What We're Up To:
From both the perspectives of combat analysis and area design, we're not fully satisfied at how many different broad strategies are available. If you think about what most people gear for, the answer is usually STR/HP/damage/save-vs-spell as major categories, with maybe five more that are of secondary importance, and a host of other things that don't see a lot of use. We're aiming to put more categories into at least that second tier, and we're starting with Dexterity. Why do we feel it needs a boost?

1) Since 'back in the day', Dexterity has played a lesser role in combat, even for classes with Dodge. The main cause of this is that over time we've sharply increased the number of skills and abilities which inflict damage regardless of physical defenses. The internal consensus was that DEX-heavy warrior in particular, along with combat-heavy thieves and assassins had waned in power against STR-based builds.

2) If you didn't have Dodge, Dexterity was of little importance beyond the ability to hold more items in inventory. (That's nothing to sneeze at, but we felt it should do more.) After inventorying the number of skills/etc. that it did influence, we felt like priests and mages had little use for it, which led to some poor combos because the races were balanced with "high DEX" as an advantage. Ideally, any character would want to train or use equipment to keep their DEX high, and gain something from doing so. Conversely, hitting a character with a -DEX malediction should do something.

Brief summary of changes:
1) Strength no longer influences Hitroll. Hitroll is now influenced by Dexterity instead, keeping with an ongoing theming of Hitroll towards being the ability to land accurate strikes.

2) The Evade skill has been added. All classes that get Dodge get Evade at the lower and middle levels, and paladins and anti-paladins get Evade later. Even if you don't get the skill, you have some useful chance to Evade if your Dexterity is high enough. Arial healer and midbie dark-elf anti-paladin rejoice! A little.

Think of Evade as either a limited physical defense (or saving throw) of sorts against targeted physical skills. Even under the best of circumstances, it will not work often-- I believe mortals would cap at around 10% in the best of scenarios. It is sharply dependent on Dexterity-- as mentioned in the helpfile, a giant is probably not going to get much out of this skill at all.

3) Only some NPCs can Evade at all-- generally members with the class/level appropriate to a PC having it. These specific NPCs are therefore a bit tougher on defense, but remember that all PCs are now a bit tougher on defense. We'll see how this shakes out in practice, and may adjust the experience rewards for these NPCs upwards slightly.

4) The "top end" (23+) of the DEX scale got adjusted upwards for Dodge perhaps a week ago. (Nep?) Previously, DEX's impact on Dodge was more 'flat' than how we like attributes to work, so the difference between, say, 23 and 24 was not all that large.

5) Nep reformulated encumbrance somewhat. Previously, if your Strength was dropped a good bit, odds are even with very light armor you Dodged like a house because you were terribly encumbered. (Ironically, the most efficient strategy for stopping someone from dodging generally wasn't to hit their Dexterity.) The new math still lets you derive some benefit from having a high Dexterity even if your Strength has dropped. (Very low DEX or letting both STR and DEX drop somewhat is still very bad for Dodge.)

6) A couple of the combinations which previously got, how you say, sympathetic calls made in terms of balance previously may get less sympathy now and in the future. We'll feel less bad for elf paladin, dark-elf assassin, etc. now that one of their highest attributes means a bit more.

A few more changes related to making "more things count" are on the horizon, and will be debuting in the future. (Including a few things that presently count very, very little.) All of this is a work in progress, and we'll be actively monitoring how things shake out.

As usual, comments and discussion about this should go to Gameplay. Let's keep Announcements for the 'headlines'!

valguarnera@carrionfields.com