Speeds and armor

[Happycrow]

pffffft.

It's a lot less impressive than it sounds. That, my publications and editing bibliography, and $1.89 will get me a double-espresso at Starschmucks.

[I-KP]

Better than a kick in the pods.

[paazin]

So... no one agrees that dwarves should be able to run around at any encumbrance level?

[Brokenbone]

So... no one agrees that dwarves should be able to run around at any encumbrance level?

Sure, PnP does!

I sort of like "never encumbered" but also balanced by 20 foot move, not 30 foot move. Slower than humans, but just as fast as a human loaded like a pack mule, and way faster than pretty much any other loaded down short.

[Ithildur]

+1 to this:

What I always like are choices, tactical decisions that matter. Fighter-types often carry around a selection of arms to use the appropriate one for the situation, why not add an element of tactics with armour as well? It's just a little boring that currently it's a no brainer - the vast majority of paladins, clerics, fighters et al. have dexterity 12 and carry a full plate, no matter what.

Funnily enough, my own character usually is encumbered when I swap to a full plate without dumping other armour in storage first, and I've actually been in a couple of fights where I preferred it anyway despite not being able to run.

We should probably try to see it as a tactical enrichment, not "omigod my already relatively far more powerful armour choice gets a little less universally superior". We already grant a fair bump in wealth allowance to take into account that characters in ALFA usually not get the one "killer" gear setup perfect for their class in every situation, so I think philosophically, BB's proposal would follow nicely in that line of thought.

I personally would appreciate it if armour choices became a little more tactical and meaningful. Cookie cutter is cool power-wise, but if there's no drawback whatsoever it's just boring. Heavy armour users probably could make a lot of roleplay use out of it, probably being the ones with the tactical expertise to make the calls and offer advise.

This proposal likely won't garner a majority of popular support since ALFA favours heavy armour users so... heavily, but it's still very intriguing and interesting - admittedly, I myself have to look past my character's own interest to see that it might be a systematic enrichment.

0.02€,

and +1 to this:

As an aside, it should be possible to add a custom interface... or maybe use PC Tools buttons, to allow PCs to modify their base movement rate, as would be legal.

I love it.

I also like the idea of disallowing running in heavy armour (or in full plate anyway - nobody ever uses splint or half-plate ). It's a severe penalty, but let's not forget that the plate armours in NWN get a massive advantage over those in PnP: you don't need help to put them on.

+1 in fact to anything that balances out the reality that nwn1 and nwn2 so heavily favors heavy armor wearers that it's beyond ridiculous. There's virtually none of the drawbacks to wearing heavy armor in nwn (even though alfa adds one minor one, resting in armor, and even that's watered down) that exist in pnp, and not only that, there are some glaring disadvantages to wearing light/no armor in nwn that do NOT exist in pnp (the most obvious one being stupidly considered flat footed in situations where you'd never be flatfooted in pnp)

I really like the fact that slower movement in heavy armor will lend itself to better tactics as well, as veilan expressed. No question about this, hands down no brainer imo.

[kmj2587]

The heavy vs. light argument has been covered in detail already, so I'll avoid reiterating. What I would like to point out is the effect some kind of speed adjustment would have on the viability of medium armor. Medium has always been the most neglected class of armor, and generally the only people who wear it are those too poor for heavy armor. NwN2 has helped in this regard compared to NwN1 by adding breastplates, which allow for a total AC bonus of 8 (5 armor, 3 max dex) which makes it comparable to leather or field plate. Penalizing speed in heavy armor will make medium armor much more attractive to fighters. This in turn may result in not every fighter and paladin having exactly 12 dex. 14 dex now becomes a useful middle ground between when a fighter wants to be more heavily armored and when they want mobility. The 13+ dex also opens up new feats for fighters, which may result in more differentiation between fighter builds from player to player.

All in all this reinforces Veilan's point about making tactical decisions important. Reducing the absolute utility of heavy armor means choices in the middle become viable and may lead to characters with more well rounded stats less tailored to the equipment they expect to have and better suited to adapting to the tactical situation at hand.

Addendum: It's also worth nothing that while this change may be "fair", "balanced", or other such words that we use to express our approval of it, it is still a reduction in the absolute level of power fighters have. As such, DMs would need to respond accordingly with their mobs knowing that fighters either won't be able to run away, or will have significantly reduced AC.

[t-ice]

The simplest balancing measure to cull the universal uberness of full plate relative to everything else would be dropping the AC value to 7. (Yes, I know, cue the torches, pitchforks and heresy accusations) Still the best there is, but less universally so. There might even be a half-plate used by a low-dexer, and breastplate by a high-dexer then

Conversely, say doubling the price and lifting the AC of half-plate to par with the full plate might see that otherwise useless piece actually used by low-dexers, too.

But both of these wouldn't increase the utility of lighter armors much, and imo only somewhat increase the odds a melee char would actually not pick dex 12.

