Weight encumbrance now affects rerolls rather than die sides

[Rias]

Per the changelog: Weight encumbrance now affects defense rerolls rather than defense die sides.

The amounts of adjustment will likely be tweaked as we get a better feel for things. The idea here is that we want characters to move on from situations they've outgrown skill-wise rather than find ways to continue getting gains from those situations by deliberately penalizing themselves.

Like before, Dodge is the most heavily affected by weight encumbrance, followed by Parry, and then Block is affected the least.

[Lysse]

Have you considered something similar for the way climbing checks work? It can be pretty rough finding a good place to skill up climbing, because the increased difficulty of the check from weight can be pretty harsh. I'm not sure if you could shift over to that for climbing AND still prevent people with tons of gear/kit from climbing super difficult checks though, which is unfortunate.

[Alexander]

This update has left me feeling severely penalized for wearing full plate. My only containers are my pants pockets, scabbard, and a belt pouch, so I am not capable of carrying much else to contribute to weight encumbrance. I am at encumbrance 3 with parry and block at a consistent -2x. In such a state, combat simply does not feel practical.

[Vazbol]

I was not expecting to have block rerolls drop to -0.5 at enc 2. Maybe dodge starts dipping that low, but this does make wearing heavier loadouts far too impractical.

There's already an armor use check that penalizes people using armor if they fail it. Maybe worn armor and wielded gear should be excluded from enc checks? But everything else you're carrying in containers should be penalizing you through weight? Pretty gamey solution, but the weight of some armors doing -2 is excessive to checks.

[Zeldryn]

The big thing that made heavier armor realistically usable before was the weight encumbrance reduction given by tactics of choice in the new system. I feel like once those return, it might help rectify this somewhat. That being said, this is just one of many ideas popping around in my head. I’ll think on this more myself. Good observations for sure though

[xavier]

I'm not exactly understanding what this means. Could someone explain the change? Specifically I don't understand what is meant by rerolls. I do remember how it used to work.

[Lysse]

I'm not exactly understanding what this means. Could someone explain the change? Specifically I don't understand what is meant by rerolls. I do remember how it used to work.

Insteadi of reducing the die size for your roll based on the weight your character is carrying, you get a number of negative rerolls (example, if you were rolling 200 on Dodge, instead of getting reduce to 180 Dodge from the weight you're carrying, instead you get a number of negative rerolls). Those rerolls mean that you roll your skill again, and if they're negative you take the lower of the results. So if you had 2 negative rerolls, you would roll your dodge twice and take the lower two.

Negative and positive rerolls cancel each other out (and positive rerolls are the opposite, roll and take the highest).

Partial rerolls (IE: a reroll of 0.5 or -0.5) are a chance to get a reroll, I believe. So a partial reroll of 0.5 is a 50% chance to get a positive reroll on your skill check (and the opposite for a negative reroll) - that's my understanding of partial rerolls at least, I could be mistaken! But I believe everything else is accurate.

[xavier]

Thank you very much. I can see how this will change the dynamic. I like it!

[Rias]

Lysse has the reroll information correct!

Shield and parry reductions have been lessened - particularly shield, oops.

[Lun]

Hi! I've been doing a lot of combat training recently and I noticed that full leather armor can penalize dodge with half to 1.5x reroll penalties. Since the new battle system demands that we wear armor or die, it would be nice if the reroll reduction was given a bit more flex so we can at least wear leather armor given significant armor use skill. Full leather armor doesn't even bring my weight encumbrance over 1, so it surprised me to see penalties considering I have so much armor use skill and low weight.

I'm not deliberately dropping my rolls or trying to circumvent the challenge system, these are fair challenges to my character, by the way!

Also, is it intended that wearing medium armor instantly drops dodge rerolls down to -3x and heavy armor more, even when my weight encumbrance is low and I (in theory) am passing my hindrance checks with much higher skill than the challenge?
This is affecting worldNPCs like vanguards as well, where they're just obliterated with negative rerolls.

