Speeds and armor

[danielmn]

Definately Ith. I'd love to see all speeds up to canon myself. My only concern would be low level players being able to get away and backpeddle...but otherwise I'd welcome speed changes to correct the current spawns. As I said...my pc can't run already because he's laden with so much junk, so it effects me very little, personally. The creatures WITH corrected movement aren't in yet though, Ith...they are still awaiting approval and testing...so no, medium and heavy armours aren't experiencing that added benefit at this time. ( You'd think getting new creatures in would be way more important than discussing the merits of fixing obsidian's borked system by implementing speed change.....but here we are....)

[SwordSaintMusashi]

Out of curiosity, and after reading through 6 pages of this thread in confusion, what IS the change that is proposed anymore? I have gathered from everything that it is: Slowing Heavy Armor Wearers (TM). But is there an actual idea of how this is ot be accomplished (aka, reducing heavy armor speed by 10% or the like) or is it really just a "heavy armor wearers must be punished for moving fast!" conversation at this point?

[danielmn]

It's an extrapulation that because light/medium armour wearers aren't getting the benefits they should be getting within the system due to feats being borked by obsidian, Heavy armour wearers should be slowed so that there is more balance between the light/medium and heavy armour wearers since the borkedness can't be fixed. In order to promote a more perfect union, establish justice, provide for the TSM defence, and stuffs. And this is why they call it the brainstorming thread, to weigh positive and negative aspects before implementation. How the problem and the solution were linked together is beyond me...I'd prefer a more quantatative measurement of fixing the problem myself, rather than just guesswork at what might provide balance, but we have to go with what we have. All in all I don't think the change would be overly detrimental to the players.

[Swift]

( You'd think getting new creatures in would be way more important than discussing the merits of fixing obsidian's borked system by implementing speed change.....but here we are....)

This is ALFA, people love to focus on shit we dont need, rather than shit we do

[danielmn]

J. Going through all creature blueprints, correcting the speeds of those that are at default.
K. Going through all creature blueprints, making sure the armours the creatures are wearing aren't default, but custom, to ensure that the monsters that do wear armour are also getting the speed reduction.

If something like reduced movement speed for heavy armor was implemented, the above points by Dan are a prerequisite. As are the fixes to dwarves. Otherwise, you are dooming every heavy armor user to a plodding death when those super fast mobs who should also be plodding along run them down and chew them up. Fact is, we don't play PnP here, we play on a PW. It's not turn based in the traditional sense, especially when dealing with AI, and DMs are not infallible in the monsters they throw at you being completely in line with PnP either. PnP tactics, emotes etc., are almost impossible to emulate in real time combat gameplay without a pause button.

Improving the system so that you solve the "flat footed" problem Ithildur describes above (assuming its doable) is a much better use of resources I would think. Also, as the player of a high dex PC who only ever wore light armor and was retired at Level 9 after well over a year of play (and anyone who played with Corio knows he never hesitated to jump into a fight) I don't think this imbalance for dex based builds is a big problem, stunts tactics, dissuades RP etc. (Sorry Ith)

And believe it or not, some melee built PCs do take dex over 12 because the character concept calls for an agile, quick fighter, as opposed to the player wanting to max their toon's AC.

But what's this about Uncanny Dodge being broke? Now THAT needs to be fixed (goes off to play his new Barb PC). =P

At the Exreme Least we need to do K. I am hesitant to correct monster speeds as that might prove too great an obstacle for beginners and lower levels...however making sure that those creatures that do wear heavy armour (and I wouldn't imagine there would be too many monsters, most likely the majority would be NPC's) are also slowed should cover the bases to make sure the change is equal in reguards to players, enemies and allies alike.

[Ithildur]

SSM, there have been various suggestions discussed in this thread; the simplest, least intrusive and mildest of all these seems to be (correct me if I'm wrong) the 10% movement reduction to heavy, and perhaps medium as well. It's a third of the 33% penalty that they have in pnp. It means theoretically that they aren't inconvenienced all that much outside of combat, but during combat they might have some difficulty outrunning monsters that are supposed to be faster than they are. It's still possible, since afaik all you have to do is get your piano carrier to the edge of the map and click on the AT icon, and BOOM, surefire escape (which you could not do in ALFA1 btw). To me that sounds really lame, both intuitively and when you compare to how impossible that would be to pull off in pnp.

