Removing stat requirements

[Susramanian]

This is part of a lengthy effort to suggest ways in which we can streamline equipment so that it makes more sense and works more elegantly. I'll start with the easy part: stat requirements.

I'd like to completely do away with stat requirements on equipment. Many of them make no sense and they feel like an ugly means of enforcing desired gameplay. First I'll talk about what they accomplish, then I'll propose a few relatively simple changes (I swear, this isn't another thing like the rune system!) that should have the same effects but do so far more elegantly.

Desirable effects of stat requirements:

-They keep the game from breaking when a low-level character finds a very high-level item.
Keeping the player from experiencing broken gameplay is good. Avoiding the problem in the first place is better.

-They encourage classes to stick to the appropriate equipment.
Stat requirements accomplish this until relatively late in the game. Then, through easily available stat boosts, it's possible for nearly anyone to wear anything. What we'd like is a system where everybody just naturally gravitates towards what works best with their class without having to be pushed into it by artificial requirements. Mages should have some good reasons that they prefer robes to plate armor, for example.

How we throw out stat requirements while still doing the above:

1) First, keep much tighter control over what drops where. No more mithril in the early game. These restrictions apply to stores, too.

2) Merge the heavy armor training and massive armor training talents into a new talent, armor training, which applies to all armor. Add a fatigue-reduction component to it-- every point you spend knocks 20 off your fatigue. This works additively, not multiplicatively, in order to keep it interesting for all classes. Points in this talent also boost armor granted by body armor, helms, gloves, and boots by X%.This talent has a rapidly increasing strength requirement that starts fairly low so most classes can take a point without difficulty. Make sure that this talent uses effective talent level, so that mastery makes a difference.

3) Magnify the difference in mastery between various classes in the Technique / combat training tree. Classes that actually rely on the tree (Warriors and whoever else) get a 1.3 mastery. People who don't have much business messing with it (mages and whoever else) get a .7 mastery, just like with escort quest rewards. If there are any classes that fall somewhere between these extremes, they can have a mastery of 1.

4) Apply a double fatigue penalty from armor to all classes that we don't want wearing bulky armor.

5) Only use natural stat values for determining talent eligibility, otherwise everybody will be able to get the armor talent with strength-boosting endgame loot.

That's it. Now let's look at an example to see these measures in action. Consider a pile of gear that has a total fatigue of 75%. We'll examine its fatigue effects on a berserker and a mage.

The berserker, with three points in armor training, will have an effective talent level of 1.3*3 = 3.9, so he knocks off 78% from that fatigue, leaving him with no fatigue penalty.

The mage desperately wants to encase himself in steel, but fatigue values are doubled for him, so he's looking at 150% fatigue. He tries to mitigate this by putting a point in battle armor training. He has an effective talent level of .7*1 = .7, so he'll knock 14% from his fatigue, leaving him with 136% fatigue. Thus his talent costs are multiplied by 2.36.

That berserker barely feels the armor, but the mage is sweating like crazy under its crushing bulk. The verdict: the mage should stick to robes and wizard hats and leave the crude mountains of steel to the thugs. His single point in armor training would negate the effects of one piece of heavy non-body armor, though. And eliminating a 14% spell cost penalty is pretty good for one generic point.

[edge2054]

Vaults might break.

By their definition they generate stuff that's OOD. If you can't walk into a vault and pick up a nice weapon for your level you may as well avoid the vault all together. If you can and you can use said nice weapon right away because it has no requirements on it then you might break the challenge for the next few dungeons.

Also as you mentioned with bows. Not quite sure how much that matters really though as Fighters can already shoot just fine and no other class will really have the stats to pump the damage up.

As to the generic armor talent, I would look at a multiplier rather then a flat modifier and I would give this talent stat requirements like Health has but base it off Strength or Strength and Con (the later making the most sense). The stat requirement would discourage non-warriors from picking up more then a couple points and the multiplier would make the system feel less binary (I'm carrying 100 lbs of armor and I feel just fine... oop 101 lbs now I'm at 5% fatigue!!)

Something like..

