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Post by espeorb on Oct 15, 2008 7:28:39 GMT -5
I agree with Gando on this one. While some races do seem a little overpowered (COUGH spirit of blizzard), many of them make up for opportunity with lack in versatility. Also, the Young Angel race seems a little underpowered, but that may just be me sucking at playing it. But the main problem: the essences. If they could level up like blue armor and items and stuff could, instead of having a tiny amount of points to spend and that's it, that would fix them by a lot. That might also fix the obsoleteness the get after 1 or 2 levels deeper into the dungeon.
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Post by Frumple on Oct 15, 2008 13:36:01 GMT -5
Question for the jury -- very special monsters (Ghost family, mirror balls). Should they be treated differently?
P.S. You can choose wailing phantom straight from the start... which is great. Martial arts + Physical immunity = slaughter. Also -- mirror ball with 900 hp at level 5? Priceless.
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Post by Gando on Oct 15, 2008 14:35:20 GMT -5
Question for the jury -- very special monsters (Ghost family, mirror balls). Should they be treated differently? P.S. You can choose wailing phantom straight from the start... which is great. Martial arts + Physical immunity = slaughter. Also -- mirror ball with 900 hp at level 5? Priceless. Why is this necessary?
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Post by Variaz on Oct 15, 2008 15:13:57 GMT -5
Actually, tonight, I plan on uploading Portralis again to discard every changes I did yesterday based on a math post without taking a lot of things into consideration. I gave some more thoughts, and perhaps it was wrong to nerf something that may not need it. I feel bad, it's the Martial Arts thing all over again... My apologies. Math posts are nothing but trouble. I really need to forget about number crunching. As for Spheres, the only change I plan on doing is to reduce their guaranteed block to 75% instead of 100%, and perhaps make their weakness -50% instead of -100% to compensate. As for ghosts, I will not change them, as Physical immunity, while uber early on, gradually loses it's usefulness as monsters gets more varied attacks. EDIT: I played a Lesser Earth Elemental. So he's really powerful early on. Killing everyone with big big damages, he eventually found a red. Vengeful Orc pops-up, knocks my elemental's to about 33% hp. But I kill it. Yay, cursed essence! ......then I meet Nightmare Scouts. And they gave me a good lesson on why it's not good to listen to math posts, and that "gameplay" should be the basis of nerfs/improvements. Big damages doesn't help when enemies dodge, blocks or if they ever taker a hit, it only takes away a life point.
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Post by Variaz on Oct 15, 2008 19:39:33 GMT -5
Ok, so the game is reuploaded, and every nerfs have been discarded for the moment. Plus, the "Double Magic" ability has been fixed, so it's worth to redownload it. All right, to the meat of this post: Indeed. I took a wrong aim. I aimed at the poor dragon, while forgetting about caster monsters and lesser melee monsters. I even let down my little naga, who was definitely not overpowered in the least. I believe the problem lies with Martial Arts and Monsters. Now, for normal races, Martial Arts is just fine. It's powerful, but you lose two item slots and you have to restrict your armor which, unless you're an Enchanter, is a big drawback. I recently played a martial artist and while she was quite powerful(built her in combination with Melee type spells, and I got a rather mean damages combo out of that. And then I used soul bind on gloves with an iron golem's soul.... ), she was extremely vulnerable and even her damages weren't too overpowering. So in the end, it works well....for a normal player. But for a Monster, things changes. Monsters such as dragons have no drawbacks whatsoever for using Martial Arts. They don't lose essence slots or anything. And then you have the fact that Martial Arts already gives a lot of bonus blows, so when combined with a dragon's high base stats, it's not long that you get over 100+ blows, and that's before any items, essences or anything. Despite their big damages, if they had not too many blows from it, or at least had to wait until a good level, it would be all right. But right now, I think they get too much bonus blows from Martial Arts, and that the skill may not be balanced enough toward monsters. I think that's where the problem lies. Perhaps there needs to be some tweaks on how many blows they get and perhaps the general damages bonus from Martial Arts to take into account their higher natural base stats(and in dragon's case, MUCH higher). Then, we could perhaps add an additional bonus to "Small but Deadly" to make up for that in the case of lower monsters.
