A Question of Balance

[John Robinson]

A Question of Balance

Many of our threads are looking for specific entries on things you like about the game. Difficulty Level comparison. Talents you use most. Is it a bug or an intentional limit in this test phase of the Alpha. Speaking for myself. I cannot understand how the strands work without stepping back far enough to see how the Spider’s web functions. So I will take a look at the Web at normal difficulty, followed by a brief comparison to easy difficulty. Fact or fiction just one tester's view at this time.

Normal Difficulty Balance of Power

1. Monster Health. This is the center of the web the spider calls home. For party members to be effective in combat there must be some kind of indicator displaying the monsters remaining health. Even with one health point the monster will strike at full strength. I think it is crucial to play-ability to display a health bar underneath the monster icon, or some other visual aid to help the party survive, and utilize the best tactics available. If you don’t have an active attack in play, you can tap the monster’s icon to see the basic starting statistics. These are monster level, minimum hit points with maximum hit points unknown, maximum base damage it can inflict, and resistance. It is unknown to me if this is resistance to damage inflicted by magic, or resistance to curses.

For example tapping a bow rat would display,
Bow Rate Level 1, 10 hit points (at least), and able to do a maximum of 10 damage points.

Is the party facing a ratkin with a broken leg bleeding profusely, or a shaman buffed, unscathed, enraged butcher?

2. The Wizard. Starts with a Level 1 Firebolt that does 8 to 15 points of damage, and is his basic attack. In my testing it very seldom hits, and when it does the damage inflicted is usually between 3 to 8 points. Higher levels are listed at higher damage, but remain the same in these respects. It can be frustrating to fire at a ratkin and miss four times in a row. Casting Choking Ash, in conjunction with the Cleric’s Ethereal Anguish helps a little, but not near enough.

Let’s talk a little bit more about Choking Ash. At level 1 it curses enemies for 8 turns at a range of 6. The curse lowers the target's Parry, and Dodge by 1, and Protection by 2. It is unknown to me what “Protection” is, or if -2 Spell resistance should be added to the description. In some games thieves rely on Dodge to make elemental spells miss, is that what is happening here? What makes the spell particularly weak, is when cast it only affects one square to the right and left of the target. Being a Cloud type spell it would be more helpful to effect a one square block around the target. With the size of the square increasing at higher levels. The 8 turn duration isn't really relevant in the Alpha as the monster is usually dead long before 8 rounds have passed. So perhaps creating a square around the target, and reducing the duration would be of better use to the Wizard.

Replace Polearms with Bows as a trainable skill, or develop some other ranged weapon with less capability than the thief uses. Using a melee weapon is certain death as the Wizard will never reach hit point parity with monster opponents. Why a ranged weapon? During play my Wizard has run out of magic points. In a battle sometimes multiple characters are using the potions, and there aren't enough to go around. So he gets caught without the ability to fight. By definition Wizards should not be investing points to raise melee skills.

3. The Thief. A pretty serious balance problem occurs when using her Disarming Touch. I used up all my magic points to clear a hallway 2 squares wide, by eight squares long. Although the talent has a range of 3. It costs 5 points to cast, and you can only pick one square at a time to search before the spell ends. I’m thinking of being able to use it more as a metal detector. Like people at the beach slowing moving it in a small arc in front of them. I think any traps inside the three squares directly in front of her should detect the trap, with a very small increase in range at higher levels, max 3. It isn't an easy problem to solve so there is allot of room for other options.  Some may say the Thief is over powered.  I love playing a Thief who finally has some teeth.  In other games playing a Thief wasn't a viable option to winning the long game, but I played anyway without worrying about finishing the game.

4. The Outlander The Strike talent is his basic attack with any weapon. It does good damage when it hits, but is crippled by not hitting often enough. Missing 3 or 4 times in a row just isn't getting the job done. The Cleric actually does more damage than the Outlander because she hits more often. The Crushing blow suffers from the same lack of accuracy. The Savage Sweep is much more reliable. However it costs 2ap, and 2mp to use. Using this on a regular basis to compensate for the lack of Strike, will force him to invest points in Intelligence to raise his limited magic point supply. He is a fighter not a wizard. I think he would be more balanced if his Strike talent got more hits right from the beginning. One thing that I am very concerned about is his starting Resistance outside of the Alpha may prove to be too low. Upon leveling I was surprised I could not increase it, as it is listed along with Dodge, and Toughness. By accident I realized the only way to raise it is to increase Willpower. The strange thing is he begins the game with a Willpower of 5, but resistance of 1, the lowest in the party which averages 3 to 4. At the beginning of the game I think at a value of 7 in his Strength and Toughness are too high at the expense of Resistance. Perhaps shaving them to 6, and giving the 2 points to raise Resistance to 3, might make him more balanced as the Alpha moves towards the released game. Right now I don’t know the role Toughness plays, Strength he will always increase as he plays. I don’t know what the definition of Resistance is, but starting at 1 it will be difficult to reach parity with opponents as his levels increase.

