Revising the weapon skills

[adom-admin]

Right now I'm thinking about how weapon skills will be handled in JADE. There will be some similarities to the skills in ADOM and some differences. Similarities include:

• Weapon skills will be improved by practicing with weapons (e.g. fighting with them).
• Weapon skills provide bonusses to hit, damage and DV.

Additionally there will be some additions:

1. The most important first: Weapon skills in JADE (like attributes, standard skills, etc.) will be open-ended, e.g. there is no limit of 15 levels like in ADOM. As a consequence effects of weapon skills will need to be smoothed out a bit more to prevent game-breaking effects.
2. Weapon skills will increase the probability of critical hits: Each weapon in JADE has a critical hit probability (a percentage) that determines if a hit is critical. Critical hits provide a damage multiplier (either constant or variable depending on the weapon) that increases the total damage.
3. Weapon skills might increase the critical hit multiplier (see above).
4. Weapon skills might provide "other" special effects (e.g. a chance for stunning opponents when using blunt weapons or a chance for increased bleeding effects for piercing weapons) which become available at high weapon skill levels.

What I am right now really interested in is some input on how to model a new weapon skill system without the flaws perceived in the ADOM system. Please note that this mostly refers to the points #1, #2 and #3 above. Right now I'm not really interested in a discussion of "cool" weapon skill special powers - that's something for a later point.

Thanks for any input!

[yisk]

How about weapon division by the class of damage?

I suggest to allocate:
- Pricking attacks (spears, arrows, daggers)
- Cutting attacks (knifes, swords, scimitars)
- Hit-cutting (i really cannot find a suitable english word) attacks (axes, two-handed swords)
- Blunt attacks (clubs, hummers, rocks)
- Biting attacks (lashes, whips)

It is logical that the sheepskin coat is protected is better from blows by a club, than by a spear. The chain armour, in turn, protects from daggers and swords more reliably. It is besides, obvious, that for evasion or blocking different types of weapon (for example, spears and whips) various skills are necessary. I want to tell, that DV and PV should become complex values.

P.S. This idea is not new. Even in "AgeOfEmpires2" there is a division of the "near" and "arrow" protection.

[theotherhiveking]

I'd not like to see 53 diferent weapons skills, one for daggers, one for short swords, one for spears, one for shiny axes, one for not that shiny axes...


I mean, are a sword so diferent form a scimitar that there are the need to split it in two weapon skills?








or polearms of spears?






daggers, swords (short or long, it doesnt matter), spears (or polearms) unarmed combat, mazes, axes bows and crossbows are more than enough..


and, of course, shields

[adom-admin]

How about weapon division by the class of damage?
I suggest to allocate:
- Pricking attacks (spears, arrows, daggers)
- Cutting attacks (knifes, swords, scimitars)
- Hit-cutting (i really cannot find a suitable english word) attacks (axes, two-handed swords)
- Blunt attacks (clubs, hummers, rocks)
- Biting attacks (lashes, whips)

Right now (as of the moment of typing) I have implemented the following weapon classes (1H = one-handed, 2H = two-handed):

• unarmed
• daggers & knives
• blunt (1H)
• blunt (2H)
• ball & chain (1H)
• ball & chain (2H)
• swords (1H)
• swords (2H)
• axes (1H)
• axes (2H)
• polearms (1H)
• polearms (2H)
• staves (2H)
• whips
• bows
• slings
• crossbows
• thrown weapons

It is logical that the sheepskin coat is protected is better from blows by a club, than by a spear. The chain armour, in turn, protects from daggers and swords more reliably. It is besides, obvious, that for evasion or blocking different types of weapon (for example, spears and whips) various skills are necessary. I want to tell, that DV and PV should become complex values.

I have decided against the latter. I would like to keep armor simple enough to be able to display the armor values in a simple expression like ADOMs [+3, +5] to signify a DV bonus of +3 and a PV bonus of +5. If I had to differentiate that even more for the damage types available in JADE it would become too complicated. Right now JADE knows the following damage types (which are subclasses of each other as one would expect):

• physical (piercing, slashing, blunt)
• energy (fire, electricity, acid, cold)

One might consider one value for energy protection and three for physical damage but I know that someone will say "Hey, fur armor protects much better against cold that against..." and so on. So I have decided to keep one protection value for all damage types. Maybe fur armor will provide "cold resistance (5)" as a special ability but that is nothing to directly include in the PV.

[theotherhiveking]

Right now (as of the moment of typing) I have implemented the following weapon classes (1H = one-handed, 2H = two-handed):

• unarmed
• daggers & knives
• blunt (1H)
• blunt (2H)
• ball & chain (1H)
• ball & chain (2H)
• swords (1H)
• swords (2H)
• axes (1H)
• axes (2H)
• polearms (1H)
• polearms (2H)
• staves (2H)
• whips
• bows
• slings
• crossbows
• thrown weapons

I have decided against the latter. I would like to keep armor simple enough to be able to display the armor values in a simple expression like ADOMs [+3, +5] to signify a DV bonus of +3 and a PV bonus of +5. If I had to differentiate that even more for the damage types available in JADE it would become too complicated. Right now JADE knows the following damage types (which are subclasses of each other as one would expect):

• physical (piercing, slashing, blunt)
• energy (fire, electricity, acid, cold)

One might consider one value for energy protection and three for physical damage but I know that someone will say "Hey, fur armor protects much better against cold that against..." and so on. So I have decided to keep one protection value for all damage types. Maybe fur armor will provide "cold resistance (5)" as a special ability but that is nothing to directly include in the PV.

the skills cross-train? I mean, using a 2H weapon should share around 60% of the exp with the 1H one..

