need feedback for weapon proficiency groupings

[polytope]

11 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

If quarterstaves should be grouped with something, that should be with spears. Sure, a spear has a pointy end, but as the Chinese bo fighting style proves, there is a reasonable overlap (and more commonality between the two groups than staves vs clubs).

I wouldn't have suggested collapsing the categories at all if subtledoctor hadn't specified he wanted to get it under 10 proficiency groups. Clubs and quarterstaves are very tenuously connected (besides being wooden and usually druid choices) by having an extended potential contact surface for striking and a fairly isotropic mass distribution along their length; relative to axes, hammers and maces, anyway, which have small and dense heads as the striking point.

Grouping spears (and halberds) with staves has firstly a game balance issue, (at least, for EE) in that a single proficiency group improves ability with slashing, crushing and piercing types of weapon. Secondly, a conceptual problem in what actually constitutes a spear.

This edgy spear is not going to be wielded in the same way as a bo stick:

Still less is this pronged affair:

It gets even worse with the halberds, they are not at all designed for or really appropriate to be used in bojutsu.

[Satrhan]

On 9/7/2022 at 12:38 AM, subtledoctor said:

I mean, it's doable with a fair bit of effort. But, I'm not sure the end  result is  worth that effort. You would still need to use distinct proficiencies for each weapon, so you would not free up any stats. In Scales of Balance I just give a bunch of pips early on, which can only get you proficiency or specialization. So you end up proficient or specialized in many weapons, and building toward grandmaster with your later, fewer pips as you level up. The process is different but the result is very similar, and  the effort to implement it is an order of magnitude easier.

Yes I thought of doing it this way as well, seems like a decent and easy solution to the problem as well. 

Just put of curiosity, you already grouped some proficiencies in Scales, is the mod you're discussing here going to be completely separate from that?

9 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Yeah and I was actually thinking axes and halberds together…? Given a halberd is basically a species of poleaxe? And CDTweaks/IWDification has two-handed axes with the axe proficiency and the halberd animation?

Alternatively: why do we even have halberds in the game? It’s a bit weird to pick out that one polearm and make it so common. Not to mention it’s an anti-cavalry weapon and the game has no mounted combat? Maybe give them the spear animation and call them glaives. Or just “spears.”

In that case a greatsword is just a very large two handed dagger

Halberds are probably just a stand in for polearms in general. If you look at those there is such a great overlap between different polearms, it's hard to represent them all. They really should just have been called polearms, and leave the rest to the item description. 

Or, unkindly but just as likely, its a weapon one of the devs (or dnd creators) had heard off, and thought it was cool to include. Same goes for bastard swords, which really are just a slightly larger than usual long sword. And don't get me started on studded leather.. 

[Endarire]

@subtledoctor
From an entirely game mechanics perspective, proficiencies just seemed meh to me.  BG and D&D 3.x have a similar situation ('problem') with Fighters in that they're focused on weapon proficiencies, then feats in later editions, when there's only so far you can go with these before starting over with another weapon type or changing to melee/ranged from the other.  Wizards stop time and shoot horrid wilting clouds to deal 16+ dice of damage per casting, and often 60 dice per chain contingency 3 pack.  Fighters... ignore magic resistance and hit stuff.  They're effective if you want to focus on auto attacking with the occasional other option.

Whoever made AD&D 2e and Baldur's Gate -really- liked longswords & longbows and encouraged players to build for them.  Other weapon types exist, and Carsomyr and the Staff of the Magi/Staff of the Ram are some of the best counterexamples in vanilla, but focusing on one weapon type (scimitar, bastard sword, etc.) means that you'll very likely ignore other melee/ranged weapon categories if you find them, or edit the game to make yourself proficient if you found something you liked but don't want to make a new character to use it.

Functionally speaking, there are 6 types of weapon styles:

-2 handed melee.

-2 handed ranged.

-Single weapon style (empty off-hand).

-1H weapon & shield.