5. Miscellaneous. When leveling I was not able to increase Strike for the Outlander or Cleric, Slash and Loose for the Thief. Did anyone else have this problem? Was it intentional to control the Alpha play test? I’m a little confused.

The items written above, taken as a whole help me see the Web more clearly, which no single strand can do.

Easy Difficulty Balance of Power

Is Easy too Easy? Yes. I depend on Easy difficulty to act as a Tutorial for how the game really works. How effective some attacks are compared to others. Which powers party members use in unison against a monster are the most effective. After completing the Alpha dungeon at Normal difficulty. I started a new game at Easy difficulty. The gap feels more like a move from Easy to Difficult, rather than Easy to Normal. If I had played Easy first, I would have asked myself how could I have failed to understand how the the game really works, and return to Easy to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Please keep in mind as stated in the beginning this is only one Alpha tester’s experience. Nothing written here should be confused with how much fun I’m having, and how exciting it is to have a chance to communicate directly with our esteemed developers, and fellow forum members in the Alpha testing.

[johndramey]

Hmmm, awesome idea on the thread. I'll post what I think.....

First off, I'll say that I like the balance as it is. Granted, we are seeing a very limited scope of the game at the moment, but everything seems just about right.

I'll address the things you wrote about and my two cents to start with.

1) Health bars; I don't really think a health bar is needed, and in fact I think it would detract a little bit from the atmosphere of the game. As it is, we can see how much HP to expect from a creature. We don't really know the range, but that is ok. I don't want to know exactly how much HP an enemy has, because that would take a little bit of the tenseness away from the game play. I do, however, agree that being able to see a basic "status" might be nice. Maybe something along the lines of a simple "Healthy / wounded / Critical" progression on the status page we can see by clicking on the enemy? That would be ok. I don't really want to have more things cluttering the game screen though, and I think health bars would be too much clutter. We'd have to add them to the characters as well, and it would be just.... too much on the screen.

2) Wizard comments; Hmm, I can see what you mean about the ranged attacks. However, I think that giving the wizard a bow isn't really in keeping with the feel of the character. It might be worth thinking about giving the wizard some kind of fallback option other than the staff, but I think a bow might be overdoing it. We might even have some kind of purchasable, limited use weapon (think alchemist's fire or throwing knives) that you can purchase and give to the wizard as a sort of "oh shit" button.

I have noticed that his fireball tends to miss quite a bit and have relatively small damage. I think the damage -or- the accuracy should be pumped up a bit. As it is now our thief outdoes the fireball in damage and accuracy, meaning that he makes the wizard's offensive abilities a little obsolete. I would like to see the wizard be able to outclass the thief in one-on-one damage. However, this is all said without seeing the late level wizard abilities. If the fireball scales like the empowered melee attacks then I could see the wizard dealing very large damage with later levels, maybe much more than a bow could put out? We could be just seeing the starting point of a slow-burn character build, something that starts relatively weak and builds up into an amazingly strong character? fallen or Cory Trese will have to comment on that.

Choking Ash (and other curses); Definitely agree that we need a little more info on the Dodge/parry/protection. I imagine this will all come later in the alpha, but for now it's all guess work here. I don't really know how to comment too much on them, but I'll say that your idea of a stationary cloud effect is interesting. Maybe that could be a way to differentiate between the cleric and wizard class curses? As it is now, the two classes of curses have slightly different effects but are, in essence, the same things. Making the wizard's curse an AoE stationary effect and the cleric's curse a targeted single creature effect would give each of them a very clear niche.

3) Thief issues; Agreed with the SP cost issue, I think the "utility" spells should have relatively low SP costs and big AP costs. I think lockpicking has a 6AP cost, and that's really smart. I think fallen has said that they are tweaking the SP costs of disarming touch/farsight and implementing some kind of trap-detection into farsight, so I think they are working on that issue.

