Two-Handed Combat - Armor, Damage, and Defenses

[Dorn]

Going to start off with a few points.

1. I'm aware this is early days, and many things are still being worked on and tweaked.
2. This is purely from a perspective of capped/near capped skills and equipment against appropriate enemies.
3. I'm aware that for the majority of the playerbase, they'll likely be experiencing something completely different because things can work at one end of the scale, but not the other.
4. This is all regarding PvE, and not even touching CvC.
5. This is a Post mostly to start a discussion. I don't have something I think is an immediate fix, and I'm still tossing ideas around in my head.

That out of the way, I've been attempting to make two-handed weapons work with Dorn instead of immediately falling back to utilizing the old golden standard Morning-Star/Shield combo. With the inclusion of Dreadnoughts this time around In Clok, it is just perfect.

Unfortunately, it hasn't been exactly enjoyable for a few different reasons;

1. The damage output doesn't feel significant against the variety of mobs available. Even ranged stealth mobs seem to have at least 50% if not more resistance to normal damage types. Some mobs also seem to have either vastly higher health pools, or damage thresholds, along with rerolls which means you have to chip away at mobs instead of finishing a fight quickly.
2. The special attacks don't feel impactful. Both due to the fact the damage doesn't feel worth the additional energy cost, and the fact they don't change the flow of combat in the first place. As you're going to be chipping away at your opponent anyway, the occasional additional bit of RT doesn't change the amount of times you're going to get hit.
3. The current armor mechanics mean you'll pretty much always suffer defensive penalties, which means you will get hit and hit a lot. Parrying isn't sufficient in ensuring you avoid damage just because it suffers a lot from encumbrance still, and your dodge will always be awful.
4. The above point leads into the fact that any mob with on-hit effect means you will spend a lot of your time standing up again and/or suffering secondary effects, let alone the constant culmination of minor injuries. Even vastly weaker mobs will throw you around a LOT just due to the nature of rerolls.
5. This further bleeds into the fact that equipment damage/injuries accumulate at a much faster rate and outside of the occasional Poultice from a rare store, it does mean at the moment you really have to be careful against some of the more harder hitting mobs.

Put this all together and... basically it feels like you spend a lot of energy to do not much damage, and your opponents constantly hit you.

Out of curiosity, I put away my two-handed weapon and *did* pull out the old Morning-Star/Shield combo. Despite my Specialization, I'm finding myself a lot more effective. Night and day.

In essence...

1. I am still chipping away at my opponents, but it is costing me less energy to do so as a whole.
2. Feels like the special attacks/uniques weren't providing me with any benefit against my opponents.
3. Blocking suffers the least from encumbrance, and while my parry/dodge are still terrible, I'm actually consistently avoiding attacks. Especially from lower level opponents.
4. Not spending as much time having to stand up due to trample attacks, and weaker mobs don't kick me around as much.
5. Injury/Energy/Damage from opponents are consistently less which means I can remain in the field longer.

Do I have any ideas on how to fix this? First of all, I will say I don't think any *fix* should necessarily be tied into abilities. Abilities should be in my opinion, for cool stuff, not as band aids. Keeping that in mind...

1. At first thought encumbrance/weight changes would help, and I believe they will, but at the same time that is something far reaching that effects all combat styles. Something that might help this style become more effective may completely skyrocket sword/board.
2. I do think armor resistances need looking at, as there is not much difference between the two extremes in heavy armor as it is. Ridgeleather vs Plate. Then not much between Heavy and Medium, and downwards. With that being the case, why wear heavy armor when it will penalize your rolls so much in comparison to light.
3. Damage is another iffy one, especially if resistances are looked at. Attacks should feel impactful, but at the same time, not to the point where in the mobs hands against players, it doesn't mean at the top tier of things that a single hit can end a prepared player (in my mind at least).
4. I did wonder if armor encumbrance should maybe offer a "Resistance" value of its own. Not entirely sure what to call it. Momentum? Armor Mass? It is basically the sum of your Armor Encumbrance, and reflects how difficult it is to push you around. It could provide a chance to shrug off knockdown/staggers/thrown/etc. This way, even if other things aren't tweaked and Two-Handed users are still getting constantly hit, it means they at least can keep fighting.