Armor Training (Str 14 / Con 14 +6 to each per talent level; so at 38 con and 38 str you can have it maxed. Plate mail could require 2/5 in Armor training to wear.)
You've learned to wear and move in armor effectively. Each talent point increases your armor rating by 1 and reduces your overall fatigue by 7% as well as your chance to be critically hit by 1%

As far as the Combat Training tree I don't think everyone should start with it. Again this is about thematic sense. There's a reason mages don't have it. I do see what you're saying though about nerfing their talent level but I think that could just as easily be accomplished by having the merchant teach you the talent at .7 mastery like the warrior would. (Mage like classes are the only ones I ever see not starting with this talent tree by the way and health is based off Raw talent level anyway so the main reason a lot of people learn it won't be effected by mastery level).

Anyway that's my 2 cents. For the record I'm still a fan of varying stat modifiers for weapons based on quality rather then requirements or removing requirements outright. Granted that system doesn't work really for armor so meh.

[edge2054]

Another thought...

What's to stop a (shoob) player from heading over to dungeon X at the start of the game, scumming for a nice weapon, and then heading back to the dungeons he's the more appropriate level for?

[Mushroomhermit]

1) First, keep much tighter control over what drops where. No more mithril in the early game. Maybe a very lucky character finds a dwarven steel item in the trollshaws, but that's quite rare. These restrictions apply to stores, too.

What if base stats depended on the item's level and then were modified by the material level?

Like an iron longsword in the trollshaws might have between 7-11 phys power while a mithril one might have 12-18, but an iron longsword from some high end dungeon might have 30-40 power with a mithril one rockin like 45-55. That would keep you looking out for new equipment as you move through the dungeons while preserving the "Woo! Lucky drop!" effect of seeing mithril early on.

-They encourage classes to stick to the appropriate equipment.
Stat requirements accomplish this until relatively late in the game. Then, through easily available stat boosts, it's possible for nearly anyone to wear anything. What we'd like is a system where everybody just naturally gravitates towards what works best with their class without having to be pushed into it by artificial requirements. Mages should have some good reasons that they prefer robes to plate armor, for example.

As far as mages wearing plate, I think that a large part of the problem stems from the availability of useful egos.

::SPOILEY::

Right now there is only one way to find large amounts of resistances on armor is to wear heavy or massive armor. Also a lot of the useful artifacts are heavy or massive. I can't help but notice that there isn't a single artifact wizard hat while the ONLY artifact helm with +magic on it requires heavy armor skill. Doesn't quite make sense. Also of note... No artifact robe provides more than 30% TOTAL resist... like all resists COMBINED are 30% or lower and that one specific example provides 30% of something thats pretty much unused by all of the more dangerous monsters. Many plate artifacts or even egos can have 20%+ of 4 or 5 resistances. Combine that with high armor and defense numbers along with cheap and plentiful sources of mana regeneration (even in the non-potion system), there is no reason, even with high fatigue levels, for a mage to use robes.

Resistances win difficult fights, not mana endurance. Robes don't give resists, plate does. Fix one of those two and the problem will solve itself.

[Shoob]

Another thought...

What's to stop a (shoob) player from heading over to dungeon X at the start of the game, scumming for a nice weapon, and then heading back to the dungeons he's the more appropriate level for?

who said I would head back to a level I would be more appropriate for? That's half the fun of it Now only if there were barehanded classes available.

[Sirrocco]

I agree that it would be useful to have egos and artifacts on lighter armor that would better serve the people who want to wear the stuff. Leather should tend towards thief stuff, with a side of magic. Cloth should tend towards magic. Heavy armor should tend towards melee hitting power with strength and dex and a bit of con, while superheavy should go straight defense, with con and then strength. Certainly, people should not be penalized (say, by having pathetic resists) for wearing the armor of their type. I'd be thrilled if the gear base was such that people who didn't get the training tree by default were generally better off not spending points on heavy and superheavy armor.

I imagine that if someone wrote up some appropriate helms, body armor, and so on in cloth and possibly leather (and particularly if they did so in lua), The Grand And Glorious Dark God might well be inclined to add them.

...but you miss one of the reasons we have the strength limitations. It gives people a reason to put points in strength. It gives people a reason to swap around gear to buff up this or that stat so they can wear this or that nifty artifact. I've had a number of cases as a strength/will-based character where I lucked into a high-strength weapon or armor, and hung on to it for a few levels while I desperately crammed everything I could into strength so I could qualify to use the thing - and that's a good thing. Armor should not be a reason for archmages to invest in strength (or at least not any more than scrolls and potions are a reason for Berserkers to invest in magic) but it *should* be a reason for wyrmics and Cursed and Reavers to keep the strength side of their character fairly healthy, rather than trying to go pure will or pure magic.

