Speeds and armor

[Dorn]

I've always through the armor is messed up in nwn2. The fact that someone's fully encased in iron doesn't seem to slow them down compared to a ranger in leathers.

I'd like to see:
a) some benefit for those taking lighter armor and pushing dext etc outside just an AC equation.

b) better party dynamics. The full plated tank does not charge the evil mage as he's lumbering and would take too long...he stands and holds off the minions. The fast moving barb or ranger wearing hide or studded leathers is best for that lightning strike.

c) a better variety of armor used as pepope see the benefits.

Looking at the d20 tables, it seems that all movement in medium and heavy armours is reduced. Also, in heavy armors, running speed is further reduced.

Now how could we do this for alfa?

Without some complicated coding i see two easy options.

1) All heavy armor has a -10% movement, all medium armor has a -5% movement: this would mean people encased in iron could not outsprint monsters (max realism)

or

2) All light armor has a +10% movement, all medium armor has a +5% movement: this would mean that people could still flee monsters (less realism, more survivability)

I would expand on this to say a certain str would negate this (eg Str16+ means no movement reduction in heavy armor, 14+ no movement reduction in mediaum armor) but i think that might be too hard.

Setting aside the work required to implement (eg repace all armor in shops, and replace all PCs armor). Do people think it's at all a good idea? I ghuess it's a kind of 'house rules' discussion.

Discuss...

[Mick]

I for one would not mind seeing this at all. I would prefer the first option, however, as the second one would actually give lightly armored folks an advantage over those who are unarmored. I would think that adding even more to the latter would give them too much advantage over the hostiles.

[dergon darkhelm]

Even as a plated tank, I would think utilizing 3.5 armor speeds would be a good thing

[Brokenbone]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/moveme ... ticalSpeed

Tables are pretty simple. If you're tall and light armored, looking at 30 ft move.

Tall and med/hvy, dwarf in ANY armor, or other shorties in light = 20 ft.

Non-dwarven shorty in med/hvy = 15 ft.

This breaks out to say, a default 100% move category, a 66%, and a 50%.

Unfortunately since most ALFA critters are likely to be at default move rates (not necessarily based on d20), this means all shorties are snacks from that point out with no effective ability to flee a tough spot, except dwarves, who will simply be chewier or have a chance of outlasting whoever is chewing them. I do not know how you'd go about retooling a zillion NPCs, or instead, maybe just something about a much smaller set of armor blueprints or onequip scripts noticing who's wearing what heaviness of armor, but it sounds kinda herculean to me.

There's some sad imbalances in d20 stats out there anyhow, like snivelling kobolds for some reason also enjoy a 30 ft move rate, I guess being able to run circles around their gnomish racial enemies, and even dwarves. (Maybe their -4 to STR and being dirt poor discourages wearing anything too heavy compared to vagabond rags...)

[danielmn]

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.

[Dorn]

Very true Dan, and thanks for the reality check

And as with any policy shift in aresource constrined envirnoment, the concept needs to see if it has legs before doing the assessment of feasibility.

If people dont like the idea = stop

If people like the idea = feasibly?
Turns out technically infeasible =stop

If people like the idea = feasibly?
Turns out technically infeasible =feasible. Workload?
Workload is over the top = alternative options, or stop

If people like the idea = feasibly?
Turns out technically infeasible =feasible. Workload?
Workload is over the top = alternative option better?

If people like the idea = feasibly?
Turns out technically infeasible =feasible. Workload?
Workload is over the top = alternative option works and isn;t too hard!
Less important than otehr ALFA needs = stop

For exmaple there might be an easy fix that achieves 80% of the benefits for 30% of the works, but misses the 20% that would take 07% of the work.
For example:
- just do armor changes
- forget about creature changes (poor creastures are already disadvantaged by PCs getting max Hit points)
- forget dwarf and other shorty race changes (this 'brainstorm' is about relative effects of armor instead of a COMPLETE land speed retooling - and if they dont get their race speed penalty, then maybe they can forget their armor speed benefits)

like i said, house rules rather than replicate canon

kinda should be the way for most brainstorming things IMO

[paazin]

I for one am a little peeved that dwarves get slowed with encumbrance, seems like one of the coolest benefits of the race.

But yeah, real movement rates would be wonderful to have. And to be quite honest? Not that difficult to script, all things considered.

Only a few checks would be needed: confirm whether the armor worn is heavy, check the race and class of the wearer, check upon spells that alter someone's state (like polymorph or stone body) and potentially and new spells we decide to add (like longstrider)

The only problem is it might prove a little kludgy when dealing with encumbrance and dwarves that never slow down.

[danielmn]

I've always approached the technical aspect to any project first. Even if there is consent, without the technical feasability it is moot. However, if the technical feasability is there, but the consent isn't, the technical feasability can still be explored and pigeonholed for a time at which the issue does become popular and consent is given.... ie. because it's not popular now, doesn't mean it won't be in the future...however, if it is technically not feasable, at least given this platform, there is little chance of it being feasable in the future.

[Veilan]

The dash feat is banned in ALFA, we could easily have it attached, or a barbarian / monk movement speed feat, attached to every light armour. That would just leave the problem that you're suddenly slower naked than in a padded vest .

