Talent and equipent prereqs use only PERMANENT ability score

[Doctornull]

In another thread, this was posted:

If that change is made, then I think a similar change is needed. If you don't have the required stats, the item functions as if it weren't equipped. I think it's kind of silly that you can wear a few rings of strength, then equip a huge plate armor and then take off the rings. Without the rings, you shouldn't be able to handle the equipment.

It got me thinking.

What if talent prereqs and equipment only cared about your PERMANENT ability score? The score without items, without sustains, and without condition debuffs like diseases.

Obviously the talent minimums would need to be lower, maybe equipment prereqs would also need to be lower. Also, stat buff items would still be good and useful in terms of USING talents -- you'd still want a high Strength score if you are hitting someone with a pointy stick, it's just that you'd have no need to juggle equipment when leveling up.



This would mean several things:
- No equipment hording / juggling just to meet specific level-up prereqs.
- Some talent trees might want to have no pre-reqs, or very low prereqs, especially General trees available from Escorts.
- Early stat allocation would be more important, early stat-buff items would be less important.
- Escorts and Alchemist quests would be more important: those +3/+3 elixers are permanent, and they're somewhat more reliable than Escorts.
- If you level up while suffering from some kind of horrible disease, you will not be surprised by your poor choices.


Permanent stat boost sources:
- Class
- Race
- Passive Talents
- Elixers
- Escorts
- Level boosts & wyrm queen heart

Non-permanent stat boost sources:
- Gear
- Sustained Talents
- Conditions


The game ALMOST has this information available already: there's a number in parens which is your class + level boosts, but your race is counted as a "temporary" boost like an item.


Thoughts?
Does anyone actually LIKE juggling equipment?

[HousePet]

The elixirs count as temporary at the moment.

Wouldn't really need to adjust talent requirements, they would just take a little longer to get the higher level ones.

This would restrict prodigy options though and that could be an issue.

[Doctornull]

The elixirs count as temporary at the moment.

Yep, just like race -- both are incorrect IMHO.

Wouldn't really need to adjust talent requirements, they would just take a little longer to get the higher level ones.

That may or may not be desirable -- that's what I want to discuss!

IMHO it might be nice to scale back, or just flat-out remove, the prereqs for certain Escort trees. For example, Stone Alchemy is the sort of thing one might want to dip into without being a character who otherwise uses the Magic stat, and that should be possible. The category point and the ten Generic talent points are a fair price for what you get.

On the other hand, Divinations might still want to keep some kind of Magic stat requirement, since it's used more like normal spells.

This would restrict prodigy options though and that could be an issue.

Absolutely.

We might just lower the ability score, or we might have different "tiers" of commitment, since some Prodigies are self-balancing... if you somehow manage to take Superpower without being invested in building Willpower, you're only cheating yourself.

[Sedrahl]

My biggest concern is that this would severely limit playstyle flexibility of many classes. Take equipment out of the picture and your talent prereqs will practically decide your stat investments for you. It will also make life considerably more difficult for classes with a wide stat spread, while leaving the already-easy life of those with only one or two primary stats unaffected. While equipment juggling can be a hassle, the reason we're doing it in the first place is because the value of what we gain by doing so is greater than that of the time/effort spent juggling.

[Doctornull]

My biggest concern is that this would severely limit playstyle flexibility of many classes. Take equipment out of the picture and your talent prereqs will practically decide your stat investments for you.

Sounds like you disagree with HousePet about talent tree prereqs needing to be re-scaled.

What do you think a better scale would be, to allow classes which demand a wider stat spread to remain viable?

[minmay]

Removing stat requirements altogether seems like it would actually be closer to how the current system works - most characters find enough stat-boosting equipment to get 50 of any stat (or very close) by the time they reach level 30, and it's similar for talent requirements.
Requiring base stats would notably make some silly gimmick builds (mindstar rogue etc) worse.
I'm not sure which one I prefer but I'm leaning towards removing stat requirements just because it's actually a smaller change. And making race/elixirs affect base stats has other implications because of the inability to raise base stats beyond 60.

[SageAcrin]

I pretty much agree with Minmay; I'd rather see the requirements removed than more stringently enforced. Some classes become far harder to play(often not the better classes, like Temporal Warden) with such a change, and the payoff's not worth it-mostly negative, really.

