Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

User avatar

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1194

Joined: Friday, 18th April 2014, 01:41

Post Sunday, 26th June 2016, 00:56

Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

See title. This is akin to something used in e.g Sil. So, instead of 41 AC, you might have Prot: 7-41, so that any attacks that do below 7 damage will always do 0. The floor should be some function of your body armor's base AC and type, and maybe armor skill, and ought to apply to all attack types, including ranged and magic I think this accomplishes an effect similar to GDR while being more transparent, while leaving the status quo for melee combat more-or-less the same, provided the right numbers are used for the AC floor.
remove food

For this message the author tabstorm has received thanks: 8
all before, arandomperson12, dynast, Floodkiller, ololoev, Sandman25, Shard1697, yesno

Slime Squisher

Posts: 395

Joined: Monday, 28th April 2014, 19:50

Post Sunday, 26th June 2016, 06:18

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

Please don't make the floor based on armor type. Having secret GDR numbers for each armor is already bad we should be getting rid of it.

It should only be based on total AC (and maybe armour skill). But having it based only on AC sounds nicer to me. 20 AC should always be 20 AC, and not 2-20 sometimes and 5-20 other times.

For this message the author genericpseudonym has received thanks: 6
duvessa, Lasty, nago, PleasingFungus, ydeve, yesno
User avatar

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 911

Joined: Thursday, 17th December 2015, 02:36

Post Sunday, 26th June 2016, 07:14

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

this is good; it would be good even if you made no changes to mechanics at all, and the floor was always 0. For such a long time I really did not know what AC did. I mused that perhaps AC was the percent amount by which incoming damage was reduced, so that with 10 AC you'd be taking 90% of damage (which actually is how AC works, for some types of damage).

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Sunday, 26th June 2016, 07:26

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

While I do not want to defend GDR, than *if* I understand GDR right than your proposal is absolutely unlike GDR, it's more than then the *name* GDR suggest to unspoiled players.

For this message the author sanka has received thanks: 2
Arrhythmia, PleasingFungus

Shoals Surfer

Posts: 325

Joined: Tuesday, 13th October 2015, 06:02

Post Sunday, 26th June 2016, 08:48

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

It's just a die role. Need more die roles, please. RNG is easy to damage to force consistency.
User avatar

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1194

Joined: Friday, 18th April 2014, 01:41

Post Sunday, 26th June 2016, 15:34

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

It's a minimum AC roll. This is effectively what GDR does, as far as I can tell, except in a more complicated way that depends on what enemy you're fighting, what attack type it uses, and on a hidden number. This idea is based on a not-hidden number, for instance, just taking the protection floor to be half your body armor's base AC, or taking it to be half your body armor's base AC plus 1 point for each auxiliary slot, without dependence on the armor skill.
remove food

For this message the author tabstorm has received thanks: 7
all before, dowan, duvessa, Floodkiller, gammafunk, Shard1697, ydeve

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Monday, 27th June 2016, 07:11

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

Maybe I misunderstood something, I have tried to refer to the fact that GDR is significant for single, big damage while your proposal sounds to be weak there, but very strong against multiple weaker attacks.

I do like the fact that your proposal is easy to understand, not hidden from the player and does not restricted to melee. I actually would not mind if GDR is removed without compensation.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Monday, 27th June 2016, 07:32

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

sanka wrote:Maybe I misunderstood something, I have tried to refer to the fact that GDR is significant for single, big damage while your proposal sounds to be weak there, but very strong against multiple weaker attacks.
The title isn't just "Replace GDR", it's "Replace AC/GDR". Being "more effective against multiple weaker attacks" is a characteristic of current AC.
Furthermore, if you think of AC as more effective against multiple weaker attacks than single strong ones, then you must necessarily think of current GDR as equally effective against all attacks up to a certain point (the point where you don't have enough AC to fully use your GDR percentage against the attack), otherwise you are being inconsistent. In the most charitable case for "AC is better against weaker attacks and GDR is better against stronger attacks", AC reduces all affected damage by the same absolute value on average, and GDR reduces all affected damage by the same relative value. This allows "AC is better against weaker attacks and GDR is the same against all attacks" if you measure by relative reduction, and it allows "AC is the same against all attacks and GDR is better against stronger attacks" if you measure by absolute reduction, but it doesn't allow both, barring some kind of mathematically nonsensical combination of absolute damage and relative damage.
In the less charitable, and more realistic case, AC and GDR are actually closer together; because you cannot take negative damage, AC's absolute and relative reduction is lower than "expected" for weaker attacks (any attack that does less damage than you have AC), and GDR's absolute and relative reduction is lower than "expected" for stronger attacks (any attack that does more than AC/2 damage).

And let's be clear. GDR is literally a minimum AC roll. The actual value of that minimum changes based on some fairly wacky things (it's been giving the wrong results for monsters with weapons since day 1), but a minimum AC roll is exactly what GDR is. If your AC roll is below X, it gets set to X.

