Warrior Combat version 2

Estarra

Once again, I was going around and around trying to take Kaimanahi, Daganev and Shuyin's suggestions to craft the specializations. I really can't get them to work. However, in the discussions both on the forums and with the envoys, there were ideas generated which I did like. Basically:

• Wound levels have no effect.
• You cannot cure wound levels by applying any salve or potion.
• Drinking health will cure wounds; however, more wounds cured, the less health healed.
• Stances will direct where the health potion focuses on curing wounds.
• There are 10 physical ailments cured by applying ice to the various body parts. There are no levels.
• There are effects that can be given based on warrior skills.
• New ailment of bruising is given by blunt weapons, which damages on hostile actions and movement.
• Bleeding and bruising cannot be cured by herbs.
  

I made a Warrior Spreadsheet based on the above. The first tab is a worksheet to establish what each specialization focuses on. We do not want every specialization to be able to do critical effects for every body part; therefore it is limited to 1-2. The first level (light wounding) is one of the 10 ailments (5 cutting or 5 blunt or combo if Cavalier). Heavy and critical do effects. This is very basic! It is to outline a mechanic, not to write in stone what ailments and effects actually do. The spreadsheet is read-only, but my hope is that the more motivated and ambitious of you would copy it and create your own spreadsheets to share with the rest of us.

Turnus

One thing that immediately sticks out to me is the disparity between one-handed weapons and two-handed weapons making their kill conditions. Both weapon specs require having an open wound on the kill body part, however the one-handed weapon specs can accomplish that in one combo. First swing causes the wound, while the second swing causes the kill.  Will there be something to balance that out for the two-handers?

Daganev

A few questions I'm not understanding.

1.  What cures bleeding? Clotting?

2.  What cures bruising? Does it cure itself, and its one time burst damage?

3. How are bonecrushers and axelords supposed to kill people?  They don't seem to have a critical level instant kill. 

4.  Is bruising intended to do enough damage that they might die from it?  I really hope its on par with bleeding in terms of how much damage it can eventually do.

5.  Will wounds build up the same way they do now, or another method?

Baelor

Turnus said:

One thing that immediately sticks out to me is the disparity between one-handed weapons and two-handed weapons making their kill conditions. Both weapon specs require having an open wound on the kill body part, however the one-handed weapon specs can accomplish that in one combo. First swing causes the wound, while the second swing causes the kill.  Will there be something to balance that out for the two-handers?

As noted, the ailments and effects are not written in stone. It's entirely possible we can have one handed specs require heavy wound afflictions to achieve critical kill conditions.

And heavy wound afflictions require light wound afflictions to be scored on the target. Think how we changed blademaster in the current iteration to require open wound on legs to achieve tendon, as to avoid instant greenlock.

Yacsee

Just a general question:

All skillsets (except perhaps Cavalier) are going to become quite short with all the removals as listed in the spreadsheet. Axelord for example is going to shrink from 28 skills to 20. Knighthood is shrinking some too. It just feels rather ... short for an entire specialisation skillset.

Are any sort of replacements planned for all those removed skills (utility or otherwise)?

Lerad

After thinking about it over a day or two, I'm liking this idea. It's very different from what Kelly and Shu's been working on, but it has its merits. First of all, the number of afflictions are greatly lowered, and assuming the activation requirements of the open wounds (I suggest we rename them as open "cuts" to prevent confusion from the underlying wounds levels mechanics) and trauma can be moved about, can be balanced fairly well.

The only problem I see, though, is that head trauma and head open cuts (I'm using this from now on in this post) can stack with each other to deny drinking for a double-ice-apply. One warrior won't be able to do this, because all specs only have access to one of either of the two, but in group combat, this can be potentially very unbalancing. At the same time, blocking drinking is also a fairly important milestone for the warrior, once he hit slit-throat in the past, he gained a lot of momentum with the burst bleed and the curing delay the affliction used to give. In the new system, I suggest we make it a separate affliction (name it "DamagedThroat" or something) from trauma and open cuts, and cured by ice as well. This has two effects:

1) As a separate affliction, you can re-route both trauma and open cuts to the head to activate that same affliction, ensuring two warriors hitting those two afflictions at the same time on one target won't create a double-stack of the same effect (blocking drinking, in this case)

2) As a separate affliction, it'll require an additional ice application to cure, separate from both the head trauma and head open cuts which activated it, which means that the warrior gains a spike to their progress as they hit that affliction.