-Dual weapons.

-1 handed ranged (sling, throwing axe, throwing knife, and some spell-made projectiles).

These are the most notable distinguishing factors for weapon-wielding characters.  Instead of needing to wait tens or hundreds of hours to get to the type of weapon you want in the vanilla system while likely regretting life until then (and I'm looking at you, katanas!) or/and rely on significant foreknowledge of where stuff is to get it quickly, focus on a weapon style.  If you find a weapon you like that you didn't spec for, how much are you willing and able to change your build to accommodate it if you aren't just editing your character to quickly respec?  Probably not far:  A longbow character is a longbow character until there are no more longbow-related proficiencies to get that you want - and then what?  Likely, you start adding proficiencies to another weapon type (longsword, warhammer, etc.) and it's ranged if you don't already have maxed ranged and melee if you don't already have maxed melee.  There's little actual effective choice regardless of how many subcategories of these 6 aforementioned weapon styles people use.

From another perspective, the SCS mod just gives proficiency of a certain degree of whatever weapons are in a unit's inventory to these units.  Why?  It's convenient and effective.  How much does it matter if a unit attacks in melee with a dagger, a warhammer, a longsword, or some other weapon?  Not very much.  A backstabber will likely use a backstabbing weapon, a Cleric will use a Cleric weapon, etc., but it's still physical damage if it hits and a bad roll for the attacker if it misses.

[polytope]

55 minutes ago, Satrhan said:

In that case a greatsword is just a very large two handed dagger

Halberds are probably just a stand in for polearms in general. If you look at those there is such a great overlap between different polearms, it's hard to represent them all. They really should just have been called polearms, and leave the rest to the item description.

I too dislike the idea of two-handed halberds sharing a proficiency with hatchets, even if thrown axes (or all thrown weapons) are to be relegated to their own group.

Agreed that halberds in game are a blanket classification (The Wave was supposed to be a trident, which makes more sense because of its oceanic connection), the thing is most polearms have really awful stats btb in AD&D, so nobody would use them or take proficiency in them, it gets even worse because the devs didn't include variable weapon damage by size.

• Awl Pike, speed factor: 13, damage vs small/medium: 1d6, damage vs large 1d12
• Fauchard, speed factor: 8, damage vs small/medium: 1d6, damage vs large 1d8
• Glaive, speed factor: 8, damage vs small/medium: 1d6, damage vs large 1d10
• Partisan, speed factor: 9, damage vs small/medium: 1d6, damage vs large 1d6+1

I mean, spears are already pretty bad, speed factor: 6, S/M 1d6, L 1d8, (should be S/M 1d8+1, L 2d6 for a spear used two handed), but at least are usable by druids, like scimitars, so less need to be competitive with a two-handed sword or halberd.

55 minutes ago, Satrhan said:

Or, unkindly but just as likely, its a weapon one of the devs (or dnd creators) had heard off, and thought it was cool to include. Same goes for bastard swords, which really are just a slightly larger than usual long sword. And don't get me started on studded leather.. 

Ah yes, studded leather, the non existent armor which is the best in game choice for two entire classes (thieves and druids) and several kits, thus spurring treasure hunts to get the most magical varieties of it, ludicrous.

Edited September 8, 2022 by polytope

[subtledoctor]

 

7 hours ago, polytope said:

It's a well known (and well liked) trope in various kinds of fiction that one member of the crew has particular skill with a certain weapon even if they're weaker than their companions in other respects and thus occasionally saves the day. Your mod, your choice, but I personally prefer this precedent.

