Any consideration for a mini-gate of the forge ala mini-space between heart beats?

Seems AC is still fairly irrelevant outside of gates, past level 15 or so.

Could even tie it into metal armor use skill for theme. That way only people it makes sense working for would matter, paladin/anti-paladin/warrior/etc.

Would put some advantage on heavy/high-AC armor that is lacking compared to light armor/low weight dodge/and new mechanics for being over-carry weight.

1) You're correct that outside of Gates of the Forge, the only useful AC is armor AC (vs. bash, slash, pierce, element, or magic, not general AC bonuses), unless you have truly ridiculous amounts of it. Maybe a really prepped-up druid might see some misses at higher ranks.

2) We're on the lookout for items that are too light for what they do, which ends up permitting Dodge-happy builds to get all the benefits of those skills without really making sacrifices in terms of what they're using.

3) When making changes like this, the challenge is balancing player-vs-player and player-vs-environment issues. Giving many/all players free damage reduction for wearing armor ends up making exploration easier, and we've had too many features of late (mostly Edges and 'gear inflation') that do this. This is further complicated by the fact that nearly all NPCs wear little to no armor. After that, you have to think about shifters, shifted druids, the recently looted, and other edge cases.

4) I really like the idea of the Armor Use skills playing a larger role, and maybe Parry taking half a step back so that we don't become Defense MUD along the way. It differentiates classes in a functional way that reinforces fantasy tropes -- it's very weird that CF thieves and assassins can do their thing in a suit of heavy armor. It also increases variety upon replay, as you'd want to dress each character differently instead of just slapping on "the damroll suit" or "the HP suit". Finally, it's counter-intuitive and generally silly that armor (except the shield slot) does little to defend you. This leads to new players going a very wrong route when dressing.

5) I generally agree that light armor doesn't involve many tradeoffs relative to metal or stone. Weight doesn't matter much to a fire giant, but a mid-STR warrior would have to made some trades if they wanted to wear a full metal/stone suit. Thanks to the existence of Stoneshatter (and to a lesser extent, things like Telluric Surge and Dent), it's probably safe to make the metal/stone perks pretty significant.

5B) I hate dragon armor. It's way too common and it's basically awesome at everything (high AC, low weight, generally immune or highly resistant to being broken, etc.). Its omission from Armor Use is very intentional.

6) We probably give out hitroll bonuses on too many things. Very high hitroll (especially coupled with Aim, Precise Aim, and Opportunity Strike) dials down Armor Use significantly. (Again, this really only matters vs. PCs, because we have a ton of naked NPCs out there.) Limiting it a little harder, creating more ways to hand out -hitroll penalties to opponents, and/or dialing down some abilities that grant it (like Frenzy or Berserk, which aren't really finesse abilities) might also help here.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Thanks for the write up and sounds great. #4 especially is dear to my heart.

Could double it up, -hitroll for wearing things you don't have an armor use skill for. Two birds one stone?

I think the bonus to your attack roll gets better as you approach hero (like most other Thac0 systems).
I'm not sure if that number is where you want it to be or not...
but that might be something to consider adjusting if you are going to change around hitroll stuff.

You probably thought of that already.

I intentionally didn't make Armor Use and related skills use ROM mechanics because of how wonky ROM is with AC, hitting a target, etc. Core ROM code still handles whether you "hit" your target, but that's different from making an armor deflection.

The armor system was written from scratch, largely around specifications laid out by Kastellyn and me. Kastellyn also handled the grueling task of reviewing thousands of pieces of existing armor for compliance with the new guidelines. He did this for months, and no one noticed that we were aggressively monkeying around, because under ROM, AC did that little.

The system hit its specifications on the first try, but I think we weren't ambitious enough in shaking up existing mechanics. For whatever reasons, CF combat always made some numbers (damroll, save vs. spell, all the factors that feed into Parry, etc.) critical, but condemning a lot of equally sensible-sounding numbers (AC, hitroll, save vs. anything else, morale, etc.) to the fringes. We've made a conscious effort over the last several years to make the system more multi-dimensional as well as more intuitive, but we still have work to be done there.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Thanks for the explanation.

Rather than adjusting the hitroll/ac check and handing out hitroll debuffs, I think focus should be given to the armor use skills which as I understand it are a different check? It's already very noticeable that dirt kick can ruin a lowbie. I've made use of high AC coupled with -hitroll at low levels in PK as it is, it's really quite absurd when you can make your opponent miss on four attacks in a row they might have been dealing caps damage with (but has to be done very deliberately). I think this would need extensive reworking to make the hit/miss calculations meaningful and fair at both high and low ranks.

Not many classes are actually all that tanky at high ranks, shifters being an exception. There are cases where even a warrior isn't an effective tank in a group, unlike most rpgs. What might be cool is a succesful armor check for the slot reducing damage rather than blocking it - you could make this happen more frequently, and skills like aim become worth practicing. How many orcs and thieves have actually taken the opportunity strike edges? Armor deflection currently isn't something to give much thought to in PK so nor is countering it. For an even more involved solution, the damage reduction for each damage type could vary according to the piece's stats, making it sensible to use blunt weapons on a heavily armoured target and piercing weapons against light or no armour, etc.