In place of the persistent no-drink effect of having a head trauma or head open cut, you could have: Give amnesia every Xs instead.

Which brings me to the next point - I noticed that the torso/gut trauma/opencut afflictions have "Give sprawl every 3s" or "Give stun every 3s". I'd like to suggest we increase that to 5s (similar with my amnesia idea, if we use it), instead. The reason being that the timer being at 3s can be very potent, for reference the old open-gut affliction currently existing ticks on a 12s timer to sprawl the target. And I wince to imagine what fighting with a stun every 3s would feel like.

5s as a timer is far more manageable, and with the stacking effects of wounds eating up health healing as well as the big stuns from heavy wounds levels, a 5s timer should be reasonable enough for the warrior as well.

Bruising could be cured with mana as well, on the same mechanic as bleeding, so as to replicate its effect on forcing the opponent to decide whether he wants to drink health or drink mana - or he can leave it uncured and not attack so as to avoid the health damage, which leaves the warrior open to continue snowballing his advantage without hinders. I think it's a fairly decent mechanic that falls into place to support the new warriors-wounds-damage dynamic being proposed here.

Lerad

Also, on a different note, I think it's fine to have short skillsets. Long skillsets for the sake of length never did serve much of a purpose for me - as long as it's not something like 5 abilities over master-to-transcendant, it's probably perfectly fine. As long as the spec works the way it should work in the end.

Estarra

Estarra said:

This is very basic! It is to outline a mechanic, not to write in stone what ailments and effects actually do.

See bold/italics sentence above, the ailments and effects probably will not be what we go with but rather are placeholder/examples, which is why I was hoping others would copy the spreadsheets and come up with alternatives. The spreadsheet was more for outlining the mechanic.

These ailments will definitely need to include no drinking ailments (one for blunt/one for cut) as that was one of the original designs of the ailment overhaul (otherwise nothing would stop drinking). However, it need not be the head--I could see the gut working as well:

• Ruptured Stomach (blunt): Can't drink, perhaps also if attempt to drink vomit and immediately take bruising damage.
• Bleeding Stomach (cut): Can't drink, perhaps also if attempt to drink, vomit and immediately take bleeding damage.
  

Bruising would be cured in a similar manner as bleeding is now. However, the herb cure for bleeding would be removed.

One thing that may be helpful for those concerned about how to achieve kills is to recommend a different method/tactic for each specialization (bonecrusher, blademaster, pureblade, axelord, cavalier) and we could design around those strategies.

Daganev

Estarra said:

Estarra said:

This is very basic! It is to outline a mechanic, not to write in stone what ailments and effects actually do.

See bold/italics sentence above, the ailments and effects probably will not be what we go with but rather are placeholder/examples, which is why I was hoping others would copy the spreadsheets and come up with alternatives. The spreadsheet was more for outlining the mechanic.

These ailments will definitely need to include no drinking ailments (one for blunt/one for cut) as that was one of the original designs of the ailment overhaul (otherwise nothing would stop drinking). 

Estarra said:

Bruising would be cured in a similar manner as bleeding is now. However, the herb cure for bleeding would be removed.

One thing that may be helpful for those concerned about how to achieve kills is to recommend a different method/tactic for each specialization (bonecrusher, blademaster, pureblade, axelord, cavalier) and we could design around those strategies.

Can we have one ailment that stops drinking, and another ailment that isn't blunt/cutting part specific, and then have 4 blunt/ 4 cutting ailments?

Can bruising be the same as bleeding in all but name?

