Re: [Adonthell-general] Adonthell Rules Rough Draft

[Kai Sterker]

On Fri, 29 Mar 2002 16:00:18 +0100 walther-franks wrote:

> 1) Experience: i have to agree with the others, that there shouldn't
> be a theoretical limit to the level. The EP scala could be altered a
> bit as Kai and ALex suggest, most importantly it needs to be checked
> with the monster levels/Ep points, so that lvel advance is realistic.

The best would be, as Alex said, to make up some formulas for both the
level advance and the EP you'll get for slaying a certain opponent.
First would probably be something like     
    ep_n = ep_n-1 + ep_n-2
or something similar. Latter would somehow involve level, attributes,
skills (possibly equipment and own level) of the opponent.

> 2)combat ABILITIES: I like the way abilities are reduced to the
> necessary, but I do see one problem. The combat abilities as they are,
> all except the'fighting feat' do not really show how well a character
> can fight, but merely on what equipment he can use to fight. A rise
> in, say, 'melee' would not on it's own let the char fight beter, he'd
> need a next level weapon that he'd have to buy/find in order to do
> more damage in combat. The most powerful high-level char, stripped of
> all his equipment, would be as weak as a first-level one.
> Maybe we'd need some clearer thoughts on the actual combat system to
> work this one out better. One way to compensate it might be to raise
> the overall fighting power with each level of 'fighting feats',
> additional to the feat itself, or to come up with a whole new ability.
> It's not that I really miss standard rpg abilities such as strength
> and dexterity :) , I just think that in some way their principle needs
> to be integrated.

The current combat formulas we have involve strength, dexterity and the
like. Mike Avery did those formulas for melee battle way back. I have
written a summery in my item draft (that nobody ever looked at, as it
seems :P).

Here's the relevant bits:

Hit Calculation:
================

For those calculations, each character needs the following attributes:
dexterity and luck are basic attributes, the attack skill reflects a
character s proficiency with the equipped weapon and the defence skill
is the general ability to avoid being hit. From those we will calculate
4 ranges that determine the odds for a hit, a miss, a critical hit and a
critical miss. These ranges will be scaled so that their sum equals 1
and weighted so that, given opponents of equal strength, the odds for
hit, miss, critical hit and critical miss are 12:6:1:1. Then we roll the
dice and see what we ve got. Since we need attributes of both
characters, we mark them with A (attacker) and D (defender) to tell them
apart. 

First of all, we calculate the attack and defence ranges: 

  hit range = (dexterity_A + attack skill_A) / 200 * 0.6
 
  miss range = (dexterity_D + defence skill_D) / 200 * 0.3

>From those two values we can calculate the remaining range, and the 
characters luck attributes give us the ratio between critical hit and 
miss: 

  crit allotment = (hit range + miss range) / 9

  crit ratio = luck_A / (luck_A + luck_D)

Now we can determine the actual critical hit and miss ranges: 

  hit range_crit = crit allotment * crit ratio

  miss range_crit = crit allotment - hit range_crit


Damage Calculation:
===================

We ve seen how the hit determination works and can find out whether an
attack was successful. Now we ll have a look how much damage a hit
inflicts on the target. Here the equipment comes into play, although
skills may influence the use a character can draw from a weapon or piece
of armour. Only skilled characters can use good armour and weapons
efficiently. On the other hand, skilled characters with poor equipment
won t be able to make use of their full strength. 

We use the following attributes: the characters  strength and dexterity
as well as the hit- and miss ranges calculated earlier. We further need
the weapon base damage, armour rating and armour dexterity penalty. From
those we calculate two modifiers that represent the abilities to inflict
damage, and to absorb/avert damage: 

  modifier_A = (base damage_A + strength_A + dex penalty_A) * hit range 
  
  modifier_D = (armour rating_D * 0.5 + dexterity_ D) * miss range 

Note: The  0.5  in the modifier_D formula denotes the maximum percentage
of base damage that ar-mour can absorb. This is of course adjustable.

>From above values we can calculate the base damage: 

  damage_base = modifier_A * base damage_A / (modifier_A + modifier_D)

As you can see, the base damage will always be the same as long as the
conditions do not change. Therefore, it should be randomly adjusted by a
certain amount. +/- 20% seems to be a good value.
_______________________________________________________________________


So far we didn't really decide for or agains those formulas. But now
that we get close to actually need the stuff, we should do so :).



> 2) magic abilities: I agree with Kai here, that the different
> categories of spells should be the four elements. You could then
> always proclaim fire as offensive, earth as defensive spells,
> water&air could share the general spells in some way.
> It is also important to keep the two ability-categories well balanced
> concerning possible ranks. Nils solved this quite well with
> 5+2+3+3+3=16 for combat and 5+5+5=15 for magic. With our four magic
> categories you could make this completely even with 4+4+4+4=16
> possible ranks in magic abilities.

Well, you should take into account that magic is limited to Elves and
Half Elves. That's compensated by alchemy and smithing skills of Dwarves
and Humans. The point is, if you differenciate between abilities and
skills, that means that Dwarves and Humans will always turn out as
killing machines and may additionally have alchemistic skills and the
like. 


Kai