Strength

[lostinspace]

[Mobility and agility have nothing to do with each other though. An HG with poor agility is faster then a Celf with AI agility. Also has more endurance to outpace them.

You have said this twice, and it appears to be true when walking, but I'm pretty sure a human can run faster than a half-giant, and an elf can run much faster.

[roughneck]

[Mobility and agility have nothing to do with each other though. An HG with poor agility is faster then a Celf with AI agility. Also has more endurance to outpace them.

You have said this twice, and it appears to be true when walking, but I'm pretty sure a human can run faster than a half-giant, and an elf can run much faster.

If you're kiting with a bow, you're either a desert elf with uber run + stealth, or you're mounted on something fast which also keeps you safe from charge/bash... and even if someone is able to run in and attack, you take your hit, flee, and then peg them with two arrows while kill lag wears off.

[Dar]

And agility factors in this how?

Once you are skillful enough with archery, you always hit and have chances for crit shots.

[lostinspace]

I actually know relatively little about archery, but I know an elf running has way less movement lag than a giant and wanted to point that out.

[Dar]

I actually know relatively little about archery, but I know an elf running has way less movement lag than a giant and wanted to point that out.

I have recollection of it different. Give me a few days and I'll be able to be more educated on the issue

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I propose an experiment. Next time you have master shield use go hit something weak, and then only count the times you're hit and the times you block. Defend for a good while, at least 10 minutes.

Now go find something stronger, again only counting hits and blocks, not dodge/parry. If you're correct this number should change in a measureable way as you fight stronger and stronger opponents. If I'm correct as your time defending approaches infinity you should see that you block the same percentage of the time regardless.

I'll brush up on things again when I have time and skill, though I have to make sure whatever I do is IC. You could be right.

[X-D]

Strength does effect the to hit on at least one combat skill, (ETWO) Agi for dual, and, I believe single hand weapon. AGI is a HUGE bonus to all ranged other then throw. The difference between say a dwarf ranger with max archery and good agi and a half-elf ranger also with maxed archery and EG agi is HUGE. (I know, no rangers other then ones still alive from before the change but I have not played a new class yet). Agi also effects parry, dodge, likely shield use (though I have never checked) and over all has way more affects on other skills then strength, some of which I cannot mention on the GDB.

Myself, I am fine with strength affecting to hit, a stronger person can swing the weapon faster...otherwise they would not be doing more damage. There is a reason why men hit balls farther then women in the sports where you hit balls, and it is not agility. It is club/bat/racket speed based on greater strength.

Again, I say things are balanced fine, if anything HG's are way under powered, as is the str stat IMO, but play to the strengths of the race/class/stat if you are that worried about it and you will be fine.

Oh, I know of at least 2 celf warriors in the last year that were just downright scary because of that agility.

[Vex]

Dwarves need a strength reduction, or some karma requirements.

Strength would be fine, if encumbrance was based off a percentage, of your cumulative physical statistics. That is, 33% strength, 33% agility, 34% endurance. Strength to handle the mass, agility to better move under burden, and endurance to cope with it consistently.

I find it absurd, seeing dwarves in full plate armor, a Salarr warehouse worth of weapons, and two or three large bags full of loot, whilst the elf next to him struggles with minimal leather armor, a couple weapons, and food and water.

There is more to shouldering a burden, than sheer brawn. The code should better reflect this, imo.

As far as combat goes, I feel the strength scale, could stand to contract some. A little more for elves, a little less for dwarves and muls, as if the human physique is the standard, none of the common races, except half-giant, are so vastly different in proportions, that it warrants to astronomical differences, that exist currently.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

... encumbrance was based off a percentage, of your cumulative physical statistics. That is, 33% strength, 33% agility, 34% endurance. Strength to handle the mass, agility to better move under burden, and endurance to cope with it consistently.

This is a clever idea, and I like it. I'd factor agility in less, however.

[Seeker]

40 Strength
20 Agility
40 End

Agree with 7DV.  Excellent idea, Vex.

[X-D]

Um...no. In reality it is Strength to handle the mass, Strength to handle the weight and strength to reduce endurance costs. Only other thing that helps handle the mass is extra mass.

Take a female gymnest and a male power lifter, give them each 200lbs and see who handles it better and longer...Hell, give them each 1/3 own weight just to make it fair and see who does better, it will be the same each time.

Interestingly....Arm already works properly there.