And that's all I've got at the moment. I will keep thinking about things.

P.S. Yes. I like lists.

[Rias]

There's a lot of valid feedback to mull over here, I just wanted to address the armor/defense bit specifically since some solutions have been in the works already. And I'll use a list of my own!

- Some of us on staff were discussing Armor Use updates/overhauls just last night, which should help particularly with heavy armor for classes who are expected to be wearing it.
- I've got the additional Armor Deflection defense just about ready, which is an additional defense type based on Armor Use skill against any block-able attack for Guardians and Dreadnoughts as long as they're at Armor Level 3 (wearing primarily heavy-class armor). This defense is unaffected by weight encumbrance up to encumbrance level 3, so you can be weighed down by your armor and other gear up to encumbrance level 3 ("yellow") and suffer no reroll penalties to this defense method.
- I've been mulling over the idea of the various tactics for medium- and heavy-armor classes increasing the level of weight encumbrance that determines when to start penalizing their parry rerolls.
- In general, I think we want heavy armor to feel fairly cruddy to use unless a characters is essentially specialized in its use (like Dreadnoughts and Guardians). Otherwise, we end up with just about everyone in plate armor once they've ground the skill high enough, and there's literally no reason not to grind that up.

[Dorn]

I'll play around with the changes that have come in, and get a feel for any differences on the defensive side at least before coming back to this.

My initial instinct however is that with how the Weight Encumbrance thresholds have been implemented (and what it effects), you'll still look at heavy armor users spending the majority of the time being on the floor from charge attacks. Less so Guardians, as some are blockable, but at the same time the big, tanky classes are still going to be bowling pins against anything that functions with a dodge only.

Funnily enough, on that note, I've started finding a lot of mileage from Inner Strength but as a defensive ability.

[Dean]

There's a lot of valid feedback to mull over here, I just wanted to address the armor/defense bit specifically since some solutions have been in the works already. And I'll use a list of my own!

- Some of us on staff were discussing Armor Use updates/overhauls just last night, which should help particularly with heavy armor for classes who are expected to be wearing it.
- I've got the additional Armor Deflection defense just about ready, which is an additional defense type based on Armor Use skill against any block-able attack for Guardians and Dreadnoughts as long as they're at Armor Level 3 (wearing primarily heavy-class armor). This defense is unaffected by weight encumbrance up to encumbrance level 3, so you can be weighed down by your armor and other gear up to encumbrance level 3 ("yellow") and suffer no reroll penalties to this defense method.
- I've been mulling over the idea of the various tactics for medium- and heavy-armor classes increasing the level of weight encumbrance that determines when to start penalizing their parry rerolls.
- In general, I think we want heavy armor to feel fairly cruddy to use unless a characters is essentially specialized in its use (like Dreadnoughts and Guardians). Otherwise, we end up with just about everyone in plate armor once they've ground the skill high enough, and there's literally no reason not to grind that up.

I want to start off by saying all three of the newer Guardian features:
- Guadian class reducing armor hindrance rating
- Reduced Encumbrance penalties to block/parry
- Deflective Defense

Are great ideas! I just have some comments on each of them. I agree that full heavy armor should really only be for heavy-armor classes, but the thing is, as it stands, the armor is more of a penalty than a benefit, statistically. This isn't criticism or anything, just my observations as of last night.

- Armor hindrance reduction is very nice to have, but it is weirdly also a problem. As there is no way to train Armor Use besides wearing armor with a hindrance rating, this makes it harder to train the skill once you have the class, which actually exacerbates the existing hindrance penalty problem. I'm rolling 481 vs. 212 now, down from 320 - this is great stuff! - but I'm still taking a penalty at least 1/3 of the time, and that penalty is still frequently in the -8x to -5x range. It applies to every defense equally as well, which is a bit odd to begin with. This would be more handy if we had a way to train the skill up like other combat skills. As it stands, legacy characters who completed the Armor Use grind back in the day have an advantage that new characters are simply incapable of catching-up to, no matter how much time they put in, and the penalties mean I'm still struggling to deal with mobs at or around my level with very few exceptions (all of which are animals, and thus not a good idea to train on long-term).