As an aside, the thief seems like it could have lots of teeth in later levels. She's no slouch right now, but it seems like you can build her up into an absolute melee beast with meter long teeth with the "Torrent of Steel" talent. Take a look at that one next time you are running through with her, it makes her long knife into a very scary thing. Chews through an amazing amount of SP, but you can pretty much be assured that you'll deal at least 70 damage (minimum knife + ToS bonus damage) over a turn. Armor seems to reduce damage a lot though, so thief seems to be for softer targets.

4) Outlander; I haven't noticed much of an issue with strike, and as I mentioned in the Saturday's question thread I find the empowered attacks to be a little too good. One thing to notice, the sword your Outlander starts with has an accuracy bonus of 2 while the club your Cleric starts with has an accuracy bonus of 3. Not sure how much 1 bonus helps, but that might account for the disparity in hits you're seeing. I don't really agree with the idea that he needs more strikes, I think that we are seeing low level characters pounding on low level enemies. Put a couple levels under their belts and you'll have a much clearer character build, but right now we are using the basic build. Resistance, well I'm not exactly sure what that is for. I thought it would be (magic) resistance, and in that situation it makes sense for the Outlander to be lower than the others. He's a brute and, as such, he will be pretty susceptible to curses and other kinds of magical assault.

Also, Savage Sweep vs. Crushing Blow seems pretty good imo. Savage Sweep is focused less on damage and more on accuracy, making good sense for an dex build Outlander. Landing more hits with less overall damage. Crushing Blow makes sense for a strength build Outlander, huge damage possibility, but you are sacrificing consistency. Think of it as the difference between a rapier and a broad sword, one is dealing much more precise attacks with less damage, while the other is just trying to cut you in half.

5) misc; I believe the standard talents (strike/loose/etc) are not trainable. In fact, would it be possible to just remove them from the "improve your talent" screen? That would cure a lot of the confusion.

6) Easy balance; Totally agreed here, easy should be ramped up about 50%.

I also have a small question/information post for this thread;

I've been keeping track of the weapons stats and comparing them between classes. It seems to me that the progression goes as such;

Pole Arms - Narrow damage band, highly accurate (e.g. guard's spear is +3 accuracy/+2 damage 14-18 damage)
Blades - middle of the road, medium damage band with medium accuracy (e.g. Training Blade is +2 acc/+2dam 10-21 damage)
Blunt - Strength build, wide damage band with med accuracy (e.g. Club is +3 acc/+1 dam 6-23 damage)

This is just looking at and comparing the alpha dungeon weapons, but am I just about right there? I would suggest that maybe we might want to lower the accuracy bonus with the blunt weapons a little bit. That would make a clear distinction between High acc/narrow damage and Low acc/wide damage.

[fallen]

@johnrobison - awesome post, thanks for the well thought-out discussion on balancing!

1. Monster Health - we are working hard to keep the vision of the game, which is a medieval battlefield without a lot of complexities, stat read outs, overlays, etc riding on top. I can understand why you'd want to know about individual monster health, but I think you'll find that they are predictable within a class of monster. If you touch a monster without an attack talent selected, the Health shown is current health. So, if you touch an uninjured Ratkin, you'll see that they have ~ 30 HP.

2. Resistance is your character's natural "armor" against magical attacks. It soaks damage and helps reduce curses. Toughness is natural armor against physical attacks. Thanks for pointing out the Outlander's low Resistance, there was an error in his equation. He'll be better off in Phase 2.

3. I'm surprised you find all the talents to be so miss heavy. My experience is that the Wizard's Firebolt is highly accurate. Even better when you've cast Choking Ash on a target.

4. Area Effect Spells - need work and clear definition within the UI. This is lacking right now. You'll find that Choking Ash (and all AoE spells in the game) currently use the "cross" ... one up, one down, one left, one right from the primary target. The number of possible hits is limited by the skill backing the talent, in the case of Choking Ash, Conjuring. Hope that helps! We are working to get more of this into the UI so its clearer.

5. Raising melee skill for the Wizard would only be done for self-defense as stated in the leveling screen. Every point of Polearms decreases his likelihood of getting stabbed if someone gets close to him. While he may never Thwack someone with his staff, that is his style and there will be a host of powerful staves and rods for him to choose from that will bolster his abilities as he moves through the world.

