SOTW 0.8.9 - First Act Beta preview!

[yayswords]

I mean letting resistances be part of the base damage multiplier so you can overcome them by having even more magic.

If I could play my own opponents, I would think: Well now, I could try to compete with the player's mages for magic score, but there's no telling how much he can get. OR I could just rely on the damage cap and get resistances instead, which reduce the damage after it's already capped anyway.

For physical attacks it's a constant contest between attack and defense scores. If enemies have low defense they can't make up for it in some way with a secondary physical resistance stat, they're just gonna get clobbered.

[jack1974]

When you get weapons with elemental attacks, it works the same as with Mages elemental spells though

With my hunter in the back row, I nuked a mage in the back row with it. Is the description wrong or the function wrong?

Ah no the function, you shouldn't be able to use it in the backrow (too powerful otherwise!). Will check it thanks!

[fabulaparva]

Ah, I was afraid so. I gotta try to clear the Mormont fight without exploiting this bug, then.

(EDIT: I accidentally stumbled on this one during the goblin waves in Chapter 2)

[jack1974]

I think will do a small change and raise the hp gained by leveling up by 10 instead of 5, this because with this system is hard to make the game work with small numbers - there's always going to be some differences in the various party members and enemies. Right now even without putting any attribute point in constitution you'll get 30x5=150HP at end of game, while with the change you'd get at least 300HP (in my simulations tanks would get more like 500-600HP on average).
I am tweaking the act 2 battles but is really hard to have an enemy do low damage and still be "dangerous" enough. I think the main problem right now is the damage vs HP of the characters (enemy and allies). Everything else is OK, is balanced, but this part not so much. The only need is to have battles last a bit longer, so there can be countermeasures (healing, guarding, etc). Otherwise the weakest characters are going to die too often
So either I lower the overall damage a bit more, or increase the HP because when you do 75 dmg with a spell and you have two mages, is easy to take out an enemy the first turn.
Using a full party is completely different from the first act

[renke_]

and what if you use a method that slows down damage above a certain level of the enemy's HP?

in pseudocode as a example:
if damage >HP/2; then
damage = HP/2 + (damage - HP/2) * 70%

damage above 50 % of max HP are only weighted with 70 %, not a cap*, but a way to slow the damage growth down

*) specifically written for yayswords

[yayswords]

Can't comment on the specific formula but sure I wouldn't mind some kind of diminishing returns for more +magic. I'd rather it involved the respective +magic stats than the health. Something like: If you have twice the target's magic, you do 200% damage. If you have thrice, you do 250%. If you have five times the target's magic, you do 300%.

When you get weapons with elemental attacks, it works the same as with Mages elemental spells though

But I don't have to use those. Elemental weapons aren't inherently stronger as far as I can tell (okay seems they are after a little test, hic!). They probably fkn pwn against high defense, low resistance monsters though. If enemies have high resistances I can't use a physical damage nuke with my druid. Hell if there was one I would probably use it exclusively

Also since you mentioned it, I was beating Mormont (0.8.7h) by having Vaelis hack everything down. He doesn't have any crazy gear. An air damage 1h axe from the pelt thieves quest, and the rest is just +defense. His throwing axes do like 70-100 dmg (bleed not included) to the skellies. Note I don't even know how much he might do with some mad +attack, but clearly his damage cap is far over the druid's, and this is considering the skeletons even have some air resistance too.

Okay I went back and checked. This is pretty funny. I've been doing some semi-hardcore +magic shopping for my druid. At 46 magic, she still sits there damage capped at like ~55 (Inferno) against Mormont's minions. Vaelis, with no +attack investments, swings for 33-43 and his Throwing Axes hit for 82-108 (vs. warriors). Okay but maybe 108 is his damage cap and maybe it doesn't get even worse for my poor druid! Wrong! Hic! I increased Vaelis' attack by a whooping six points and his melee swing became 46-56 and his axes are doing, wait for it, 114-140 damage. Meanwhile there's a mechanic in place to stop my druid from doing too much damage. Hihihi. I'm a soberist but I feel drunk right now.

Actually when I equip Vaelis with a normal damage weapon his damage drops by like half. I think you botched elemental weapon damage somewhere. Or the negation of defense is just so powerful that no elemental resistance can make up for it.