- The reduced weight penalties to Block/Parry are nice in theory. If the above is resolved, I think I might notice it more. As it stands, though, Block already takes no penalty at Enc 3, and Parry only takes a penalty above Enc 2. Most people probably aren't fighting at Enc 4, as far as I know? Even full plate armor and a big shield tend to not push me over to Enc 4. So while this is a very thoughtful feature, one that I think is going in the right direction, most characters will be at or around Enc 2 or Enc 3 and, thus, will either not benefit at all or will benefit very marginally to Parry (and not at all to Block). Dorn's suggestion of adding armor values or weight to body-mass for resisting knock-downs sounds great to me; maybe tie that into the Stability ability, as that's already exclusive to Guardians and Dreadnaughts anyway?

- Deflective Defense is great! It appears to work exactly as intended, combining Armor Use and Melee Combat skill as a defense-roll just like Dodge, Block, etc. My only comments are features to add to it: Allow it to provide Armor Use practice (it doesn't, currently, provide any skill benefit on a successful defense, much like Parry - which, also, probably should do so too, come to think of it) so that the heavy-armor classes can have a route to truly specialize in the armor that they rely on and allow this feature to remain relevant throughout their career; and make it either take reduced, or zero, armor hindrance penalties, because it is extremely strange for your armor to get in the way of your armor's ability to defend you. I don't imagine the weight of the armor you're wearing is going to significantly hinder your ability to, per the flavor of the ability itself, make very small adjustments to positioning to deflect attacks. It being an imperfect defense is represented by the defense roll itself; either you angle your armor properly and deflect it, or you don't and you take it on the chin. The only other note on this one is, you can't choose to make it your primary defense with the 'combat defense' command, which makes selectively training it to catch-up to other skills very wonky (assuming the first suggestion is taken). I love this feature to death; I just wish it wasn't stuck rolling 625 when my other skills are rolling 1100-1200. It isn't relevant to the things I'm fighting.

Other, more general suggestions for Armor Use itself would be to cap it at skill thresholds based on the tier of armor your class specialization is intended to use - something like 1000 for no class, 1500 for light, 2000 for medium, and 2500 for heavy - rather than basing the limit on a percentage of the hindrance rating of whatever you're wearing. That way, heavy armor classes are exclusively the best at using heavy armor, while light armor classes don't feel like they need to strap into full plate and stand in front of mobs just to train the skill up enough to fight in light armor, and classes without a specific armor focus, like rogues, bards, physickers, mages of any sort, etc. can still put on light-to-medium gear and do "okay" if not necessarily "great" with it.

[Dorn]

Still need to try a few things and put in some time with some of the other higher level mobs, along with the knockdown heavy ones but wanted to pop in with a bit more of a response.

I don't agree with locking the usability of armor behind abilities. As Dean mentions in the post above, it is more of a penalty at the moment than a bonus or at least that what it feels like though my experience is limited to heavy selection. I find requiring abilities to make certain combat styles function at a base level in comparison to what others can accomplish using just skills as a whole, unrewarding. When it is an extreme, it is a little more understandable and can be quite neat. Take for example, the BroFist of Clok v1. As much as I disliked them, the fact they allowed a combat style that was always only ever meant to be situational/very limited, and made it both capable alongside a lot of other combat styles and in some cases superior not to mention neat, was in my mind a great utilization of Skill vs Ability.

On the OTHER hand, from the playing around I've done with both one-handed/shield and two-handed in at least one of the areas that made me switch back to shield, the Deflective Defense felt really impactful and useful. I do need to try it against other mobs though, that tend to be a bit more on the offensive side of the spectrum/harder hitting. Seeing that you guys are aware, and tweaking is always great.

EDIT: I did have one thought regarding the Two-Handed conundrum on the offensive part. If Weapon-Type Specialties return (Chained wrapping round shields/parries, and so forth), what if when used two-handed these effects have a great chance of proccing than one-handed? Or avoid more Parry/Block when they do. Or cause more damage through a Block, so forth.

