Revised Armors

[kreso]

Revised Armors

You know Dembro, the full plate mails were actually MADE to cover all the weak spots. The additional platings while hinder the movement even harder, they are dedicated to make striking someone with daggers/misericorde even harder as you basically try to open a can.

I wouldn't agree on this. Even before firearms were introduced on fields of battle, crossbows proved so efficient in killing knights in armor that they were "banned" from use (considered cheap). Knights, when they fell from their horses, were often taken as prisoners or, if killed on the field of battle, coup de grace was often done via daggers - it's easy enough to squeeze it in between the armor parts.

 

making the backstab difficult to land in the first place, and 20% resistance is going to heavily reduce the damage sustained against a high backstab multiplier.

This is a fair point. -20% makes backstabs loose quite a bit of their power (assuming you land one in the first place).

 

without DEX penalties light and medium armors are completely pointless compared to heavy armor, and the only reason to ever pick one is a forced class restriction

I don't think that's true with IR (altough it's completely true for vanilla) - there are very valid reasons for some enchanted chains even on fighter-types (Mail of the dead in BG1, Asylferund Chain for clerics etc).

 

 

Also, that'd make Bludgeon weapons far more relevant as their biggest advantage is not giving a heck about most of in-game armors.

I never liked this, tbh. Flail should, if anything, be quite innacurate and clumsy in battle.

 

Demi vs. power playing and convenient tweaks

.......

I think Demi's point here is that installing a patching component which introduces physical resistance to armors more belongs to "tweaks pack" rather than "revisions".

I understand the reluctance on this - his vision of the mod isn't a (very!) convinient tweak pack for powergamers.

Personally, I wouldn't keep it optional. You take -x on DEX, get DR in return (you can also make bows keep their rate of fire otherwise, no?)

It will (probably, but I may well be wrong ) actually LET players pick other characters than 18/18/18 fighters and ENJOY playing them. Just because Charname is a Child of Bhall doesn't mean he has the strenght of an ogre, dexterity of a cat and is built like a rhino .

Most NPCs won't even notice DEX penalties (Keldorn's dex is abysmal, Korgan doesn't care anyway, Valy can't get in Plate/Chain, Mazzy prefers bows when I take her - and can be made into an AC decoy even with leather, Viconia's too weak for Plate, etc.)

Another point to note - vanilla game best (or best AC, to be more accurate) armors were -2AC. IR makes it to -4AC. Shields were -5AC, IR goes to -7AC. This alone makes up for the negative DEX. It's a win-win for players eventually (and hence my suggestion that full plate goes to -4 dex - in reality, you couldn't even walk in it).

Having choices doesn't always make the mod better (or anything else, for that matter). My 5/2 cents.....

[yarpen]

1. I like the idea of %-based Dexterity penalties. Sorry, I've missed so much of the actual discussion that I didn't knew you want to implement it that way. I'm okay with -1 penalty for someone who has less than 9 Dexterity. It's just as far as I remember most of implementations for Dex penalties, they were like -5 for Full Plate Mail and that screwed 9-Dexterity characters pretty badly.

 

2. I believe resistances should be shipped with some kind of penalties as well. I'd love to play a game where light armor is as viable as heavy armor in some certain cases. That'd encourage playing in certain ways without kit restrictions.

 

Let's say full plate mail grants some huge-ass penalties.

I want to play very aggresive, dual-wielding Fighter.

And to maximize my damage output I have to choose Light or Medium armor instead of heavy one.

These kind of situations are cool.

 

3. When working on what kind of penalties you get from an Armor - you need to start thinking how to show them in description. If you'd have 10 different penalties, description becomes a mess.

 

Armor Class: 3

Physical Damage Reduction: 20%

Attack Speed Factor penalty:

Movement Speed penalty:

Dexterity penalty:

 

Anything more besides that just makes the description a huge mess to be honest. I'd love to see an unified name for all of those penalties.

Or what about making Full Plate Mails generate lots of fatigue?

 

4. Crossbows were kinda specific you know. You can't compare thrusting a dagger into someone and shooting crossbow's bolt. You know what kind of power they had - reloading a crossbow required a special device as a normal man could not pull it to load another bolt.

[Ardanis]

@Arda, how do you feel about this?

Everyone here has a valid point.

 

I suggest to keep 2-3 recommended options and put the rest either under a "Custom" subcomponent or in the "Show All Options" group.