That's fine. I think that trope is a bit over-used (here it is on Game of Thrones... here it is on Walking Dead) but there's nothing wrong with it. I just think the base game proficiency system basically has that covered. So the point of doing something else in a mod  is not to say the mod way is better, but rather that two options are better than one option. And yeah, unfortunately, to broaden the idea of "combat skills" to include more than just weapon specialization, I want it to be a unified system. That means either 1) use the proficiency system to implement combat skills, which necessitates combining weapon categories, or 2) pulling weapon specialization out of the proficiency system, zeroing out class-granted pips so that screen can be bypassed during level-up, and using an alternative (probably dialogue-based) system instead. There are a merits to option #2: it's no longer limited to 20 skills or skill groupings, and it would not need a repeating effect to monitor your pip values all the time.  But OTOH it would be more fiddly work to set up dialogues properly and level-gate certain skills (the proficiency system can just use profsmax.2da), and it's a bit weirder and less pleasant for a player than simply increasing pips in the proper level-up UI. At the moment, I'm contemplating a hybrid system where using combat skill points will involve the familiar proficiency UI, and some will advance simply like proficiencies; while some will instead be 'skill groups' where each pip spent gets you the use of a dialogue to choose from several abilities.

7 hours ago, Satrhan said:

Just put of curiosity, you already grouped some proficiencies in Scales, is the mod you're discussing here going to be completely separate from that?

Yes. The SoB alternative proficiency system groups several weapons together, and I've long thought that I should utilize the proficiencies freed up by that system. So this is where my head's at. But as I thought about what skills to add alongside weapon specialization, I realized 1) the new skills need more stats, so I would want to reduce SoB's 13 weapon categories to 10; and 2) it makes sense to de-emphasize weapon specialization... not entirely, but just tone it down a bit to make it closer to the 2E source, and emphasizing other skills a bit more. In one of the simpler statements of the rules, only two pips could be spent on weapon specialization, so the max bonus from proficiency is +1 thac0/+2 damage. The level 7/13 APR bonuses only apply to specialized weapons, and only fighters can specialize. So fighters end up with 2.5 base APR (instead of 3 or 3.5 with BG-style grandmastery) and paladins and rangers never advance beyond 1 base APR. It's extremely limited compared to the BG2 system, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it as a game rule. Fighters end up operating at their maximum potential with way more weapons than they would  in a grandmastery system.

Of course this is BG2 so I'm thinking of something capable of more closely approximating BG2 gameplay. Currently I'm contemplating allowing fighters to reach Mastery with three pips. It doesn't really need to be more complex than that. Instead of spending the last two pips for GM, you could spend them on the "attack speed" combat skill, which gives you APR bonuses with all weapons in 0.5 increments.

Something like that. Because weapon grouping needs to be done late, this will probably look like a bunch of the Might & Guile feats being moved to Scales of Balance, and the the combined [proficiency changes + feats] being offered as an alternative to the existing SoB proficiency overhaul.

7 hours ago, Satrhan said:

And don't get me started on studded leather

To be fair this one isn't necessarily on the BG devs. Studded leather gets prominent placement in e.g. DMGR3 Arms and Equipment Guide. I just make my brain read "brigandine" whenever the game says "studded leather" and it's a little better... hmm, possibly it's worth actually doing that in a mod...

  

7 hours ago, polytope said:

Clubs and quarterstaves are very tenuously connected (besides being wooden and usually druid choices) by having an extended potential contact surface for striking and a fairly isotropic mass distribution along their length; relative to axes, hammers and maces, anyway, which have small and dense heads as the striking point.

Yes. While the game's club animation looks like a wooden mace, the description calls it "a stout stick" and says "anyone can find a stout piece of wood and swing it." So I kind of see clubs as more like a tree branch, or even a stout baton or shillelagh. Advanced specialization with club and staff could therefore be something like mastering both bojutsu and jojutsu.

7 hours ago, polytope said:

Grouping spears (and halberds) with staves has firstly a game balance issue, (at least, for EE) in that a single proficiency group improves ability with slashing, crushing and piercing types of weapon.

This one doesn't concern me as much, because basically only fighters (edit - and bards I guess) can get the benefit of this. Clerics could only use staves, thieves could only use staves, druids could only use staves and spears. So it's basically a class feature for warriors, which I think is fine. And it's balanced because the weapons in this groups are generally inferior to other weapons that you would have to spend more pips on. (Greatsword for slashing, morning star/flail for crushing, and... okay there's no bigger/better piercing weapon.)