Also, axelords have shared afflictions with bonecrushers in the past, is that similarity being removed?

Enyalida

Estarra said:

• There are 10 physical ailments cured by applying ice to the various body parts. There are no levels.

Presumably, this means that non-physical classes dealing external physical afflictions won't experience any change in their experience (except for aff pruning), right?

Daganev

My mind is blanking looking at the table, so I'll try to chime in with some kill conditions:

All specialisations have something to boost damage and make damage kills possible. In addition, they have the following kill conditions:

Bonecrusher: Stunned to death:  Stunned, blacked out, broken legs, lost balance. (Or if stuns accumulate, then 10s worth of stun time)

Pureblade:  Beheaded:  Head at critical, Target prone

Blademaster: Cut of a thousand wounds:  Bleeding from every body part  doing at least 2k damage in total.

Axelord:  Dismembered:  both arms and both legs at critical

Cavalier:  Skewer:  Gut at Critical , Mounted, Target prone.

Shuyin

Just fyi, I've been working on skills for each spec based off the previous thread's version. I've already gone too far with it, so I want to get it out here and get some feedback before moving onto this new version.

Not particularly keen on passive stuns and not being able to specify cures though.

Daganev

Shuyin said:

Just fyi, I've been working on skills for each spec based off the previous thread's version. I've already gone too far with it, so I want to get it out here and get some feedback before moving onto this new version.

Not particularly keen on passive stuns and not being able to specify cures though.

Where did you post it?

Shuyin

It's on my own spreadsheet, I wanted to get it all done before putting it up because it's all supposed to be taken as a whole.

Siam

Will Bleeding still be changed from its current form?

Daganev

Siam said:

Will Bleeding still be changed from its current form?

The change will be that chervil no longer cures it.

Siam

What about the bleeding given by casters? Will that still be changed?

Daganev

It will be changed to not be cured by chervil.

Ushaara

I'm wary of the following points:

• Drinking health will cure wounds; however, more wounds cured, the less health healed.

How this is implemented will be important, and while 1v1 it would likely be fine, since current iteration of warriors do pathetic damage, it could lead to even quicker deaths in group combat than old warrior wound stacking with sips being less effective.

• Stances will direct where the health potion focuses on curing wounds.

Overhaul might be changing the general "stick a prone, go for head/crit bodypart" of warrior combat and make the following irrelevant, but this might make it a bit too easy for the warrior to dictate where they can hit, e.g. a warrior can hit any bodypart, target stances that part to cure up, and the warrior gets free hit wherever else they like. Getting around stances/parry can be tricky, but some complexity is good.

Maligorn

I'm mildly worried that stance/parrying will be really rather complex to figure out actually, because if different specs are going to have different kill conditions, suddenly parrying your chest is way more important than parrying your head.

You'll have to have 5 stance/parry configurations to compensate for all the specs if your head and legs aren't as important anymore. I don't know how hard or easy that'll be, or if I'm even accurate in saying this.

EDIT: And I haven't expressed this yet, so I will now -- I'm really wary of wounds decreasing the effectiveness of health sipping.

Ushaara

EDIT: Oh, god, formatting!

Okay, @Estarra @Baelor this may not be what you asked for, but since there are balance concerns with every proposal so far, here is another option to consider (with its own balance concerns) that tries to keep the feel of existing specializations.

Deepwounds changed to come in two forms:

1) Lacerations - can include a modifier to regular bleeding, but not required.
2) Bruising - can include damage on movement/action, but not required.

Both are cured with restorative ice. Both are the only 'afflictions' which require a cure.

Each has different levels of severity, like a Pyromancer's burn levels, or tempinsanity/timewarp.

Suggested levels: minor, moderate, major, massive.

Lacerations and Brusing on each bodypart is distinct e.g: can have minor arm lacerations and major head lacerations simultaneously, or moderate arm bruising and moderate arm lacerations simultaneously.

Applying restorative ice to a bodypart will reduce the severity of both lacerations and bruising simultaneously.

