Would it be possible to make these two abuilities mutually exclusive? Sort of in the vein that you can't wear the blindfold while thirsting.

Is it even that good?

I mean, yeah, if I'm playing Empire thief or something maybe that's terrifying, but for most characters (having been both the thirst/entwiner and thirst/entwinee) it's never seemed all that great to me -- at best it's a really good way to steamroll very weak characters that I already could probably just bash down without trying very hard. What am I missing?

Specifically my hand spec warriors just can't do anything against someone only wielding a single weapon as bizarre as that sounds. I even had that toruble with Ganicus the few times I fought tontik, I would be controling the fight, he lands an entwine, I deny him the rewield only to get my face raped off with punch and offhand wield. He was tanking better(above and beyond the fact he had superior dam redux) then me both when I used bare hands and when I used axes.

My non hand spec warriors didn't have much of an issue with making them flee/surviving the entwine.

I am too, often, surprised at how good one tanks with only a dual wield.

Once upon a time, if your main hand was empty you just didn't parry. At some point another change Zulg made (and I no longer remember which one) made it so in that case you pretty much parry with the hand that still has a weapon. I want to say that was an originally unintended consequence but it's been some years and I no longer remember for sure.

I'm not necessarily opposed to some kind of fudge factor in favor of it being harder to parry again in that case but I struggled for a bit to come up with a set of rules that seemed fair and then got distracted by something else shiny.

I always assumed there was some sort of penalty to only having a dual wield. If I understand the parry code right it actually can be a boost now in the situation where your primary parries worse then your dual wield to get disarmed.

*This is based on the assumption that when wielding 2 weapons there is a random chance to use either to parry and that parry chance is still based on the kind of weapon doing the parry.


two solutions I can think of off the top of my head.
-Keep it so you always try to parry with the dual wield but just put like a 30% penalty on the succes rate.
-change the up front system to favor the primary hand (say 60/40) and then keep the check in place such that the attempt falls on the empty hand you just don't try to parry.

I like the second a little more because it also penalizes dropping an offhand weapon to a degree but not as much as losing a primary.

isn't that the point of the skill, to have a second attempt to parry via the dual wield sword?

Or are you saying that if the primary no longer has a weapon, the secondary is then used as the parry check? Without a penalty attached to it then laxman is right, that's pretty funky and not great for game balance mechanics.

Especially in the case of whip/flail. They're now better off two-fold. One because their weapon changes from a whip/flail to potentially axe/mace/dagger/sword and two their opponent loses tanking due to being entwined.

Laxman thinks a 30% redux rate, I'd think 50% is more appropriate. Yes you should be able to parry with your offhand but not all that great. maybe then you could make an edge that increases ambidextrous parrying.

shrug

>isn't that the point of the skill, to have a second attempt
>to parry via the dual wield sword?

Nope. It's a bonus to parry if you happen to be wielding two swords.

(I don't know if that's splitting hairs too much for you.)

>Or are you saying that if the primary no longer has a weapon,
>the secondary is then used as the parry check?

I believe so, yes. Keeping in mind that I haven't taken a good look at this code in probably years.

It used to be that if you had a weapon in the dual wield slot, you had about a half and half chance to parry with either hand, and if your main hand happened to be empty and was picked, you didn't parry (so about 50% fail rate).

This may also be why disarming builds are much less in vogue than they used to be.

I typically don't try to disarm anymore because it doesn't seem to buy a lot of additional damage output unless it's a dual axe or flail tank (warrior/orc). That, and disarm triggers, not that I can't accommodate with a slight change in strategy there.

Anyway. Just seems kind of a bad game mechanic to have it set up that way. I think a blend between new and old seems fitting.

Thanks.

>> It used to be that if you had a weapon in the dual wield slot, you had about a half and half chance to parry with either hand, and if your main hand happened to be empty and was picked, you didn't parry (so about 50% fail rate).

This is how I thought things worked now. In the old days you never ever parried without a mainhand wield (barring ironhands / unarmed defense).

Just getting to use your dual wield to parry without any kind of penalty is being a bit too nice to the disarmed guy.. no?

Here's something more complex than you want to implement:
The goal is, single-wielding parries as normal. Dual-wielding has a small advantage over single-wielding, and makes more logical sense.

If you're single-wielding:
Parry check as normal.

If you're dual-wielding:
Parry first checks whichever of your hands is best for parrying against the incoming attack. Because really both hands should be about equally skilled at parrying and you naturally use whichever seems easiest to parry with. Reduced success by 15%

If that fails, you make attempt to parry with your other weapon. Reduced chance by 80%

So basically you can get two chances to parry, once with your best weapon, and once with your worse.

The 15/80 reduces chance modifiers would be tweaked (by people who do math better than me) such that dual-wielding two swords gives you a slight advantage compared to wielding a single sword. The biggest difference is that it would hurt your parrying much less to wield a bad poor parrying weapon alongside a good parrying weapon.

you guys prefer it now or to the way it was?

>Once upon a time, if your main hand was empty you just didn't
>parry. At some point another change Zulg made (and I no
>longer remember which one) made it so in that case you pretty
>much parry with the hand that still has a weapon. I want to
>say that was an originally unintended consequence but it's
>been some years and I no longer remember for sure.
>
>I'm not necessarily opposed to some kind of fudge factor in
>favor of it being harder to parry again in that case but I
>struggled for a bit to come up with a set of rules that seemed
>fair and then got distracted by something else shiny.

By the way, if the offhand parries, that makes balance of the sisters that much less attractive. When I had it with Eulinda and Aemelius, it was an enormous difference. But if you can parry with the offhand now, balance is still somewhat useful, but less so.

>Would it be possible to make these two abuilities mutually
>exclusive? Sort of in the vein that you can't wear the
>blindfold while thirsting.

As someone playing an active Nexan right now, and being completely stomped every time by one of the current entwine/deathblow guys, I don't think they should be exclusive. Entwine is the skill that makes whip/flail worthwhile. You have to accept that against bersekers you have to either prep, or gang. If you don't want to do either, then roll village or something-that-doesn't-raid-village, or just accept that you're going to get stomped hard if your build doesn't match up well against entwine/deathblow.

as a villager I would agrue that lash and eyejab are what make the spec worthwhile. Unless your goal is to curb stomp melee chars instead of mages. Then entwine becomes great. Against most mages entwine is a wasted command unless your in the village (and even then it is often wasted because they can survive it with ABS or at least know its a distinct tactical posibility and prepare for it)

>as a villager I would agrue that lash and eyejab are what
>make the spec worthwhile. Unless your goal is to curb stomp
>melee chars instead of mages.

There are definitely melee chars who will get stomped. But if you're a non-svirf warrior or orc, you should have a good shot at bashing him down between the entwine and the thirst, especially if you've prepped. Assassins can vanish (eventually), thieves... are complicated and rangers have some options.

>Against most mages entwine is a wasted command unless your in
>the village (and even then it is often wasted because they can
>survive it with ABS or at least know its a distinct tactical
>posibility and prepare for it)

Yup, word negates entwine.