I also fully agree things would make more sense across the board if monsters had correct speed, but going down that progression of thought, why would we be committed to fix monster speeds (slowing them down in most cases), but be opposed to putting even a small dent on heavier armor speed? When they already have a slew of advantages that they do not get in pnp?

[Swift]

why would we be committed to fix monster speeds (slowing them down in most cases), but be opposed to putting even a small dent on heavier armor speed?

Fixing the speed of monsters has only been raised as something that should be done to balance to simplistic change most in this thread seem to favor (ie across the board speed penalty on heavy/medium armor, since it should be uniform for PCs and NPCs alike).

Of course, as dan said earlier, this means some of the more common creatures (eg wolves) would be faster than even light armor wearers, so you can decide what benefit that would be.

[SwordSaintMusashi]

33% Penalty in PnP? Its a flat -10 feet, not 33%.

Light Armor: No Penalty
Medium Armor: -10 feet
Heavy Armor: -10 feet, and only x3 run speed instead of x4.

In Neverwinter Nights 2, when you're "running" (aka, don't have track mode or stealth mode etc on), you are not running by pnp standards, are are moving at 30 feet. All of the speed adjustments in Neverwinter Nights 2, as well, have had their penalty or bonus changed from feet to percentage, but remain structurally intact:

Barbarian Fast Movement: +10 feet in pnp. +10% in NWN2
Dash Feat: +5 feet in pnp. +5% in NWN2.

So -10% is fitting along right where NWN2 calculates its movement speeds anyway. And since Light and Medium armor wearers don't get the benefit of x4 run speed anyway, the x3 run speed is a moot point in NWN2.

As well, as far as penalties, consider: Light armor wearers tend to be skill users. And lighter armors mean less armor check penalties. While heavy armor wearers get that extra defense, they also are atrocious at the physical skill checks (Besides maybe one character I have seen, Jump checks for people in plate are usually negative modifiers).

To get to a more NWN2 sense of balance, I keep the suggestion of -5% to medium armor wearers, -10% to heavy armor wearers, and since this whole thing has become an idea of how speed affects combat survivability, fix the other races' speeds. In addition, the ability to choose the Dash feat would have to become an option. If you're reducing people's speeds, there's no reason not to give them the option to blow a whole feat to reduce the penalty. As someone said a few pages ago, if this is going to be done, don't do it "just to nerf heavy armor wearers". Do it to fix an actual problem, and do it right.

[oldgrayrogue]

Sorry, I just don't really see how these speed reductions are worth the effort or add to the game experience. I continue to believe that if light armor wearers are being denied their AC, dodge and other bonuses etc (as described by Ithildur) we should just try to address that. This seems a backward way to address that issue that does nothing to improve the experience of light or no armor wearers, and will simply serve to increase lethality, especially for low level melee builds. Any change that increases lethality at beginning level is counterproductive in my view.

[Ithildur]

AFAIK fixing the problems with light armor/dex ac/flatfootedness/broken uncanny dodge is not possible without serious reworking of the NWN2 combat engine OGR. Unless someone in the community comes up with a viable way to hack into the inner workings of the combat engine I don't know that it's even on the radar.

Any change that increases lethality at beginning level is counterproductive in my view.

This is getting somewhat off topic but, as far as low lvl survivability, I strongly disagree with the thinking that 'any change' that potentially raises the degree of challenge is a bad thing. We already have things ridiculously easy with ALFA2; in fact, it is currently easier to survive encounters in ALFA2 than the an average NWN1 server with a decent array of challenging encounters. The perception range and max HPs alone assure this; you can walk up to a group of monsters in full plate with no scouting and get an idea of how many there are, and simply avoid them, or maybe alert one or two of them and run away with blazing fast speed, reaching safety as soon as you hit that AT. You could not do this in most NWN1 servers because the default sightlines for monsters were not nearly as gimped as NWN2, and you certainly could not get away with this on the better designed ALFA servers with more intelligent AI and mobs that often chased you across AT's.