 

Casual players should stick to the authors' design. If they don't want to, it's up to them to change that design. We can allow for that to be done with ease, as explained above, but I think we also shouldn't drown any newcomer in a sea of options they may not fully understand yet. As I've said before, most any software offers a couple of standard installations and a custom one, often full of arcane fields under the "Advanced options".

 

Alternative solution - keep all armor tweaks in separate components.

 

That's the biggest issue I always had with AD&D's system. They mix up Armor Class (Evasion) with the resistance from damage.

That's the biggest mistake about the armor system in RPGs that I keep hearing over the years, almost as fundamental as people believing that HP is character's health rather than the ability to sustain injury in combat.

Armor Class is the character's total defense rating, representing their ability to avoid taking a damaging hit. And HPs are inseparable from AC here.

 

Or what about making Full Plate Mails generate lots of fatigue?

Unable to implement in a feasible way

[DavidW]

I don't know anything about the specific issue, but I've confronted the general problem a lot with SCS: people want particular options but indulging all the requests clutters the install process and can lead casual users to make bad installs.

 

My eventual solution was the ini file: fine-tuning and not-author-recommended options end up there. Casual users don't see it but people who want advanced options can make appropriate choices there.

 

Feel free to borrow the code: put this in the ALWAYS block of the mod:

///////////////////////////////////////////////////
// read in ini
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
ACTION_IF !VARIABLE_IS_SET ini_read_in BEGIN
 ACTION_IF FILE_EXISTS ~%inifile%~ BEGIN
   COPY ~%inifile%~ ~%workspace%~
    READ_2DA_ENTRIES_NOW ~scs_ini_array~ 1
       FOR (i=0;i<~scs_ini_array~;i=i+1) BEGIN
         READ_2DA_ENTRY_FORMER ~scs_ini_array~ ~i~ 0 ~key~
         READ_2DA_ENTRY_FORMER ~scs_ini_array~ ~i~ 1 ~value~
         TO_LOWER key
         SPRINT $scs_ini_hash(~%key%~) ~%value%~
       END
   BUT_ONLY
 END
END

(having set %inifile% to "item_revisions/item_revisions.ini" or the like)

and then use these functions:

DEFINE_PATCH_FUNCTION check_ini
       STR_VAR ini=""
       RET value
BEGIN
       TO_LOWER ini
       PATCH_IF !VARIABLE_IS_SET $scs_ini_hash(~%ini%~) BEGIN
          SET value=0
       END ELSE BEGIN
          SET value=$scs_ini_hash(~%ini%~)
       END
END

DEFINE_ACTION_FUNCTION check_ini
       STR_VAR ini=""
       RET value
BEGIN
      OUTER_PATCH "" BEGIN
       LPF check_ini STR_VAR ini RET value END
      END
END

 

Then just do (e.g.) LAF check_ini STR_VAR to_check=Disable_Armor_Penalties RET value END before executing the dex-penalty code, and only execute it if the function returns zero.

[Demivrgvs]

Revised Armors

1. I like the idea of %-based Dexterity penalties. Sorry, I've missed so much of the actual discussion that I didn't knew you want to implement it that way. I'm okay with -1 penalty for someone who has less than 9 Dexterity. It's just as far as I remember most of implementations for Dex penalties, they were like -5 for Full Plate Mail and that screwed 9-Dexterity characters pretty badly.

See, I knew I would have convinced you I did the right thing! On a side note, it's not that "I want to implement it that way", it's that it already works that way since a couple of years with the currently available IR version.

 

2. I believe resistances should be shipped with some kind of penalties as well. I'd love to play a game where light armor is as viable as heavy armor in some certain cases. That'd encourage playing in certain ways without kit restrictions.

Exactly my point.

 

3. When working on what kind of penalties you get from an Armor - you need to start thinking how to show them in description. If you'd have 10 different penalties, description becomes a mess.

Not much different from what we have with weapons imo, though adding there stealth and spellcasting penalties surely is a big amount of infos.

 

Or what about making Full Plate Mails generate lots of fatigue?

We do considered it, and I even asked A64 what could possibly be done with fatigue stat, but as Arda says there's little we can do. Too bad, Barbarian and Ranger getting Endurance, or Goodberry removing fatigue could have been cool.

 

Demi vs. power playing and convenient tweaks

I suggest to keep 2-3 recommended options and put the rest either under a "Custom" subcomponent or in the "Show All Options" group.

 

Casual players should stick to the authors' design. If they don't want to, it's up to them to change that design.

