing how thieves sneak around would.

But still, it obviously won't work for combat. Attacker has a d%, weapon skill, ability bonus and weapon bonus, defender has dodge, defense... uuuh, yes, you only add ability bonuses for light armor and unarmored, and those won't offer too great a bonus in itself. But still, I'm afraid we won't be able to fine tune the formula until we have and idea about weapon and armor numbers.

Hmm? Does it sound to me like you're volunteering to calculate armor and weapon numbers, Slotha? How kind of you!

Also, enemies might not have the same armor on all parts of their body, so called shots might be worth it to increase the number you have to roll under.
Also, with different weapons giving different basic bonuses to damage or hit rate. So if you are facing someone who has excellent abilities to not take damage, you might instead employ a faster lighter weapns. A club, instead of a warhammer, for instance.

Rainbay wrote:Hmm? Does it sound to me like you're volunteering to calculate armor and weapon numbers, Slotha? How kind of you!

It takes me twelve hours just to get to the fridge, even if I don't drop in the orange radioactive lava or fall asleep along the way.

Rainbay wrote:Also, enemies might not have the same armor on all parts of their body, so called shots might be worth it to increase the number you have to roll under.
Also, with different weapons giving different basic bonuses to damage or hit rate. So if you are facing someone who has excellent abilities to not take damage, you might instead employ a faster lighter weapns. A club, instead of a warhammer, for instance.

But weapons good at attacking will deal less damage, and weapons good at damage will give less attack bonus, or even penalty, pretty much keeping the chances where they were. Our problem is that we need to somehow punch the roll-under number up by 50 points, and I loathe to be the one suggesting d&d-grade fixes. But I am all for having a single formula for everything, instead of making a dozen variations for each specific use of skill. We either need to do the equipment just right, or create the disballance artificially.

The issue only seems to be with physical combat. With magic we can just have it be (Skill level+intelligence) - (enemy agility+spell difficulty). We might leave out or change the enemy agility part of the formula. or lower the intelligence and agility part, so it's mostly skill that decides your ability to cast the spell.

Then when calculating the damage, we can do (Spell magnitude+willpower) - (Enemy willpower+any resistances)

I Think we should leave out the skill level when calculating damage, with skill only governng how your chance of actually castng the spell is. Once the spell is cast, it's the stregth of the spell that decides how much damage is done, along with the will you put behind it.
We might want to divide the willpower bonus by 2 or 4 or 5 even so that weak spells don't become much much better to cast than strong spells because of the difficulty of using them. So maybe

(spell magnitude+ willpower/4) - (enemy willpower/4 + any resistance they have)

How is that sounding?

I'm not sure willpower should factor into damage. Why not just (spell power)-(resistance)?

Also, we should reconfigure racial resistances to be flat numbers, not percentages. Percentage reduction just doesn't work out in PnP.

Then what will willpower factor into, besides setting your fatigue?

In game it was technically used to govern success of casting, not intelligence. Perhaps we should just have it do that?

I don't know where the talk of attributes in combat is coming from. You oppose attribute bonuses (which are the tens digit of your attribute) for a small gain or loss, but attacks will be based on (skill + weapon accuracy + agi bonus) - (armor avoidance + agi bonus). Here's how I see it working.

Let's say a tier-one one-handed weapon (chitin long sword) provides +5 to hit.
A faster short sword would be +10
A slower but heavier mace would add +0
Two-handed weapons will be among the slower weapons (spears being faster than warhammers, for example, but neither of them measuring up to a dagger).
Light armor, like Fur, would provide +10 to dodge
Chain would provide + 5
Iron would provide +0

In this way, you create a decision for your combatant: do I pull out the heavy weapon and hope to land one or two telling blows, or do I bleed the enemy out with my short sword and try to make the combat last longer?

As armor gets better, the protection it grants will grow faster than the bonuses you recieve from weapons. So at tier 3 it looks more like this:
Steel short sword adds 20
Steel long sword adds 15
Steel mace adds 10

Whatever armor is better than steel (Dorf maybe?) provides +10 (advancing at the same pace as the heavier weapons, allowing your chance to hit to grow, but providing increased protection when you land that hit)
The third tier Medium armor (I think we said Bonemold?) would add +20, keeping pace with, but still allowing you to be hit somewhat easily by, fast weapons, but providing slightly better avoidance from mid-range weapons
Chitin would provide +30 or +40, making it harder for all weapons to hit you, but providing only marginal damage resistance from even light blades and clubs.

