>>Jwoodward: Someone that seemed to know a lot told me that swinging a two-hander while wearing a shield is going to greatly effect the 2he. Does anyone know about this penalty, or heard anything about it?

Last I heard, there is supposed to be a penalty to both the weapon and the shield when using a two-handed weapon while blocking with a shield. I don't know how big the penalty is, however.

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

The hindrance will apply to both weapon and shield use, I believe.

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Has there been any decision on if a pike/halberd will have as large of a shield penalty.

I thought I remember some discussion about those not having as large of a penalty as say a maul or greatsword, because while the game does classify them as two handed, they are very often seen with a shield.

Hopefully I'm not the only one who remembers this.

>Didn't he just say shield penalty isn't going to be as large because instead we're getting hit by larger RTs?

I'm just trying to ask if pike is being treated exactly the same as 2hb, 2he, because the original plan was that it would not be.

>Your correct, I assumed from how it was written it would be for all two-handed weapons, but we are in the 2HE section arean't we.

Yes we are and his post did not specify 2he or 2hb just 2 handers... so my question still remains.

While this might be the 2he folder, since it directly responds to Kods post here, I decided to reply here.

If you'd like to copy everything from here and make a new post under pikes, have at it.

Right now it will be a small penalty (to offense and defense) for 2 handed pikes and staves, and a bit larger of a penalty for 2 handed swords and blunts.

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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

>> What was true in 2.0 isnt anymore, and I for one would probably place my THE skill into Pikes, and only picked THE cause it was a 'superior' skill to be honest until recently:(

Hmm. That's part of the beauty of DR. You can always change weapons. It's sort of like if you obtain a fancy new ME and you only trained HE, you have the opportunity to train ME and use that weapon now. Sort of the opposite of Gemstone IV where you are completely stuck.

That being said, I'm 99% sure they will not allow skill swapping because an overpowered weapon is getting a down tweak. That would open the door for everyone wanting to change their skills every time a change doesn't go their way.

They're never going to let you just move all your ranks in A to B because you now decided you want B.

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When in doubt, http://elanthipedia.org/

>>I get to go from being a fire mage to a lighting mage

This comparison is more like deciding you like greataxes instead of claymores. You're not really jumping into an entire concept of magic as much as shuffling the stats around. Fire and Lightning mages function using the same skills.

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When in doubt, http://elanthipedia.org/

what I WOULD recommend though if you DO want to change weapons, do it now and work on that other weapon. BEFORE grandfathering comes into play.

<the player whose prime thief is going to be stuck with having brawling as secondary weapon because of the <insert curse> skill combine of LE and ME - there's just not enough time to play in 2 instances>

An arisen dummy zombie bellows, "You will all be ssslaughtered!"
>

Regardless of whatever happens, I will always cherish the choices I've made in bringing up my character. For better or worse, I've come to know and love the skills I've trained and wouldn't forsake them even if they ended up being inferior in the grand scheme of things. After all, at the very least my character will be unique :P

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg

>I dont expect it of course. I'm not debating my point to 'convince' anyone, I realize its far too late in the process for it, but it would have been a nice consideration.

It was considered. And eventually dismissed by GMs. They didn't want to go that route.

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Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.

Parry/evade when you're using your two-handed mirror flamberge of dewm. Also, keep in mind a defensive penalty isn't going to be nearly as lethal in 3.0 as it is now.

All things considered, I would personally love to have HE over 2HE as my primary melee skill, but that's mostly for dual whirl and not because I'm concerned about min-maxing.

Spell wipes usually do not happen unless they are unavoidable. It's less about "being fair" and more about "the data is now garbage and deleting it is expedient." I can think of only a single time in my tenure on staff that I've okayed (and been okayed) removing a spell for something other than a technical problem.

Beyond those incredibly rare events, MUs are expected to roll with it when things change under their feet.

-Armifer
"In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

>>My general issue with back training is generally you are training like 1-2 skills while doing it generally because your skills are so far progressed what your hunting.<<

If this is the case, then you're doing it wrong. Sure, you may want to backtrain quarterstaff and staff slings, but if you're not also training a few other armors that you neglected, magics, foraging, escaping, or any of the other skills, then backtraining really stinks. Do you WANT to train HP and LP on your halfling ranger? No, but why not add as many other skills to make it worthwhile?

