ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The current setup with Armor Training has bugged me conceptually.

It works fine, of course, but it's out of line with all of the other skills in the game, right now-the sole 10-point skill in the game. It looks odd.

Straight up halving it and doubling its effect is, however, out of place.

However, it occured to me there is a hole in armor handling as it stands right now, and the idea of a new skill to fill it-as well as divide up the skill into two parts.

My idea is simple enough.

First, make Armor Training five levels instead of ten, double the Armor impact per level(Talent Level*2.8, I believe), and combine the Shields/Mails levels. So, helms/etc. at L1, Shields/Mail at L2, and heavy armor at L3.

However, do not double the armor hardiness.

Instead, make the Defensive Maneuvers skill. This would grant 5%*talent level armor hardiness to any kind of armor, not just heavy armor, raise Defense(Not Armor!) by 2.8*talent level, and lower Fatigue by 2% per talent level.

This makes a clear split between heavy and light armor tanking. Characters with a Defense orientation now can invest in a defensive skill of their own, that tends to reward their own upsides, while Mages can now use Robes for their Armor value without feeling completely dumb when they realize how Armor Hardiness works.

And the biggest change to your average heavy armor tank is that they gain more Defense and less Fatigue-which some characters, like Sun Paladin and Arcane Blade, are sorely pressed to gain any of anyways, and which most heavy armor tanks mind only a little bit to start with.

It seems like a way to produce an interesting niche without totally skewing game balance. Thoughts?

Edit: Oh, and part of the beauty of the idea is that it's easy to juggle values. Initially, I was thinking of a 7/3 split between armor hardiness on Armor Training and Defensive Maneuvers-that is, Armor Training would give 7% before talent level modification, while Defensive would give 3%. There are ways to rebalance the idea.

Well, you'd need to do something with the Marauder's Mobility tree, which right at the moment is occupying the "light armor tanking" niche.

Not especially.

Marauders still can be hit-** Accuracy enemies exist-and 21 Defense(The base bonus*1.5 from a fully capped Mobile Defense) translates into three or four points at the 80 level, and four or five at the 60 level.

It's significant, yes, but there's a lot of good investments for a Marauder-they'd have to pay for that elsewhere. And just because someone has a good Defense skill, doesn't mean they can't have another one, or Marauders wouldn't exist(as they get two.).

Also, Defensive Maneuvers is very notably not light armor tanking. It is meant to be any-armor. So there's no niche sharing either.

I'd be a little bit more worried about enemies stacking a lot of Defense, but again, at this level of values it's not too dangerous, I think.

I've already talked to SageAcrin about this in IRC but just wanted to reiterate a bit.

I like the idea of making armor training 5 talent points.

I like the idea of a defense generic talent in combat training.

But I think it should only work while not wearing heavy armor so players don't feel encouraged to put five points in both.

edge - are you thinking defense+fatigue reduction, or just defense? I sort fo feel like it ought to do at least two different things, and fatigue reduce fits that well. If you made the defense boost dependent on going light armor but left the fatigue for everyone you might even wind up with some niche builds that would pump both.

Also, for those of you who are worried about someone stacking huge amounts of defense, worth noting that defense does nothign for you when you run into an enemy who's pulling out the nuke spells

As I said in IRC, I have nothing against that, Edge, overall, but it essentially requires two separate solutions, if you aren't allowing them to stack. One for a retool of Armor Training down to 5, and one for a new skill.

Nothing wrong with that, but I was as much going for a way to make Armor Training less of an odd skill out as I was going for an interesting new skill. I was trying to do a simple split, in other words.

I think juggling the values should help with the feeling of need to invest, somewhat-if you make it so that a Bulwark feels like they have enough Armor Hardiness just from five levels of Armor Training(7% per level) and like the rewards from Defensive Maneuvers are low enough(3% per level), they may reconsider stacking all the defensive skills they can get.

I kinda doubt it-10 Armor Training Bulwarks are less about practicality and more about mentality, I think, a feeling that you should grab up all the defensive skills you can get, no matter what. However, nerfing that means a backlash from people with that mentality, making a proper retool of that complicated.

If heavy armor was really overpowered...but it isn't, per se, there's just no similar upsides for light armor wielders like Armor Training is for heavy armor. Compare Robe of the Archmage as overall armor to Chromatic Harness, and it's surprisingly competitive, albiet very different.

Now, obviously your average Archmage shouldn't tank quite as well as your average Wyrmic, but my point is mostly that heavy armor isn't intrinsically overpowered enough to require a heavy nerf. As was suggested in IRC, you could just add Armor Hardiness to egoes and artifact armors, then not double the Armor Hardiness from Armor Training, and just cut it in half with doubled Armor. But that does take notably more work.

Basically I was going for an answer that could be whipped up in a few minutes. You could probably put hours of effort into it, but I don't know if the difference would really be that meaningful.

I like the idea of splitting armor training into two skills, but I don't think fatigue reduction should be for light armor only. Light armor has so little fatigue to give only minor annoyance to those using it, while heavy armor has a good bit of fatigue, and massive armor has MASSIVE fatigue.

In short, I would barely even notice fatigue reduction for light armor, whereas I would crave it in massive armor.

I wasn't suggesting that it would be all that much fatigue reduction - along the lines of 15% or so max, and 15% fatigue reduction is the same or better for the light armor wearers as the heavy (for the lights, that's effectively giving them 10% more of their casting resource of choice. For the heavies, it's rather less). Fatigue reduction at that level may not seem all that much to most folks, but it can matter a fair bit if you have a lot of must-have sustains but want to run leather armor. Also, as noted, it's intended to be only a part of a greater ability.