Having said that, the current system produces a kind of curve, too-there's a gear level requirement for any talents you aren't pumping stats for, right now. Optimally, you'd reproduce that somehow(raw level requirements) for the big cases like Thick Skin, but it's not entirely possible to reproduce without stat requirements.

It's a weird situation. It works right now, though, without being too annoying.

[Hachem_Muche]

There are also technical considerations. The game stores your stats as 2 numbers: a base value and an increment value, that it adds together to get the total stat. The problem is the inc value includes bonuses/penalties from equipment, temporary effects, permanent increases from elixirs and other things. It would take a bit of reworking various effects for the game to be able to tell whether a bonus to Cun came from a ring or from using Elixir of the Fox, for example.

A (somewhat) simpler, and probably better method of accounting for stats is make them affect the actual effectiveness of each piece of equipment or talent. Many talents that have stat requirements already do this, since they use the prerequisite stat in their calculations and are less effective if the stat they rely on is undervalued. For equipment, penalties could be introduced.

For example, if you don't have enough strength to use the heavy armor you're wearing (either because of stat juggling or because of being under the effect of a weakness effect like a disease), you might get a defense penalty or suffer a higher fatigue rating (maybe something like 1% per point of under strength). Trying to use a voratun dagger without enough Dex could give you penalties to accuracy and damage. Some of these effects are already partially in place -- daggers use your Dex to compute their damage, for example, but stiffer penalties could be added.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

How would it take that much work? Wyrm bile already works that way, and even exceeds the cap if necessary. Bigger issue with permanent stat gains from potions is the meta-gaming it would encourage, not drinking them until after you already hit your natural cap AND drank wyrm bile (to prevent bile from lowering them after you drink, thus wasting the lifted natural cap.)

If we changed it that way, no-one would drink these until they were at/near highpeak, just for the minor boost it could provide.

[Doctornull]

Removing stat requirements altogether seems like it would actually be closer to how the current system works - most characters find enough stat-boosting equipment to get 50 of any stat (or very close) by the time they reach level 30, and it's similar for talent requirements.

So, level 30 would be
Requiring base stats would notably make some silly gimmick builds (mindstar rogue etc) worse.
I'm not sure which one I prefer but I'm leaning towards removing stat requirements just because it's actually a smaller change.[/quote] Before level 30, though, you really can feel the pinch.

So, something whereby around level 30 you're no longer feeling much pinch... cutting all the prereqs roughly in half, but still starting the stat requirement above 10, could have that effect.

Or maybe using accelerating prereqs for high-end talents: start at 11, 12, 13, etc. for low-req trees, but for high-req talents keep the existing levels. So if you're NOT heavily mono-focused, you might use your level 10 cat point for a low-req tree, or for an Inscription slot if you only want locked high-req trees.



@SageAcrin - you're used to the current system, but even you realize that it is annoying to lug around gear which you ONLY use at level-up... but it's too optimal to ignore, so you rationalize the annoyance. It's fixable, though. Why would you fight to keep annoying things which can be fixed?

[Doctornull]

There are also technical considerations. The game stores your stats as 2 numbers: a base value and an increment value, that it adds together to get the total stat. The problem is the inc value includes bonuses/penalties from equipment, temporary effects, permanent increases from elixirs and other things. It would take a bit of reworking various effects for the game to be able to tell whether a bonus to Cun came from a ring or from using Elixir of the Fox, for example.

The game already knows, sort of. SOME of that information is displayed on the level up screen -- see the number in parens? That's your (sort of) permanent ability score, while the number to the left of the parens is your temporary modified ability score. It's not really as consistent as I'd like, but the mechanics are already mostly in place.

It's also not particularly difficult for a computer to add THREE or FOUR different numbers, rather than merely adding two. So it's quite possible to keep permanent bonus (race, class, elixer, passive talent, wyrm bile, etc.) separate from level-up points (start at 10, go up to 60 and never beyond 60). Then the player will never be penalized for doing the obvious thing, and will be able to put 50 points in his main stat no matter when he does it. (This is not currently the case. Right now, it's smart to save wyrm bile for after you have 60 base in your main stats, but before level 50 so you can re-fill any stats which get lowered. You're gambling, but it takes a lot of meta-gaming to get the best gamble, and that's bad IMHO.)