Elvis has left the building.

>>Rewyn: With all these swapping of what weapons do what, is there any thought to let players reallocate their skills?

>>Rewyn: Magic Users will get it, You will also have the option with your TDPs, so I see the exclusion of weapons from that thought process as strange.

Magic users will be required to re-choose their spells. There's no way around this given the sweeping changes to the spellbooks and spell slots. They don't get to simply move their magic ranks from one skill to another. (I'm not talking about new magic skills, which are derived from your current skills or grandfathered to circle. That applies to any new skill, including weapon skills.)

If you were going to go down this route, you might as well let people redistribute their ranks among all of their skills, but I don't think that would be good for game balance.

That being said, you do get a limited weapon "do-over" in the sense that if you trained two skills that are merging into one, the ranks from one of those skills will go into your weapon bonus pool, boosting the learning rate of all weapons. If you did not train any "redundant" skills, you're really getting a bonus in effective ability, since you will be able to use weapons that you did not train. (For example, if you have trained pikes but not halberds, you'll also be able to use halberds with the same level of proficiency.)


>>Rewyn: Will spellcasters get to repick their spells? How are skills different?

First of all, guild's spellbooks are being completely rewritten, so many of the spells that you may have chosen will no longer exist. Others don't do the same thing. (For example, Holy Warrior currently provides 60 extra stance points, but in 3.0 it will bless your weapons and buff defenses.) Still other spells will not have even existed when you made those choices.

Moreover, the way spell slots are calculated is being redone, and spells will not cost the same number of slots. In short, there is no way to avoid a spell respec for magic users given the sweeping changes that will take place under Magic 3.0.

On the other hand, current weapon skills will still exist under 3.0 and will continue to do what you expect them to do. (There are some skills that are merging, but the functionality will still be there.) For example, the Twohanded Edged skill still governs the use of two-handed edged weapons. That's not to say that Combat 3.0 won't change perceptions of which skills are desirable to train, but the fact remains that the changes to the weapon skillset aren't on par with the changes to magic. It can also be argued that we have been warned about these changes for at least two years, so if you've changed your mind about whether it's worthwhile to train pikes, you've had the chance to act on that.

There is another difference as well: spell slots. The magic system is a sort of hybrid system where you have magic skills and spell slots. The magic skills govern how well you can use the spells that you selected for your spell slots.

You can think of the weapon system as a combination of weapon skills and weapons, where the weapon skills govern how well you can use the weapons. However, it is the finite nature of these spell slots and the fact that they cannot be easily cleared that sets magic apart. If you have 10 spell slots, you can only allocate those once. It is possible to unlearn spells, but it costs TDPs if you want unlearn more than one spell in 180 days. On the other hand, right out the gate, you can choose to use every available weapon if you want, and you can instantly switch weapons (within the same weapon skill) without any kind of penalty except the monetary cost of acquiring those weapons.

>>Teveshszat: They're never going to let you just move all your ranks in A to B because you now decided you want B.

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

While there is only one skill for targeting magic, PM was broken up into 5 different skills that each govern a type of spell. So just because you can cast a good shield on yourself, doesn't mean you can disable an opponent equally well unless you have trained both warding and debilitation together. While damaging spells may use the same skill to aim the spell, the magic skillset itself was broken up to be more like the weapon skillset.

Stats and spells need a respec because how they fundamentally work is being changed. The same can't be said for any skill including the weapon skillset. As has been said many times already, allowing people to change bits from skill A to B would be very bad for the game.

>>I BELIEVE the 'melee' mastery skill may upset this somewhat, but until Testing is out its a bit difficult to say.

Not really that difficult to say. It is exactly what the mastery skills are going to do at release. If you really want to use pike instead of THE under 3.0, but don't want to stop your normal hunting to backtrain, then you could wait till it is released and add it into your normal combat routine.

There is also something you should keep in mind about this too. It has been announced that they are slowing down how fast skills move from 0-100. So if it were me I would at least try to get my first 100 ranks before 3.0 is released, after that it should be fairly easy to use at level, and you should not have to backtrain in another hunting area.