Edited September 8, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Labyrinthitis]

I've always though weapon proficiencies are one of the less fun parts of the rules as implemented in the infinity engine games, especially in the BG2 proficiency set. While some choices and limits make the game fun, it goes too far and in practice it seems most people go straight to specialising as much as possible in a single weapon and supporting style, and just ignore a lot of weapons throughout the game - so while you get a big choice of weapon proficiency, it effectively reduces your choices in equipment.

How about a more radical approach to proficiencies, that leaves some meaningful choices but in practice allows a lot more flexibility to equipment that weapon you picked up without worrying whether you've "optimised" for it? Instead of any individual weapon or group proficiencies, you ONLY have weapon style proficiencies - so if you are using single-weapon style, and have two pips in it, you will get the effects of two pips in any weapon wielded in that style, alongside any style specific bonuses. Then you can swap between longsword and mace and dagger freely, as long as you wield them on their own, without penalty, but if you equipped two weapons, or a two-handed sword, you would get no bonuses as if non-proficient (unless you have the other appropriate proficiencies). An additional ranged style would probably need to be added for ranged weapons (or even two, launcher vs hurled or something like that), but it would free up even more proficiencies to be used for interesting skills.

[polytope]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

And yeah, unfortunately, to broaden the idea of "combat skills" to include more than just weapon specialization, I want it to be a unified system. That means either 1) use the proficiency system to implement combat skills, which necessitates combining weapon categories, or 2) pulling weapon specialization out of the proficiency system, zeroing out class-granted pips so that screen can be bypassed during level-up, and using an alternative (probably dialogue-based) system instead. There are a merits to option #2: it's no longer limited to 20 skills or skill groupings, and it would not need a repeating effect to monitor your pip values all the time.  But OTOH it would be more fiddly work to set up dialogues properly and level-gate certain skills (the proficiency system can just use profsmax.2da), and it's a bit weirder and less pleasant for a player than simply increasing pips in the proper level-up UI. At the moment, I'm contemplating a hybrid system where using combat skill points will involve the familiar proficiency UI, and some will advance simply like proficiencies; while some will instead be 'skill groups' where each pip spent gets you the use of a dialogue to choose from several abilities.

Have you considered modifying the LUNUMAB and LU___ 2da files for this purpose? Since there are both min and max level restrictions on ability selection, a class or kit could start gaining special abilities at a much lower level, perhaps levels 1-7 would access only original proficiency system, 8-14 would have mid level abilities, 15-21 high level abilities and 22+ epic level abilities. Some HLAs in any case would respect the original breakpoint of XP over 3 million.

However, I am afraid that there may be a hardcoded limit on number of ability choices that can be displayed on the selection screen for level up, even if you cap some at a maximum level, haven't tried this at all myself.

[subtledoctor]

7 hours ago, polytope said:

Have you considered modifying the LUNUMAB and LU___ 2da files for this purpose?

Yes. Three problems with that:

1. HLAs come every level and we want combat skills to be limited to one every 2-3 levels.
2. The HLA screen can only show a limited number of abilities... I think? I know it can scroll now, but  I think it is still limited to 24 entries. I have >30 combat skills to choose from. Not every class/kit will have access to all, but when you add ~8 actual HLAs it's just too limiting.
3. IIRC the "minimum level" for HLAs does not actually work - it is only for the vanilla HLA spells added to multiclasses, to prevent someone who cannot cast 9th-level spells from getting a 10th-level spell  they don't have any slots for. My recollection is that normal HLAs on single-class characters, the min_level field is simply ignored.

I have sort of solved #1 - I've figured out how to give HLAs every 2nd or 3rd level. But even there, that means you would continue gaining HLAs that slowly even at epic levels - I don't think you can change the rate of aqcuisition. And #2 and #3 are still problems. I think any workarounds would be at least as difficult and clunky as using proficiencies or dialogues.

