Too many damage types?

[Grey]

After playing Dungeons of Dredmor a bit I've realised there's a real danger in having too many damage types in a game. It becomes complexity for complexity's sake, and it ruins any possibility for real tactics such as emphasising one type of damage or defence. And, on reflection, I think ToME4 suffers a little from this too. Resist all and physical resistance are the only resists worth seeking out - the others are too varied, and rarely is there a situation where you will collect a specific type of damage resist to help with a situation. One can often end up with many resistances from equipment that you don't even pay attention to - they only appear in small amounts, and can't be relied on to help in many situations. Tactically resistances play a very small role in the game, and have little effect on equipment choices or character builds.

You may disagree of course, but personally I think we could do with a few less damage types. A split of the current ones:

Commonly used - physical, fire, nature, cold, lightning, blight
Rarer - arcane, acid, light, darkness, temporal, mind

My biggest beef is with temporal and mind. Mind resistance items don't exist, and the damage type is almost never used. It seems superfluous. Why not just change it to physical? Temporal items are common enough, but are little use since there's only one zone where most players are concerned about receiving temporal damage. Why not change it to arcane? The threads of time could be intricately linked to arcane energies. Chronomancy spells could be changed to use a wider variety of damage types depending on the end effect. The idea of "temporal damage" doesn't really make any sense anyway.

If we wanted to take it further then I'd suggest removing acid, though this would involve a bit more work. Corrosive vapour could change to nature damage, as could alchemist acid infusions. Reaver's acid blood could become blight blood. Acid rune could become arcane.

Light and darkness are hard to remove as they're so thematic to a couple of classes. More enemies could be made to use them though.

In general I think more enemies should have regular attacks that use a different damage type than physical. Spiders could be all nature damage for instance, or some exotic ones darkness damage. Ghouls could do blight damage with their attacks. Dragons could use their elemental type instead of physical on their base attacks, without the need for ice claw. Demons could use all sorts. These would make resistances much more important.

[Aquillion]

My biggest beef is with temporal and mind. Mind resistance items don't exist, and the damage type is almost never used. It seems superfluous. Why not just change it to physical? Temporal items are common enough, but are little use since there's only one zone where most players are concerned about receiving temporal damage. Why not change it to arcane? The threads of time could be intricately linked to arcane energies. Chronomancy spells could be changed to use a wider variety of damage types depending on the end effect. The idea of "temporal damage" doesn't really make any sense anyway.

The thing is, both of these would drastically change the balance of things that use them.

Mind damage, for instance, cannot be reduced with resistances but can be prevented with mental save, making it a good option for enemies with high resist all. Changing it to physical would make the talents that use it much, much much more boring and generic.

Temporal damage means that Chronomancers generally don't have to worry about resists (it's one of their key advantages), except when facing one of a small number of enemies. This is an extremely big deal for Weapon Folding. I would absolutely oppose making them use 'a wider variety of damage types' -- that'd be turning them into Archmages. The fact that they use a weird damage type that almost nobody else does (and which almost nothing resists, though they can be in trouble when they come across something that does) is a major, major part of both Chronomancy classes, and it would require a radical redesign to change it.

(Also, the way Damage Smearing functions is totally dependent on the concept of temporal damage as a rare damage type.)

I don't see any advantage at all to making that change. Having "rare" damage types is a good thing for the game! It helps make the things that use them weirder or more interesting. I think, though, that part of the problem is that recently temporal damage has been showing up on way too many common egos -- Paradox stuff especially. That's a mistake. It should be rarely-seen overall. Obviously making it more rare would affect Chronomancy classes negatively, but they could be tweaked to balance for that.

Basically, I don't see your objection to rare damage types. The idea is "very little can inflict this damage type, and very little can resist it" -- that's a good thing. That doesn't reduce tactical decisions, that increases it, because when you're considering that damage type you can take that into account. What's bad is when you have a bunch of damage types that are all splattered randomly over your game, making tactical considerations unimportant.