Alternatively, if you buffed armour you could also buff the skills which bypass it, maybe hitting a gap in the opponents armour can check for critical succes to cause small bonues damage, minor bleeding etc. And give mobs these skills.

What if armor deflection was more tied to a function of weight and material? So heavyass steel armor has a better chance to deflect a hit than the light leather armor?

In addition we could tweak the dodge penalty to be less simplistic. ASs it stands it's a function on weight carried. What if it was tied more to the weight of individual items? So let's say the total weight threshold was raised, but if you had a chestpiece heavier than 10 pounds, you start seeing less dodges. So dodge guy won't worry about their boat or how many pies they have, but they might think twice about a 30 pound chestpiece.

...this way a dodge happy class won't want to wear armor heavy enough to give significant gains through armor deflects, however a giant will be all over that.

Obviously this is another massive undertaking since we'd need to make sure EVERY item in the game has weight values that make sense.

Mithril is supposed to be a very light weight, super strong metal. In CF terms that 30lb breastplate would be closer to 15lbs as mithril. (Just as a rough figure.) CF Mithril might weigh more.

Aside from that one exception, it may be confusing for new players.

That being said, I like the idea. It really doesn't make sense that someone could be running around in full platemail and be a double spin kicking assassin.

With that major of a change, gear balancing might be a larger issue because all of the sudden the assassin cannot use the "best damage roll set" in the game anymore. Which is almost to the point of making top tier items class only (which would be kinda cool if in makes sense).

I basically have the same 'end game' set of armor with every character, with very little variation since 1996. Oh how I miss the gilamdring.

This would be a huge change and significantly different than default:

two rings of fortitude/shard/stamina/sapphire
two brooch/broach/mantle/badge
Suit of darkened/silver dragon
Robe with +40 hp
one of the 6 belts with +15-25 hp
Two longevity/aquamarine/golden chain/moons
Mainhand with + hp
Offhand with + hp

It frustrated the heck out of me that an d-elf assassin can wear full iron darkened platemail with some dex items and dodge the crap out of me. It was just one of those things we've always accepted to be .. "the way it is"

That being said. I think it will create a HUGE imbalance issue for mages if you suddenly give penalties to heavy armor, because there certainly isn't a lot of 'light' armor for mages that has a ton of hp... And lets face it, barring a few saves against magic, that's all that matters most of the time.

As for your comment on dragon armor - I think it's very important, and I was very appreciative of the charcoal/silver dragon concept.

It gave players that were stripped a quick and easy way to regear and get back into the PK frenzy without being at a huge disadvantage, as they are acceptable pieces to fill gaps until something better comes along.

Thanks for all the work you do, this would absolutely change the way CF is played and RP'ed.

So right now we have armor, treasure, etc. This is further split up into material type.

What if armor was further split up into heavy, medium and light categories?

Light armors- lighter weight armors that give no penalties to dodge and evade, however they give no bonuses to AC

Medium armors- Some penalties to dodge and evade, some bonuses to A/C

heavy armors- Higher penalties to dodge and evade, but more bonus to A/C

The penalties/bonuses or lack there of would be dependent on how many of those types of armors you are wearing. The A/C bonuses could be just be flat A/C percent bonuses. By doing it this way you could have mithril armor that is considered light armor, and have lighter weight dragon armor that is still considered heavy/ medium armor (due to thickness and rigidity). You wouldn't be just limited by weight and/or material. I think it would then be easier to go back and adjust a/c and weight accordingly after and min/maxing those values in each category as you see fit.

You could still find it useful to wear heavy metal bracers on your dexy build though, depending on stats/bonuses, just taking a bit of a hit to the effectiveness of your dodge/evade. And while dodge would be ruled by dex/weight/armor type, miss/deflect would be countered by hit.

The imms would need to decide what percentage of armor to hit ratio would give you what percentage of miss/deflect. They would need to balance both ac and hit accordingly. Just like dodge isn't a sure thing, being fully armored vs someone with small hit rate wouldn't be a sure thing either, in fact significantly less but it still would be a useful. I can also see some maledictions (maybe both str/dex combined) affect to-hit more however, again even if you max your ac against the enemy's hit rate it would be helpful but still no where near as good as dodge currently is at its max efficiency (though again up to the imms to decide what helpful should be at max).

Of course parry would be adjusted accordingly.

Regardless of what directions the staff wishes to go though, it is quite the project. I wish you luck in whatever you decide.

So the better your metal breastplates AC is the better chance to deflect a blow from metal armor use?

If so Maybe the way to go would be to have high overall AC also give a boost to armor deflection?

Otherwise I do like the idea of AC being somewhat more meaningful at the highest tiers. I'm sure they have stats on this but most chars prob have AC values that fall within a certain range just by wearing a full set of eq. I don't know if you want to do anything here but maybe for characters who go above that range?