[Marauder Moe]

Where Arm fails, though, is stats being fixed.

Maybe, at least, there should be some hidden encumbrance skill you can train by carrying around heavy stuff.

[X-D]

shrug, like say a packmule skill like in fallout?

I would actually not be totally against such an idea long as it was not something major, like raise enc range by as much as 20%...Hell, I would not mind if nothing was changed stat wise and no skill added just pad the encumbrance levels a tiny bit. Say, 5-10% greater range in them.

[Heade]

Agility and strength aren't equal insofar as COMBAT goes, but if they were, agility would be OP instead. Because agility DOES matter for ranged stuff like bows, AND stealth, AND craft successes. If agility were equally as important to melee combat as strength, it would be the far more useful stat overall. As things stand, strength is good for toe to toe combatants, while agility is good for stealthy utility characters who want to be able to get in and out of situations easier.

The utility of agility is rarely brought up in these balance discussions, but from a game-level standpoint, it needs to be considered. I think strength is fine, as is.

Kill all half-giants, though. I've never liked them in the setting.

[Vex]

The solution I was aiming for, was not realism.

Rather, it was to provide some respite to elves and younger characters, who are crippled by low strength, as well as to people who feel pressured into selecting strength as primary, even when it makes more sense to choose something else, without upsetting combat solutions.

It would, as a byproduct, mean dwarves are slightly less able to maximize their defenses with best in slot armor, on top of their huge offensive benefits, but I don't feel that is a bad thing, for an already extremely beneficial zero karma race. Muls and half-giants, by virtue of already having monstrous strength and endurance, would barely feel the difference.

I don't feel strength, as a combat mechanic, is wrong. I would just like to address the issues it poses, when it comes to encumbrance.

[lostinspace]

One thing I'm remembering is that sizing armor also seems to effect the weight of it, although I can't check logs to confirm currently. Does this also work for dwarves? When they size down human armor are they reducing the weight as well? Or how about when a tall elf has to upsized a breastplate, is that increasing the weight?

If that's the case, maybe looking into reducing the weight change when gear is resized, as dwarves might be double dipping with lighter armor and more strength while elves are getting double penalty for heavier armor and less agility.

[Boogerbear]

One thing I'm remembering is that sizing armor also seems to effect the weight of it, although I can't check logs to confirm currently. Does this also work for dwarves? When they size down human armor are they reducing the weight as well? Or how about when a tall elf has to upsized a breastplate, is that increasing the weight?

If that's the case, maybe looking into reducing the weight change when gear is resized, as dwarves might be double dipping with lighter armor and more strength while elves are getting double penalty for heavier armor and less agility.

There is a bug with tailoring.  I noticed it as a human (max size) resizing half-giant gear; the weight was reduced to 1.

I filed multiple bug reports because, quite frankly, I felt like I was cheating by walking around with heavy gear weighing 1 stone.

In my note on this to staff, the only suggestion I made was to be sure a character's gear is properly weighted is to look at each character and each piece of equipment.  A siege shield that weighed 1 stone comes to mind after resizing.

Personally, checking each and every resized piece of gear sounds like an enormous pain in the ass, and the imms shouldn't feel comeplled to do that, at all.

Still, there are probably lots of people walking around with heavy gear that weighs far less than it should, and if the player knows that and still uses the gear, they're cheating.

[Heade]

It'd be better to just not make tailoring effect weight at all, when considering this from a workload to result ratio.

[lostinspace]

I had assumed tailoring used some percentage of the items base weight and that these multipliers could just be tuned, but if each item has a hard coded weight for each size category that's a disgusting amount of work to fix. Also if downsizing is bugged to give even lighter gear then that's probably helping the dwarves as well.

[Seeker]

Um...no. In reality it is Strength to handle the mass, Strength to handle the weight and strength to reduce endurance costs. Only other thing that helps handle the mass is extra mass.

Take a female gymnest and a male power lifter, give them each 200lbs and see who handles it better and longer...Hell, give them each 1/3 own weight just to make it fair and see who does better, it will be the same each time.

Interestingly....Arm already works properly there.

I'll take stab at this.  Strength is important, sure.  But endurance is also the ability sustain physical effort.  Take your analogy of the male power lifter and your 200 lb burden.  Who is going to be able to hold up the weight longer?  Your powerlifter or his identically strong twin brother who has severe asthma?