To state it very briefly, I've considered five ways to achieve this sort of thing:

1. Feats via Kjeron's spell-learning UI
2. Repurposing the HLA system
3. Pure dialogue system
4. Pure proficiency system (with feat chaining/dependency, see the Skills and Abilities mod for an example)
5. Hybrid proficiency + dialogues

Basically I'm leaning toward #3 or #5 as the ideal solution. A pure dialogue system has by far the most flexibility, but it also involves major complexity and makes it quite difficult to modify. Might & Guile actually used to use this for a while, until it switched over to Kjeron's UI mod. Now I can modify every kit's feat selection from a single .2da table. If I had lots of free time it might be interesting to write a function that could accept a bunch of arbitrary conditions and stitch together a dialogue automatically. That could have lots of uses, for things both small and large (including possibly rewriting the entire HLA system) and it could similarly be controlled from a fairly simple table or something.

#5 is fairly straightforward: you have proficiencies, and you have skills with feat-chaining where  it makes sense - e.g. the Swashbuckler could put five pips into the Dodge skill, and get five successive AC bonuses; thieves could put multiple pips into the Backstab skill, and get successive backstab bonuses. Simple. This system only gets clunky when you spend pips to get optional skills. Like, there will be a 'Combat Postures' skill (maybe need a new name for that) which will let you choose from Leadership (like a bard aura), Grappling (chance to Hold target when attacking), Parrying (chance to block one attack each round by damage type), Missile Snaring (block one missile attack each round), Dirty Fighting (chance to apply a random debuff to the target) and Spell Evasion (IWD Evasion). These are equal alternatives for what kind of tactics you want to employ, so it doesn't make sense to chain them. Instead the game will give you an innate ability for each point you spend on this proficiency, and you can use that ability to open a dialogue and learn a combat posture. It's a bit clunky for the player, but not that bad... and the dialogue itself only needs six options and no conditions aside from class/kit, so it will be very simple to make or modify on my end.

So this is what I'm looking at. ~10 actual weapon proficiencies, ~10 fighting styles and individual skills with chained benefits, and ~5 skill groups containing about 5 skills apiece. So potentially 45 actual combat skills, which range from learning once to investing up to 5 pips in.

Edited September 8, 2022 by subtledoctor

[morpheus562]

There is no limit to the number of HLAs that I've seen. My FMT has 38 different HLAs to choose from. Another thing to consider is BGEE does not have access to HLAs, so any system using that for profs will fail for those who play standalone BGEE.

With all that, I have a simple, inelegant, function that is used to add new HLAs that you're welcome to use if you do want to add HLAs as part of this. It allows you to specify the class, number of times the hla can be used, the hla being added, and any prerequisites. It will then identify any specialty kit HLA tables that fall under that class and provide them the HLA as well.

Edited September 8, 2022 by morpheus562

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, morpheus562 said:

With all that, I have a simple, inelegant, function that is used to add new HLAs that you're welcome to use

Thanks, but I have my own inelegant functions that I use to modify HLA tables across different mods in a way to make all the changes compatible with each other.

(I was new to writing functions when I made these; that's why the action functions are called e.g. "ACTION_ADD_HLA" and  the patch functions are "PATCH_ADD_HLA"- I was terrified of making an action function and a patch function with the same name. Silly me.)

1 hour ago, morpheus562 said:

There is no limit to the number of HLAs that I've seen.

Huh, that's good to know... I think this might have been a change in the 2.0 or 2.5 patch. I don't think it's enough to make me change my plan - there are still other problems - but it does change the calculus a bit as far as how useful the HLA UI can be for a mod.

[ahungry]

I LOVE the idea of dropping weapon based proficiency in favor of static attributes one can spec into (it'd be a nice complement to go with M&G feat system).

