Rework PV
issueid=1614 01-02-2013 06:41 PM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by Grond: 971
Rework PV

The current PV system has some serious problems:
  1. It's unreasonably difficult to harm high PV monsters with normal hits
  2. Since critical damage is multiplied before PV, critical hits deal absurd amounts of damage


I propose replacing the current damage calculation with the following:
  1. Let D be the raw damage of an attack (modified by powerful/mighty blow, if appropriate)
  2. Let R be D/PV (the ratio of raw damage to PV)
  3. Let p be a carefully chosen piercing value (the higher p is the less influential PV is)
  4. Multiply raw damage by a factor of 1 - 1/(R + p) [if this is negative the attack does 0 damage]
  5. If the attack is a critical hit multiply this result by the critical hit multiplier

I'd suggest choosing p somewhere in the range of 0.8 to 1

The main effect of this system is to increase the amount of damage done by lower damage melee attacks. This is good because it lessens the frustration of needing to wait for critical hits to do any damage. At the same time it lessens the power of critical hits, which is important given the higher multipliers available. Also, this system preserves the power of mighty blows, since these increase the value of raw damage (this means that, as before, mighty blows are especially effective versus high PV targets). For high damage attacks (relative to PV), this system behaves about the same as it did before.

This was discussed at some length here: http://www.adom.de/forums/showthread...ts-be-modified . Credit for the system proposed in this RFE goes to grobblewobble.
Issue Details
Issue Number 1614
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM II (formerly known as JADE)
Category Gameplay
Status Suggested
Priority 3
Suggested Version ADOM II 0.3.2
Implemented Version (none)
Votes for this feature 0
Votes against this feature 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




01-04-2013 08:31 AM
Ancient Member
To be honest I'm a bit nervous about this, even though I suggested the formula myself. I worry that it will also make PV less effective against monsters, which could possibly make the game too hard, especially if a relatively high penetration parameter is chosen.

The current endgame lets you fight through a gazillion fire giants, which is the one currently existing monster that can't be damaged by non-critical hits. I think this is the main reason why armor penetration is needed in the game in its current form. We need to keep in mind that this will eventually change, as the endgame can be expected to become much more varied in the future.

Fire giants are comparable to molochs. Imagine what a game of adom would look like if level 30 to 45 had no other monsters than hordes of molochs to fight through and how this would skew game balance. Personally I feel that they should be one size smaller, which would make them colossal instead of gargantuan. They're not titans, they're regular fire giants.

01-04-2013 04:56 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by grobblewobble
To be honest I'm a bit nervous about this, even though I suggested the formula myself. I worry that it will also make PV less effective against monsters, which could possibly make the game too hard, especially if a relatively high penetration parameter is chosen.
I'm not sure this is necessarily a bad thing: it's not particularly interesting to have monsters which can't do any damage even if they hit. Against stronger monsters the damage difference isn't huge. This is definitely a concern with ranged attacks though, since you don't have much control over how many ranged attacks you take (the barbarian wilderness encounter in particular could be really deadly). It might be prudent to compensate this change with an increase in out of combat regeneration, or some items that still give moderate amounts of flat damage reduction (rings of unslashability and the like perhaps).

Quote Originally Posted by grobblewobble
The current endgame lets you fight through a gazillion fire giants, which is the one currently existing monster that can't be damaged by non-critical hits. I think this is the main reason why armor penetration is needed in the game in its current form. We need to keep in mind that this will eventually change, as the endgame can be expected to become much more varied in the future.
I don't think the current PV problems are exclusive to the endgame. A troll might have no difficulty damaging monsters with normal hits until the endgame, but with anything else you run into problems with some monsters much earlier. While the endgame will eventually consist of more than just hulking brutes, fire giants are probably not going to be the strongest, given that class abilities go all the way up to level 100. I think the longer the game goes, the more difficult it will be to choose reasonable PV values with a flat damage reduction system. On the other hand, there may be better solutions than the one proposed here.

01-04-2013 07:56 PM
Junior Member
In Elona different types of weapons ignore different percentages of PV. Something like that could be used.

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