To actually add in speed penalties for medium(?) and heavy armors sounds good, but unless someone with the tech skills to actually do it raises up a hand, it's all theoretical, and simpler measures should be contemplated.

Or , make mithral armors more common

[NickD]

Or you could go really crazy and add in different dex penalties for light/medium/heavy armour instead of having a maximum dex bonus!

[Swift]

God, people are still harping on about this?

What net benefit does the work required to make this change bring to ALFA? Very, very little.

We have played ALFA for nearly 10 years without this and I submit that not having movement speeds for different armors has not had the slighest detrimental effect to anyones immersion in that time.

Conversely, say doubling the price and lifting the AC of half-plate to par with the full plate might see that otherwise useless piece actually used by low-dexers, too

Oh, yeah, wouldn't that be awesome. While everyone continues to be ordering their mithril chain at level 3 and 4, the plate wears can just wallow without their signature armor for even longer than they do now. You don't think 1600 is enough in a world that is as stingy as ours?

What this will do will increase the survivability of fighters. Why? Because while everyone else has gotten ahead and is getting beaten to death by mods, the parties fighter/paladin will still be lumbering slowly along trying to get to the fight. I am sure players that die in such a way wont be so supportive of a change like this once.

Seriously, we havnt had this for 10 years, there are so many better things we could spend our limited tech teams time on.

[Magile]

Seriously, we havnt had this for 10 years, there are so many better things we could spend our limited tech teams time on.

[Rotku]

What this will do will increase the survivability of fighters. Why? Because while everyone else has gotten ahead and is getting beaten to death by mods, the parties fighter/paladin will still be lumbering slowly along trying to get to the fight. I am sure players that die in such a way wont be so supportive of a change like this once.

Not withstanding your last paragraph, I'd say this was sort of the point that some people were making. It adds more tactics to the game. If you go running out in front of the walking wall-of-metal you're going to get blasted, end of story.

But in saying that, I do sort of agree with your last paragraph.

[Swift]

It wouldn't add tactics, it would simply make players even more timid and cautious, something others have rallied against in the past.

Movement speed works for PnP because it is only used in combat (since walking long distances is just passed over by a DM in most cases). And, once in combat, the turn based nature of D&D means enemies move and then kindly wait for the party to decide what to do.

No such thing happens here, thanks to the real time nature of our game. Movement speed penalties on armor /won't/ increase the tactics of battle. If people aren't willing to stick together and keep the plate wearers infront now, making plate wearers slower isn't going to magically change their ways.

Net benefit to ALFA of this change is 0.

[danielmn]

God, people are still harping on about this?

What net benefit does the work required to make this change bring to ALFA? Very, very little.

We have played ALFA for nearly 10 years without this and I submit that not having movement speeds for different armors has not had the slighest detrimental effect to anyones immersion in that time.

Conversely, say doubling the price and lifting the AC of half-plate to par with the full plate might see that otherwise useless piece actually used by low-dexers, too

Oh, yeah, wouldn't that be awesome. While everyone continues to be ordering their mithril chain at level 3 and 4, the plate wears can just wallow without their signature armor for even longer than they do now. You don't think 1600 is enough in a world that is as stingy as ours?

What this will do will increase the survivability of fighters. Why? Because while everyone else has gotten ahead and is getting beaten to death by mods, the parties fighter/paladin will still be lumbering slowly along trying to get to the fight. I am sure players that die in such a way wont be so supportive of a change like this once.

Seriously, we havnt had this for 10 years, there are so many better things we could spend our limited tech teams time on.

Redundant post is redundant.

Well...I'm glad your setting aside all of that work...

Cause that is a mountain of work.

A. Figure out how to transpose a negative or positive movement onto armour.
B. Going through EVERY set of armour in the pallete to place the property.
C. Figuring out the Str16 solution and how to place.
D. Placing solution on all armours in pallete.
E. Testing to make sure these changes take within the shops themselves, or if the shops will also need to be edited.
F. Testing to see if speed works in conjunction with Class Abilities related to movement- Barbarian, Druid (movement through underbrush), Monk, Rangers (movement through underbrush).
G. Tooling a completely seperate set of dwarven only armour, as is mentioned in the PHB on page 14 - "Dwarf base land speed is 20 feet. However, dwarves can move at this speed even when wearing medium or heavy armour or when carrying a medium or heavy load (unlike other creatures, whose speed is reduced in such situations).
H. In order for this "improvement" to be fair....halfling, gnome and dwarf base speed should be reduced to a level lower than the rest of the races that travel 30 ft. normally.
I. In order for this "improvement" to be fair, dwarves should be able to walk base 20ft no matter the load, and such needs to be scripted...right now they become slower under medium and heavy loads.
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.
That would, I believe, get the landspeeds up to canon. Now, as to it being worthwhile, as with any project, I'd have to say you can't discount/dismiss the amount of work that would go into such a project vrs. the benefits reeped from the work. It's one thing to say...We should go to the moon...it is completely something else getting there.

