Resistance Piercing Resistance idea

[SageAcrin]

Something that occured to me earlier is that there is actually an odd answer to a bunch of complicated issues.

Issue A: Physical fighters tend to have issues in the East, due to the all-present Skirmisher. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in and of its self, but...

Issue B: Skirmisher gets stronger on higher difficulties. As do all piercing skills. This has gotten a lot less extreme with tweaks, but it's still there.

Issue C: People generally feel like heavy armor is rather weaker than it should be, and that it doesn't grant any defenses against magic at all. The general argument is the resistances intrinsic to heavier armor... which are getting pierced, which is a weird problem.

Issue D: Higher difficulties are kinda rocket tag already, and the resistance piercing issue is compounding this.

So, here's a thought: Resistance piercing resistance.

Call it Piercing Hardiness, for simple. There's two ways to implement it-either as a percentile amount to cut resistance piercing by, or a value to cut resistance piercing by flat rate. (That is, "50%" which would cut 50% piercing to 25%, or "50" which would cut 50% to 0.)

The latter is more interesting-stronger piercing skills like Wildfire would still get through, which is helpful-but the former is definitely easier to balance. For the sake of discussion, I'll give some example figures for both methods, though(former/latter).

How would it be granted? I have two thoughts for this.

A: Based on armor tier and type. Let's say that Robes don't give you any, light armors and mails give you (3% or 2) per tier, and heavy armor gives you (6% or 4). So, 30% Piercing Hardiness or 20 Piercing Hardiness at tier 5.

B: Based on Armor Hardiness. This one's way easier; Just have it be Armor Hardiness/4 or /6. No extra coding needed, and suddenly tons of Armor Hardiness is relevant. Alternatively, make it (Armor Hardiness-30)/2, so that it starts at 0.

Personally, on reflection, I prefer the % based version and the Armor Hardiness code(With the (Armor Hardiness-30)/2 resistance calculation) and it's dead easy to code and pretty intuitive, allowing those that get 100% Armor Hardiness to resist 35% of piercing effects.

The only danger is that enemies would go insane with Piercing Hardiness due to tons of levels of Armor Training or Mobile Defense, and that's easily mitigated with a 70% hard cap on those skills.

So, any thoughts?

Edit: Also, another way to do it is simply to tie the effect straight to Armor Hardiness, without even adding another statistic. This may be even simpler.

[jenx]

Something that occured to me earlier is that there is actually an odd answer to a bunch of complicated issues.

Issue A: Physical fighters tend to have issues in the East, due to the all-present Skirmisher. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in and of its self, but...

Issue B: Skirmisher gets stronger on higher difficulties. As do all piercing skills. This has gotten a lot less extreme with tweaks, but it's still there.

Issue C: People generally feel like heavy armor is rather weaker than it should be, and that it doesn't grant any defenses against magic at all. The general argument is the resistances intrinsic to heavier armor... which are getting pierced, which is a weird problem.

Issue D: Higher difficulties are kinda rocket tag already, and the resistance piercing issue is compounding this.

So, here's a thought: Resistance piercing resistance.

Call it Piercing Hardiness, for simple. There's two ways to implement it-either as a percentile amount to cut resistance piercing by, or a value to cut resistance piercing by flat rate. (That is, "50%" which would cut 50% piercing to 25%, or "50" which would cut 50% to 0.)

The latter is more interesting-stronger piercing skills like Wildfire would still get through, which is helpful-but the former is definitely easier to balance. For the sake of discussion, I'll give some example figures for both methods, though(former/latter).

How would it be granted? I have two thoughts for this.

A: Based on armor tier and type. Let's say that Robes don't give you any, light armors and mails give you (3% or 2) per tier, and heavy armor gives you (6% or 4). So, 30% Piercing Hardiness or 20 Piercing Hardiness at tier 5.

B: Based on Armor Hardiness. This one's way easier; Just have it be Armor Hardiness/4 or /6. No extra coding needed, and suddenly tons of Armor Hardiness is relevant. Alternatively, make it (Armor Hardiness/2)-30, so that it starts at 0.

Personally, on reflection, I prefer the % based version and the Armor Hardiness code(With the Armor Hardiness/2-30 resistance calculation) and it's dead easy to code and pretty intuitive, allowing those that get 100% Armor Hardiness to resist 35% of piercing effects.

The only danger is that enemies would go insane with Piercing Hardiness due to tons of levels of Armor Training or Mobile Defense, and that's easily mitigated with a 70% hard cap on those skills.

So, any thoughts?

Edit: Also, another way to do it is simply to tie the effect straight to Armor Hardiness, without even adding another statistic. This may be even simpler.

followed next month by 'Resistance Piercing Resistance' piercing resistance?

lol. just kidding.

good idea actaully

[HousePet]

Well you seem to have thought this through carefully, al my initial thoughts when I read the title were addressed and I like the implementation.

However, I think you mean (hardiness-30)/2, Unless you intend for the effect to start at 60% hardiness?

[SageAcrin]

Ah yes, good catch, I'll fix that.