Heyo!

As many folks know by now, I have been working on some massive overhauls to the DragonRealms combat system. A few of these changes will begin trickling into the Test instance this coming week, so I want to take a few moments to let folks know what to expect.

First and foremost, let me begin with a brief explanation of why combat is being overhauled. The simple truth of the matter is that although we have built many new things onto it, the foundation of our current combat system was created over a decade ago for a game where 30th circle was amazing, and over 100 ranks in a skill was almost inconceivable! We do not have to look very far at all to see this in the combat system. Fatigue goes from being a huge issue to virtually non-existant fairly quickly. Bleeders quickly cease to be a problem. Lodged weapons do little more than tickle the enemy and annoy the attacker who just lost a weapon. Vitality deaths become increasingly rare, while hits to vital areas become increasingly likely to be one-shot deaths. Offenses quickly outpace defenses because defenses have an absolutely mind-boggling number of penalties stacked on them, many of which are percentage reductions which in turn means that the higher the skill becomes, the more ranks are being lost. I could go on and on, but I don't think I need to. Most of our long-term players are very aware of the situation. Therefore, the first major goal is to rescale combat so that all aspects of combat apply across all circle, skill, and stat ranges, as well as address issues like the one-shot kill issue that plagues higher level play. Things like bleeders and lodged weapons will also be addressed to make them more of a real threat, especially at higher levels.

The second major issue I will be addressing is the combat combo system. I'll make this simple -- it is going away. I'll discuss what we will be doing in its place later, but for now just be aware that it is definitely going away. One major thrust of the overhaul is to make the combat system involve far more choices and options...but strictly as options. The goal is simply to give players plenty of choices and let them decide what works best for their style and their favorite weapons.

There are many other considerations, but I think the two above are the big ones. I'm not going to go into extensive details at this point, but here is a -brief- overview of two of the upcoming changes:


Fatigue

Fatigue is being completely rescaled on all levels.

- The penalties for being fatigued will, in general, be reduced.

- The pool size will be increasing drastically by, among other things, the addition of a constant to the current stat-based equation. This should make it far easier to set fatigue costs so that they can still impact high level characters without totally dropping the poor low level folks, while still allowing higher level folks to improve.

- Here's the catch -- the recovery rate is going down substantially, especially in combat. I won't kid anyone -- it will be virtually impossible to spam attacks endlessly and not get tired, regardless of your circle/skills/stats and choice of weapons. With a much larger pool, however, it will also take much longer to get to a point where the fatigue begins to create problems.

- The ability to reduce the fatigue cost of attacks will be changing dramatically. One reason fatigue ceases to be a problem so early in the current system is because the same criteria that make the pool size and recovery rate go up also make the cost go down at the same time -- a triple whammy. While it will still be possible to reduce fatigue costs, there are two major changes -- (1) the stats involved will be shifting somewhat so that one stat isn't dominating all fatigue-related functions, and (2) the minimum fatigue costs will be higher than they are now.

- It will basically be impossible to maintain non-stop attacks indefinitely, especially at minimumized roundtimes. Higher level players will need to know when to hold them, know when to fold them...er...wait. Wrong game. As players grow more powerful, they will need to learn to pace themselves a bit better, and learn when to take a breather (even if only by typing "dodge" or "parry" between every few attacks) and when to drive the attack home. This will be especially true with heavier weapons. This ties in to the combo breakup. Just because dodge, parry, or other non-damaging (or low damage) attacks will no longer be "required" by the combo system does not mean there won't be very good reasons to still use them.


Vitality

This is the big one. Vitality needs to be much more relevant from 1st to 150th than it is now, and likewise one-shot kills to vital body parts need to become far less common. We will be killing two birds with one stone here.

- The vitality pool will be increasing much like the fatigue pool, and will involve a healthy constant to provide padding for lower level characters.

- Much like fatigue, the recovery rate for vitality will be going down. Things like bleeders and lodged weapons will drastically reduce recovery until they are addressed, making them far more dangerous.

- Here's the biggy!!! Vitality (which increases) and body part points(which does not increase) will be more directly related to one another. When an attack hits, the damage applied to the affected body part will be modified based on the current vitality of the target. What this means is that if a defender is at 100% vitality, it will be difficult to inflict more than a scratch. On the other hand, if they are at 20% vitality, they are at much higher risk of having an incoming shot blow out their chest or take off their head. In other words, the lower your vitality, the greater the risk of serious or fatal injuries.

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Yes, this means a few of our fatigue and vitality related spells and abilities will need to be revamped to fit this new setup. Do not expect that fatigue or vitality spells/abilities will remain as effective as they are now, but also understand that their role will be much more vital.
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Shields

In order to bring all three active defenses more in line with each other, there will be some significant changes to all three. In this post, I am going to address shields briefly.

- Shields are currently penalized based on their weight. This will be going away. However...

- Shields currently have a hindrance rating that is applied as a penalty to evasion. This penalty will be moving to the shield itself under certain conditions (see the next note) to replace the weight-based penalty. You will still be able to work the hindrance down much like you do now.

- Here is the catch. Arm-worn shields will also apply a hindrance penalty to both the shield and the weapon when used in conjunction with two-handed weapons (with a few possible exceptions). This is being done to offset the many advantages shield has compared to the other two active defenses. Shield use will work best overall with one-handed weapons. While using two-handed weapons while wearing shields will still be perfectly possible, it will come at a cost to effectiveness for both the shield and the weapon. Again, this hindrance can be reduced with training.

- The use of two-handed missiles will likewise be hindered, and will probably have additional restrictions similar to the current ones for bows and arm-worn shields.

- It is very likely (but not completely certain at this stage) that some exceptions to the above will be made for pole arms to give these weapons a bit of a perk. In addition, because they only require one hand, thrown weapons, slings, and light crossbows will be far more viable with shields than bows and heavy crossbows.


- GM Dartenian


If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. - Henry Ford