Yesterday, I was playing a high STR character that was significantly maledicted by a dexy assassin. I escaped, but holy crap did the new changes slow down my escape.

This made me ponder a few things. From my perspective the change to MV seems like it benefits DEX players more than STR players. The reasoning is, when I am playing a dex whatever I generally already insist on keeping my weight around 50% max (whole point of dex is dodge duck dip and dive!). When I am playing a STR based bashy guy..I want to weigh a lot.

That said, I wonder if you would consider the following regarding maledicts.

Can you factor STR into the 'effectiveness' of skills like..Boneshatter/Kanset/Kote/etc? It stands to reason that a giant (25 str) swinging a mace with the intent to "Break bone" Is going to break a helluva lot more bone than mr. 16 str dark elf. Now, I realize people will bring up the 'traning' aspect, and sure..both warriors would be equally trained. That said..Boxers are somewhat equally trained, and personally I'd rather the welter-weight guy hit me as hard as he can vs taking a punch from Mike Tyson...

To me, it seems that dex is now the way to go..period... How about some draw backs of being the 16 str dude trying to break the 25 str guys wrist?

In Summary: I feel that there are many more mechanical advantages of being high dex..than there are to being high str. I could be wrong, and please point it out if I am!

-Sarien

One thing I might look at with this is the affect of spells upon this while incapacitated.

Case in point: My char was slept, scourged, weakened, and poisoned, and cursed. 5 ticks later, I was able to stand and attempt to walk away, but couldn't even make it to the next town healer with the move reduction on a paved road.

All I saw every move was:



civilized <238hp 439m 369mv 18207tnl (0.83%) 9 AM> s
Burdened as you are with an excess of weight, you struggle to move.
East Sumner's Road

(Kudos to the necro that got me, but man, seeing my move burn from the spells, and then the attempt at movement. Ouch.)

Incidentally I think most of those skills also do already have a STR component, if maybe not as big of one as you'd like.

Obviously certain maledicts shouldn't really have a str component (artery/hamstring/obvious dex based skills) But, for skills like Boneshatter/Impale/Kote/Kans would you consider making higher str 'better' than it is currently?

I wouldn't even mind if you took the path of buffing these debuffs for higher STR chars, and left dex ones where they were. Ex firegiant with 25 str landing a 10/10 boneshatter ;).


Anyways, Do you feel that this request has any merit, or do you feel that it is pretty well balanced as implemented?

-Sarien

Boneshatter became more STR dependant about 6 months ago and I'm not yet convinced it needs to be adjusted further than that.

Assassin skills I don't know that I'd adjust more because there isn't a large range of possible STR values for the class.

Reading the Code Changes board notes from when this was introduced might be a good start.

So,

I did read the board and could it be any more vague?

"This is slightly more pronounced for people with lower base strength"

OK!

That still doesn't truly address my actual point. What I am looking for clarification on is:

Most people playing a dex build "should" be running around at about 1/2 max weight to maximize their chances of dodging, I know I do.

A STR based char is much more likely to be very close to carrying max weight (especially if it wants to bash people)

Lets say (for sake of argument) that 19 STR arial and 24 STR giant are both boneshattered for -8 str

Max carry weight on arial is 227 at 19 STR for the sake of this example, lets say he's carrying 110 lbs to max dodge

Max carry weight on the cloud giant is 452 at 24 STR for the sake of this example, lets assume he's close to max for bashiness.

The arial at 11 STR, will not be under his carry weight, and not penalized mv wise.

Wheras our buddy the giant will definitely be under his, and be penalized mv wise.

This is exactly why I am saying through my experiences it seems like this is yet another 'boost' to DEX builds, and a detractor from STR builds.

All in all, it just 'looks' like a significant boost to DEX builds, which are arguably already stronger and more popular than STR builds.

Am I missing something not explained in the 1 liner code changes update?

Based on your tone I feel like I'm preparing to beat my head against a brick wall, but here goes.

>So,
>
>I did read the board and could it be any more vague?
>
>"This is slightly more pronounced for people with lower base
>strength"
>
>OK!
>
>That still doesn't truly address my actual point. What I am
>looking for clarification on is:
>
>Most people playing a dex build "should" be running around at
>about 1/2 max weight to maximize their chances of dodging, I
>know I do.

In practice, virtually no one runs that light. If I look at 10 random dodgy characters, odds are I will find 0 at half weight. The opportunity cost is usually too high.