[Ela]

The recent changes have greatly improved how it feels to play a character using heavy armor. After acquiring the new Deflective Defense ability, the change was instantly noticeable and impactful. This is how I would prefer abilities to be.

I echo the sentiment of both Dean and Dorn though. Without the knowledge of the upcoming guild abilities, we're committing a lot of our character builds to feel like the character is playable with heavy armor: one point allocated to Melee Combat Proficiency, one for Combat Style: Heavy, one for Class Specialization: Dreadnought, another for Armor Deflection and finally the last for Deflective Defense. Without these abilities, it's safe to say at least some players, many with more experience and a greater understanding of the system than I possess, don't feel like heavy armor is effective to play with right now. That meets the goal of discouraging others from clanking around in plate armor because it affords the most protection, but I think it feels bad for actual plate armor users.

One of the suggestions I have is scaling back the number of abilities and simply combining them in to other abilities locked behind class specialization. I know that Rias doesn't want us to feel like we have enough points to get everything and that's good because variety is nice. I also think six ability points to allow five* ( at time of posting Wyrvardn, Harbinger, Templar, Mercenary and unguilded ) options to effectively use the armor is going to limit our options for variety and creativity, too. We're already seeing this with the inclusion of the new parry/blocking bonuses being added to Dreadnought/Guardian instead of being abilities, but it could be taken a step further.

The damage output doesn't feel significant against the variety of mobs available. Even ranged stealth mobs seem to have at least 50% if not more resistance to normal damage types. Some mobs also seem to have either vastly higher health pools, or damage thresholds, along with rerolls which means you have to chip away at mobs instead of finishing a fight quickly.

I feel similarly about the damage output of two-handed weapons. They're heavy, with the ones that my character has used costing her between 7-9 energy to swing, and their damage doesn't really seem to make up for it. If damage across the board for two-handed weapons isn't on the table, Dreadnought could probably use an innate energy reduction on attacks while wielding two-handed weaponry.

I did wonder if armor encumbrance should maybe offer a "Resistance" value of its own. Not entirely sure what to call it. Momentum? Armor Mass? It is basically the sum of your Armor Encumbrance, and reflects how difficult it is to push you around. It could provide a chance to shrug off knockdown/staggers/thrown/etc. This way, even if other things aren't tweaked and Two-Handed users are still getting constantly hit, it means they at least can keep fighting.

Dorn's suggestion of adding armor values or weight to body-mass for resisting knock-downs sounds great to me; maybe tie that into the Stability ability, as that's already exclusive to Guardians and Dreadnaughts anyway?

My PC has both Stability and Stalwart and neither seems to be doing much to prevent getting crowd controlled right now. The biggest offender for me is missed attacks/attacks which deal no damage from stealthed mobs are still surprising/stunning.

Even full plate armor and a big shield tend to not push me over to Enc 4.

It reduces over time but when my PC puts on her plate armor and wields her two-handed weapon, she's at Enc 4 for a while. It eventually reduces to 3 but it can take a while.

[Dean]

Dorn's suggestion of adding armor values or weight to body-mass for resisting knock-downs sounds great to me; maybe tie that into the Stability ability, as that's already exclusive to Guardians and Dreadnaughts anyway?

My PC has both Stability and Stalwart and neither seems to be doing much to prevent getting crowd controlled right now. The biggest offender for me is missed attacks/attacks which deal no damage from stealthed mobs are still surprising/stunning.

Even full plate armor and a big shield tend to not push me over to Enc 4.

It reduces over time but when my PC puts on her plate armor and wields her two-handed weapon, she's at Enc 4 for a while. It eventually reduces to 3 but it can take a while.

I've noticed Stability work in my favor a few times, but it does specifically only help with knock-down attacks - tackles, charges, that sort of thing. It won't help with being shield-bashed, and definitely won't help with being ambushed. The only defense against ambushes is a high enough Perception to avoid them, and that is, I think, the hardest thing to grind right now for various reasons (probably worth making a separate thread about) from the skills that are technically possible to grind.