I'm aware there is a popular misinterpretation of GDR where people think that this minimum value, instead of just being a minimum, is added to your AC roll. That probably should be the case in this new system, since having a distribution where a single number is far more likely than the rest is silly. But tabstorm avoided actually specifying that.

For this message the author duvessa has received thanks:
sanka

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Monday, 27th June 2016, 08:40

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

Ok, giving it some thoughts you have actually convinced me. And thank you very much for the detailed explanation of your stance.

My thought was along these lines: compare which way GDR modifes "AC without GDR" and which way the proposal modifies it. I had the feeling that GDR modifies the reduction more for few bigger attacks (up to a point, you are right), and that the proposal has bigger effects (that is, compared to plain AC without GDR, not in itself) against multiple smaller attacks. So I had the feeling that however I dislike GDR, it has some justification as making AC stronger where it is weaker, while the proposal seems to make it even stronger where it is already strong. Maybe its faulty thinking, my head is not at full capacity before a coffee.

I still like to add again that I like the propsal better than GDR because of the simplicity and clarity, which seems far more important to me.
User avatar

Halls Hopper

Posts: 89

Joined: Monday, 11th April 2016, 21:48

Post Monday, 27th June 2016, 10:51

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

sanka wrote:GDR is significant for single, big damage

That's one of the MANY confusing things about GDR. 40% off sounds nice but it won't actually give you 40% off if the hit is too big. Mad math intervenes and caps the reduction with math magic.
remove handsome distillation

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Monday, 27th June 2016, 10:56

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

Maybe it will be more clear if I try to fabricate some exaple, altough I may misremember the formulas.

Lets start with a character with 30 AC, no GDR. Let it be attacked by a bat, whose maximum damage is 1 (if I remember well), and an other monster whose maximum damage is 30.

Now the bat has a (very small) chance to do 1 damage (if I remember right AC roll can be 0, if not , then use damage 2 instead as the example).
The other monsters maximum damage is still 30 (while average is much lower).

If 30% GDR is added, then, (again if I remember the formulas right) it will not affect the bat at all, you still can receive 1 damage.
But the maximum damage the other monster can deal is 20 (right?). (Average damage is not so much lower tough, I think the difference in average damage is really small.)

If we have a range, lets say 3-30 according to the proposal, this shuts down the bat completly, but only decrease the maximum damage of the monster from 30 to 27.

I think that maybe it does not make a lot of sense to check the maximum damage here, altough I usualy try to estimate it since that's what I want to know in order to avoid dying. As far as I can judge GDR rarely has any noticable effect on average damage, but it may decrease maximum damage by an observable value. On the other hand the proposal has a significant effect on the average damage, but will not decrease maximums as much.
User avatar

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 911

Joined: Thursday, 17th December 2015, 02:36

Post Sunday, 3rd July 2016, 08:09

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

tabstorm wrote:This idea is based on a not-hidden number, for instance, just taking the protection floor to be half your body armor's base AC ... without dependence on the armor skill.

This sounds really nice. To handle rounding, it may be best to simply not, and change body armors to always have an even number for base AC. We're close to that point anyway.
I'd be concerned that it may be too powerful. What if you find and wear an early plate, getting guaranteed shavings of 5 HP to taken damage?
I think hounds (dangerous early monsters) do up to 6 damage, so they would only eat 1 HP per bite at most, and rather rarely!

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 885

Joined: Sunday, 28th June 2015, 14:44

Post Sunday, 3rd July 2016, 17:30

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

Rounding is really easy. 9/2=4, 2/3=0, etc. AC is probably an int anyways.
User avatar

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 911

Joined: Thursday, 17th December 2015, 02:36

Post Tuesday, 5th July 2016, 05:50

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

Rounding is easy but awful and ugly. Think about it - all armors with odd Base AC will provide less protection than if they had even Base AC, just because Base AC is not granular enough. Better to preemptively clear all that mud that will inevitably occupy many a player's mind.

P.S. as for my concern about early overpoweredness, I think this may work OK: in order to get GDR while wearing an armor with X Base AC, the char must have X armor skill. Good?

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Tuesday, 5th July 2016, 07:04

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:Rounding is easy but awful and ugly. Think about it - all armors with odd Base AC will provide less protection than if they had even Base AC, just because Base AC is not granular enough. Better to preemptively clear all that mud that will inevitably occupy many a player's mind.

P.S. as for my concern about early overpoweredness, I think this may work OK: in order to get GDR while wearing an armor with X Base AC, the char must have X armor skill. Good?

Historically, there has been a dislike of hard break points.
Spoiler: show
This high quality signature has been hidden for your protection. To unlock it's secret, send 3 easy payments of $9.99 to me, by way of your nearest theta band or ley line. Complete your transmission by midnight tonight for a special free gift!
User avatar

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 911

Joined: Thursday, 17th December 2015, 02:36

Post Tuesday, 5th July 2016, 13:02

Re: Replace AC/GDR with protection ranges

ah ok then min(Base AC / 2, armor skill / 2)
it still seems like a considerable buff to robes, scale mail, does it not?

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 21 guests

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.