From a RP standpoint this is simply abusing the poor monster AI/perception range as well as the ability to simply warp out of danger upon reaching the AT. Again, these were not viable 'tactics' in ALFA1 and everyone learned quickly that you could not get away with such shenanigans; why we find them acceptable and even desirable in ALFA2, in the name of making things cheesily easier or whatnot, is beyond me. Worst of all, it reinforces the style of gameplay where you can afford to ignore teamwork with scout/skill types; why bother with a scout when you can strap on heavy armor, clank up to cheesily 'scout' the enemy yourself, and run away without much difficulty if things go badly? I prided on telling people from other servers that ALFA1 players learned the intricacies of teamwork, reliance on skills, RPing tactically during encounters, and the value of scouts in order to simply survive. I find myself embarrassed at times to find that all of these elements are near completely unnecessary in ALFA2 except on the rare occasions where a DM's presence or an old school ALFAn with throwback RP habits might get people to stop playing a MMORPG/FPS style and 'revert' to something that resembled what I remember from ALFA1*.

What makes it worse is that the PCs who benefit the most from these cheesy features of NWN2 gameplay are people in heavy/medium armor with the biggest hit die. OGR, of all the people that should not be worried about things becoming 'harder' because of eliminating cheese, it's heavy armor wearers. As I mentioned to Dan ingame, I'm not out to arbitrarily and sadisticly single out and 'punish' heavy armor wearers, but some things are just glaringly obvious for some of us old school folks who know the game's mechanics.

Rather off topic, but if we're concerned about making things more attractive to new players/low lvls, the answer is not looking to simply dumb things down and make gameplay cheesier (I'm sure there are plenty of PWs that fit this criteria already), but implement other features (which *may* include making certain elements of survival easier) that are attractive and well thought out.



*I'm not accusing everyone in heavy armor of abusing such cheese just to be clear. I'm sure guys like Dan know better, and RP appropriately as often as they can; the fact is however that mechanically there is absolutely no need to do so and people can get away with ignoring the fact that they should not be clanking up to monsters undetected, and when it's crunch time it's often difficult not to do what the ruleset/mechanics allows you to do mechanically, as well as new players not knowing any better... I mean, the current setup just BEGS for a new player to be able to walk up alone in full plate to a group of monsters and chalk it up to "Well, the orcs in ALFA must be hard of hearing and nearsighted as well as dimwitted.." and on top of it run away to the nearest AT and escape like olympic sprinters wearing track shoes...

[Rotku]

*Blinks*

*Looks back at the last eight pages*

*Shakes his head and crawls into bed*

[SwordSaintMusashi]

*Blinks*

*Looks back at the last eight pages*

*Shakes his head and crawls into bed*

Ayup.

[Dorn]

( You'd think getting new creatures in would be way more important than discussing the merits of fixing obsidian's borked system by implementing speed change.....but here we are....)

This is ALFA, people love to focus on sh*t we dont need, rather than sh*t we do

piss off swift/dan . get in touch with zic and create a 'place-for-ideas-only-vetted-by-admin-as-well-as-swift-and-dan-before-raising-a-point" thread to replace the "brainstorming" one

btw, i see no reason for new creatures. so you're 'need' is subjective.

i'm sure there's enough creatures existing in the tset to kill any PC. While one or two PCs may be high level enough (especially as their encased in heavy armor with no penalty so they can always run away after engaging without consequence) to beat down any static spawn, i'm sure DMs can create enough things to challenge a PC. the vast majority of ALFA PCs still have a lot of creatures yet to face so I personally dont know if this is a major problem. Certainly i havn't seen thread after thread clamoring for it.

In fact. I think i've seen more posts about having certain skimpy outfits added through haks than i have about extra monsters. But i could be wrong.

