The yin and yang of sparring/training now

[Greve]

Why are people so wary of combat skills in the first place? Why is 30 days to hit advanced considered short? Almost any other skill will hit advanced in something like 1-4 days unless you don't really use it. 30 days takes me six months to rack up, and I don't think I'm scarce when I play. 100 days would take me the better part of two years. What's the rationale for wanting it to take 2400 hours to master a skill? Like, why should that be a thing at all? You can master fireballs and backstab and lockpicking and nearly everything else in under a month. Not saying that should be the case with weapon skills, but why are they treated like atomic bombs when much deadlier skills aren't?

The reason it sucks to get stuck on those skills isn't because it delays your progress toward becoming Drizzt Do'Urden, it's because it's the most direct measure of your progress as a fighter. Most of the reason to pick a heavy combat class is the fact that they get to master the combat skills, so if half of them are stuck at journeyman due to mechanical issues, it just feels terrible. All other character archetypes have a relatively easy time mastering the skills that they revolve around. Sure, you don't have to have <master> in order to be a functional warrior, but having several of your class-defining skills plateau at the halfway point feels every bit as disappointing and undesirable as a thief who's stuck at journeyman steal.

There are loads of valid character concepts where becoming a notable, famous warrior is a fair goal. Warrior RP is its own niche, and more than any other archetype, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for people who live by the sword to be very conscious of their own prowess. We have numerous clans and a whole category of classes devoted almost exclusively to the art of swinging a weapon. How the hell did this roleplaying community somehow manage to concoct the belief that playing a character who cares about being a good fighter is somehow against the spirit of the game? You'd think we were asking for the right to have our characters learn to fly or something. It's irrational.

We're literally dealing with a fundamental feature of the fantasy genre here. Let's take Game of Thrones as an example--how many prominent characters in that story have "good at fighting" as one of their defining characteristics? Something like a dozen? Would it have been a better story if they were all just vaguely decent and roughly equal? Or Lord of the Rings; how many times throughout it is war and combat a hugely important part of the story? My point is that this isn't some obscure niche of the fantasy genre that people have no right to expect anything of in a game like Armageddon. Why is it that you can play a miscreant whose concept is to be a professional master thief and nobody bats an eye, but if you want to play a raider whose concept is to be the terror of the wastes, half of this community acts like you're trying to sabotage the game?

Weapon skills aren't even that powerful. If you're worried about mundane PCs becoming capable of defeating every NPC in the game, it's defense and strength you should be critical of, not weapon skills. Weapon skills account for like one fifth of one's combat prowess. It's just that it doesn't make IC sense to care a bunch about your offense and defense skills, and you can't really do anything to change your stats, so it's entirely fair and natural for warrior PCs to be mindful of their skill with swords and spears. It's automatically going to be the main way that warriors are measured against eachother, because off/def are hidden and block/parry are trivial to max out. But when the system is designed to make everyone stagnate at roughly the same level, the entire "how good am I compared to those guys?" aspect of warrior RP is suppressed. Instead of fostering realistic warrior RP, it undermines it.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Very well put. I agree with above.

[Synthesis]

So, I'm going to assume that the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a valid failure (full miss and sufficiently close in offense/defense) is currently a constant (perhaps based on class). Except lowered if the foe is less skilled.

Here's an idea:

1. Make parries and shield blocks into partial fails (lower chance of a skill increase than a miss).

2. Make the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a fail/partial fail taper rapidly as the level of skill increases (like, asymptotically).

3. Leave the offense/defense clause in.

There would be no plateau. Progress would just get slower and slower.

What do you all think?

What is the intended outcome of this change? When do you envision weapon skills reaching their maximum? 1 RL year? 2 RL years? 3 RL years? Assuming average playtimes.

For someone starting at novice and spending half of his or her time sparring, maybe:

1. Apprentice after 5 days (total hours played).

2. Journeyman after 10 days.

3. Advanced after 30 days.

4. Master after 100 days.

5. Maxed out after 200 days.

Something along those lines.

That timeline is way too hardcore.

In 20 years of playing the game, my longest-lived PC was around 60 days played.  Longest-lived RL time was about 1.5 years (with maybe 6 months of that without logging in).

