Howdy folks. As a result of Shaping and bowcrafting, I'm having to re-evaluate bow stats. Time to finally make their stats do something and to add Tiers to make everyone's lives easier.

Old bow stats are a mess. The stats that really differentiate a composite bow from a short bow are "hidden" from the appraise, and the suitability stat doesn't do much of anything. There are also no damage modifiers for bows with reduced / increased RTs.

The change I am working on will...

- Add a combat damage multiplier directly proportional to the bow's Suitability (also known as Power) stat
- Increase the OF modifier from balance and add fumbling chance
- Add draw strength. This will determine the base RT, power and balance, and % chance for a RT increase/decrease
- Create new bow templates that mathematically scale power/damage in relation to the loading RT from draw strength

Just at a glance, a composite bow with a cycle time of time of 12 seconds (6 load, 5 aim, 1 fire) would be doing about 60% more damage than a short bow with a cycle time of 8 seconds (2 load, 5 aim, 1 fire). 12/8 = 50% bonus mathematically, and we add another 10% to compensate for player perception that lower RTs are king. If using full aim, the DPS of heavier bows pulls even further away from the smaller ones.



Now the question of what to do with old bows has consumed the past few months of my life. From the current calculations, I shouldn't have to do a conversion of most old bows, and only a few old crossbows. Though in general you'll find old capped bows equivalent to about new capped "steel". I think this "nerf" to old weapons is important. Much like it was with Weaponsmithing 3.0. It gives me room to properly balance the stats and not compromise on game balance. We'll also have different and better ammo available which will help bring old bows back up to par.

Crossbows kind of fall apart with the rewrite because some of them have 0 power. This will be fixed automatically with the new system. Repeaters will keep their current damage, but non-repeating crossbows will get a damage boost to make up for the incredible advantage repeaters have.

The recently-auctioned energy bows will also get special stats assigned to bring them back up to T6 status. If there are any special bows that come up later, we can handle them on a case-by-case basis. But even if new bows end up with a higher stat cap, it won't make your older bows useless by far...

I imagine that crafted crossbow RTs will be lowered when Tinkering comes out. 10-20 second load RTs make balancing the damage impossible. I'd rather see them vary from 6-12, picking up where stick bows leave off.

This has been quite a process. Please let me know what you think!

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

Looks pretty solid to me. I'm happy there is going to be some conversion of older weapons so they don't become useless. I'm looking forward to this being released and being able to play around with it.

I agree about this, it is such a win to have bows and crossbows updated that I don't mind the old stuff being downtweaked a bit. We all lived through weapons and armor being modified, I am sure this is in good hands as well.

<The recently-auctioned energy bows will also get special stats assigned to bring them back up to T6 status. If there are any special bows that come up later, we can handle them on a case-by-case basis. But even if new bows end up with a higher stat cap, it won't make your older bows useless by far...>

I had some opinions about the energy bows. I don't know if the notes ever got back to you at all about them at all though.

As far as the bow rewrite, I think it all sounds good so far. Taking a minor setback to current capped bows to fit them into the tier overall tier rankings is only a minor issue, considering the whole project will eventually let things advance even further. Most weapons that I have seen have grown with their new respected crafts. I'm assuming bows will hopefully see a similar effect.

I am a little curious though. So far from your notes, it seems like bows are about to become a heavily strength based weapon, for most of it's positive effects. Is this the way it is or going to be? I guess I always viewed shooting as more of a dexterous type feat, which you could say is compensated through skill. However, as far as attributes, I guess I always assumed agility would play a decent part. It did for the longest time when it was part of the AIM bonus. But that's been removed thus far, from what I am aware of. So what kind of role does the stat play now, if any?