Encumbrance tracking is weird and I haven't really nailed down the ways it goes wonky. I just type 'enc' before I start a fight/go into a dangerous area to force it to recalculate.

That said, because of what Dorn mentioned, I don't wear my plate unless I'm fighting Nethrim with Nether damage, because plate is for some reason only 5% better than ridgeleather in most damage categories, but weighs more than twice as much. I end up avoiding more damage than plate would prevent against non-Nether attacks by way of staying at Enc 2 and, thus, only having a -1.5x penalty to Dodge as opposed to -3x. Taking zero damage is better than taking 5% less damage in most cases.

I also haven't really noticed much benefit to Deflective Defense as it is, but that seems to just be because it's stuck rolling 675 while my block is at 1300, so when I fight mobs at around 1250 it's not very helpful. If there was a way to train the Armor Use skill, I could go do that and keep it relevant and, frankly, it'd rescue an otherwise mostly-nonfunctional class.

[Ela]

I also haven't really noticed much benefit to Deflective Defense as it is, but that seems to just be because it's stuck rolling 675 while my block is at 1300, so when I fight mobs at around 1250 it's not very helpful. If there was a way to train the Armor Use skill, I could go do that and keep it relevant and, frankly, it'd rescue an otherwise mostly-nonfunctional class.

This is such a surprising difference to me. My character is deflecting at around 1600-1700, which is suitable for where she's fighting. If Armor Use can't be improved any further past a point, a simple change could be the addition of a ratio of Melee Skill being added, akin to what we see for abilities like Sweep.

[Dean]

I also haven't really noticed much benefit to Deflective Defense as it is, but that seems to just be because it's stuck rolling 675 while my block is at 1300, so when I fight mobs at around 1250 it's not very helpful. If there was a way to train the Armor Use skill, I could go do that and keep it relevant and, frankly, it'd rescue an otherwise mostly-nonfunctional class.

This is such a surprising difference to me. My character is deflecting at around 1600-1700, which is suitable for where she's fighting. If Armor Use can't be improved any further past a point, a simple change could be the addition of a ratio of Melee Skill being added, akin to what we see for abilities like Sweep.

It already has 1/4 of Melee Combat added to it. My Armor Use is stuck at 381, as that is where a full set of average plate armor's hindrance rating stopped providing training, back before abilities were introduced. That is, largely, the root of my issue - if I could train it in any capacity (even just by deflecting things!) I could catch it up and both make the defense relevant and mitigate the hindrance penalties involved. As it stands, my deflective defense will max out at (2500 Melee Combat / 4) + 381 Armor Use + 100 Base = 1106; this is only when I have reached 2500 Melee Combat skill, though, which will take a pretty long time, given it trains at 1/4 of the speed of weapon skills. The deflective defense will, by its nature, remain irrelevant for that entire career, and then remain irrelevant thereafter because I will be fighting things at the 3250 combat bracket at at that point (because my weapon skill will have reached 2500 by then also. Multiple of them, actually, by necessity).

It's a bit of a pickle, honestly, but one with some very simple solutions to it. It doesn't really matter to me which way it's fixed, so long as it happens.

[Dorn]

My Armor Use is stuck at 381, as that is where a full set of average plate armor's hindrance rating stopped providing training, back before abilities were introduced.

I wasn't aware that Armor Use was so low soft-capped currently. That is pretty brutal, even without factoring into how lackluster that makes Armor Deflection.

Does that even give you roughly a 50% chance of succeeding Armor Encumbrance penalties without even bringing into Weight Encumbrance penalties into the equation? I'm not surprised you're having so much more luck with Ridgeleather.

A random thought that is less to do with Armor, and more the issue of Two-Handed Weapons. Has bringing back a Dodge bonus due to Reach been considered?

[Dean]

My Armor Use is stuck at 381, as that is where a full set of average plate armor's hindrance rating stopped providing training, back before abilities were introduced.

I wasn't aware that Armor Use was so low soft-capped currently. That is pretty brutal, even without factoring into how lackluster that makes Armor Deflection.