Restorative ice is fast, like liniment balance. Curing of lacerations/bruising like curing tempinsanity/timewarp tiers with pennyroyal/horehound. Slightly more given than cured, but can still be cured to none quickly.

Now rather than the current mechanism of each warrior affliction having its own cure, and deepwounds being their own thing, warrior afflictions are now 'activated' by the target having the pre-requisite lacerations/bruising and the warrior hitting the appropriate bodypart.

Two examples:

• A Bonecrusher's CrushWindpipe effect can be activated when the target has major head bruising, and persists until target's head bruising reduced to moderate/light. We still keep the diagnose lines, in effect just becomes a 'cured by time' affliction, that is the time it takes to reduce head bruising down a level.
  
• Pureblade's LegTendon effect can be activated when the target has major leg lacerations, and persists until leg lacerations reduced to moderate/light.
  

With racial stat standardisation, and no +bal races, hopefully a happy medium can be found where warriors can build lacerations/bruising and not be screwed by passive entangles or whatever, and yet not get to the point where their target needs to run and hide for a minute just to cure down wound levels.

I see it as being faster than deepwounds, and more like an Illuminati trying to build tempinsanity or a Pyromancer building burn levels. Given quickly, cured quickly.

We can still dump quite a few afflictions from each specialization, but I think this has the potential to reduce the complexity of curing, and also keep existing warrior paradigms like regen-cured prones. e.g. (1) might take 3s for restorative ice to cure major leg lacerations to light/none, during which they can't stand if the warrior has activated a LegTendon effect. (2) Slickness + SlitThroat is still a cleanse lock

Whether parry/stance/rebounding are then needed with this sort of setup is another thing that could go, depending on the rate of how quickly lacerations/bruising are given/cured.

Lerad

Estarra said:

These ailments will definitely need to include no drinking ailments (one for blunt/one for cut) as that was one of the original designs of the ailment overhaul (otherwise nothing would stop drinking). However, it need not be the head--I could see the gut working as well:

• Ruptured Stomach (blunt): Can't drink, perhaps also if attempt to drink vomit and immediately take bruising damage.
• Bleeding Stomach (cut): Can't drink, perhaps also if attempt to drink, vomit and immediately take bleeding damage.
  

Whether you go with Shuyin's, Ushaara's, or this new version, I'd just want to repeat my stance that having two afflictions (or ailments, as you call them) with the effect of blocking drinking and cured by the same cure is a bad idea - since it allows the two of them to stack for what is effectively double the ice-application time. Currently, anorexia, slit-throat and crushedwindpipe have the same cure-blocking effect, but they are cured by different balances, not to mention two those have multiple balances they can be cured by. In the new system, there will only be one cure available for physical ailments, and anorexia will block eating instead of drinking, so that leaves the cutting and blunt version to fill the space of the drink-blocking ailment - these two should not be allowed to stack on top of each other.

As you said, the specifics of the ailments themselves are subject to change, and are currently only placeholders for better ideas - as it is, I think the ones you came up with aren't too far off the mark already, which is why my post did not focus too much on the specifics, and just commented on how I felt the entire system as a whole will work - which I feel would work fairly well, if we DO go ahead with this one. However, the point about not having two drink-blocking afflictions that stack on top of each other and are cured by the same cure balance remains - it is something we want to avoid. We certainly need to give both blunt and cutting attacks a way to activate that effect, I agree, just don't make them stack.

Rivius

I quite like Ushaara's suggestion a lot. Things I like about it are:

o Wounds are separated into 'blunt wounds' and 'cutting wounds' so these two types of wounds don't cross-stack. In this way, a bonecrusher fighting in groups alongside a pureblade will need to work on his wounding on his own, which'll change group mechanics a little bit and maybe alleviate warrior stacking ever so slightly. It also gives a new dimension to cavalier, as you'll need to actively do more blunt-type hits to get blunt-type afflictions.

o By making wounds cured away quickly and limiting affs to only being cured below a certain threshold, you can potentially vary the length it takes for an aff to be cured. For example, maybe the difference between curing between medium wounds and light wounds is fewer ice balances than between heavy wounds and critical wounds.