~Van

<Stats will continue to play the roles they always have. Strength primarily increases the minimum damage, and to a lesser extent increases the damage cap. Agility will modify OF which primarily affects to-hit, and to a lesser degree effects damage.>

I was just meaning that I saw you mention bows drawing from suitability(from strength), from draw weights, and from draw time. These just were all strength based attributes, I wasn't sure if agility played much of a role in bows, as they do in melee weapons anymore. Every since the remove of the agility based AIM bonus, which was rather distinguishable. After being replaced by the skill based one, honestly, it never really felt like stats played much of a role at all in bows. And it's blatantly stated in the appraisal on crossbows that it has no strength component(which I understand the reasoning). Pre and post stat buffing capabilities often feel negligible at best, to me, when shooting. And so I just seem lost on which are really helping anymore. So that's why I was just concerned.

So just out of curiosity, is suitability a consistent sliding scale consistent through all the bow types, or is it inherent to each particular bow type? Meaning, say you have a fairly suitable composite bow, and a reasonably suited longbow. Does this mean the longbow has more power than the composite, or is there an inherent power factor to these bows just for being the type of bow they are, and the suitability attribute just shows how it compares to others of the same type?


~Van

Oh man, these changes definitely sound awesome. Look forward to where this is going.

I think I'd like to see repeaters get a little bit of a boost.. not as big as the regular crossbows of course, but if we're talking about crossbows being starting standard at 6 sec load time while repeaters have a 3 sec push time, and aim time is the same between them, that doesn't sound like repeaters will have an advantage at all, and instead be at a disadvantage.

Of course, that could just be me treasuring my 14 bolt repeater that I got from scrip.. although even now I usually go for my slurbow.

So how do old crossbows RT get affected? For example the old 6/7 forester's crossbow.

Rhadyn da Dwarb - Blood for fire!

That was a seriously awesome youtube show. I give it a plus 1.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

Caraamon, this was not the intent of my post. Simply put, bows in DR have some penalties that crossbows do not, nor do they hit as hard. You might say that the weakness of a crossbow is the load time, but you can sling up to three loaded ones over your shoulder, or carry three repeaters and get a rather absurd firing rate. While I think the expense and relative rarity of repeaters go somewhat to balancing this out, once they are craftable by players, this rarity might disappear. I'd like to see bows distinguished from crossbows more in terms of the archer's skill than the weapon's engineering. And I'd like to see those distinguishing features available to all guilds, not just rangers or barbarians. Sure, tweak down feat prereqs a bit according to lore or skillset, but anyone who spends enough time with a bow should be capable of doing the same things.

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Now with 20% more lightning.

That dude is insane, shooting arrows out of the air and splitting them?!?!?! FREAKIN AWESOME!!!1!!11!!!

Bows should represent the middle tier of RT vs damage. Slings and Crossbows would then both be brought under the new rules once they can be appropriately crafted. Until then, we'll just keep fudging their damage so the store-bought templates maintain effectiveness.

Slings are in kind of an odd spot because you can already get 1s load from hand (with a 2 sec load bow). Perhaps we'll have some heavy sling templates that mirror short bows up to 3s from hand.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

If you make sling have native multi-load capability (that is, let someone load +1 stone at 50 ranks, +1 more at every 100 ranks after that) I think it would go a long way to countering the 'meh' nature of slings.

Tiered skill based feats for multi-loading slings would rock.

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Vote:
http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-DragonRealms.html

<For inspiration, I recommend the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk >

I watched that video and thought it was pretty cool. Sent it to a friend of mine who is really big into archery thinking she might appreciate it. Heh, she got a little upset with me and responded with this article...

http://geekdad.com/2015/01/danish-archer/

While I think there is a ton of truth to the rebuttal website's writings.

And partially because of some of the rebuttal website's writings, the writer puts a bit of emphasis on just how lacking in coordination and athleticism this archer has, and despite all that agrees that he can put a lot of arrows out over little time.

I'd still think some of the stuff in that video if it could be implemented into part of a weapon feat system, would be very much into DragonRealms' style fantasy extra-ordinary heroic and epic abilities, especially because Adventurers of Elanthia have skills, and stats that excel FAR beyond him, and also just about all humans on Earth especially when those characters are HIGHER circle.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

Well overall to address the worry that it would be just one more thing that Rangers wouldn't have any more. I'm more seeing a very full WEAPON feat system.