6. We have reduced the cost of all the Thief's utility talents, including Disarming Touch. Farsight will gain the ability to identify areas where there are traps (green result) so you can "sweep" an area quickly and only invest if its a positive.

7. The Outlander is rolling more dice than the Cleric even if the Cleric uses her +3 Accuracy talent and the Outlander uses his basic Strike attack. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on accuracy, I find I hit very reliably. Is accuracy too low? Savage Sweep adds +3 Accuracy so definitely guarantees hits, but you're trading for damage.

8. The Outlander is not a Wizard, but he will still need Spirit reserves. Raising Intelligence can be a useful investment, but you'll notice that all characters gain HP / SP every level based on their class. So, you could definitely survive as the Outlander without raising Int. There will also be other ways to get your SP up like magical gear throughout the game if you find you don't have enough (the Wizard will always feel this way).

9. Basic Attacks cannot be increased in power. They grant no bonuses and cost nothing, and continue to provide that option throughout the entire game. We have an item on our roadmap to add an alert to the UI stating this fact is you try to level them.

10. I am not sure that I understand the conclusion in "Is Easy too Easy?" Sounds like you think Easy is too easy ... but its supposed to be Is Normal too Easy or too Hard? Would love to see that feedback section expanded a bit.

[fallen]

Lol johndramey I guess you type faster

Will investigate Wizard damage and accuracy. Your read on weapons is good, also check leveling screen on skill for details too.

[fallen]

I will make sure that we prep and post a HoS Systems thread that details the rolls being made if we can't get it into the game UI for P2!

[John Robinson]

johndramey

Great analysis really enjoyed your post! Thanks for using numbered items, makes it easy to continue our conversation.

1. Back to our monster health status idea. Thank You! I am squarely in the low screen clutter camp. Your idea of tapping the monster and getting a display of healthy/wounded/critical is a great idea, allot better than mine. You don't need to add a health bar for party members because it is already displayed along with magic color bars to the left of each character portrait. The ==> currently shown on the bottom of the screen is a good way to rapidly cycle through each character for a spot check on how they are doing.

2. Wizards weapon that requires no magic points. I agree, giving him a bow is way to powerful. I was hoping for some kind of ranged weapon only he can use that isn't up close a personal like a staff. What do you think of Grenades? Make them do less damage than a bow. Think of his alchemist training allowing him to create his own Grenades. Real Grenades have a very limited range compared to a bow, probably couldn't throw one more than three squares. Let it do a fair amount of damage but not area of effect, single target only.

Your second paragraph hits it right on the nose. 100% on board with that.

3. Thief. I may have not stated it right. I was trying to say how great it is HOS has given the thief a real solid offensive bite, where most of the other games of this genre I've played give them a good defense but under-power their offense. You hit a home run for me going high AP low SP for disarming, and lock picking. Or could we have a scaled talent, as you raise your Level of Disarming touch, the AP/SP requirement gets smaller?  I would like to see, when using this talent, traps should be revealed on screen within one or two squares in front of where she is facing. Instead of choosing blindly from a 3 by 3 square block. Then remove her automatic disarm and replace it with this. If she attempts to disarm the trap, and fails due to low level Disarming Trap versus trap level difficulty, she takes full or partial damage.

Something I forgot to mention in my post that I think is real important. The thief cannot fire the bow when directly adjacent to monster. That makes perfect sense to me. However when a Bow rat is next to her, the sound I hear is a bow being fired. Is the bow rat using a dagger or really using the bow. The Same adjacent bow attack rule should apply to the Bow rat as it does the thief.

4. Outlander Correct, not more strikes, more hits. The training sword vs club accuracy (2/3). The description of the sword says it depends on strength. So is his accuracy influenced by his strength, or more likely how much bonus damage he might do, and the ability to use heavier weapons. Dexterity is key to the thief to score a hit with the bow. Does the Outlander need this to score with the sword? Their beginning stats have them a dex 4, and dex 6 respectively. The 1 point bump in accuracy with the club is what I was thinking about during a previous post to see if I could swap the clerics club with the outlander's sword. As Fallen pointed out, and I should have seen the Cleric cannot use blades. I suppose I could give her the Wizard's staff as she can use Polearms, but she is my choice to backup the Outlander on the front line. I'll definitely give the Outlander another run, You are getting better results, I might need more practice. By the way Stone Skin has been a real go to talent, when taking a beating.