Does that even give you roughly a 50% chance of succeeding Armor Encumbrance penalties without even bringing into Weight Encumbrance penalties into the equation? I'm not surprised you're having so much more luck with Ridgeleather.

It's an issue that's been present since the fix that re-enabled hindrance penalties, yes. I'm rolling 481 against 212, so it's a roughly 45% chance I take some manner of penalty, with that penalty scaling from -1x on everything to -8x, depending, I assume, on the endroll percentage. My plate set is considerably higher, since it's both plate and also is only of average quality, rendering it mostly unusable - I just can't affort to bring that past the halfway-mark, not without any way to make up for a penalty that applies equally to every roll in the defense array.

It doesn't matter how many defense options I have if all of them are at -4x or worse.

It's an issue that legacy characters who previously were able to get their Armor Use beyond 1000 or so largely aren't impacted by because the number of die sides against the hindrance of typically Exceptional-quality armor means their likelihood of getting a poor endroll percentage at all is extremely low; this makes it a frustrating problem every new character has had to deal with, made more frustrating by a general lack of understanding of the severity of the issue by others (or a general disregard for the new player experience, in some cases).

Some people have simply given up on training combat entirely because of it.

-

As for the other thing, reach is already its own defense roll, though the roll itself is opaque. Making that roll visible would go a long way toward seeing how reach might be applied to more features. I'm not sure it's affected by Morale, let alone any character statistic.

[Mystry]

I'm not a two handed weapon user outside of the occasional glaive (I just like glaives), but I will stick my oar in and say yes, armor hindrance penalties are a pain. I trained in heavy armor up to the current soft cap when I normally only wear light armor, and even now I still have about a 23% chance to fail an armor hindrance roll.

[Dorn]

As for the other thing, reach is already its own defense roll, though the roll itself is opaque. Making that roll visible would go a long way toward seeing how reach might be applied to more features. I'm not sure it's affected by Morale, let alone any character statistic.

That's fending, which is *useful* but is a chance based on a variety of things (including the reach). Providing a potential dodge reroll(s) or such however, could be MUCH more impactful and useful as you've likely observed from seeing your Dodge Rerolls go from -3x to -1.5x due to Plate to Ridgeleather in regards to weight. Negative rerolls are *awful*, and even getting to neutral, or 1x is HUGE.

[Dean]

As for the other thing, reach is already its own defense roll, though the roll itself is opaque. Making that roll visible would go a long way toward seeing how reach might be applied to more features. I'm not sure it's affected by Morale, let alone any character statistic.

That's fending, which is *useful* but is a chance based on a variety of things (including the reach). Providing a potential dodge reroll(s) or such however, could be MUCH more impactful and useful as you've likely observed from seeing your Dodge Rerolls go from -3x to -1.5x due to Plate to Ridgeleather in regards to weight. Negative rerolls are *awful*, and even getting to neutral, or 1x is HUGE.

Agreed, on the math. Intuitively, though, I'd expect reach to somehow relate to parrying, especially for a Dreadnaught feature - Rias seems to be intentionally avoiding giving heavy armor classes access to Dodge-related features beyond the basic roll.

If we could Deflective Defense against Dodge-based combat maneuvers (tackles, charges, etc.) I think it would handily resolve a lot of the "why is the heaviest, strongest guy the easiest to push over" problems mentioned above, and would mean not really needing Dodge benefits. Given the new feature to make Dreadnaught tactics reduce Encumbrance penalties to Parry, if Reach provided a benefit (0.1x or 0.2x the Reach rating as Parry rerolls, for example) you'd regularly be at or above a 1x reroll with more two-handed weapons when combined with parry specialization and other parry-related abilities.

Maybe tie that to Dreadnaught specifically, though. Sword Duelists do not need even more Parry rerolls.

In that vein, Followup Punch is a weird choice for Dreadnaught to get. I'd expect some manner of weapon-butt maneuver instead, like a pommel-strike or similar - that way, it still scales off of your main weapon skill instead of brawling, given Dreadnaughts have absolutely zero other abilities that synergies with the brawling skill.