[Susramanian]

I hadn't considered vaults. How about the OOD number gets applied only for purposes of determining ego type and quality, not material type? Maybe magnify these effects a bit to make up for the lost chance of getting a great material. So weapons you find in vaults now won't be early mithril weapons, but they might be early elemental weapons.

For the armor talent, I'd rather make it pure strength, since so many classes max con by the endgame anyway. We don't need any more reasons to focus on con. I'm fine with it reducing fatigue by a percent multiplicatively as you said, but I think that the amount should probably scale with strength. Tune it so that very strong characters with 5/5 armor training can get almost all fatigue removed. And there's no need to make points in that talent a requirement for wearing heavy armor; we can just use the existing fatigue mechanic to make wearing heavy armor a bad idea unless you're well trained.

Strength requirements on the armor talent won't keep other classes out. With item stat bonuses counting towards talent requirements, you can get anything by the endgame. This seems like a good reason to finally disallow this particular form of abuse. Consider natural stats only for determining talent eligibility. It'll provoke some grumbles at first, but things are just such a pain to balance correctly when anybody can get around any stat requirement. Also, this would sort of address Sirrocco's good point about giving people real reasons to pump the strength stat. With harsh fatigue penalties in place, that armor talent might be tempting enough to make somebody put some points into strength that they otherwise wouldn't.

I don't have my heart set on mages starting with the combat training tree. But however they get it, it should be a .7 mastery.

Oh, and I noticed something else that was broken about the original proposal: we'd have rogues happily running around in plate. Or does heavy armor impact them negatively in some other way, like disallowing stealth or something? I don't play rogues, but they probably shouldn't be plate-wearers. I'd say give them the same double fatigue penalty mages suffer from. That combined with the inability to cheese their way into the armor training talent will keep them in light armor where they belong.

[Mushroomhermit]

You can't use stealth in heavy or massive armor. Thats the only real penalty.

[Susramanian]

Mushroomhermit, I missed your post when replying. The point about egos and resistances is a very good one. We need more good robe and light armor egos and artifacts that give resistances. As for the suggestion about materials, it's very interesting. The next part of my proposal will be a material overhaul, so that was good reading. And thanks for the rogue clarification.

Edge, the Shoob scumming thing has me stumped. I'm tempted to just ignore that reason for stat requirements. If somebody wants to sneak into Tol Falas at level 1, they sort of deserve whatever they make it out with. Good luck, Shoob!

[madmonk]

Edge, the Shoob scumming thing has me stumped. I'm tempted to just ignore that reason for stat requirements. If somebody wants to sneak into Tol Falas at level 1, they sort of deserve whatever they make it out with. Good luck, Shoob!

Power-levelling is very common... as is the price of failure!

Armor should not be a reason for archmages to invest in strength (or at least not any more than scrolls and potions are a reason for Berserkers to invest in magic) but it *should* be a reason for wyrmics and Cursed and Reavers to keep the strength side of their character fairly healthy, rather than trying to go pure will or pure magic.

Which sort of implies that you want to dictate how a player develops a character.

If I want to create a Tank Mage (or as much as I can of that particular build) then I should be able to do so! With the recent change in how armour works (I noticed it in SVN 1920) and so on I might even invest more than 1 point in that school to get more protection.

Fundamentally, I don't believe we need to fix this at all. On the other hand having the option to get and use light to very light armour in the form of robes and so on can only be a good thing. It gives more options to players, you never know I might even wear a robe when playing a Mage - especially if it has arrow/spell resistance and some other nice things thrown in.

[Zonk]

I'd like to completely do away with stat requirements on equipment. Many of them make no sense and they feel like an ugly means of enforcing desired gameplay.

Definitely agreeing here.

...
-They encourage classes to stick to the appropriate equipment.
Stat requirements accomplish this until relatively late in the game. Then, through easily available stat boosts, it's possible for nearly anyone to wear anything. What we'd like is a system where everybody just naturally gravitates towards what works best with their class without having to be pushed into it by artificial requirements. Mages should have some good reasons that they prefer robes to plate armor, for example.