The only thing that worries me is how quick it might be for groups. Right now we have the obstruction effect, so maybe we might have to vamp it up if it seems too crazy (eg. maybe you don't do any wounds at all when obstructed, just bleeding/bruising + poisons).

I think Ushaara's suggestion is actually quite good and maybe a little later today I'll come up with some rough modifications.

Lerad said:

Estarra said:

As you said, the specifics of the ailments themselves are subject to change, and are currently only placeholders for better ideas - as it is, I think the ones you came up with aren't too far off the mark already, which is why my post did not focus too much on the specifics, and just commented on how I felt the entire system as a whole will work - which I feel would work fairly well, if we DO go ahead with this one. However, the point about not having two drink-blocking afflictions that stack on top of each other and are cured by the same cure balance remains - it is something we want to avoid. We certainly need to give both blunt and cutting attacks a way to activate that effect, I agree, just don't make them stack.

With Ushaara's mechanics, both the blunt head and cutting head aff might be at crit head blunt/cutting wounds. If I understand right, when you apply ice, both blunt and cutting are cured simultaneously, and if it falls below a threshold, the affs at that level are cured as well. In other words, if you had crushed windpipe and slit throat on the head and applied ice and made both levels fall below heavy, both affs would be cured. So technically they automatically don't stack if it works this way.

The biggest problem I'm having at this point is, I really think we'll need more than 10 total affs, and find it difficult to create a good system without that. But I'll mull it over some more.

Ushaara

Your understanding is correct, CrushedWindpipe and SlitThroat effects wouldn't stack, as both effects would be cured at the same time.

Group stack potential for unending affliction states would require an obstruction effect alright to reduce lacerations/bruising on same bodypart given by different warrior. Though tendon chains are already a thing, so there'll always be some problems exacerbated by a group.

As to your last point, my viewpoint is that there is only one effective affliction, the laceration/bruising, and only one cure. Since only the level of the laceration/bruising matters, a 5 cutting/blunt aff effect restriction is to me a bit arbitrary.

Because of that, I think the temporary activated affliction effects can remain in practice much as they are now (though their curing is entirely changed) and so we keep the uniqueness of each spec, while accomplishing the goal of simplifying curing.

Rivius

Hrm. So if I follow you right...

Each spec will have one cutting/blunt affliction per body part and all that'll differ is the wound level that each specialization gives it at?

Eg (just an example). Pureblade will give tendon at crit, and BM would give tendon at heavy. Tendon would be cured from a PB when you heal below crit and BM's tendon would be cured when you heal below heavy? 

Ushaara

No, not necessarily just one effect per body part.

E.g.
1) Pureblade may activate a LegArtery effect at minor lacerations that gives minor/moderate bleeding until lacerations cured to none.
2) Pureblade may activate a LegTendon effect at major lacerations that sprawls and prevents standing until lacerations cured to moderate.
3) Pureblade may activate a AmputateLeg effect at massive lacerations that gives heavy bleeding until lacerations cured to major.

Rivius

I see what you mean. So you're not thinking of afflictions as in the framework we're working with now, but rather effects directly tied to wound levels?

Ushaara

Yep. I mean they're functionally equivalent, but in this mechanism rather than having to cure an affliction with herb/salve and deepwounds with healing, you just cure your lacerations/bruising and the affliction effect disappears.

Edit: Basically the aim was to try to keep warrior mechanics as close as possible to what they are now, but with a simpler curing mechanism.

Rivius

That does make curing much simpler, and allows us to have a much less restrictive range of affs and keep a very different feel for each spec. It would ultimately mean that we only have 10  afflictions for ice salve, but each affliction increases in severity, with varying effects tied to wounds. It's a great middle ground. I love it.

Enyalida

How does that work with non-wounders dealing physical external afflictions?

Kalnid

How would delayed cures work, add the few seconds on top of whenever wounds drop low enough?