[Dorn]

Realistically, any change to Reach would effect everyone, not just heavy armor classes.

[jerc]

I'm not a two handed weapon user outside of the occasional glaive (I just like glaives), but I will stick my oar in and say yes, armor hindrance penalties are a pain. I trained in heavy armor up to the current soft cap when I normally only wear light armor, and even now I still have about a 23% chance to fail an armor hindrance roll.

I've seen you make this statement before, and I'm not sure where you're getting this 23% number from. We don't see the actual armor hindrance rolls and any rerolls that are being added behind the scenes. I'm guessing that you're at a higher soft cap than I am since I stopped with ridgeleather, and you're simply dividing the die by the armor hindrance value, which does give you the odds of getting above zero with a straight roll. But in practice, I'm not seeing more than a quarter of my defense rolls get hit with an armor hindrance penalty, so my suspicion is that there's more to it, and this 23% number is exaggerating the severity of the situation.

Looking back at my last ~50 defense rolls, I see five instances of an armor penalty, so roughly 10% in this relatively small sample. Pretty far from the 28% that would result from a straight roll.

[Dean]

Realistically, any change to Reach would effect everyone, not just heavy armor classes.

Sure, but just as heavy armor classes are better at using heavy armor than others, it's not unreasonable for Dreadnaught (and possibly Berserker?) to have features that make them better at using two-handed weapons' reach more effectively than others in some manner.

Even if that's just going from 0.05x to 0.1x rerolls-per-reach benefits, for example.

[Dean]

I'm not a two handed weapon user outside of the occasional glaive (I just like glaives), but I will stick my oar in and say yes, armor hindrance penalties are a pain. I trained in heavy armor up to the current soft cap when I normally only wear light armor, and even now I still have about a 23% chance to fail an armor hindrance roll.

I've seen you make this statement before, and I'm not sure where you're getting this 23% number from. We don't see the actual armor hindrance rolls and any rerolls that are being added behind the scenes. I'm guessing that you're at a higher soft cap than I am since I stopped with ridgeleather, and you're simply dividing the die by the armor hindrance value, which does give you the odds of getting above zero with a straight roll. But in practice, I'm not seeing more than a quarter of my defense rolls get hit with an armor hindrance penalty, so my suspicion is that there's more to it, and this 23% number is exaggerating the severity of the situation.

Looking back at my last ~50 defense rolls, I see five instances of an armor penalty, so roughly 10% in this relatively small sample. Pretty far from the 28% that would result from a straight roll.

If you don't mind sharing, we can work backwards from this.

When you run the 'armor' command to check your hindrance, what are you rolling, and against what hindrance value?

[jerc]

Looking back at my last ~50 defense rolls, I see five instances of an armor penalty, so roughly 10% in this relatively small sample. Pretty far from the 28% that would result from a straight roll.

If you don't mind sharing, we can work backwards from this.

When you run the 'armor' command to check your hindrance, what are you rolling, and against what hindrance value?

Sure. It's d427 vs 120. A straight roll is roughly 28% chance to get below zero. With one reroll, the odds are closer to 8%, which seems much more in line with what I'm observing.

Here's an anydice link with both scenarios: https://anydice.com/program/3b0bb

[Mystry]

Quoting people is hard, so I'm just not going to bother with quotes. Here you go:

armor
You are wearing the following armor:

head: .... (leather) a leather helmet
neck: .... (leather) a leather gorget
torso: ... (leather) a leather cuirass
arms: .... (leather) some leather vambraces
hands: ... (leather) some leather gloves
legs: .... (leather) some leather greaves
feet: .... (leather) some leather boots

Overall Armor Level: 1 (Light)
Armor Hindrance Check: d427 vs 120


120 / 427 = .28~

So I was actually misremembering and it's even worse, at 28% chance to roll under 120 rather than 23%. 427 is the soft cap of armor use by my experience, which I got from training in full ridgeleather. If there is a higher cap to achieve, I couldn't get it since plate plate stuff is super duper expensive.