Definitely agreeing here. Encourage players to behave in a certain way through 'realistic' mechanics, rather than artificial 'you just can't do this' limitations.

How we throw out stat requirements while still doing the above:

1) First, keep much tighter control over what drops where. No more mithril in the early game. Maybe a very lucky character finds a dwarven steel item in the trollshaws, but that's quite rare. These restrictions apply to stores, too.

Not much to say here. It's exactly how I want it to work. Keep the luck/RNG aspect, but with a reasonable limit.

2) Merge the heavy armor training and massive armor training talents into a new talent: battle armor training. Include a fatigue-reduction component in battle armor training. Say, every point you spend knocks 10 off your fatigue. Make sure that this talent uses effective talent level, so that mastery makes a difference.

I've got 3 thoughts on this:
1)I'll prefer if the fatigue reduction was a 'real' %, I'll explain that later on..
2)I wouldn't oppose making the talent apply to leather armour - which wouldn't benefit much from the fatigue reduction but are still real armor - but not to robes, of course.
3)I'd also like if we had 10 levels of armour training, just like we have with weapons.
Yes, more points to spend overall but there's no longer the 'if I wear heavy armor, my massive armor training points are useless, and the other way around'issue. Also lets us make the benefits more gradual.

3) Magnify the difference in mastery between various classes in the Technique / combat training tree. We can even have everybody start with that tree and avoid the silly 50-gold speedbump in Minas Tirith. Classes that actually rely on the tree (Warriors and whoever else) get a 1.3 mastery. People who don't have much business messing with it (mages and whoever else) get a .7 mastery, just like with escort quest rewards. If there are any classes that fall somewhere between these extremes, they can have a mastery of 1.

I'd rather be slightly more generous and give 0.8 as combat is ALWAYS going to be a somewhat significant part of adventuring, but I can accept 0.7.
Also: there's NOTHING intrinsically bad with numbers such as 0.9, 1.1 and 1.2 you know

The berserker, with five points in battle armor training, will have an effective talent level of 1.3*5 = 6.5, so he knocks off 65% from that fatigue, leaving him with only 10% fatigue. Thus his talent costs are multiplied by 1.1

The mage desperately wants to encase himself in steel, but fatigue values are doubled for magic users, so he's looking at 150% fatigue. He tries to mitigate this by putting five points in battle armor training. He has an effective talent level of .7*5 = 3.5, so he'll knock 35% from his fatigue, leaving him with 115% fatigue. Thus his talent costs are multiplied by 2.15.

I disagree with the way you'd handle the reduction.
I'd prefer if the reduction wasn't 'straight' but RELATIVE.

So for example, if you had a 50% fatigue reduction from the talent and 60% base fatigue from armour, you wouldn't end up with 10%(60-50) but 30%(60 - 50% of 60).
And I'd apply the reduction to each armour piece(gauntlets, boots, helmet...no shields).



I've also got something else to say...

I would like if, in some situations, wearing light armour(but not robes obviously) was a valid strategy for serious meleers.
As in: if you're a Fighter, Berserker, Cursed...whatever, you wpuldn't always think of light armor as 'trash'.
How to do that?
With my relative fatigue reduction, the fatigue from heavy armor would be significantly reduced but not simply eliminated...which might mean it might be worth giving up on it occasionally.
Say the heaviest armours, with maxed armour training, could still end up giving you 10%-15% fatigue, which for some builds/players might be relevant.



add: One problem with Strength/'heavy'armour(and other heavy things) compared to say, T2, is that while there we had gradual penalties for being encumbered, here it's binary.
You can either move, or you can't.
Perhaps keeping the strength requirement for armour very low or even simply ditching it BUT ensuring that if you are significantly encumbered you have a (movement?)speed penalty could be interesting...but it could also be too complicated or simply annoying for some.

