If you haven't read Part One already, might want to skip there and come back. It has an introduction towards why we care about making more stuff count.

The key helpfile to read (online or in the sidebar) is 'ARMOR DEFLECTION'. The short version is that the armor class values of a defender's specific armor pieces may occasionally deflect a blow, and that an attacker's hitroll can prevent this from happening. Those of an offensive mindset may wish to pay more attention to hitroll, and those of a defensive mindset may wish to pay more attention to the armor they are wearing, both to maximize its contribution to AC, and to match it up with any Armor Use skills they have.

Prior to these changes, both of these factors meant fairly little, especially once past the game's early levels. If you weren't seeing "misses" in combat, you probably had plenty of Hitroll and
and more wasn't doing you very much good in the big picture. If you found a +2 hitroll item, you'd probably be better off wearing something else.

Armor class was the flip side of that. If you weren't seeing your opponent "miss" you in combat, your armor class was doing precious little. Note that generic AC effects (like the Armor spell, or an item with something like "improves Armor Class by -3") still do little beyond this. That's something which we plan to address at some point, but not today. That said, many affects (Bark Skin, Petrify Flesh, etc.) which improve Armor Class now also very slightly improve armor deflection against some or all types of attack-- all that tough skin under your armor helps you turn aside the blow. This hopefully makes a lot more of these types of skills worth using and practicing.

This project started in January 2003, and gained and lost momentum along the way. It changed personnel, went dormant for months at a time, and generally ate up space on our hard drives. Kastellyn deserves a great deal of credit for this project being possible-- without his systematic adjustment of literally thousands of pieces of armor, you'd be seeing axes deflected by "Silk Pajamas with 25 piercing AC". Armor Standardization laid the groundwork for even being able to start writing code, and that was nearly all Kasty. Special thanks also to Cyradia for whipping up the visual side of the project, and to Nepenthe for asking 4,000 nitpicky questions which forced us to be more ambitious and account for all sorts of details. If you notice that your invisible breastplate just isn't very good at deflecting light-based attacks, it was probably his idea.

As usual, let's try to keep the Announcements board tidy, and keep discussion to Gameplay.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Output from the new Compare after next reboot, if you compare two pieces of armor that cover the same part of the body:

compare chainmail platemail
A suit of silver-gray platemail should give better protection against piercing attacks than a shirt of elven chainmail.
A shirt of elven chainmail and a suit of silver-gray platemail protect you roughly equally against blunt attacks.
A shirt of elven chainmail and a suit of silver-gray platemail protect you roughly equally against slashing attacks.
A suit of silver-gray platemail should give better protection against the elements than a shirt of elven chainmail.

c 'detect magic'
Your eyes tingle as they begin to see raw magic.

compare chainmail platemail
A suit of silver-gray platemail should give better protection against piercing attacks than a shirt of elven chainmail.
A shirt of elven chainmail and a suit of silver-gray platemail protect you roughly equally against blunt attacks.
A shirt of elven chainmail and a suit of silver-gray platemail protect you roughly equally against slashing attacks.
A suit of silver-gray platemail should give better protection against magical or divine attacks than a shirt of elven chainmail.
A suit of silver-gray platemail should give better protection against the elements than a shirt of elven chainmail.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Hitroll used to be kind of a "throw-in" with respect to game balance, becuase it did very little. We've redefined it to be both:

1) A function of Dexterity reflecting accuracy.
2) More useful in general.

Abilities based on brute force or anger (Berserk, Frenzy, Bloodthirst, etc.) now give less hitroll than they used to. On the plus side, less hitroll that does something is a leg up on more hitroll that did little.

Abilities based on raw speed, inspiration, or divine insight (Bless, Warcry, Accelerate, Aristaeia, etc.) that used to give +Hitroll work as they previously did.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Maybe you guys have already thought of this.. but have you looked at skills that LOWER opponents hitroll and tweaked for this new change? I noticed dirt kick still lowers 4 hitroll, for example.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Armor now has 5 AC categories instead of four. The three most common attacks remain unchanged-- piercing, blunt/bash, and slashing.

Other attacks now fall under either "element" (anything an invoker can sling, etc.) or "magic" (anything else). A piece of nonmagical/nonpriestly armor can be very good dealing with elemental attacks, but probably isn't very good vs. anything magical in nature.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com