[Kunren]

Personally, I think that the only way to get no penalty at all should be no armor at all! After all, it is an option and should have some weight to it. I don't use armor myself, muahaha.

I suppose an argument could be made to have light armor zero out and no armor give bonus rerolls instead tho.

[Squeak]

I'm guessing there might be abilities in the pipeline to mitigate the armor penalty re-rolls. Something along the lines of Cogg's Adjust Gear ability, for instance, which just reduced overall encumbrance for worn armor and containers. Since the rerolls are encumbrance based, this would make wearing armor easier.

I'm also of the opinion that armor use is just in a really bad spot right now, overall, but that's to be expected with things still be worked on and tweaked as we go. It's needed for survivability, but it's penalized for training (which, at the moment, the only way to train it is by wearing heavier, and heavier armors, thereby giving increasing armor hindrance failures), and then it further penalizes defenses by adding additional rerolls for overall weight. It's been awhile since I've checked, but I think a full leather set of armor is right around 20 pounds. An additional 5 pounds (7, if you wear a cloak or jacket) for just your standard clothing, a single weapon, and a single container.

Out the gate, most people are likely sitting at around 30-35 pounds fully armored in light leather and gear. If you reduce the amount of armor worn to cover just vital spots, you no longer gain training. I'd like to suggest that Armor Use, as it's trained, reduces the weight of worn armor to simulate the hours and hours of use and familiarity of it. That would help with overall encumbrance effecting rolls and give a good feel to it. I suppose this could be as an ability on its own, one for each armor preference, too.

Oh, and I'd also like to see about suggesting that failed armor hindrance checks gives Armor Use training, regardless. Failures are a learning opportunities just as much as successes after all, especially with your life on the line.

[Lun]

Yup! Of course I don't want to judge the state of armor while it's still clearly work in progress, but I did run into my odd situation and just wanted to provide feedback or to get some clarity on the specific situation. Rias did say things were still fiddly with numbers after all.

It just felt a little odd to me in terms of the idea behind the change and the actual impact on play.

[Squeak]

Yup! Of course I don't want to judge the state of armor while it's still clearly work in progress, but I did run into my odd situation and just wanted to provide feedback or to get some clarity on the specific situation. Rias did say things were still fiddly with numbers after all.

It just felt a little odd to me in terms of the idea behind the change and the actual impact on play.

I feel you. There also seems to be a bug with the reroll penalties and the encumbrance prompt, too. Well, the encumbrance prompts always been finicky when taking things in and out of containers, so when you start seeing the penalties, type in ENC to reset your encumbrance. Sometimes the game thinks you're carrying more weight than you actually are.

[Dorn]

Initial opinion is in agreement with the assessment that armor beyond the minimum is a hindrance more than anything right now, but I definitely need to take more time breaking it down.

Critical damage vs Chipping away is always a hard balance to strike, but I feel like it is also prudent to mention in a skill based environment beyond the lethality factor you also have to consider the gain environment. Why bother with armor beyond minimum if all it does is impede skill gain due to penalties to rolls, and losing more energy and ensuring you can't sustain yourself in the field for as long?

[Dorn]

I'm still working over a few ideas, but in general I think as a whole Armor is in a bad place right now and that isn't specifically to do with the situation with rerolls.

I tend to think this is due to the bastardization of both the original Clok and Cogg systems which despite similarities had completely opposite approaches to combat.

Armor still tends to follow the minor progression system of Cogg when it comes to protection. This means, even a basic suit offers a large percentage of mitigation in comparison to old Clok. With the penalties that currently come with armor, there is no reason not to wear the lightest form of armor as it provides a huge jump in mitigation. With the fact that progression is all about maintainability, this provides a lot of protection for little cost and is enough to protect from the occasional spike of damage. Will definitely be trying some more things and post in the future, but in the current climate without additional changes, this is definitely another reason not to wear anything beyond leather/use a buckler.