Your suggestion is in fact exactly wrong (you offhandedly suggested splattering damage types randomly over the chronomancy classes to replace Temporal -- that would make all damage types less interesting, harder to predict, and harder to build strategies around.) What's needed isn't fewer damage types, but more coherency among the ones we have, especially regarding egos (many of the newer egos were random suggestions in the ego thread made without proper consideration about the role that each damage type was supposed to play.)

In general I think more enemies should have regular attacks that use a different damage type than physical. Spiders could be all nature damage for instance, or some exotic ones darkness damage. Ghouls could do blight damage with their attacks. Dragons could use their elemental type instead of physical on their base attacks, without the need for ice claw. Demons could use all sorts. These would make resistances much more important.

Noooo. For one thing, that would utterly wreck the value of armor, which only applies vs. physical.

It also wouldn't solve your problem. Unless you give the game more "themed" areas where everything does one damage type, players still won't really benefit from focusing too much on one when tons of things are attacking them (especially since the nastiest opponents almost always use weapons, which randomizes their damage types anyway.)

The difference in the extent to which damage types are used is part of what informs the tactical choices related to them and the value of things that inflict them or grant their resistances; making them all equally common would be a terrible move. The idea that physical is the 'default' damage type (and the only one armor works against!) and that anything else is 'special' and unnatural is part of what informs ToME's entire damage system.

Non-physical damage types are actually incredibly dangerous -- most people underestimate them, but if you actually look at the damage in your log carefully, they usually make up a lot of the pain you're taking. The reason why resistances to them are frequently ignored isn't so much because they're rare, it's because it's incredibly hard to get resistances up to a really decent number.

What's needed are higher values for non-physical resists, and perhaps even higher damage caps. Physical damage should be common (as it is now) and hard to become immune to, while it should be possible to cultivate immunity or near-immunity to most of the other damage types. If I could get 100% acid or fire resistance I would totally do so when I anticipate fighting certain kinds of foes. But the ~10% given by most equipment? Not an important consideration.

[bricks]

I actually think Temporal and Mind are two of the most interesting damage types in ToME, since the sources and resists are both very uncommon. The elemental hodge-podge is very dull, on the other hand. It does add some flavor and challenge to have fire spells not work on fire drakes, but stacking cold resist gear for Rantha, for example, is not interesting play. I think damage resist should go the way of status immunities; rare for players to get outside of talents and artifacts, common only to enemies who have a good reason to be immune (foo drakes, acid with retchlings, fire with fire imps, etc.). I think on and off about developing my own roguelike, and whenever I hit the damage type question I run through the same ideas:

1) I don't want the player to feel like they have to gather a bunch of equipment specific to an enemy type.
2) Elemental damage is one such ability that causes (1).
3) Thus, remove elemental damage.
4) What should differentiate, say, a fireball spell and a lightning spell?
5) Targeting style, direct vs. damage-over-time, status effects.
6) What about special creatures, like Salamanders? How do I make them immune to fire attacks without overhead work for every fire spell?
7) Flag all fire spells as fire damage.

So now I'm back to (1). The solution is then to avoid providing the player with piles of resistance equipment. From my long-lost MMO days, I recall resistance gear as a way of forcing players to grind for equipment and to slow down progression; not really appropriate for a single-player RPG except in very special circumstances.

While on the topic, I think that the Mindslayer shields need to have better utility. They only counter six damage types. Apart from physical, none are too rare, but the utility of physical damage reduction is many times greater than that for everything else. I think the spectrum of those shields needs to be expanded.

[edge2054]

In general I agree with your point Grey but why does this apply for Sun Paladins and Anorithil but Temporal not apply to Chronomancers?

Light and darkness are hard to remove as they're so thematic to a couple of classes. More enemies could be made to use them though.

Making most chronomancy damage Arcane would make them extremely powerful. One is a resist you rarely see the other is a resist that's hardly supposed to exist at all. And converting the damage on many of their spells to something other then Arcane would require a major rewrite. Temporal damage is stuff like Entropy and Aging both of which make a lot more sense to me then Light (which honestly could just be fire) and Darkness (which really could just be cold). Darkness damage is really the damage type that makes the least amount of sense to me. Light at least could have some kinda radiation component to justify it not being Fire but Darkness... that's just the absence of light and heat.