One which even at 200 circle and being a weapon primary guild you couldn't have EVERYTHING, but you'd be the closest.

Rangers being one of a good few that are weapon secondary guilds would have a bit of stuff.

I kind of like the idea of a self made volley of arrows, could kinda see this feat taking a few different forms and perhaps taking up several slots so that your proficient with them.

Such ideas are:
Rain of Arrows: Nothing very accurate, just cluster of arrows descending upon opponents that aren't within melee range of you.
Add-on - Suppressing advance: basically you draw a radius in-front of your character where the opponent fears and possibly will get nailed by arrows.
Add-on - Master's rain of arrows: You understand movements well enough and your own trajectories, that the arrows will also descend upon enemies that are at melee range of you without the fear of yourself being hit.
Add-on - Rain on you: The arrows are specifically set into the air to descend on a focused area, a specific target.
Add-on Volley [Direction]: Generates a rain of arrows in an available room in direction suggested.

Some other ideas: Some of which might be pre-requisites.
Load with off-hand arrows: Ready a certain amount of arrows, determined by your skill in your off hand. Where you can use them with the bonus reduced load time from doing it from your hand.
Load with bowed-hand: Ready a certain amount of arrows, determined by your skill in your hand with the bow. Allows more finesse and ease of the archer as well, because the archer can also still use other hand to pick up loot, and use it for other tasks. While still allowing for the bonus reduced load time from doing it from your hand. Pre-requisite Load with off-hand arrows.


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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

I would love some other cool maneuvers being added to various weapons, bows especially. Adding a volley that hits all engaged critters would be pretty neat, though we tend to forget that sort of weapon ability is frequently found in games that don't really have consumable ammo. I know it would never happen, but adopting such a system would make me so happy.

As for bow balance, that's great! The more things that get brought up to modern paradigms the better! I'd like for there be a bit of range in bows, not just in their quality, but in what we can use them for. Shortbows obviously for faster, lower damage firing, and enormously heavy composite bows for high strength requiring, high damage doing shots.

Realism be damned, this was one impressive boworc: http://youtu.be/sqjfq5gsfYk?t=1m24s

<<I've specifically side stepped dual-load. Because I think certain things should stay in the preview of their guilds.>>

I guess I'm not really understanding what you're meaning then. Because it appears to me like picking and choosing which weapons skills do go feat based, and which ones can stay guild.

My main issue in a feat system, especially if you start pulling abilities away from particular guilds, is that it really makes DR start to feel like a ubiquitous. What really separates or makes a guild unique, other than by name, if everyone starts becoming able to do anything anyone else can do? I mean, part of it I totally understand, and part of it makes me go, meh. Like, I'm waiting to watch the Empath outcry once people start making remedies that heal everything, and no ones goes to them anymore. They just carry Heal-Everything potions.

I'm definitely all for adding more things though. Like for armor skill sets. They do have shield slams, shield wearing, and the obvious armor penalties. But at the same time, there doesn't really seem to be a lot you can really do with armor. I mean, you wear it, and hope it works. Right? You can be really awesome with a rock, but in the end, it's still just a rock.


<To me it would be more geared towards helping defend areas during invasions, more for dispersing crowds of somewhat weaker to pitifully weaker opponents then you. And perhaps able to weaken a target that's about on par with you. But I agree they might not.>

Actually that's precisely where it is available. You can shoot arrows off the walls in cities, into the room just in front of the gate. But it hardly gets used. Many probably don't remember it, and most invasions hardly happen in that specific area. Kind of fun when the opportunity arises though, never-the-less.


~Van

<<Well not taking from the other stuff, but what's the syntax for this ability?>>

I think you can peer over the embrasure, you can also aim target embrasure, and I believe just fire or fire embrasure when ready.



~Van

No, can't target magic over the embrasure. But you can aim. Excited to try that out.