Thanks

[John Robinson]

fallen

Got me rolling with laughter. Before I finished typing my last post. You filled in the gaps for me big time. Information you gave was so helpful. Especially tapping the monster before selecting an attack to show what hit points it has left. Perfect I can't ask for better. For me slam dunk, case closed.

The Outlander rolling more dice. Great to know, thanks on that one too.

On my comment, "Is Easy to Easy? Yes" Speaking personally, because of the perceived difficulties I described, hitting etc. That was the foundation of thinking the transition from easy to normal was too big a gap.

Your post is mind altering. The strands in the Spider's Web are clearer now. Like seeing one in the sun after it rains.

I'm meeting my party at the wagon and giving it another go.

[evmaker]

Oct 27, 2013 23:13:56 GMT -5 fallen said:

@johnrobison - awesome post, thanks for the well thought-out discussion on balancing!
3. I'm surprised you find all the talents to be so miss heavy. My experience is that the Wizard's Firebolt is highly accurate. Even better when you've cast Choking Ash on a target.

7. The Outlander is rolling more dice than the Cleric even if the Cleric uses her +3 Accuracy talent and the Outlander uses his basic Strike attack. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on accuracy, I find I hit very reliably. Is accuracy too low? Savage Sweep adds +3 Accuracy so definitely guarantees hits, but you're trading for damage.

For my two cents while playing I haven't noticed any particularly issue with missing, I can definitely go for spells where I might miss two or sometimes even three attacks in a row, but generally all my team hit more often then not (outlander/cleric melee, thief/wizard ranged).

That said I haven't beaten higher then hard yet, so I couldn't say if it is more an issue/more noticeable higher then that.

[fallen]

You'll definitely see a lot more misses on higher difficulties ... but you asked for it

[Lesleyr]

So THAT'S what is going on. I was beginning to think that the wizard and outlander couldn't hit the side of a barn with a guided missile. Was about to accusing them both of partying all night and having a hangover. Dying Playing on brutal.

[slayernz]

Even on Normal, they miss a great deal.

What would be nice is if the game tracked the number of times a talent was used by a character ... after say 100 successful uses of the talent, you automatically gain a talent point for that talent. If the Wizard sends out 100 firebolts, surely he'll become more proficient at that talent, even if he got XP from kills that go into the "general pool of talent points on leveling".

Reduce the hit probability on the enemies as it certainly seems that not only can your party not hit well, but they can't block worth a damn either

[johndramey]

Another big text dump, incoming!

Oct 27, 2013 23:13:56 GMT -5 fallen said:

4. Area Effect Spells - need work and clear definition within the UI. This is lacking right now. You'll find that Choking Ash (and all AoE spells in the game) currently use the "cross" ... one up, one down, one left, one right from the primary target. The number of possible hits is limited by the skill backing the talent, in the case of Choking Ash, Conjuring. Hope that helps! We are working to get more of this into the UI so its clearer.

Awesome, thanks for the clarification on that. I'm not sure how the UI could be modified, maybe a tap to display the area that would be effected and a second tap to actually cast the spell? That suffers from "tapitis" which seems to be something that you guys are actively working to avoid though. Either way, awesome to know exactly how the AoE is being calculated.

A quick question about AoE, will there be a chance for expanded AoE attacks? I'm picturing something like an empowered spell in 3e DnD, you could maybe up the SP cost by 150%-200%, add an extra AP or 2, and double the AoE. It could maybe be a talent or some ability unlocked by having a high conjuration skill. The AoE could be a diamond, 2 squares N/S/E/W and one square NW/NE/SW/SE, the 2.5x SP cost would balance out the fact that the same effect could be had (more or less) by casting the spell twice, but this would allow you to cram more casting into a turn at the expense of really blasting through some SP.

If not, no worries. I just always loved the empowered/extended/silent spell perks that were in DnD, so great for roleplay and such awesome utility perks without unbalancing the game. For those that don't know, you could cast beefed up spells, empowering them basically doubled the dice roll, silencing allowed them to not have a verbal component (awesome for stealth), extended doubled their duration, and prepared actually let you cast them as a partial action, but beefing those spells up caused their spell level to go up. In effect, an empowered level one lay on hands would fill a level 2 spell slot, and since you were limited in your spell slots you really had to weigh the options when it came to preparing your spells for the day.