In 20 years, I've only had...I don't know...maybe 8 PCs even get beyond 20 days played.

I understand what you are getting at here, but if a system like this was implemented, I would quit. Everyone learns at different speeds, even in real life. I think the way it currently is set up works if they add in parries and blocks as XD stated. I would rather have the system we have, than a timed system on when you can advance a level.

The idea of the longevity gate is to match the current rate of cheesy training to the rate of learning that would occur by sparring when parries and blocks count as failures.  Eyeball's estimates are WAY off.  Essentially the only thing that would change about the game is that you would get no particular advantage to weapon skill training by critter grinding.  You could still critter grind, if you want to, but you wouldn't advance any faster.  No reason to quit.

Obviously, all of this would be modified by wisdom scores, and perhaps by class.  I left modifiers out of my initial discussion because talking about EVERYTHING up front makes it difficult to hash out the basic framework.

Why are people so wary of combat skills in the first place? Why is 30 days to hit advanced considered short? Almost any other skill will hit advanced in something like 1-4 days unless you don't really use it. 30 days takes me six months to rack up, and I don't think I'm scarce when I play. 100 days would take me the better part of two years. What's the rationale for wanting it to take 2400 hours to master a skill? Like, why should that be a thing at all? You can master fireballs and backstab and lockpicking and nearly everything else in a week or two. Poisoning you could max out in like a couple of RL days if you have access to the right stuff. Why are weapon skills treated like atomic bombs when much deadlier skills aren't?

The reason it sucks to get stuck on those skills isn't because it delays your progress toward becoming Drizzt Do'Urden, it's because it's the most direct measure of your progress as a fighter. Most of the reason to pick a heavy combat class is the fact that they get to master the combat skills, so if half of them are stuck at journeyman due to mechanical issues, it just feels terrible. All other character archetypes have a relatively easy time mastering the skills that they revolve around. Sure, you don't have to have <master> in order to be a functional warrior, but having several of your class-defining skills plateau at the halfway point feels every bit as disappointing and undesirable as a thief who's stuck at journeyman steal.

There are loads of valid character concepts where becoming a notable, famous warrior is a fair goal. Warrior RP is its own niche, and more than any other archetype, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for people who live by the sword to be very conscious of their own prowess. We have numerous clans and a whole category of classes devoted almost exclusively to the art of swinging a weapon. How the hell did this roleplaying community somehow manage to concoct the belief that playing a character who cares about being a good fighter is somehow against the spirit of the game? You'd think we were asking for the right to have our characters learn to fly or something. It's just totally irrational.

We're literally dealing with a fundamental feature of the fantasy genre here. Let's take Game of Thrones as an example--how many prominent characters in that story have "good at fighting" as one of their defining characteristics? Something like a dozen? Or Lord of the Rings; how many times throughout it is war and combat a hugely important part of the story? My point is that this isn't some obscure niche of the fantasy genre that people have no right to expect anything of in a game like Armageddon. Why is it that you can play a miscreant whose concept is to be a professional master thief and nobody bats an eye, but if you want to play a raider whose concept is to be the terror of the wastes, half of this community acts like you're trying to sabotage the game?

Weapon skills aren't even that powerful. If you're worried about mundane PCs becoming capable of defeating every NPC in the game, it's defense and strength you should be critical of, not weapon skills. Weapon skills account for like one fifth of one's combat prowess. It's just that it doesn't make IC sense to care a bunch about your offense and defense skills, and you can't really do anything to change your stats, so it's entirely fair and natural for warrior PCs to be mindful of their skill with swords and spears. It's automatically going to be the main way that warriors are measured against eachother, because off/def are hidden and block/parry are trivial to max out. But when the system is designed to make everyone stagnate at roughly the same level, the entire "how good am I compared to those guys?" aspect of warrior RP is largely removed from the game. Instead of fostering realistic warrior RP, it undermines it.

I agree that it's the lack of progress that is incredibly frustrating (although I would say what's more frustrating is knowing that I have to engage in a particular sort of behavior in order to progress).