Since it's a "this is a game, not true D&D" - it already fits the mantra of other Scales of Balance features and could be a #2 option when picking to use the SoB proficiency system or not (use this new one instead of the SoB prof rebalancing).

If there was a global HP increase to all PCs/mobs (x3?), something with larger scaling could even work without making all combat end too soon:

Swift Striker - 1 pip = +0.5 APR  (max 2.5 APR at 5 pips)

Deadly Precision  - 1 pip = 5% crit increase (max 25% crit at 5 pips)

Nimble -  1 pip = 1 bonus to ac and thaco (max 5 ac/5 thaco)

Super Tank - 1 pip = 5% physical resist (max 25% phys res)

Shrug off Magic - 1 pip = 5% magic resist (max 25% magic res or save bonuses, +1 to each save category - if the magic resist component is installed)

Keep the 4 weapon styles from SoB with shield bash/dual wield etc.

You could still orient a character to go "all in" on something (maybe you have mod added gear and plan to have 5 base APR, or use Greater Whirlwind often, or the 100% crit HLA)

[polytope]

14 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

1. Feats via Kjeron's spell-learning UI
2. Repurposing the HLA system
3. Pure dialogue system
4. Pure proficiency system (with feat chaining/dependency, see the Skills and Abilities mod for an example)
5. Hybrid proficiency + dialogues

Here's an idea - which I somehow know most other players won't like - special class skills and abilities other than weapon proficiencies could actually be granted through rare usable items found in game, which could even be randomized via RNDTREAS.2DA and shared scripts. These would probably mostly be readables, much like the tomes in Baldur's Gate or the few plot related single use scrolls, but also including such things as keepsakes, oracular skulls and unusual elixirs or incenses.

It's simple enough via 206 (324 for EEs) and shell spells to ensure that a boon of the same kind isn't usable for 3 levels and not even boons of different types at the same level (or maintain the same period of 3 levels for all, if you prefer), with a little fiddling you can also prevent the item being expended on a failed use to avoid accidental wastage (not for potions though, that would be babysitting, but for the other sorts of permanently enhancing items it makes sense).

This method also requires writing a fair amount of fluff text and making new icons.

[Graion Dilach]

On 9/8/2022 at 7:25 AM, polytope said:

This edgy spear is not going to be wielded in the same way as a bo stick:

This was mocapped, AFAIK.

To put this to more perspective, AFAIK the Eastern halberd styles were closer to bojutsu than the Western ones. But I don't think D&D ever defined which style it assumes to their spearmen.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Graion Dilach

[Endarire]

There are 2 main thought processes regarding weapon proficiencies and their implementation in games:

1: Do something close to realistic in our real world.  This is sorta the current BG system.

2: Make things convenient for the player.  This version acknowledges that d8 damage is d8 damage regardless of how it's done, and instead focuses on putting points into weapon styles (1H melee, 1H ranged, 2H melee, etc. as mentioned above) as well as things that boost accuracy, damage, AC, attack speed, and attacks per round, and maybe also grant some sort of other buffs to  self/party and debuffs like slow or trip to foes.

So, @subtledoctor, how should we focus our discussion?

Edited September 9, 2022 by Endarire

[polytope]

15 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

To put this to more perspective, AFAIK the Eastern halberd styles were closer to bojutsu than the Western ones. But I don't think D&D ever defined which style it assumes to their spearmen.

Point taken but there's still a critical difference; in stick fighting the hands slide up and down the entire length of the staff to reverse it and deal blows from unexpected directions, if a substantial portion of the staff's length is metal with a cutting edge then the wielder can't do that, and has quite a bit of muscle memory to unlearn.

I'd honestly prefer weapon specialization in game to be pretty specific to the weapon trained with, and relatedness only conferring a partial benefit (as I once did with scripts) but this thread has taken another turn entirely with the discussion of scrapping even more weapon proficiencies in favor of fighting styles. Ultimately it will be subtledoctor's mod and his choice I guess.

Edited September 10, 2022 by polytope