In general, I'm in full agreement that light armoured classes need a boon. After all, with uncanny dodge being broken, the typical light armour users who try to make up with dexterity are massively fucked for armour class.

However, we need to be careful about movement speeds, as they are a prime CvC factor. Simply slapping on PnP speeds might not work, but I'm looking forward to a balanced and thought-out proposal! What technical means do we have?

[NickD]

Not against the idea so much, but I think it's one of those things that work a lot better in theory than in practice.

Just think about how much other characters have to keep running to catch up with barbarians as it is, then think about how much more they will have to do so when it's a cleric/fighter in heavy armour vs a barbarian in medium/light armour.

And how about different speeds based on race? If we base speed on armour, it would make sense to also base it on race. A halfling fighter would end up moving at half the speed of a human barbarian in a light armour.

[Brokenbone]

Funny thing with NWN2 is that "all movement is tactical movement." Whether you're running around in a fight or crossing the countryside, it all applies the same way. This means huffing and puffing to catch up with buddies on the trail which currently only is an issue with monks / barbs and anyone whose speed got damaged via weird scripts associated with overland maps or something of that nature.

In PnP, you sort of just handwave that away, the party stays together when travelling the roads, until their next random encounter.

Besides which, in PnP, there'd probably be a lot of horses and ponies involved which equalize a lot of movement rates, since it's kind of insane to walk 500 miles if you can afford a horse.

It's very difficult to identify just one element of PnP to like, lament not having, without needing to consider twenty other things that are tied to it and might need importing as well. Armor speeds, well what about race? Racial speeds, well what about if the gnomes are given ponies? Gnomes get ponies, then can humans get horses? Maybe those goblins in the forest should have the occasional worg to ride then. It goes on and on.

All those very granular speed differences in PnP are worth having in "turn based" play with a lot of graph paper, but in real time, it does definitely risk getting very messy and inconvenient. Even if using a "not quite like PnP" solution, of just globally applying something like -10% move rate to heavy armors, even just for a two week test and seeing how that goes (i.e., complaints, CvC issues, people reasonably crying out for say, a dwarven exclusion, etc.).

[jmecha]

I personal think that allowing armor to effect movement speeds in game the way it does in PnP would be great. I also have no concept of the work load that such would involve.

[t-ice]

I would try to contribute here that movement speed is a feature not really implemented in NWN2, and so is creature size. The adult dragon moves at (more or less?) the same speed as the beetle and the human PC. So to do this, you need to look deeper than PCs and their armor items. But if you have the drive to include a speed system into the core haks, power to you.

Heavy armors are indeed powerful, so giving a leg up to lighter ones makes sense. It also makes sense to be able to move faster in light armor. But I will claim it's better to not do it, and leave the nwn2 system, than to do it half-arsed for PCs only and add a bonus or penalty here and there for PCs wearing or not wearing this or that.

The speed system should start by looking at creature speeds, and figuring how to make them work reasonably with light/medium/heavy armored PCs (of different race/class). It's about PCs being able to outrun critters or not, and the implications of this to the PC tactics. If light armors can always outrun any critter, or heavy armors never outrun anything, that gets us back to the balance issues why I suppose dash was removed in the first place. And to the overtly large benefit druids/barbs/monks get from their plus speed, if cheesed to the hilt on the engine. Being able to disengage and outrun giants, dragons, everything is . And if the speed system needs a remake of every creature blueprint ...

Finally, it's glaringly obvious the basis of the system can't be the item blueprints. That would need a change in every shop and (humanoid) creature blueprint to make use of the new line of armor items. If it'd be there, it needs to be deeper in the haks, and I don't even know if it can be coded there. What I know is that Haze had a armor-based speed system in their haks, but I have no idea what was that based on. They also had scripts that you had to take time to put on armor. Maybe worth asking around and a look if someone really contemplates doing this speed thing.

One could hope the speed of a creature (PC or not) would be a number, modified as in PnP by type of armor worn, but of course not, that'd be too easy, and instead we have half a dozen obscure speed categories to choose from

[Swift]

Not against the idea so much, but I think it's one of those things that work a lot better in theory than in practice.

Agreed. When walking anywhere with a group, there is already alot of stopping and waiting and pausing while players wait for those loading into an area, or with connection issues that have them pause and fall behind, and it can easily double the time of the walk, without any benefit to the players.

Adding movement speed penalties to heavier armors will only increase this.

In PnP, you sort of just handwave that away, the party stays together when travelling the roads, until their next random encounter.

I see no reason not to continue doing this in our world. Even if the change only took an hour, the are arguably better ways for that hour to be spent right now.

[Veilan]

Off topic:

Agreed. When walking anywhere with a group, there is already alot of stopping and waiting and pausing while players wait for those loading into an area, or with connection issues that have them pause and fall behind, and it can easily double the time of the walk, without any benefit to the players.

Actually, you can ease this by having everyone follow the fastest person in the group - since you AT when the guy you're following does, which keeps travel annoyance down a fair bit.

Of course, that leader might feel a little dumb for being the only one having to walk!