[Grey]

I agree very strongly with the following points:

- Artificial stat constraints should be removed
- Heavy and massive armour talents should be merged (especially makes sense with weapons already merged)
- Armour talent should have an increasing Strength requirement
- Armour talent should decrease fatigue, but on a percentage basis (ie 50% = half fatigue), and based on effective talent level
- Mages should learn the combat tree at level 0.7 or something low
- Robes need much better egos to make them more viable for casters
- Light armour needs more differentiation from heavy armour, perhaps with its own ego set

I would also suggest the following:

- Massive armour should require armour level 2 to wear.
- Higher metals should require higher talent levels. Weapons should be the same. This retains an element of the current stat requirements, since talent levels are limited by stats and player level. Stops level 1 chars having ultimate equipment, but still allows one to pump some talents over a few levels to make use of a cool find.
- Higher material armours need to give much higher defense/armour bonuses. Currently they are dwarfed by egos and spells. Egos especially are of far more interest than the armour type when finding a new armour. Mithril plate is crap in comparison to leather armour with the right ego.
- Egos should scale better with material type, so that higher materials are always much better. (this applies to other items too)

I also quite like Edge's suggestion in another thread that higher materials should scale more with stats, so that using one at a low level isn't anywhere near as effective as with higher levels.

[Zonk]

I would also suggest the following:

- Massive armour should require armour level 2 to wear.
- Higher metals should require higher talent levels. Weapons should be the same. This retains an element of the current stat requirements, since talent levels are limited by stats and player level. Stops level 1 chars having ultimate equipment, but still allows one to pump some talents over a few levels to make use of a cool find.

I agree with the rest of what you're saying but I strongly disagree with this.
I don't see how moving the requirement from stats to talent would improve things, and I think it would actually be worse. It feels even more artificial.

Right now, I can sorta-rationalize Str requirement IN THEORY as thinking the item is too heavy/encumbering to use properly.
I still disagree with how it's applied it, and it doesn't make sense at all for say.
But it's "sorta"logical even if misapplied - you can't properly lift a heavy weapon because you're puny.


But...a weapon that you can't even use if you don't have enough skill?
I can actually justify that if we were talking about a weapon type(not material) that was VERY exotic or complex to use, like a kind of super-technological crossbow or one of these 'exotic' jointed weapons.
Maybe for some kind of intelligent artifact that only wants a 'proper' warrior to wield it.
But NOT for ordinary weapons that are simply made of 'better' materials.

The proper solution to level 1 chars with ultimate equipment is what Sus proposed: enforce more reasonable OOD item generation, while the solution to people wearing plate armour without having armour training isn't to flat-out disallow it, but to make the penalties very significant.

[Grey]

I agree with the rest of what you're saying but I strongly disagree with this.
I don't see how moving the requirement from stats to talent would improve things, and I think it would actually be worse. It feels even more artificial.

Hmm, I guess you're right. Perhaps then higher talent levels should have a bigger effect on higher materials, as an expert can do much more with the right equipment.

[Zonk]

Perhaps then higher talent levels should have a bigger effect on higher materials, as an expert can do much more with the right equipment.

Technically, it's already like that if you consider the +weapon damage talent, since it's a % increase and higher materials have better base damage...however, it would be nice if the difference was even more noticeable.

Edge's idea of making higher-grade weapons benefit more from high stats - say if an iron weapon gets a 100% strength bonus, a steel one could get 125%, and so on - is both simple and effective, which is why I think it should be enough for this particular problem.

That cannot be applied to armour of course, as the effect is not directly dependant on your stats.
However I think our proposed changes to armor training would work pretty well anyway.

There *is* a way to make higher-material armour benefit more from armor training, other than the fatigue reduction which I think we all agree with anyway.

Make the armor bonus be a % of base armour and have it apply forALL armour pieces worn, not just body armour.

This would require the game to separate between 'mundane'(from worn, real armour) and 'magical' armor bonuses.
Yes, we will need an extra variable.
Nothing complicated really - I've done something like that in my module already

It's trivial, I just do something like

Code: Select all

function _M:combatArmor()
	...
	x = x + (self.eq_armor or 0)* (1+self:getTalentLevel(self.T_ARMOR_USE)/8)
	...
	return self.combat_armor + x
end

Eq_armor is base armour value from equipment(again, to differentiate between real armour and stuff like rings of protection).
Note that the bonus from the talent in my code above is arbitrary - it's +12.5% per talent level which might feel excessive. I'm not suggesting it's the value we'd use here in ToME.

There is the balance issue of finding a proper % that is significant for low-tier armour while not being unbalanced for high-tier, but I'm sure we can solve that.
And we'd just use rounding/math.floor if we don't want fractional armor values.