Now with all that said, if you are not trying to get this to actually happen, and not trying to change people's minds then what is the point in continuing to post the same thing over and over for days in multiple threads?

>>2) There is a split in philosophy over how you attack with spells vs how you attack with a weapon that I find a bit interesting. Utilizing a bastard sword in one hand (HE) takes an ENTIRELY different skill from a bastard sword in two hands (2HE). Utilizing a lighting bolt called down form the sky uses the same skill set as flinging a fire ball at an entirely different vector.

I find this statement funny, but in a way completely unrelated to game balance. A bastard sword is sort of what you would call a hand and a half sword. Wielding it in its one-handed style would be completely different and require different training than wielding it in its "two-handed". The 3.0 weapon skills mirror RL a little bit better, not exactly but still. Axes should be paired with hammers rather than being edges. That may not make immediate sense to some people but it has to do with the way the weapon is balanced and wielded.

Then again peoples perception of what a war axe actually looks like is often wrong, they more resembled picks than they do what is commonly depicted.

>>No we dont 'over' vague things, there isnt one magic skill called 'magic' but at the time, we end up with a wide variety of weapon skills which as handled in the system, dont feel quite right. I refer back to Jamie Lannister (who hasnt read SoIF at this point?)

Your having tunnel vision here. What I mean is your not understanding magic in DR. Like at all. So far everything you've said has been repeatedly about how different TM spells do different affects but its all one skill. You see as it currently there is one magic skill which governs all magic, and its not TM. TM is not the only magic, in fact its a small fraction in most spellbooks outside of Warrior Mages. PM the skill that governs all magic is being broken up, it will stay around in a form similar to Melee Mastery or Ranged Mastery, but in the end its not the primary skill. Its moving away from the vague.

Ohh and as far as DR lore is concerned, aiming a fireball and aiming a lightning bolt is the exact same process. The vector is meaningless when it comes to the targeting pattern. Think of the spells as laser guided missles. The act of forming the pattern that creates the spell is the launcher, the targeting pattern or TM is you being the guy who has the laser pointed aimed at the target. Whether its launched by air or land, doesn't matter it will always go to where the spotter is pointing. The angle it comes in has nothing to do with the targeting pattern, the targeting pattern is just you going "hit that guy right there". TM is just the skill determining how good you are at pointing out what "right there" is.

>>He trained his entire life with knightly weapons, but I'm damn sure if i gave him a war hammer, he would be deadly all the same. He wouldnt like it or be able to work at peak efficiency with it (his "feats" were spent elsewhere), but he isnt sitting there scratching his head wondering how a warhammer works.

>>The current system in DR means if a barbarian who has mastered every weapon in the system but one picks up a new weapon, he currently is scratching his head wondering which side to hold it from. I BELIEVE the 'melee' mastery skill may upset this somewhat, but until Testing is out its a bit difficult to say.

Not entirely true even in the current system. I can hit things much more reliably with a lot less ranks than someone with less stats than me. But that being said, if someone was trained in "knightly" weapons(maces/hammers were knightly weapons so I assume you mean swords) and you gave him a warhammer, he would promptly fail horribly using it.

_______________________
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The Light is Crimson through the Darkness.

I find alot of contradiction here. Aiming a spell of different sorts despite the massive differences in how a fireball would behave vs a lighting bolt is ok, but I need to have a totally different weapon skill to attack with a medium edged 'slicing' weapon vs a heavy edges 'slicing weapon.

And as someone that spent some time playing with weapons in the SCA, I do not agree that fighting with a one handed weapon (free offhand) and a two handed weapon were such dramatically different skills as they are represented in DR. In DR, someone could have 10000 ranks in one, and try the inverse and basically be utterly inept with it. Thats makes little sense to me, the basic ideas of combat with a weapon are going to apply to a slashing based weapon. The only thing counter acting this is that higher characters have more 'stats' to compensate for their lack of skill, but this is just a poor modeling method.

Someone thats trained to use weapons is not going to be all thumbs if they are given something they arnt familiar with, not to the degree in DR, and I have a very hard time accepting that dozens of attack spells all falling withing TM because 'they have the same core concepts' does not relate to weapons which all fall within 3 general strategies: bash, slash, or poke.

Equine Cemetery anyone?

Elvis has left the building.