Oct 27, 2013 23:13:56 GMT -5 fallen said:

7. The Outlander is rolling more dice than the Cleric even if the Cleric uses her +3 Accuracy talent and the Outlander uses his basic Strike attack. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on accuracy, I find I hit very reliably. Is accuracy too low? Savage Sweep adds +3 Accuracy so definitely guarantees hits, but you're trading for damage.

I've not been having any issues at all with accuracy, but I have only played through on Easy, Normal, and Hard. I've found that I'm hitting over half the time with almost everyone, and if I invest in Smiting Blow/Savage Swing/Aimed Shot I hit pretty near 100% of the time. I like the Savage Sweep/Crushing Blow choice, by the way. Really lets you choose a specialization for your outlander.

Oct 27, 2013 23:13:56 GMT -5 fallen said:

8. The Outlander is not a Wizard, but he will still need Spirit reserves. Raising Intelligence can be a useful investment, but you'll notice that all characters gain HP / SP every level based on their class. So, you could definitely survive as the Outlander without raising Int. There will also be other ways to get your SP up like magical gear throughout the game if you find you don't have enough (the Wizard will always feel this way).

I think I've started to see this. It seems like you could, with a little consideration, set up your Outlander in one of 4 basic ways. Either a dex or str build "mundane" fighter, relying on pure physical prowess to bash his enemies, or a "spell sword" style hybrid dex/int or str/int build with much less physical stats but deeper pools of talent/SP. Seeing as how Crushing Blow/Savage Sweep will scale in damage quite high, you should be able to maintain near parity between the two. The physical only build will probably end up with less one-hit damage potential but much more steady damage, where as the spell sword will probably have more one-hit potential but will rely on his SP.

Oct 28, 2013 0:50:20 GMT -5 John Robinson said:

1. Back to our monster health status idea. Thank You! I am squarely in the low screen clutter camp. Your idea of tapping the monster and getting a display of healthy/wounded/critical is a great idea, allot better than mine. You don't need to add a health bar for party members because it is already displayed along with magic color bars to the left of each character portrait. The ==> currently shown on the bottom of the screen is a good way to rapidly cycle through each character for a spot check on how they are doing.

Awesome, glad you understood what I was saying. I, too, use the ==> button to check through all of my duders. The "group" button works well for this also.

Oct 28, 2013 0:50:20 GMT -5 John Robinson said:

2. Wizards weapon that requires no magic points. I agree, giving him a bow is way to powerful. I was hoping for some kind of ranged weapon only he can use that isn't up close a personal like a staff. What do you think of Grenades? Make them do less damage than a bow. Think of his alchemist training allowing him to create his own Grenades. Real Grenades have a very limited range compared to a bow, probably couldn't throw one more than three squares. Let it do a fair amount of damage but not area of effect, single target only.

Bingo on the grenade idea. That's why I put Alchemist's Fire in my post. Alchemist's Fires were, basically, little molotov cocktails that could be used in DnD. They did relatively little damage (unless used in devious ways) and were very handy for character builds that weren't really.... physical. They didn't scale with strength or anything though, so all but the puniest of characters would be better off with bows/crossbows/knives/etc. I could see a lot of utility in purchasable, one time use weapons that the wizard could keep a store of. I wouldn't want them to be too expensive or too powerful, but maybe allowing the player to go buy "Bang pots" or something would be a good idea? Allow the bang pot to have a single, high accuracy attack on an enemy for something like 10-20 damage, but cost quite a bit. I dunno, just brainstorming

Oct 28, 2013 0:50:20 GMT -5 John Robinson said:

Something I forgot to mention in my post that I think is real important. The thief cannot fire the bow when directly adjacent to monster. That makes perfect sense to me. However when a Bow rat is next to her, the sound I hear is a bow being fired. Is the bow rat using a dagger or really using the bow. The Same adjacent bow attack rule should apply to the Bow rat as it does the thief.

Yes! I love that the thief can't use his bow when adjacent to an enemy. Makes perfect sense, and forces the player to be more tactical in his/her approach. You don't want the thief out front if you are ranged spec as any melee unit can effectively shut down 1/4 of your team. I imagine that the ratkins wielding bows are exempt from this rule due to limitations on AI. The brothers probably don't want the ratkin to accidentally walk too close and then not be able to do anything. Can't always trust them AI codes!