[Ithildur]

As far as taxing tech resources, that's always a reality that needs to be taken into consideration. I have a deep appreciation for Acadius's work (as well as others) and have no desire to kill the man with trivialities that aren't worth the time/effort... really, I don't (Didn't I see a post by Holly somewhere in this thread that made it sound as if adding a small movement rate penalty via the pc tools would be a relatively simple matter?). Stuff like the additional/pre MOTB revert haks are certainly nice but non essential and a lower priority imo than stuff that effects core rules/gameplay.

So why bother with this, why do I for one think this is worth serious consideration? A few reasons:

If ALFA's philosophy is still influenced by the thought that bringing the gameplay experience closer to PnP (NOT real life physics, that's a rather irrelevant point bringing up real life armor arguements) than what the vanilla NWN1/NWN2 engine allows is often desirable (and looking at the overhaul we've done to the skills, spells, resting rules, domains, etc etc would seem to confirm that is), then I see this as deserving of some consideration/brainstorming (and really, that's what this forum is for), especially when you combine the grossly overpowering of heavy armor relative to pnp with the fact that due to game mechanics in the nwn engine, all non heavy armor users are heavily penalized by the game engine.

Forget about pnp rules for a second and lets just consider some game mechanics and balance within the game as is; the fact is people in medium/light/no armor (in ascending order of severity) are screwed by being considered flat footed in ridiculous situations all the time. It's especially bad in a RP heavy setting and actually discourages someone from seeing a hostile creature and RPing appropriate responses, because that hostile will immediately peg the flatfooted PC and nail him while he's standing there (typing an emote etc) without any of his dex or dodge bonuses. NWN2 may or may not be slightly better but the way NWN1 handled this was atrocious, need I remind people; a non heavy armor PC basicly had three options to avoid getting shredded while flatfooted:
1. as SOON as you see a hostile and they are aware of you, you IMMEDIATELY target and attack it which causes the engine to roll your initiative and no longer consider you flatfooted. No emotes, no shouting a warning, no signals, no RP, no tactical repositioning, not even a chance to retreat if they're ranged; you'll still be considered flatfooted and they'll easily fill you with arrows unless you attack. , and then KEEP ATTACKING NON STOP until every single hostile is gone. If you even so much as pause for a second and type something, try to reposition, regroup, drink a potion, cast a spell, virtually any other action besides attack, you are flatfooted again and your ac plummets abysmally.

2. If you happen to be stealthed/invis/otherwise unspotted and see hostiles, you thank the stars and move out of their range, and have the heavy armor guys run up and draw fire. It doesn't matter if you happen to be slicker than that Drizzt guy and have the dex of a demigod which *should* give you AC on par or better than the heavy armor guy and allow you to dance and dodge; as far as the NWN engine is concerned as long as you're doing anything other than stupid mad attacking, your AC is calculated WITHOUT all your uber dex and speed and mad dodge skillz.

This is a viable tactic certainly,get the heavy armor guys up, but really, should this be the ONLY viable tactic? Especially when the dexer is on paper someone that should be able to dodge bullets?

Which brings us to the third viable tactic...

3. If you can't beat em, join em. Roll up yet another dex 12 guy in heavy armor. Better yet, make him a cleric in heavy armor, and heavy/tower shield (hey, at least we fixed tower shields to be not stupid automatic choices in ALFA; why not do the same with heavy armor?). Laugh at the high dex guys in leather armor who claim they can dodge stuff but strangely seem to turn into pincushions whenever they pause even for a moment to do anything other than attack attack attack like frenzied dervishes... Watch him die, and watch their player roll up the next dex 12 heavy armor cookie cutter

All of this is made worse if in fact uncanny dodge is in fact broken as I was told by a member of standards, and Warning Weapon property (Magic of Faerun) is not allowed in ALFA

NWN2 may have improved things a LITTLE (Veilan tells me it's not much better), but regardless, is the above situation (which is fine for a hack and slash server where you might be expected to simply attack attack attack everything that moves) is clearly not ideal. Heavy armor is overpowered due to both lack of significant RAW setbacks and due to the clumsy way the game punishes non heavy armor wearers, especially non heavy armor wearers trying to RP or use tactics other than clickattack in/around combat situations. Without going into the possibilities/impossibilities of what the game engine offers, I think adding some kind of minor movement penalties to heavy armor is a small, managable way to bring at least a bit more balance to ALFA as well as coming closer to PnP.

[Swift]

I think Ith just volunteered to start working on the list of tasks Dan posted to get this underway

If this was to be done, it should be done properly. It should affect both PCs and NPCs alike, which means a simple PC tools button is out of the question, otherwise you are doubly penalizing heavy armor wearers by ensuring plated NPCs can easily get away from plated PCs.

Do it properly, which is a ton of work, or don't do it at all.

Edit: Put simply, if this was a real world business proposition, the Cost/Benefit ratio simply doesn't add up.