I don't know if these are well-explained anywhere in a help file, so I'm laying these out. If this information isn't in any help file, I'll write one.

Carrion Fields has a long-used (*) function which is essentially a fancy check against Constitution (CON). It has three modes, originally to deal with resistances and vulnerabilities: Poison, Disease, and Other. It used to just be a dice roll against CON, tweaked by res/vulns.

"Other" covers matters of endurance, resistance to pain, etc. Battlerager abilities give some perks here, for example.

These aren't traditional saving throws, in the sense that level doesn't matter, there is no gear category for it, there is no data about the "attacker", etc. Over the years, other things have crept in: Edges, Legacies, subclass abilities (swampdweller rangers vs. poison/disease while in a swamp, etc.), etc.

(*): I found a code update from April, 1997.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

fgbsrfgb

Have any sort of + con factor in all of this?
I know you said no gear factors. But it always seemed to me like wearing + con over your racial max helped you save against rot. as in, I've got a full 18 con, but I"m wearing +5 in con gear I'll save against rot better than just having a full 18 con.

Or does this only apply to the actual timer effect of con?

I know, again. You said no gear factors.

But I swear it can be hard to land that plague on one 18 con guy, but his 18 con friend its NoProblem. I hit him 2 x as often

>I know, again. You said no gear factors.
>
>But I swear it can be hard to land that plague on one 18 con
>guy, but his 18 con friend its NoProblem. I hit him 2 x as
>often

"Edges, Legacies, subclass abilities" If you're sure that it's none of those things, then or similar stuff, then it's rng. It sounds to me like for a certain build you can't really do much to change it (except keep con maxes) but there are miscellaeneous differences between builds.

As in, if I read the code there isn't anything that looks at gear.

It checks your CON, of course, so if your gear is keeping your CON high, that's good. Daevryn covered this.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I know this would never be made available to players, but it would be interesting to compile a table that shows, for different starting values of base constitution, how much "con from gear" one must have such that the expected (i.e. "expected" in the statistical sense) con loss from rot doesn't result in player death.

In other words, "with a base con of X, you need Y con from gear in order to have a 50% chance of surviving rot" (for each possible value of X).

Having such a table might highlight whether rot needs to be tweaked in any way w.r.t. game-play considerations.

(I'm not saying it does, necessarily- just that such a table would serve to highlight whether any change is needed.)

When you wear the gear, that is.

Slapping on the +con gear when already low will only buy more time.

Slapping it on whilst high will give a better return.

Was assuming dude had it all on hand and wore it immediately after the rot was communed.

For instance, if it were the case that a guy with 10 base CON needed to wear +20 CON in order to have a 50% chance of survival, then that would probably be imbalanced.

(Note: Those numbers are just for the sake of argument and probably aren't even REMOTELY accurate.)

20 con worth of gear is about 30lbs at most, assuming that you aren't wearing any as part of your basic set.

Based on what the imms are saying, the probability would vary depending on what race the character is.

A fire giant with 10 con, wearing +20 con, will do much better than a drow with 10 con wearing +20 con, because the fire giant will generally be saving with a higher con.

So you feel its balanced for characters to need 30 CON on tap (either from base or gear) at all times in order to have a 50% chance of surviving rot?

I sure don't.

I actually feel like a good metric would be, "The race with the lowest base CON, with the stat at max, should not die to rot most of the time in the absence of any +CON gear."

So the only time you'd need to carry +CON gear is if "most of the time" isn't good enough for you, or if your base CON is below 16. Or if you want to account for the possibility that the shaman will try to damn you first for -CON.

Without doing the math, my general experience as a player is that if I'm around human con I don't need any con gear, and if I'm a lower con race, I might. I'm pretty much okay with that -- if I'm a felar, I accept that my low str and int are drawbacks and I have to find ways to compensate for them; if I'm an elf, I accept that my low con is a drawback and I may have to find ways to compensate for it.

For me was that I would basically have to go hide for 10-20 mins irl and find something else to do while waiting for it to pass.

Not fun, so the answer was I don't fight people that use lengthy maladicts, not fun for them either.

Having to wait that long almost always results in people you were hunting logging off, groups you wanted to make disband, raids or counter raids are finished.

There's got a be a better (and shorter) way.

Heal heal, heal refresh. Rot doesn't incapacitate you, it just nukes your regen.

The flipside to that is, I might want you out of my way for a while so I can get my item back, raid your cabal, or any number of things. If you generally sit out rot vs. fight with it, you've given me a way to do that.

sdrgbsr

If I'm a solo shaman, I probably do. :P

It's one of the few chinks in an elf paladins armor. Or that drow ap.

There are non-limited items as follows:
2x ring for +2 each, running total +4
2x neck for +1 each, running total +6
body +3, running total +9
about body +3, running total +12
2 x bracers +2 = running total +16

Throw in juggling balls, a basic +con belt, and you are already at +18, and hardly weighed down at all, even as a weak race.

You can easily expand on the above as your con drops, and this ignores and +con gear that you might happen to be wearing in other slots simply because it is nice gear (e.g. plain phylactery).

Honestly, if Nererial could take a full rot from a hero with the edge and only lose 4 con, it's not op. It may be somewhat tedious to sit there in your crappy anti-rot set, but it isn't really overpowered.

>Have any sort of + con factor in all of this?
> I know you said no gear factors. But it always seemed to me
>like wearing + con over your racial max helped you save
>against rot. as in, I've got a full 18 con, but I"m wearing +5
>in con gear I'll save against rot better than just having a
>full 18 con.

Nope.

>Or does this only apply to the actual timer effect of con?

This. Well, and in that rot only starts damaging you when your current con is less than your permanent con stat.

Also consider that, several ticks into rot when the rot affect is at let's say -6 con, the just 18 con guy is now saving with a 12 con, whereas the guy with +5 con gear overmax is still saving with a 17 con.

My experience matches Guy's.

For some reason, when I am 20con above my max, I don't seem to lsoe con much when rotting. Maybe 4-6 con in a full strength rot from a hero with the edge, on a drow.

When I am 4 con above, I'm probably toast. And that's partly because I invariably lose con the first 5 ticks when that's the case.

nt

So you could potentially save as if you had con higher than 25, but only for things where con matters, i.e. poison, disease, rot, etc?

The helpfile for grit specifically mentions brews of questionable content. Is this some reference to mundunugu brews, or something else? Orc only preps sold in the village you say, why that sounds great I say.

Tac

Interesting. So what falls into the "other" category? Stuff like boneshatter? Kot/kan?

Stuff like "wrack" or whatever it is called.

I don't even know what that is. Heh.

nt

I might be using the wrong name, but what it does is:
- prevent resting, let alone sleeping
- screw with regen on top of this (I seem to recall)
- cause spells & supps to fail sometimes (as in, the affected person fails because of the pain, a bit like wasps)
- cause a bit of damage on the tick (again, my memory is not perfect here)

At least not that I ever experienced.

The echo I remember is something like...
You scream out as your body is wracked with pain

or something like that. I only know of one set of mobs that does it.