[Kalmakka]

the skills cross-train? I mean, using a 2H weapon should share around 60% of the exp with the 1H one..

I remember in Morrowind, you could be an expert at wielding a long blade, but if for some reason you had to use a short blade you wouldn't be able to hit a thing. That was awful.

Ideally, you could have a matrix determining how much using a weapon trains your other skills. My reasoning is that using any weapon will give you a bit of fighting experience that can be put to use to wield any other weapon.
For instance, using a 2h polearm would give much training in 2h polearm (of course), somewhat less in 1h polearm (perhaps 50% of what you got in 2h polearm), a bit in staves (15%), small amounts in swords and blunt weapon skills (5%), and not a significant amount in the rest (1%)

[Dougy]

I remember in Morrowind, you could be an expert at wielding a long blade, but if for some reason you had to use a short blade you wouldn't be able to hit a thing. That was awful.

Ideally, you could have a matrix determining how much using a weapon trains your other skills. My reasoning is that using any weapon will give you a bit of fighting experience that can be put to use to wield any other weapon.
For instance, using a 2h polearm would give much training in 2h polearm (of course), somewhat less in 1h polearm (perhaps 50% of what you got in 2h polearm), a bit in staves (15%), small amounts in swords and blunt weapon skills (5%), and not a significant amount in the rest (1%)

One problem with this, I foresee, is that usually you get 1 weapon skill point for killing something. So every number would thus need to be scaled up by at least a factor of 100 so something could be increased only by 1%.

Also, I wouldn't want to see someone even theoretically capable of achieving mastery of swordfighting entirely from throwing rocks (or some other silly combination), possibly never even seeing a sword in his/her life.

The matrix idea sounds reasonable, although it introduces some arbitrary proportions. I believe some tricky questions would arise: (a) Would the matrix be symmetric? For example, would using a 1H-sword train your 2H-sword skill just as much as using a 2H-sword would train your 1H-sword skill? (b) Would using a 2H-sword train your 1H-sword skill as much as using a 1H-sword would train your dagger skill?

[yisk]

I would not began to divide the two-handed and one-handed weapon. Instead, for each type of weapon it is possible to create an additional bonus multiplier which is added to skill of possession by a sword or an axe if this sword or an axe are two-handed.

Right now JADE knows the following damage types (which are subclasses of each other as one would expect):

* physical (piercing, slashing, blunt)

Yes, I wished to offer such division of the weapon!

Weapon of any kind cause a damage
1) on a surface (hammers, rocks) or
2) on a line (axes, swords) or
3) in a point (spears, arrows).

I would like to keep armor simple enough to be able to display the armor values in a simple expression like ADOMs [+3, +5] to signify a DV bonus of +3 and a PV bonus of +5. If I had to differentiate that even more for the damage types available in JADE it would become too complicated.

Well, I agree, that the realism is not important, if it harms to game process.

P.S. Hah, if in JADE really there will be snow fields, would be cool to see there a cap "shapka-ushanka" which gives resistance to cold weather, but the hero becomes almost deaf. xDDD

[Dougy]

You'll need to use some kind of logarithmic scale at high levels. I tested this but it's a bit inappropriate at very low levels. So for levels 0 up to 15 I suggest a linear scale, then after 15 revert to the logarithmic.

For example the current to-hit in unarmed combat looks like this

UNARMED FIGHTING    0  1  2  3  4  5  6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15
To-Hit Modifier     0 +1 +2 +2 +3 +3 +3  +4  +6  +6  +9 +10 +10 +10 +12 +12

So I fit this to MIN(0.88*level,4.17*ln(level)) giving the values (after rounding):

0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26
0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8  +9 +10 +11 +11 +12 +12 +13 +13 +13 +13 +13 +14 +14 +14 +14 +14 +15

The constants 0.88 and 4.17 I used to fit the curve as close as I could to the ADOM data. I wanted to maintain that level 15 gave +12 to-hit with both the linear and logarithmic. These constants can be modified to allow for to-hit, to-damage and DV, and race,class,starsign,weapon type, etc..

Going through the manual the current values seem to be almost linear - although some of them tend to "curve up" that is increase at an increasing rate, which could be a problem if you want to stick closely to these values. If you really want to stick to these closely, a cubic equation is probably necessary at levels 0..15 such that the to-hit at 0 is 0 with gradient 0, and the to-hit at 15 equals the given to-hit value, and "tapers off" slightly at the end. I.e. match the gradient of the cubic function to the gradient of the log function at that point.

[Dougy]

I tested the idea of a cubic function between 0 and 15 followed by a logarithmic function thereon. I'm not entirely thrilled by it, but I thought I would share the experiment.

Let c be the value you want at level 15. Let x=ln(15). Let k be a parameter - I introduced to vary the slope of the log function.

The cubic function is f(level) = (3cx-c+k)/225x level^2 - (2cx-c+k)/3375x level^3 for 0<=level<=15
The logarithmic function is g(level) = k + (c-k)/x * ln(level) for level>=15.

f(0)=0
f'(0)=0
f(15)=g(15)=c
f'(15)=g'(15)=(c-k)/15x

I've attached a copy of this function when c=12 and k=-20. The main drawback with this type of graph is that it requires time to "get going."