So please disagree the the idea.
But dont start getting all high and mighty about what I, or others, should raise in a brainstorming thread or not.

oh yea......" "

[Swift]

Ith, what is it about penalizing heavy/medium armor wearers that you find more appealing as a solution rather than trying to work out something to compensate light armor for its disadvantage?

Basically in the left hand, we have the idea of nerfing heavy armor to bring them a bit further down towards the disadvantaged state of light armor (ie lets make everyone bad), in the right hand we have the idea of investigating what, if any, way we could add to light armor to try and compensate for the disadvantages (ie lets see if we cant make everyone good)

You seem vocally supportive of nerfing heavy armor yet seem to ignore the idea of trying to find alternative ways to compensate light armor.

*I'm not accusing everyone in heavy armor of abusing such cheese just to be clear. I'm sure guys like Dan know better, and RP appropriately as often as they can; the fact is however that mechanically there is absolutely no need to do so and people can get away with ignoring the fact that they should not be clanking up to monsters undetected, and when it's crunch time it's often difficult not to do what the ruleset/mechanics allows you to do mechanically, as well as new players not knowing any better...

And, once again, just because the heavy armor wearer moves 10% slower isnt going to suddenly make the party get tactical. I am yet to see anyone supportive of such a change show me what exactly is going to make all those 'MMO' style players open their eyes and instantly change their ways (which, from reading your posts, you would think we are being simply overwhelmed by ). Putting this change in isn't going to lead anyone to a "Oh my god, I have seen the light!" moment.

I mean, the current setup just BEGS for a new player to be able to walk up alone in full plate to a group of monsters and chalk it up to "Well, the orcs in ALFA must be hard of hearing and nearsighted as well as dimwitted.." and on top of it run away to the nearest AT and escape like olympic sprinters wearing track shoes...

See, now you are just being utterly silly.

Rather off topic, but if we're concerned about making things more attractive to new players/low lvls, the answer is not looking to simply dumb things down and make gameplay cheesier (I'm sure there are plenty of PWs that fit this criteria already), but implement other features (which *may* include making certain elements of survival easier)

Yes, and how does lowering the survival chances of those in medium/heavy armor (by virtue of the fact that they can no longer escape from a fight) make things more attractive or make survival easier. Believe it or not, but we do have random encounter scripts (at least on TSM) and it is considered bad form to simply AT out rather than move through the area which, in most cases, leads to inevitable combat.

that are attractive and well thought out.

The proposed 'easy' solutions to 'fixing' medium/heavy armor do not meet this criteria IMO. They are not well thought out, and they certainly are not attractive.

[Ithildur]

You've got to be kidding me... *blinks* This is interesting though I'd rather not keep reiterating and expounding on the same points... but let me sum up a few things.

Heavy armor currently retains all the advantages of heavy armor in DnD, while losing several huge disadvantages for free, which I'm sure you're aware of. The most obvious one is movement rate/being able to run like a trackstar. I'm not being silly. NWN2 heavy armor wearers can run just as fast as the most fleetfooted rogue in leather armor. The only ones they can't outrun are the unique movement freaks like barbarians and monks. If anything is silly, THAT, my friend, is what's silly.

That alone, might merit consideration for slowing down movement rate in a PW that considers a playstyle/ruleset more faithful to PnP than vanilla hack and slash NWN2 as it's hallmark.

Add TO that, the wonky/outright broken disadvantages that light armor types have in NWN2, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable suggestion to consider, that adding just an incey wincey tiny mild mannered 10%/5% (*gasp* well, I guess it's more tolerable than the correct 33% penalty...) reduction of movement rate to our sprinter heavy/medium armor tanks might not be a bad idea.

Add to THAT, the fact that current AI/perception range means someone in full plate can clank up to monsters leisurely, nullifying yet another significant disadvantage that heavy armor is supposed to have...

etc etc...


BTW, did I mention my guy wears medium armor? Oh noes, he won't be able to run away from everything like before with his 40 lb chainmail on! Outrageous!!