Once you get up to glass armor, the avoidance it provides will start to look ridiculous (75 or 80 being not very farfetched at all) but the damage resist on glass will probably be closer to that of Orcish or Dwemer. On the other hand, Daedric armor will let you get hit most of the time, even by clunky warhammers and claymores, but the damage you'll take from such weapons will barely register.

Regarding the magic damage discussion I missed while I was typing my book ^ up there...
I'd say add willpower bonus to each side of the damage equation rather than willpower total. If you're adding total willpower, it's not a big deal at all to throw out 70 points of spell damage at level one if you've got a good spell skill. That's a fucking lot of damage.

Saint Jiub wrote:Regarding the magic damage discussion I missed while I was typing my book ^ up there...
I'd say add willpower bonus to each side of the damage equation rather than willpower total. If you're adding total willpower, it's not a big deal at all to throw out 70 points of spell damage at level one if you've got a good spell skill. That's a fucking lot of damage.

Yeah, way to much, especially if we have the max health be 100 for a normal unboosted character, doing away with level up hp bonuses.

Perhaps have willpower be at /10? /10 is insanely easy to calculate at any level on a 100 point system, and it would serve to add a bonus to damage that certainly helps, but is never overpowering.

Yeah. The Attribute/10 always rounded down thing is what we've tentatively started calling your Attribute Bonus. Strength Bonus will, I presume, factor into damage.
Agility bonus is opposed by agility bonus during melee, giving the edge to the nimbler combatant.
Speed bonus looks like it will translate directly to how fast you can move in a combat round. Might also be used to calculate how many actions you get in a round.

What I'd like to see is Intel bonus applied to spell damage and a bonus subtracted from it based on the type of spell damage. Say, agi for dodging flying projectiles, end for resisting poison and drain, and wil for resisting subtler magic like charm, enrage, dominate, etc.

Saint Jiub wrote:a book.

So, let us assume that we're an angry racist dunmer with a steel mace (+10 attack, skill 50, strength 40 = 64) trying to trounce a poor peace-loving nord wearing fur armor (+10 avoidance, agility 40 = 14). 64-14=50, meaning that Zabagund here needs to roll 50 or less to hit. That's fine.

But what is the point of armor skill, if you get all the avoidance from armor?

We have to figure that out yet. But I'm still trying to hammer out the main points of sword vs. board before I dive into THAT can of worms.

[edit]
Also, your quote made me lol. Well played.

Saint Jiub wrote:Yeah. The Attribute/10 always rounded down thing is what we've tentatively started calling your Attribute Bonus. Strength Bonus will, I presume, factor into damage.
Agility bonus is opposed by agility bonus during melee, giving the edge to the nimbler combatant.
Speed bonus looks like it will translate directly to how fast you can move in a combat round. Might also be used to calculate how many actions you get in a round.

What I'd like to see is Intel bonus applied to spell damage and a bonus subtracted from it based on the type of spell damage. Say, agi for dodging flying projectiles, end for resisting poison and drain, and wil for resisting subtler magic like charm, enrage, dominate, etc.

Technically, in morrowind intelligence doesn't even add to spell chance of success or damage. Only willpower does anything like that, and only adding to spell chance of success.

We can do WP if you like, but it seems like if we make int the offensive magicka stat and will the defensive magicka stat it will be a little more evenly spread, rather than "you have 100 manas, but your casting still blows dead bears lol!"

But you just recomended different stats being used against different magic styles. Were those against spell effectiveness (chance to suceed in casting), with willpower being supposed to subtract damage and strength from the spell should it actually land?

Maybe we could avoid the avoidance issue by deciding that armor bonus + skill cap at something manageable, like 70 for Unarmored (giving an unarmored master with 100 agility 80% avoidance), light and medium armor being less (55 (65%) and 40 (50%), for example) and heavy offering none, or very little (15 (25%)). We'd have to use multiplers for this, but it seems the best choice so far.

Different attribute bonuses are applied to avoid taking a hit in the first place.
Once you get hit by a spell, Willpower acts as a magical Damage Resistance.