As for increasing health pools. Yes sure. The game got better when you slowed down combat, much less about MUST HAVE THE MOST SPEED!!11 Maybe time to look at ability costs at some point then though

[Troyen]

I think will do a small change and raise the hp gained by leveling up by 10 instead of 5, this because with this system is hard to make the game work with small numbers - there's always going to be some differences in the various party members and enemies. Right now even without putting any attribute point in constitution you'll get 30x5=150HP at end of game, while with the change you'd get at least 300HP (in my simulations tanks would get more like 500-600HP on average).
I am tweaking the act 2 battles but is really hard to have an enemy do low damage and still be "dangerous" enough. I think the main problem right now is the damage vs HP of the characters (enemy and allies). Everything else is OK, is balanced, but this part not so much. The only need is to have battles last a bit longer, so there can be countermeasures (healing, guarding, etc). Otherwise the weakest characters are going to die too often
So either I lower the overall damage a bit more, or increase the HP because when you do 75 dmg with a spell and you have two mages, is easy to take out an enemy the first turn.
Using a full party is completely different from the first act

I think I suggested the HP change a week ago, so I'm all for it. However, I don't really consider it a "small" change.

It did seem weird to potentially go from 35 HP to 60 HP to 85 HP at level 1 depending on where you put your points and what traits you got. How do you balance for a druid that can have either 35 or 85 HP?

One idea for the massive damage issues is to adjust the amount of defense/magic monsters get per level. That way all the tweaking should have less of an effect on Act 1 but prevent enemies from being too weak in Act 2. In fact, if you get Act 1 balanced again, you might consider adjusting scaling for monsters > level 5 to fix some of the act 2 issues. (Or, conversely, balance act 2 and adjust monster scaling < level 5.)

[jack1974]

It did seem weird to potentially go from 35 HP to 60 HP to 85 HP at level 1 depending on where you put your points and what traits you got. How do you balance for a druid that can have either 35 or 85 HP?

In Loren indeed I had a minimum starting HP, so even mages had 70HP at least. Maybe instead of raising the number of HP each level I could just go with it. In general act 1 shouldn't be hard. If I use renke system there are less chances for enemies to kill you with one shot (still possible though).
Also just to be clear (maybe it wasn't) the change is only for LEVEL UP. Not the constitution points. Constitution will still give 5HP. Is each level. Now each time you level up, you gain +5hp no matter what. After, would be 10hp. So a level 5 now would have minimum +25hp, and after +50hp (even if you put zero points in constitution).

One idea for the massive damage issues is to adjust the amount of defense/magic monsters get per level. That way all the tweaking should have less of an effect on Act 1 but prevent enemies from being too weak in Act 2. In fact, if you get Act 1 balanced again, you might consider adjusting scaling for monsters > level 5 to fix some of the act 2 issues. (Or, conversely, balance act 2 and adjust monster scaling < level 5.)

I have already done it, the problem is that player can have very different party: in some saves sent me, Vaelis has 105 defense while Shea ranger 62 same for Magic, Althea Druid 52 and Vaelis 25. I cannot force the player to have all high values.

A solution can be what yaysword suggested, so to reduce the impact of the difference between stats:
Attacker 20 Defender 20 = normal damage
Attacker 40 Defender 20 = 1,5 damage instead of 2.0 damage
Attacker 60 Defender 20 = 2,0 damage instead of 3.0 damage
Attacker 80 Defender 20 = 2,5 damage instead of 4.0 damage

I think will go for this tweak + 10 hp each level up and see, seems the best one to solve the situation.

[yayswords]

That would be nice, although we're still looking at linear gains kind of. I was more of thinking something like

20 vs 20 normal
40 vs 20 1.25 (+20 for +0.25)
80 vs 20 1.5 (+40 for +0.25)
140 vs 20 1.75 (+60 for +0.25)
220 vs 20 2.0 (+80 for +0.25)

Obviously these exact numbers won't work 'cause even in my wildest dreams I can't get ten times more magic than my targets, but I wanted some nice round numbers. The point is, each 25% extra damage is more expensive than the previous 25% increase. I think this encourages the lovely term called "a balance of stats" rather than just derping up one of them. Some more magic would help me... a little, because I already have so damn much. Some more speed would help me a lot!

edit: corrected my own numbers

[jack1974]

Yes I'll first try with my formula and if necessary reduce it even more. And just to be fair this solution:

and what if you use a method that slows down damage above a certain level of the enemy's HP?

in pseudocode as a example:
if damage >HP/2; then
damage = HP/2 + (damage - HP/2) * 70%

damage above 50 % of max HP are only weighted with 70 %, not a cap*, but a way to slow the damage growth down

was tried and tested days ago, but I don't like the idea of "if an enemy has 50HP, attacks will do less damage than on an enemy of 250HP"
The main problem are the wild difference of stats, if their impact is lowered I think all problems will be solved. Will try it today, since for Act2 I'm a bit stuck because I need more tilesets