What if instead of simply axing a bunch of highly thematic damage types we grouped some resists together and axed resist all?

Fire/Light/Lightning
Cold/Darkness/Temporal (Because of Entropy)
Acid/Blight/Nature
Physical
Mind
Arcane

*edit* This is also a pretty big issue with +damage gear and I think the +damage stuff could be lumped together in the same way.

[Obsidian]

I'd keep Lightning as it's own damage type. Lightning is only superficially similar to fire.

As for the less specific types, Light, Dark, Temporal and Mind,

Maybe we can have them be a fusion of two types? Affected/resisted by the highest/lowest/average of the partial elements?

Light = Fire/Arcane
Dark = Cold/Arcane
Temporal = Arcane/Nature/Physical (I don't really buy Entropy in this context), aging is more akin to decay. Assuming we aren't keeping Temporal unique, which I'm actually OK with...
Mind = Arcane/Physical
Acid = Nature/Physical
Blight = Nature/Arcane
Ice = Cold/Physical
Thunder = Lightning/Physical or Lightning = Nature/Fire

My core resists would fold down into...

Physical, Fire, Cold, Arcane, Nature, Lightning*

You can add loads more damage types, just have them be combinations of the existing types.

Something that's immune to fire, would still be at least partially affected by 'Light' effects, where stuff that's immune to both Fire and Arcane would be immune to Light too. I figure use the average resist of all resist components to calculate true resistance, but you could go vs Lowest (a tacit benefit of composite damage types) or Highest (a serious decrease in composite damage type power).

[edge2054]

Fire and Lightning only have superficial resemblances in what they are. How they damage a living organism aren't all that superficial and those differences can be given to stuff like daze effects and catching on fire.

To put it another way, if a creature is immune to fire damage shouldn't it also be immune to all the heat damage of a lightning bolt? Sure the instant kill stuff like heart stopping or the daze effects of having your brain rebooted are very different. But raw hit point damage caused by a 20,000 °C lightning bolt or ball of fire aren't superficial.

As to Entropy I'm not referring to some fantasy definition of the word, I'm talking about real entropy and it's affects on living organisms or matter (specifically aging and decay).

Here's some interesting links on Entropy.

Entropy (arrow of time)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%2 ... of_time%29

Entropy and Aging
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jtd/2009/186723/
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/inf ... en.0030220

[Grey]

Entropy is irreversible though, so it makes healing a bit weird (unless all forms of healing increase the entropy in another system). I would also consider entropic damage to be a physical effect myself.

Aquillion: You make some very good points. I suppose if simplification of the system is undesired then the likes of temporal resistance egos should be removed, as they have no real value. As you say there needs to be a better consolidation of egos and such. I still don't like irrelevant damage types though - why do we have 3 separate damage types (arcane, temporal, mind) that almost nothing resists? They're all equivalent really.

As far as I know melee attacks that use odd damage types (such as crystalline weapons) still obey the current armour rules. Can anyone confirm? If so I think it would be suitable to give a bigger variety to monster attack types.

[edge2054]

As far as I know melee attacks that use odd damage types (such as crystalline weapons) still obey the current armour rules. Can anyone confirm? If so I think it would be suitable to give a bigger variety to monster attack types.

Confirmed. Armor is a product of 'how' not 'what'. If the how is a weapon attack (rather that weapon is a bow, a sword, or a dragon's claws) armor works. Even if that how's what is Arcane, Fire, or Temporal.

Melee project ignores armor though.

[Obsidian]

My issue with the Fire/Lightning argument is that, though Lightning does produce thermal energy, it's application is entirely different. Lightning is raw energy more than it is Thermic. Point in fact, most thermic products of lightning are due to poor conduction and energy loss.

