Speeds and armor

[Ithildur]

LOL



Are lightly armored guys faster than heavily armored ones? You'd think!

Making light armored guys speedy is exploity!

Making heavy armored guys slow is a penalty!

<3 ALFA

This is indeed a constantly amusing thread.

@Melody: you can take the double move factor out of the equation and it still doesn't change the core concept. Guys in heavy/medium armor normally are not able to escape from enemies that move at 30' base movement or faster. Guys in light armor have a fighting chance to escape.

For those that are concerned moving slower in heavy armor in simply a PC killer, that simply is the reality if you're dealing with a nasty foe that runs faster than you and has overpowered your party. You are in deep doodoo if you have slowpokes in the group; you have a choice to either a. ditch the heavy armor guys behind (i.e. you don't need to outrun the bear, just outrun the slowest guy in your group), or b. try to come up with ways to utilize tactical retreat options taking into account the mixed speed (yes, there are options).

If you're soloing as a lvl 4 slowpoke and you go poking your nose into places where you meet, say a pack of fiendish direwolves, I'm sorry, you're s.o.l. and will die, unable to outrun them. I didn't think ALFA had any problems with this sort of a thing.

[danielmn]

If you're soloing as a lvl 4 slowpoke and you go poking your nose into places where you meet, say a pack of fiendish direwolves, I'm sorry, you're s.o.l. and will die, unable to outrun them. I didn't think ALFA had any problems with this sort of a thing.

I'm more concerned with the level 4 plate wearer who is with two level 3 PC's traveling from Rivermoot to High Hold and hits a random encounter of a troll.... as for direwolves, a party of low levels would be decimated by them as well, as direwolves movement rate is high enough to outrun any PC (regular wolves and our snowbound friends as well), so any low level party would likely be s.o.l. in such cases as well.

[Melody]

If you can script it so that heavy plate wearers are only slowed during combat while running I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this. However, you're talking about slowing them down by a significant amount at every speed. I can't see where this would do anything to improve anyone's gaming experience. I believe your stated reason for wanting to slow plate wearers was because dexterity bonuses were not working correctly with lighter armor. I still have yet to see how slowing plate wearers fixes the problems with light armor. Nor do I feel that allowing plate wearers to move at base speed is somehow overpowered. The difference between pnp and our virtual world is that we never roleplay walking long distances therefore we are never waiting on anyone to catch up. Have you ever been walking with a PC with a movement speed increase and felt frustrated at the yoyo effect it creates? Now dial that back the other way and imagine the frustration of constantly waiting for slow moving characters. Removing all pnp arguments I can not see where this suggestion would benefit anyone.

[Veilan]

If you can script it so that heavy plate wearers are only slowed during combat while running I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this. However, you're talking about slowing them down by a significant amount at every speed.

Right, because people cannot ever be asked to maybe not travel 100 leagues of overland map in full plate .

I believe your stated reason for wanting to slow plate wearers was because dexterity bonuses were not working correctly with lighter armor.

I do not think you believe correctly. While this is an exacerbating factor in the overall balance of power, I believe the hope is this will eventually, by some means, be fixed (not Obsidian - they told me pretty clearly they cannot fix it).
The main reasons actually are the lack of all drawbacks that PnP imposes upon heavy armour - such as the inability to don it properly on your own, or the movement speed penalties. Right now, any of the reasons that exist in PnP for maybe not always wearing a full plate are moot, devoiding us of balance as well as flexibility, choice and immersion.

That said, there is no reason for anyone to get their panties in a tussle - we are certainly not going to support any remedy that is worse than the disease, and just a clumsy, inconveniencing hackneyed job. So, it would actually be helpful if more heavy armour people also chimed in to tell us what they believe could be a reasonable drawback, that would encourage people of such combat mastery such as fighters to not see the full plate as always the best armour of choice.

Cheers,

[danielmn]

Hopefully not chasing my own tail here....

Two camps exsist for the change. One camp that believes in order to balance out the engine aspects of the game due to Obsidian fubar's to make the playing field more even, heavy armour wearers should have a detriment. While I'm not in entire agreement that a negative impact be put in place for some because a negative engine impact is felt by others, I'd be willing for experimentation to occur to see the results. If nothing but the heavy armour speed in itself is affected, it would only affect a small portion of the playerbase anyway, so I don't see it as establishing some great balance between light medium and heavy armour wearers, but I'd be willing to find out and eat crow if I'm wrong.