>A STR based char is much more likely to be very close to
>carrying max weight (especially if it wants to bash people)

If you're a STR character with dodge, that's probably the wrong choice generally, even though it can situationally be correct.

The best way to solve that problem is with weight you don't mind dumping when you have to. 5 pieces of driftwood or whatever.

Note that a low STR character can't do this.

>Lets say (for sake of argument) that 19 STR arial and 24 STR
>giant are both boneshattered for -8 str
>
>Max carry weight on arial is 227 at 19 STR for the sake of
>this example, lets say he's carrying 110 lbs to max dodge

This isn't realistic.

>Max carry weight on the cloud giant is 452 at 24 STR for the
>sake of this example, lets assume he's close to max for
>bashiness.

This isn't smart. Usually.

>The arial at 11 STR, will not be under his carry weight, and
>not penalized mv wise.
>
>Wheras our buddy the giant will definitely be under his, and
>be penalized mv wise.
>
>This is exactly why I am saying through my experiences it
>seems like this is yet another 'boost' to DEX builds, and a
>detractor from STR builds.
>
>All in all, it just 'looks' like a significant boost to DEX
>builds, which are arguably already stronger and more popular
>than STR builds.
>
>Am I missing something not explained in the 1 liner code
>changes update?
>
>
>
>
>

Thank you,

Although it doesn't come through in text I was working hard to be non confrontational (hence the multiple edits).

Really, I just wanted clarification which you have provided me (I don't play dex/str chars right). And, that is actually more helpful than a more mechanical explanation of the change to begin with.

Thanks.

Well, in a perfect world you would keep your dexy characters crazy light - but that in practical terms it would require you to pass on good gear, extra weapons, and preps. I think getting under 200 pounds on a fully equipped character is generally really, really hard, whick in turn does leave you very open to dropping STR.

Also factor into your calculus gearing for overmax STR and/or DEX and the different choices, say, fire a-p and arial assassin have to consider there.

See - that is where I realized my argument falls down. The only "dexy" fighting classes I have played..have always been villagers. So, I didn't have to carry around bags full of preps (call resist) and when I made my "I always keep my dex chars around 50% weight" statement, I wasn't lying, I just wasn't factoring in that in my experience..they were all villagers who didn't need to carry so much "stuff" and so, I kept them around 50% weight without "losing" things like extra weaps/etc.


I was then comparing this to my orcs (who are ALWAYS near max weight..preps/skins/etc are heavy). And most recently, I experienced the MV loss on a high str char who got maledicted to about 7/24 str..with a decent amount of weight.

That said, holy crap does it slow you down...I at first mistook it for the game lagging, but then when my pursuer ran by me..was 'wtf'd' Until, I remembered the str/max weight mv change.

I just realized that what I thought was the mud lagging during a recent PK situation was in fact just this. Wow.

I guess I'm going to have to ditch a lot of random crap I carry around...

Edit: Any way there could be some unobtrusive echoes to let one know they're being affected by this? It's so easily confused with lag, and especially for new players might be confounding.

Something that when you move echos something about panting or struggling with your extra weight. Preferably after the next room displays so you actually see it, but a highlight message on movement (above the room desc) would probably work too.

It wasn't abundantly clear to me "why" I was lagging, and it took me half way through running for my IC life to figure out why I was moving so slowly. An echo upon movement would be nice (this would allow me in retrospect to do some split second decision making like...drop prep chest + survive, or die and hope prep chest is too heavy to loot)..

I think that's reasonable.

Most assassin moves are thematically using the opponent's momentum against them which favors Dexterity. Mechanically they aren't all written like this, but if anything a higher strength on the opponent would create more openings, not allow them to out-muscle a jointlock.

Dex builds are more snowbally on minor advantages than str builds, but str always has a lower margin of error for your opponent regardless of other factors, even with bash protection in play.

But a 6 ft tall 170lb Arial (leverage or not) should pose just about as much threat to a 12' 500lb Fire Giant as a 12 year old girl would pose to a NFL linebacker.

Leverage or not, sometimes the game just doesn't add up. I am ok with that, but I think there should be some scaling lee-way there.

nt

The penalty comes into affect when your carried weight is greater than your modified maximum carry weight, while the scale of the penalty is determined by your unmodified max carry weight.

Unless I'm wrong.