Trying to use a voratun dagger without enough Dex could give you penalties to accuracy and damage. Some of these effects are already partially in place -- daggers use your Dex to compute their damage, for example, but stiffer penalties could be added.

Daggers also use your Dex to compute accuracy, so it's already mostly how you'd want it.

[SageAcrin]

It's not that I'm used to the system.

It's that some classes have three+ stat categories for talents, and even with a notable drop in the stat costs, it's a major hit to those classes.

And then some of those classes have to build Con and Strength if they want decent durability and armor, because those two stats aren't part of their core(Shadowblade's a good example of this).

And then there's interesting alternate builds-Staff/Mindstar Mastery builds, many of the odder Generic category builds(Stone Alchemy is a good example of this), heavy armor casters...all of these just get left.

It does nothing good for the game besides assuage the annoyance of swapping. Killing the stat reqs would do that too, and would mostly just power up Thick Skin and those split stat dependency classes a bit...which isn't really that damaging, and the impact is minimal anyways.

This isn't a new discussion-it's happened a few times since I've been here. It's possible you'll dig up some way to make it work without it being incredible amounts of work and/or nerfing a bunch of classes, while leaving many of the top tiers totally untouched...but I kinda doubt it.

[Sedrahl]

I think the stat requirement system is currently in a really good spot. It gives you flexibility in how you can build your characters, but doesn't make things too easy like removing requirements entirely would. It increases the amount of equipment that is useful to your character by a considerable amount, making loot and dungeon crawling more interesting in the process.

My understanding is that the main complaint against the system is "juggling equipment for skill-ups is annoying", and it's a completely fair one to make. However, aren't you confusing your objectives here? Why scrap such a workable system when all you need is to make equipment juggling less annoying? Simply automating the manual part of the process, either by having pre-set inventory loadouts or by having the talent screen calculate the highest possible value of your stat (based on inventory) for requirement purposes, would address the issue in a considerably less destructive fashion. (Although it may require some elaborate coding.)

As for talent/sustain juggling, I think it might be fair to at least make all investments in stat-granting passives/sustains permanent in a similar fashion to Armor Training, because they can technically "affect the world in a permanent fashion" the same way, and the classes that have them will still be able to use equipment for meeting stat requirements the same way as everyone else.

[Doctornull]

I think the stat requirement system is currently in a really good spot. It gives you flexibility in how you can build your characters, but doesn't make things too easy like removing requirements entirely would. It increases the amount of equipment that is useful to your character by a considerable amount, making loot and dungeon crawling more interesting in the process.

That's an interesting take. You're saying that, because you can use equips to work around the prerequisite system, thus equipment becomes more exciting. That's not an aspect I'd thought of before.

What I dislike is:
- Working around the system is so vastly rewarded that everyone does it.
- Being a pack-rat is heavily rewarded, which is annoying.
- Juggling equipment is annoying.
- Some classes having are much harder to get off the ground than others, unless you find the perfect equips, due to conflicting stat requirements. This means starts are very uneven for some classes, and that start variance could be reduced by having lower stat requirements across the board.

My understanding is that the main complaint against the system is "juggling equipment for skill-ups is annoying", and it's a completely fair one to make.

That's part of it, but not the whole thing.

Hope the above list helps.

Cheers!

[Sedrahl]

What I dislike is:
- Working around the system is so vastly rewarded that everyone does it.
- Being a pack-rat is heavily rewarded, which is annoying.
- Juggling equipment is annoying.
- Some classes having are much harder to get off the ground than others, unless you find the perfect equips, due to conflicting stat requirements. This means starts are very uneven for some classes, and that start variance could be reduced by having lower stat requirements across the board.

You call it working around the system, but I call it participating in it. Mind, neglecting your class's primary stats and using equipment to fill in the requisites isn't always (or even usually) the optimal path to take.

I fail to see how carrying extra equipment qualifies as being a packrat, considering equipment is just about all these is to carry in ToME. Are you saying there's too much useful equipment in ToME? Lots of useful equipment is a good thing, because it makes weight limits actually relevant.

I don't consider some classes being harder to get off the ground to be a problem, because some classes are simply not intended to be as powerful at a given point in the game as others, and others are simply underpowered. Current stat prerequisites have little to do with that, however if equipment swapping wasn't an option then it would become a problem for them.