I'm fine with this solution, it's pretty much what I had in mind from the beginning.

 

Let's call the component Revised Armors (unless you have better ideas) and for the options I say we could have:

1) Physical Resistance, Dexterity penalty, Movement Speed penalty, and Speed Factor penalties

2) everything except Movement Speed penalty

If we really have to I may be fine with making Speed Factor penalties optional. That would mean having:

3) everything except Speed Factor penalty

4) everything except Movement Speed and Speed Factor penalties

All the other options (I think we have up to 11 combinations) are handled outside the standard install options.

 

I don't know anything about the specific issue, but I've confronted the general problem a lot with SCS: people want particular options but indulging all the requests clutters the install process and can lead casual users to make bad installs.

 

My eventual solution was the ini file: fine-tuning and not-author-recommended options end up there. Casual users don't see it but people who want advanced options can make appropriate choices there.

^This

[kreso]

though adding there stealth and spellcasting penalties surely is a big amount of infos.

This has little to do with the relevant discussion, but any ideas why "spellcasting in armor" causes the game to start lagging, at least for me?

[Mike1072]

I'm fine with simplifying install options by moving choices to an .ini file so long as the vast majority of users will want to install the default.

[yarpen]

On a side note, it's not that "I want to implement it that way", it's that it already works that way since a couple of years with the currently available IR version.

Sorry for forgetting that. Didn't touched BG for few years.

 

Not much different from what we have with weapons imo, though adding there stealth and spellcasting penalties surely is a big amount of infos.

That's why I'd be all for grouping up all the penalties into one name.

 

Let's call it Encumberance. I know you guys can come up with better name. Still...

 

Encumberance:

Dexterity: -2 penalty

Attack Speed Factor: -2 penalty

Movement Speed: -1 penalty

Thieving Skills: -25% penalty

Chance for casting spell: -25% penalty

 

Just to group things up and make it more of an eye candy.

[veyn]

A slight offtopic, but regarding this:

... suggestion that full plate goes to -4 dex - in reality, you couldn't even walk in it

(and few other similar statements in this discussion) - why do you guys think so? It would be a suicide to enter a fight in such unwieldy armour.

 

A few proofs:

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Plate_armour: "A complete suit of plate armour made from well-tempered steel would weigh around 15-20 kg(33-44 pounds). The wearer remained highly agile and could jump, run and otherwise move freely as the weight of the armor was spread evenly throughout the body."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCvOC2VwDc, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg, and many more similar videos of modern reconstructions.

[kreso]

A slight offtopic, but regarding this:

... suggestion that full plate goes to -4 dex - in reality, you couldn't even walk in it

(and few other similar statements in this discussion) - why do you guys think so? It would be a suicide to enter a fight in such unwieldy armour.

 

Yeah, this is overemphasising. But these videos are pretty much out of context - you see guys whose armor wasn't made by a 14th century blacksmith, using 14th century tools and they're preforming in perfect conditions.

Reality was a much harsher misteress than these videos, however.

[Salk]

I think armors should ideally have two strength requirements: the first just to wear it, the second to wear it without penalties (be it movement, dexterity or both).

 

This would probably make everybody happy.

 

I don't like instead to have armors in BG that grant physical resistance so I'd not install this component, no matter what option is chosen in the end.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Reality was a much harsher misteress than these videos, however.

Well... just so you know, the 60 pounds armored knights use a horse to move themselves like said in the link. Had that been a foot soldier, the case would be different..

 

I think armors should ideally have two strength requirements: the first just to wear it, the second to wear it without penalties (be it movement, dexterity or both).

This would probably make everybody happy.

You are arguing that the 3ed rule set is better, as it's closer to what you wish this to be... well in this case perhaps. But there has to be some compromises for the sake that the game is a computer game. You can't just switch the implementation of the ruleset if you feel like it.

[DavidW]

Yeah, this is overemphasising. But these videos are pretty much out of context - you see guys whose armor wasn't made by a 14th century blacksmith, using 14th century tools and they're preforming in perfect conditions.

Reality was a much harsher misteress than these videos, however.

I think Taerom Fuiruim and Cromwell are working quite a long way beyond the 14th century norm, or indeed the 21st century norm. Magic changes the game.

[yarpen]

There were two kinds of armors.

Light ones that were dedicated to infantry.

Heavy ones dedicated to cavalry.

Cavalry ones were so heavy that wearer required help of at least one other person to get onto a horse.

[Salk]

Well, in BG nobody is riding a horse so...