[Dorn]

Realistically, any change to Reach would effect everyone, not just heavy armor classes.

Sure, but just as heavy armor classes are better at using heavy armor than others, it's not unreasonable for Dreadnaught (and possibly Berserker?) to have features that make them better at using two-handed weapons' reach more effectively than others in some manner.

Even if that's just going from 0.05x to 0.1x rerolls-per-reach benefits, for example.

Sure, I'm just pointing out that it isn't necessarily a "Heavy-Armor getting more Dodge Rolls" change. It's "Reach" transitioning. Ranged users, and polearms would definitely get the most bang for the buck for it, as well as longer swords.

Also, Followup Punch was designed basically a catch-all to represent the whole pommel strike and such, an opportunity hit that just so happens to use brawling/gauntlets without breaking it down to individual weapons/flavouring.

[Dean]

Looking back at my last ~50 defense rolls, I see five instances of an armor penalty, so roughly 10% in this relatively small sample. Pretty far from the 28% that would result from a straight roll.

If you don't mind sharing, we can work backwards from this.

When you run the 'armor' command to check your hindrance, what are you rolling, and against what hindrance value?

Sure. It's d427 vs 120. A straight roll is roughly 28% chance to get below zero. With one reroll, the odds are closer to 8%, which seems much more in line with what I'm observing.

Here's an anydice link with both scenarios: https://anydice.com/program/3b0bb

This is exactly where I was going with this, which is handy.

The real percentage is most likely somewhere inbetween, if weighted more toward the 8% end, because morale rerolls aren't partial rerolls, as far as I can tell. Just a percentile chance (20% x your morale value) to add a +1x reroll, so your chance of getting a morale reroll on a hindrance roll smoothly decrease over time.

The value of that reroll necessarily increases the higher your hindrance goes, which is probably why I'm dealing with such a pronounced difference in experience from you.

Consider this: https://anydice.com/program/3b0bc

[jerc]

The real percentage is most likely somewhere inbetween, if weighted more toward the 8% end, because morale rerolls aren't partial rerolls, as far as I can tell. Just a percentile chance (20% x your morale value) to add a +1x reroll, so your chance of getting a morale reroll on a hindrance roll smoothly decrease over time.

The value of that reroll necessarily increases the higher your hindrance goes, which is probably why I'm dealing with such a pronounced difference in experience from you.

Definitely - wasn't debating light vs heavy armor at the armor use cap, just pointing out that the reality that I've observed doesn't match the calculated 28% number.

I hadn't considered morale as an explanation though - that's a good callout. As much as I love science, that also sounds ouchy to test, so I'll just say that you're probably right and that explains why it feels fine (ish) in practice for me :D

[Dean]

Definitely - wasn't debating light vs heavy armor at the armor use cap, just pointing out that the reality that I've observed doesn't match the calculated 28% number.

I hadn't considered morale as an explanation though - that's a good callout. As much as I love science, that also sounds ouchy to test, so I'll just say that you're probably right and that explains why it feels fine (ish) in practice for me :D

I was pointing it out more to explain part of why our results with a small sample size (under 100 rolls) or the intuitive "feel" of hindrance penalties can vary to such an extent.

I think it's a fairly safe assumption from what we have here that hindrance is a challenge check, not an opposed roll, which does make sense with how it's presented in the 'armor' command's output. An opposed roll would have much higher average results if the hindrance rating were die-sides and not a fixed threshold to beat. So that's nice.

This also explains why my attempts to fight mobs with Words of Power, even ones I vastly out-skill, went so poorly. A lack of a way to train Meditation aside, this turns the morale-dump Word (or morale-destroying spells) from a guaranteed -1x penalty on everything, to a variable penalty between -1x and -9x, since it's now morale-trending your hindrance rolls in the opposite direction.

In conclusion, it is even more mandatory to take regular baths, eat a hot emberberry pie, donate to the town and/or and sleep in the inn for combat effectiveness' sake.

[Gorth]

In the other game, I asked Rias, and I believe he confirmed that morale gets added to more or less /every/ roll, and I think he explicitly said that that counted armor hindrance and fending.