The less and more logical camp believes that some detriment should exsist for it's own sake, because there are detriments that should be there that aren't. I'm more inclined to agree with the reasoning of that camp, because I myself think that heavy armour wearers should have a drawback of some sort. If the solution isn't to slow down the heavy armour wearer, then the question remains what is the solution. Detriments are already applied IG via the max dex bonus (which I think rarely applies as I think V's assumption is correct in that most fighters who do wear plate probably have a 12 or below dexterity to begin with) as well as the negative modifier of the ACP which effects a good portion of the class's skills(Ride, climb, jump,swim...four out of the seven skills available, if crafting is included as one skill), basically making the skillset of the fighter watered down and weak. The slowed rate and needing help to don armour are other detriments not IG at the present time.

Possible solutions to the exsisting problem of heavy armours not having enough drawbacks to them, despite Max Dex and ACP figures...

A. Buildwise - include more skillset checks, including the fighter's own skillset of climb, jump, swim ect. If IC the fighter sees that those in lighter armours are leaping and bounding over obstacles whilst he is shuffling over them, the PC will formulate that plate isn't always the best thing to be wearing.
B. Installation of a central repository for P-Storage on each server - something V says Rusty wanted as a prereq for servers going live, this gives the option of low level fighters leaving their plate at home in situations and wearing lighter armour as the situation requires it.
C. Possible Con Checks? - Though the argument isn't strength based but more mobility based, a possible scripted Con check for heavy armours, failing may mean fatigue ect, instituted in intervals.
D. Follow up with Regalis - seems like he has a line of thought on how to fix, if someone with the ability to do scripting within the toolset could hook up with him.
E - as already suggested, slow heavy armour wearers down
F - if not exploitable, possible speeding up of those wearing lighter armour


I agree with V that plate isn't always going to be the best option. Clanking around in it 24/7 shouldn't be the norm. Using HA in appropriate situations, MA and LA in others is called for I think. But if players are expected to have two different armour sets, then players should be given access to p-storage so that those sets can be stored and used at appropriate times. Many of the above solutions require scriptors, something we are in short supply of. I think that's perhaps the main crux of the problem.

[Swift]

*stabs thread*

[Blindhamsterman]

C. Possible Con Checks? - Though the argument isn't strength based but more mobility based, a possible scripted Con check for heavy armours, failing may mean fatigue ect, instituted in intervals.

this, is genius, have it based on any kind of armour, with it being a Fortitude save (meaning high level fighters, clerics etc have little to worry about anyway) that gets progressively higher based on armours weight.

simple and will have an effect on all armour types, but give a clear disadvantage to heavier armours if used for large periods of time!

[danielmn]

Also another limitation to those fighters with 12 dex is the feat progression. In effect with only a 12 dex they loose the ability to take Deflect Arrows, Dodge, Greater Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Two Weapon Defence, Improved Two Weapon Fighting, Mobility, Spring Attack, Two Weapon Defence, Two Weapon Fighting, Many Shot, Rapid Shot, Stunning Fist, Whirlwind Attack. On the flipside, many of these are obtainable at a Dex of 13, so a fighter would merely have to place a point in the area to gain access to many of these if that was their aim. It isn't too great of a limitation but something to keep in mind.

[danielmn]

C. Possible Con Checks? - Though the argument isn't strength based but more mobility based, a possible scripted Con check for heavy armours, failing may mean fatigue ect, instituted in intervals.

this, is genius, have it based on any kind of armour, with it being a Fortitude save (meaning high level fighters, clerics etc have little to worry about anyway) that gets progressively higher based on armours weight.

simple and will have an effect on all armour types, but give a clear disadvantage to heavier armours if used for large periods of time!

Con check or fort check would work, whichever is more balanced. It could be instituted for all armours, having a low save for light armour, a higher save for medium armour, and yet a higher save still for heavy armour. The time incriments could also be established as to the type of armour, with light armour wearers having to make a roll let's say once every hour or two, and heavy armour wearers having to make a save once every 20 minutes to half hour. The save DC could increase over time for all armours. The fatigue effects could be established to balance it as well, weather it be to slow the PC down, or some other adverse effect.

A scripted workaround would also need to be found to prevent exploitation of a player passing two or three checks, removing the armour and putting it back on to reset the checks. A cooldown period if you will, probably at the same increment for all armours.

[Ithildur]

Why would light armor folks get con/fort checks? Per RAW there are no penalties for wearing light armor vs wearing regular sturdy clothing aside from armor check penalties with stud leather and heavier and asf. You can sleep in it, swim in in, run in it, or hug babies in it, with no penalties other than these two spefic ones.

I still don't understand ACR requiring fort checks for resting in light armor...