Having endurance reflected in your ability to wear and maneuver in armor is reasonable.  You aren't just dead-lifting it.   You are doing effort over time.  Endurance.

Agility, as a small fraction is also very justifiable.   Take two identical twins.  Only difference this time?  One is clutzy, one is a trained parkour fanatic.  Who is going to move around easier, (same strength/same endurance for both), if they both are running an obstacle course in chainmail?

I'm sticking with 40/20/40.

[X-D]

Endurance is already factored in by being the stat that decides not only how much stam you have but how fast it regens. While strength decides how much a set weight will reduce the stam provided by endurance. Bringing up the twin with asthma is fine as that person would tire sooner with no load at all....IE, has low endurance. If you had the twins, one who because of a disease or spell had half the strength of his very strong but asthmatic brother but was very durable otherwise could very likely walk the same distance, though the one with asthma is even losing less stam per room because he is not as encumbered, the other has 30% more stam...But even better, that one will regen his stam faster and finish first. Quite realistic and already handled IG.


Given str and end being the same, the more agile one would likely complete an obstacle course first. But that is represented IG as well by how agility effects things requiring it...such as climb, stealth and more. Given that the low AGI person would lose stam by failing his climb checks and other things...this is already well represented by current code. In fact...there are certain room flags that penalize you in stam if you have lower agi...perhaps that should be used more.

[zztri]

I'll take stab at this.  Strength is important, sure.  But endurance is also the ability sustain physical effort.  Take your analogy of the male power lifter and your 200 lb burden.  Who is going to be able to hold up the weight longer?  Your powerlifter or his identically
strong twin brother who has severe asthma?

If the one with asthma doesn't have an asthma attack during the competition, they'll be completely the same. If he does, asthma makes one brother unable to breathe. He can't use his muscles to their full extend, his strength, with no oxygen going there. He has lower strength because of a disease, he'll be able to hold the weight less.

... Seems good to me. Let's take two twins, one of which has a deficiency that lowers his immune system, endurance. They'll hold the weight for the same amount of time. Err.. Mine's also a bad analogy of course, I doubt you can find a disease/condition that doesn't lower the strength but lowers endurance

Agility, as a small fraction is also very justifiable.   Take two identical twins.  Only difference this time?  One is clutzy, one is a trained parkour fanatic.  Who is going to move around easier, (same strength/same endurance for both), if they both are running an obstacle course in chainmail?

Agile one of course. It is going to be the same whether they are completely naked or overburdened. But he won't go "easier", he will go "faster". Quite big difference there.

Again, looks good to me.

[Is Friday]

I think the true problem with strength being a limiting factor on playing a combat PC is that it's random rolls. Let's just have a point assignment system. Rolling is pretty dumb.

[oggotale]

I think the true problem with strength being a limiting factor on playing a combat PC is that it's random rolls. Let's just have a point assignment system. Rolling is pretty dumb.

Let's agree that having all combat PCs be equivalently powerful in combat ability ruins some fun diversity.

In general most people find it more fun to RP the strongest character than a weaker one, but they'd prefer RPing a weaker (but reasonably competent one) to continuously suicide re-rolling for the strongest character. The current randomness allows there to be a spectrum of characters, strength wise.

Without it, damn near everyone would be optimize stats, which in a multiplayer RPing experience means you have less variability in combat-effectiveness in the people you're RPing with (since you don't have constant dungeon-master oversight to throw scripted variable challenges at you).

Given that skills cap, I think this stifles some diversity, everyone would optimize stats, and eventually everyone would reach master-master-master.

[Is Friday]

No, you're just going to give people the opportunity to play what they want.

Your argument is "allowing a diversity"? That seems silly. You're really just punishing players who want to play a particular concept within the confines of the rules using these random rolls. If I want to play a slick, agile backstabber--I should be able to do that. If I want to play a brute, I should be able to do that.

There's plenty of players, myself included, who will prioritize agility or endurance when it is appropriate for the character.

All you'd have to do to make it fair is create a point of diminishing returns for each stat and increasing cost. e.g. It takes more points to go from 15->16 strength than 10->11 strength. e.g. If you have a PC with 18 strength you have no more than 9 in each other stat.

re: Your points about everyone reaching master->master->master.

Impossible without extreme gaming ability and luck, especially with high stats. High stats actually stunts your growth in a lot of ways. I've played a lot of combat PCs since 2007 and there's nothing I know better in this game than skill gain.