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Post by Gando on Oct 15, 2008 20:58:37 GMT -5
The real solution imho is to create a new skill only for monsters (Unarmed Monster Combat?) that works like Martial Arts but balances it out for monsters. Btw I also think monsters with natural brands should be able to turn the brands on and off on their claws/bite without needing to use a combat feat. Shift K could work for that.
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Post by Variaz on Oct 15, 2008 21:08:27 GMT -5
I wonder if creating an extra skill is really necessary, since it would be useless for other races. Just making separate martial arts mechanics for monsters that would act like a "Monster Combat" skill would work.
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Post by Variaz on Oct 15, 2008 22:07:32 GMT -5
Now for the actual damages... I wonder if this would work:
Base damages: Monster's default melee damages(chosen using "K" if more than one, good suggestion Gando!)
Before we go further, we apply a new Small but Deadly bonus first: for every levels above the monster's depth, you get +2% to base damages. This is then multiplied by the ability's level.
Every points in the skill then increases the base damages by 1%.
So a prismatic dragon has 5d10 vase, so about 27 on average. Assuming level 40, a small monster such as my Fang Naga has 1d6, so about 3 on average. However, with 10 points in Small but Deadly, that gives her a 36 levels advantage, so 72% boost per points in Small but Deadly. Assuming 10 points, that means 720% boost, and that means that the 3 becomes 24. A depth 1 monster would have 39 advantages, and it would be 26.
So in the end, while the dragon is still stronger, as expected, the small monster is still strong. Assuming 200 points in this new skill, that means a 200% boost, and it becomes about 81 damages for the dragon(about a 13d12 weapon), and 72 for the naga(12d11 weapon). This is actually quite strong, and as you can see, both monsters become strong. The dragon is still better, but the Naga can hold her own. With more points in Small but Deadly, the Naga could even surpass the dragon in terms of base damages, although the dragon would still win due to very high stats. In both cases they get very high stats though, and damages will be quite good.
As for blows, I'd suggest we treat monster attacks as weight 40. This seems pretty high at first, but keep in mind that monsters gains both strength and dexterity upon leveling, and that their stats increases quickly. So it's really not that bad in the end. Plus, we still count it as dual wield when unarmed. We'd just have to see how well "mid" monsters fare with this kind of formula. They have to be playable too!
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Post by Gando on Oct 16, 2008 7:24:27 GMT -5
I have a question concerning monster stats...what does the Wisdom stat do for monsters if anything?
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Post by Variaz on Oct 16, 2008 8:19:30 GMT -5
Little actually. If it's higher than Int, it will be used instead of Int. Of course, it helps resisting a couple effects if you don't have the resistance. But other than that, it doesn't do much.
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Post by Gando on Oct 16, 2008 12:08:12 GMT -5
Thanks, but this wasn't implemented...?
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Post by Variaz on Oct 16, 2008 12:20:48 GMT -5
Only for the special moves. The regular attacks only used martial arts.
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Post by Gando on Oct 16, 2008 12:27:22 GMT -5
I think maybe you misunderstood the question. I meant you didnt implement the "K" function.
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Post by Gando on Oct 16, 2008 12:50:49 GMT -5
Small but deadly seems anything but deadly...I have level 5 Python (depth 2 monster) with 5 points in the ability and it adds nothing at all to the stats. not even +1.
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Post by Variaz on Oct 16, 2008 13:03:02 GMT -5
It boosts the BASE stats, not the total stats. Early on, it's quite weak(and so is Greater Evolution). But it gets really useful when you start gaining +3 per points in a stat! My Fang Naga really liked this ability.
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