ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm still struggling to figure out what on earth I'm supposed to do with mindstars (psiblades).

This part of the description isn't helping:

Mindstar psiblades have their damage modifiers (how much damage they gain from stats) increased to 138%....

But when I look at them, they say "41% Wil, 13% Cun" and not "138% Wil, 138% Cun" or anything anywhere near it. I believe the description should say:

Mindstar psiblades have their damage modifiers (how much damage they gain from stats) increased by 38%....

Since 30*1.38 = 41.40, that seems to reflect how the game behaves.

"To 138%" is equivalent to "by 38%", unless, which is possible in both cases, the percentage is misinterpreted as percentage points. The complete lack of explicit distinction between the two in the descriptions appears to be the cause of the problem, and should probably be rectified.

5k17 wrote:"To 138%" is equivalent to "by 38%", unless, which is possible in both cases, the percentage is misinterpreted as percentage points. The complete lack of explicit distinction between the two in the descriptions appears to be the cause of the problem, and should probably be rectified.

The problem is that the stat being improved, (Weapon Attribute daamge ratio) is it's self presented as a % (30-50% depending on tier). In this setting, "to 141%" generally implies that the affected percentile is simply set straight to 141% will completely independent of it's starting %.

It's like if you had something that "increased strength to 120"- when something increasing a stat to X where X is a variable of the same type as the stat it improves, it is generally assumed that the presented number simply replaces the original stat. I can easily see how the current description came about- it's a very niche scenario where the description is unclear entirely because the stat improve is it's self a percentile.



It's a lot more clear to preset it as an increase by 41%- with that description people generally assume it's an increase proportional to the base ratio on the weapon. Really psiblades could use a minor description rewrite.

Thinking about it some more, even my proposed change to the text would still be ambiguous. A player could still read it this way: "The mindstar has 30% Wil, 15% Cun... and this makes it go up by 38%... so then it should be 68% Wil and 53% Cun."

I'm not sure what the best description would be. Mindstar psiblades have their damage modifiers (how much damage they gain from stats) multiplied by 1.38... would be unambiguous (I think!) but it's not very elegant.