I disagree that master weapon skills don't matter.  Your weapon skill feeds into parry and disarm, for starters.  And as I've said before:  just because you're hitting at jman doesn't mean you're hitting well.

All that being said:  I'm not 100% convinced that it's really necessary to either limit the number of highly weapon-skilled PCs, or to make it take a long time relative to other skills.  I proposed the system I've proposed because -other- people (including Staff) seem to think that it's important.  Like I've said before, it's not my ideal system, it's a compromise system.

[Brokkr]

There are loads of valid character concepts where becoming a notable, famous warrior is a fair goal.

Seems like a fair goal.

Let's take Game of Thrones as an example--how many prominent characters in that story have "good at fighting" as one of their defining characteristics? Something like a dozen? Would it have been a better story if they were all just vaguely decent and roughly equal?

Let's!  So...you obviously aren't playing any of those people.  Think about the kind of people the characters you play would actually be equivalent to. You can get back to me.

[Greve]

I'll get back to you right away and ask how the hell you justify talking about exceptionalism thirty different times over the past few months if you don't think it's something players should be able to pursue.

Or should we all accept that characters of the same ilk as Bronn, Sandor Clegane and Khal Drogo are just beyond the scope of PCs? I'd hope not.

GoT, a story with a handful of POV characters (i.e. PCs), features a dozen or more characters defined by their martial prowess, and it plays a central role in the whole narrative. Do you think it was too much? That it should have been toned down so that only a couple of characters in the story were notable fighters? What about in a game that features two hundred POV characters per week? Where do you think the line is drawn when it comes to an undesirable number of PCs who are good enough at fighting to where it's a noteworthy characteristic?

Certainly we don't want every character to be the best swordsman or axe-dude in town, that goes without saying; but what's the rationale behind wanting almost nobody to be good enough with a weapon to where it's something that people will talk about? And why impose this almost totalitarian level of scrutiny and restriction only to a single category of skills? Why don't you seem to care in the slightest about being an "exceptional" archer, pickpocket, wizard, tailor, etc.? Why exclusively weapon skills? You have yet to answer this question.

The way it works right now, 99% of characters are equivalent, in terms of skill, to Random GoT Soldier #198132 in some arbitrary army that nobody ever notices or cares about. In a game where we're all the main characters of our own story, I don't think that's a good thing. I think it's total nonsense, in fact. We all get to be the best on the block at any and all things except the one category of skills that has, as I've mentioned, entire clans and a whole category of classes wholly devoted to it. Why? This is what I'd most like you to explain.

Of course, it gets a bit abstract if we continue to compare a game to a book. My bad for making that analogy. I thought I was just making a point, not inviting discussion on that particular topic.

[John]

Or should we all accept that characters of the same ilk as Bronn, Sandor Clegane and Khal Drogo are just beyond the scope of PCs?

What was notable about these PCs? The fact they had master next to their weapon skill? Or the fact they could kill everything in sight?

[Riev]

Or should we all accept that characters of the same ilk as Bronn, Sandor Clegane and Khal Drogo are just beyond the scope of PCs?

What was notable about these PCs? The fact they had master next to their weapon skill? Or the fact they could kill everything in sight?

They were a step beyond the normal rabble. Granted, they had some Plot Armor, but their whole deal was they were fighters.

Bronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.

As opposed to Arm PCs, who will never be Bronn of the Blackwater. They MAY be one of the dead soldiers on the battlefield, who as far as the story is concerned, could never have done more than a cosmetic strike to these people.

[Is Friday]

The crappy thing about not having a master weapon skill is that if you're below exceptional strength then you suck, regardless of how high your offense is. nick nick nick graze solid. It would benefit low strength concepts if weapon mastery was achievable, because it greatly improves crits.

Not fixing this is really just furthering the dumb strength-over-everything meta, imo.

[Dar]

The crappy thing about not having a master weapon skill is that if you're below exceptional strength then you suck, regardless of how high your offense is. nick nick nick graze solid. It would benefit low strength concepts if weapon mastery was achievable, because it greatly improves crits.

Not fixing this is really just furthering the dumb strength-over-everything meta, imo.