From a combative perspective, fire comes from the outside and burns in. Lightning bypasses the surface and works outwards. Fries out nerves and electrical paths and disrupts organs/heart/brain. It'll cook ya, but that ain't what's gona kill ya. That and it's almost always been it's own damage type throughout all gaming systems, from old DnD to more conventional ones. Plus... Water, great against fire, but lightning... not so much.

As for Temporal = Entropy, I just don't buy it. Plus if were talking about thermic entropy, I just don't see how temporal effects produce it in a realistic timeframe. You'd be more likely to see temporal shearing, gravitational effects and simple rapid aging, which would be more similar to a poison, or biological function than the draining of energy. Again, this is largely from all other systems that use time-bending.

[edge2054]

Alright, to take the arguments against the Temporal damage type seriously how would we quantify the damage type then?

Time Skip - This one basically does temporal shearing. Being tossed into the future so rapidly deals temporal damage (change to physical?)

Matter tree - I guess this could all be made straight physical (right now it's physical/temporal due to decay and temporal shearing effects)

Gravity is already physical so that one's fine.

Rethread - Another temporal shearing type of effect so again physical?

Ashes to Ashes and Turn Back the Clock - Direct aging attacks. So once again physical?

Weapon Folding and Temporal Wake could do physical damage too.

A one damage type caster (that deals physical damage on top of it) sounds really boring to me and frankly I don't feel like rewriting all of these talents and changing the themes (not to mention breaking down the trees again) so they magically start using stuff like friction, heat death, or space damage (darkness?) or whatever I would need to do to make the paradox mages deal more then one damage type.

[Obsidian]

No clue, I'm actually fine with Temporal damage being it's own type.

It's strange, and something of a hack, but it works.
You could define temporal shearing effects as both a physical and arcane, where as aging effects are physical/nature.

Gravity would probably have to be physical, but really... What's boring about physical damage? Archers/Warriors don't have much access to damage types other than physical and get along fine. Regardless of what damage type it deals, it's the 'how' (as in, ball, blast, cone, line, dot) and secondary effects which define the ability.

The only issue becomes resistance to physical, and just having them with a physical resistance reduction talent helps with that. Though, I still like my core vs. composite damage types.

[Grey]

I agree with nature on the ageing, and arcane on some of the more abstract types.

It could of course be a lot of work to change many of the damage types, and possibly not really worth it for the gameplay benefit. However I think it's at least important to keep in mind with new classes etc that adding new damage types is probably a bad idea - I think we have too many as it is, and it leads to a mess of uninteresting complexity.

[Obsidian]

Do you think it would be possible to create average resists for the odd types?

Average Physical and Cold resist to get their 'Ice' resist. Physical and Fire for 'Explosion'.

[edge2054]

There's a few split damage type effects already and in a way they do take the average of your resists.

If you have 40% fire resist and 20% physical resist and get hit with a fire/physical damage type that deals 200 total damage (100/100) you'll take 140 total (60/80). If this was one damage type and you had 30% explosions resist and got hit for 200 explosion damage you'd again take 140 total damage.

Maybe that's not exactly what you meant though.

As to what you're saying Grey I agree that we don't need more damage types. The interesting ones I can think of should all be easily covered by split damage types or current effects. Void could be darkness/cold. Chaos could do a random damage type (which would be awesome btw).

I'd love to see some sorta consolidation in the current system but I don't think removing the less used damage types isn't the way to do it. If anything the rarer damage types are contributing less to this problem then the other ones.

Maybe ego suffixes could be broader. Even on greens. Same with artifacts. Finding a +fire damage artifact when you're playing anything other then an archmage or alchemist sucks. I'm sure finding a +temporal damage item on anything other then a paradox mage or warden also sucks but on the other hand these items are much much rarer generally.

[Obsidian]

Yes, that's more what I was saying, just convert the odd damage types like Acid, Blight, Light (Positive), Darkness(Negative)/Void, Ice, into those split damage effects. Though you could also say that they would use the lower of the 2 resists, or the higher, depending upon how you'd care to do it, which would change the results in your example.

As for Temporal... it's very, very common on weapons, not so much on staffs.