Oct 28, 2013 0:50:20 GMT -5 John Robinson said:

4. Outlander Correct, not more strikes, more hits. The training sword vs club accuracy (2/3). The description of the sword says it depends on strength. So is his accuracy influenced by his strength, or more likely how much bonus damage he might do, and the ability to use heavier weapons. Dexterity is key to the thief to score a hit with the bow. Does the Outlander need this to score with the sword? Their beginning stats have them a dex 4, and dex 6 respectively. The 1 point bump in accuracy with the club is what I was thinking about during a previous post to see if I could swap the clerics club with the outlander's sword. As Fallen pointed out, and I should have seen the Cleric cannot use blades. I suppose I could give her the Wizard's staff as she can use Polearms, but she is my choice to backup the Outlander on the front line. I'll definitely give the Outlander another run, You are getting better results, I might need more practice. By the way Stone Skin has been a real go to talent, when taking a beating.

Yeah, as far as I can see (and it would make sense from a DnD perspective as well), DEX primarily effects accuracy and STR primarily effects damage. Although it seems the brothers have a built in "weapon finesse" perk for the outlander, so boosting dex with a dex specced weapon will probably scale damage as well. However, I think the ultimate split for Outlanders will be;
Dex specced, hitting frequently for relatively smaller damage, depending on talents much more for damage.
Str specced, hitting less frequently for relatively large damage, depending on talents to boost accuracy.

Of course you could go full one way or the other (Dex + Savage Sweep builds would, most likely, never miss while Str + Crushing Blow builds would probably cream anything in 1-2 hits), but if you want to min-max then combining the two sides (Dex + CB or Str + SS) seems to be the smart move.

Oct 28, 2013 17:05:23 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Even on Normal, they miss a great deal.

What would be nice is if the game tracked the number of times a talent was used by a character ... after say 100 successful uses of the talent, you automatically gain a talent point for that talent. If the Wizard sends out 100 firebolts, surely he'll become more proficient at that talent, even if he got XP from kills that go into the "general pool of talent points on leveling".

Reduce the hit probability on the enemies as it certainly seems that not only can your party not hit well, but they can't block worth a damn either

I honestly didn't see much missing on Normal, except for my wizard's fireball that is.

I like your idea about talents, but I think it would be too easy to game. Just make sure you use your skills as much as possible and you'll eventually have a fully upgraded cleric running around healing for hundreds of HP and cursing up a storm. The talent system, in its current iteration, allows the player flexibility in his build but also limits us to choosing a path. I like that, choices are good in any game.

Reducing hit probability for the higher levels might be a good idea. I haven't gotten a chance to try anything above Hard, but I'd say that was just about right. If you are missing much more beyond Hard it might be a little frustrating. Also, having the enemies miss a little more might be nice, but not too much. As it is, we can out think the poor little enemy. We don't need to make the playing field exactly level, because then we would have a clear advantage with our thinking brains.


Wooo. Thanks for reading all that!

[John Robinson]

Oct 28, 2013 18:34:22 GMT -5 johndramey said:

Yes! I love that the thief can't use his bow when adjacent to an enemy. Makes perfect sense, and forces the player to be more tactical in his/her approach. You don't want the thief out front if you are ranged spec as any melee unit can effectively shut down 1/4 of your team. I imagine that the ratkins wielding bows are exempt from this rule due to limitations on AI. The brothers probably don't want the ratkin to accidentally walk too close and then not be able to do anything. Can't always trust them AI codes!

What I see happening in my game play. The bowrats aren't accidentally getting to close. They actively move right up against a party member, and attack. When done to the Thief she has to spend AP to move one square away to fire. I think any monster firing a bow, should have to follow the same rule the Thief has to conform to. A bowrat should use the "dagger" i.e. do less damage than using a full strength bow when right up against a party member, or spend the AP, and step back.

I'm having trouble locating the camps to level up. Anybody know how many there are?

Giant Rat is eating my party for lunch. I often watch my Oulander die from multiple hits. I wondering if "Natural Weapons" get more attacks because I get way back to make it use up AP but still get hit, and man he hits hard. Any ideas? Does anybody else wish this monster could get tweaked down a little?

Hit points go up when leveling without camping. I can't find more camps with a seeing eye dog to raise my skills/talents.
Spill it I know you sharpies know what to do. Thanks

[fallen]

John Robinson - its on our list to look at! They will retreat if they can get smarter.

[fallen]

johndramey - AoE size will increase with either the talent or the talent's skill (Conjuring, Lore, etc) or a combination of both. Still in the works here. We aren't going to be able to start adding "talent use variants" that allow you to change its parameters when using it tho like empowered or extended.