That would indicate that weapon skill increases damage dealt. Does it?

[John]

Bronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.

I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have his weapons at max. You can be pretty deadly without max weapon skills. Especially when playing a dwarf.

[Is Friday]

The crappy thing about not having a master weapon skill is that if you're below exceptional strength then you suck, regardless of how high your offense is. nick nick nick graze solid. It would benefit low strength concepts if weapon mastery was achievable, because it greatly improves crits.

Not fixing this is really just furthering the dumb strength-over-everything meta, imo.

That would indicate that weapon skill increases damage dealt. Does it?

It's my experience that you hit in vulnerable locations more often with a higher weapon skill. I have no true data to support this, however, because game.

@John:
Yeah, let's just support more strength builds to reinforce character diversity instead of fixing weapon skill gain.

[Namino]

Bronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.

I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have his weapons at max. You can be pretty deadly without max weapon skills. Especially when playing a dwarf.

Increasing weapon skills appeared to increase the likelihood of landing a hit to the wrist, neck, or head which are increased damage localities. It appeared that way, anyway. As a dwarf, hitting the head or neck is nice for the bonus damage, but you can still kill just fine to the body because of your strength. And since strength doesn't need to be trained in Arm, you're gucci from the start. With an elf or weak human, as Friday pointed out, your low strength really hurts you. You struggle to get more than solids against anything but the wrist or the head. So increasing your offense/weaponskill for bodyparts that mitigate your low strength roll is good. But if you cannot achieve a high level of weaponskill, then you plateau well before you can reliability hit the soft spots.

Meanwhile the dwarf is suckling on their inherited strength.

[John]

Here's the problem with wanting to make maxing out weapon skills easy.

People keep saying "Why r u so anti-good at fiting! It makes so much IC sense". Except no-one has been anti-good at fighting. People have admitted that everyone can get to the "kill everything in sight" stage without seeing master. I don't understand the point of being obsessed with getting to master when you can already kill everything that should be fought one-on-one without getting anywhere near there.

There are of course those who want to "100%" a game. Except giving those people an easily achieved goal of reaching master would mean they literally have no reason to continue playing the game.

Finally, with Butcher Brons we can assume one of a handful of scenarios:

• Either he didn't have master and he wrecked stuff without getting to master which demonstrates you don't need to get to master.
• He was a twink who repeatedly engaged in poor RP to get to master. In which case there is no way he should be held up as a PC to be admired.
• It is possible to reach master without engaging in poor RP which means Synthesis is full of it, as are the people who parrot the same things he says.

@Namino: Are you claiming you've had a 30 day played heavy combat class who focused on combat who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag?

[Namino]

@Namino: Are you claiming you've had a 30 day played heavy combat class who focused on combat who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag?

Me? Fuck no. I was laying down unarmed in fields with 5x turaals bouncing off my armor while dodging my punches. I could reel bahamet by the time I was done.

But there are people who find the concept of being as twinky as I was distasteful or bad play. Those people very often get to 30 days played with middling skill.

That's the crux of the issue, John. No one's saying it's impossible to skill up. It's easy if you game the system and decide you don't give a shit about what is realistic and just break the game.

The whole argument is that people who want to stay true to their characters IC behavior shouldn't get punished for it by plateauing forever.

[Is Friday]

The whole argument is that people who want to stay true to their characters IC behavior shouldn't get punished for it by plateauing forever.

[John]

The whole argument is that people who want to stay true to their characters IC behavior shouldn't get punished for it by plateauing forever.

So long as someone's concept of being true to their character isn't "safely spar with zero risk forever and a day and get to master" then I agree it should be possible to achieve that goal without engaging in poor RP. But if you reach the point where you can take on everything, you either need to accept your the best there is and can be, or you need to fight against more dangerous foes.

Or you can twink out and find all those little weird tricks that Synthesis loves to elude to.

[Namino]

The whole argument is that people who want to stay true to their characters IC behavior shouldn't get punished for it by plateauing forever.