[danielmn]

Why would light armor folks get con/fort checks? Per RAW there are no penalties for wearing light armor vs wearing regular sturdy clothing aside from armor check penalties with stud leather and heavier and asf. You can sleep in it, swim in in, run in it, or hug babies in it, with no penalties other than these two spefic ones.

I still don't understand ACR requiring fort checks for resting in light armor...

merely putting it out there for discussion. The light armour could be dropped easily from the equation making the check for medium and heavy armours only with the same perameters described above.

[Ithildur]

I have an idea.
Spend our scarce resources as coders & builders on building a dungeon complex like used to be under the NWN1 Waterdeep server. Someplace or places that we can go dungeon crawling without needing a DM looking over our shoulders. I hear rumors that folks actually enjoy such frivolity.

Or are the servers already full of such mischief and I just haven't spent enough time looking yet?

-Bill

I do agree with this in spirit; if we were consistently having enough fun doing stuff ingame we'd probably be more willing to overlook/live with a lot more of the flaws of the game engine.

[mogonk]

I think I'm missing something. Why would we need to come up with a new penalty for wearing heavy armor when one already exists in PnP? If it ain't broke...

The PnP system works. I've gone through this thread looking for reasons why speed reduction wouldn't work in ALFA, and all I've found is "PCs would die because they can't outrun things." (That's not a reason!) and "Travel times would be increased."

Melody is quite right that in a tabletop game you don't have to actually sit and wait for the slowest members of your party to catch up. But in a PnP game you don't have to actually sit around for days to craft an item, either. In ALFA you do, because events in ALFA occur in (scaled) real time. That's the only way for a PW to work. Why should the travel speed of characters in heavy armor be the lone exception to this? All it would mean is that characters would change out of their armor for long trips...like a real person would.

I can not see where this suggestion would benefit anyone.

It would benefit me, in that I would not have to cringe every time I watch a fighter in full plate run exactly as fast as an elven rogue in leather armor.

Right now, any of the reasons that exist in PnP for maybe not always wearing a full plate are moot, devoiding us of balance as well as flexibility, choice and immersion.

Also this.

Come to think of it, a movement penalty that applied to running, but not walking, might address the concerns of some of the opponents of this idea, and would still be reasonably satisfying to its proponents. How hard would that be to script?

[Swift]

The PnP system works. I've gone through this thread looking for reasons why speed reduction wouldn't work in ALFA, and all I've found is "PCs would die because they can't outrun things." (That's not a reason!) and "Travel times would be increased."

What works in PnP with 4 guys sitting around a table does not always translate to real time persistent worlds. In PnP when its time to retreat, you can take as long as the DM will let you to decide on the best way of doing things. You can take a multitude of actions that you cannot take here.

Here, if its time to retreat, you have 1 option and 1 option alone: Run. You can't do something to distract the beast, you can't try and play dead, you can't pick up your hin party members and use them as weapons, you can't throw a stone to slow them down, you can't throw another party member into their path. You can either stay and fight (and if its retreat time, that means death), or run away, and if the mob is faster than you, congratulations, you get caught flat footed and shredded (ie death).

That is why the PnP system is not suited to a real time persistent world like ours. We are working with a very limited platform, so doing straight conversions from PnP is rarely the viable solution.

[mogonk]

You can't do something to distract the beast, you can't try and play dead, you can't pick up your hin party members and use them as weapons, you can't throw a stone to slow them down. You can either stay and fight, or run away, and if the mob is faster than you, congratulations, you get caught flat footed and shredded.

Except that none of those extra options you listed would actually work in the vast majority of PnP scenarios.

You come around a corner wearing full plate. There are three orc thugs there. Distracting them isn't going to make up for the fact that they move twice as fast as you, it will buy you at most one round, a head start they can catch up to by the next round. Playing dead is pointless, orcs aren't THAT stupid. Throwing a stone will not slow them down, it will do 1d2 points of damage to one of them (and throwing it was a standard action, picking it up was a move action, so you just wasted an entire round and are now surrounded). You can either stay and fight, or try to run and die. Any DM who lets a fighter in full plate escape in that scenario by doing any of the things you mentioned is coddling his players.

That's why plenty of people in PnP who can wear heavy armor choose not to, a choice which makes perfect sense and has advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, it's not a choice which is available in ALFA because the disadvantages have been removed, counter to all logic or game balance.

In tabletop games I tend to play fighters and clerics, and I don't think I've ever worn anything heavier than a chain shirt. I'd always rather play a character that can move if he has to. Some people prefer to take the AC bonus, but they also take the risk that comes along with it. Remove that risk, and you have incontrovertibly unbalanced the game.