So long as someone's concept of being true to their character isn't "safely spar with zero risk forever and a day and get to master" then I agree it should be possible to achieve that goal without engaging in poor RP. But if you reach the point where you can take on everything, you either need to accept your the best there is and can be, or you need to fight against more dangerous foes.

Or you can twink out and find all those little weird tricks that Synthesis loves to elude to.

The problem, John, is that fighting against more dangerous foes does not increase your skill.

Mekillot, Silt Horrors. These are really dangerous foes. They are no better at dodging than your average sparring partner. The only effective and relatively reliable way forward ARE those tricks that break character, like Turaal hunting.

[John]

Once you plateau is a Mek a dangerous critter? Or can you take one down quite easily?

[Namino]

At plateau a Mek will kill you 100% of the time. Even at really high offense/defense a Mek will kill you 95% of the time. They have scripts that make them dangerous to everyone. When you plataeu, a large number of creatures are still dangerous to you defensively and take a long time to kill offensively if you're not a high strength race.

You COULD benefit enormously from getting your skills up more, if you could just find something that can dodge you. But you can't. So you sit, stuck, or get so frustrated that you break your character's identity and go lay down in a field with turaal.

[John]

Namino: How many "easy" foes have you taken on at once upon hitting the plateau? Instead of fighting one turaal or whatever the current stilt lizard alternative is, have you tried multiple spiders? In my experience simply increasing the number of foes you fight at once means that you start getting more dodges.

[Is Friday]

I think that Namino has fought everything, everywhere, in any multiple. These aren't unaccounted for variables.

[Brokkr]

GoT, a story with a handful of POV characters (i.e. PCs), features a dozen or more characters defined by their martial prowess, and it plays a central role in the whole narrative. Do you think it was too much? That it should have been toned down so that only a couple of characters in the story were notable fighters? What about in a game that features two hundred POV characters per week? Where do you think the line is drawn when it comes to an undesirable number of PCs who are good enough at fighting to where it's a noteworthy characteristic?

I actually only read the first book and I hated it.

But the point was, for every Brons, how many normal red shirt soldiers that wanted to be the best were there?  While from your PoV, this may be your story, from the overall perspective, you are much more likely to be a red shirt than a Brons.  Not that there haven't been Brons.  Those are the names we remember, like Thrain.

[Namino]

I think that Namino has fought everything, everywhere, in any multiple. These aren't unaccounted for variables.

Friday has witnessed the firepower of this fully operational battle-twink first hand.

Namino: How many "easy" foes have you taken on at once upon hitting the plateau? Instead of fighting one turaal or whatever the current stilt lizard alternative is, have you tried multiple spiders? In my experience simply increasing the number of foes you fight at once means that you start getting more dodges.

I've done it all. I came up with contrived reasons to fight in dark caves because blindfighting has a flat percentage chance to miss no matter what. I've fought up to 5 x groups of things. And one member of my D&D group who plays this game is even worse than me. He dragged a turaal into the kuraci arena so it would not only be dark, but he'd be fighting something super agile in the dark. The only thing I never did was try to fight something that had night vision in the dark because that is SUPER lethal, even if they dodge the heck out of you because you have negative penalties for being blind and they don't.

I've done it all.

I've been everywhere, man.

[John]

Well I'd be interested to hear what staff have to say. They've repeatedly stated that fighting more dangerous foes results in skill ups. If Namino truly has fought everything and hasn't been able to get past the plateau without resorting to those weird tricks, I'd be interested to hear what staff's thoughts are.

[Namino]

Well I'd be interested to hear what staff have to say. They've repeatedly stated that fighting more dangerous foes results in skill ups. If Namino truly has fought everything and hasn't been able to get past the plateau without resorting to those weird tricks, I'd be interested to hear what staff's thoughts are.

The staff hasn't, to my knowledge, ever suggested the route to power is by fighting more dangerous foes. Foes with high agility and high defense are ideal, but none of the truly dangerous megafauna are high agility. They're all HP sponge/thick skin. If they tossed in more NPCs that speed-tanked by having crazy high agi and defense, then that would be valid. But as of right now, there's only a few animals that fit that mold and most of them aren't even that dangerous (Verrin hawk, Turaal, some spiders, stilt lizards, ect).