Riposte

[genericpseudonym]

what would the point of that be? what playstyle does 'triggering riposte on shield blocks' encourage?

Why is different from €
'equip "light armor" prefer ev and dodging?' playstile?

light vs heavy armour is a choice that depends on your stats (str/int/dex), how much spellcasting you want to do, how much you're interested in stabbing. there's a particular synergy there with the lbl/sbl crosstraining; both encourage light armour.

adding shield blocks into the mix dilutes and confuses that. it becomes not a question of 'm&f for heavy armour chars, lbl for light armour' but 'lbl for light armour or anyone using a shield or w/e, m&f for people using 2-handers, probably'. why would demon whips, eveningstars, triple swords exist under a 'riposte on block' system?

Keep in mind that SH gets checked before EV, meaning that blocking an attack prevents you from evading it.

The less you evade the less you riposte. So training shield skill actually lowers your damage output. That's silly.

we've talked about that, but is that an actual problem beyond the theoretical sense?

i mean, the exact same thing is true for training shield skill as a minotaur. does anyone recommend against using sh on minotaurs because it'll lower your retaliation damage?

It's not gonna be a significant issue for characters running around with a buckler, but formicids/nagas/centaurs (or anyone else using large shields) will have a big reason not to use longblades any more.

How viable is it to roll a shield and dodge check for each attack, and if you pass both you can get on-dodge effects like riposting as well as on-block effects like reflection?

[Shard1697]

I have just tried a HEBe with long blades (found two +4 EV rings before Lair) and I don't see any difference. I would use leather armour no matter if riposte exists or not because that was better for my defenses. Maybe riposte would change armour for Minotaur or Human but it changes nothing for HE/DE/Ha/Te IMHO and those are species which are most interested in LBl.

Why do you think it changes nothing for Te? They have +1 in all weapon apts and can get fast movespeed, if riposte did not exist I would use either polearms or M&F on Te. That's what I used on them before riposte, anyways, because polearms are good with their flight speed boost and I prefer M&F prior to riposte.

[Sandman25]

Why do you think it changes nothing for Te? They have +1 in all weapon apts and can get fast movespeed, if riposte did not exist I would use either polearms or M&F on Te. That's what I used on them before riposte, anyways, because polearms are good with their flight speed boost and I prefer M&F prior to riposte.

Tengu already favor light armour because of low AC and percentage-based EV bonus for flying.

Tried Minotaur, it looks like riposte can combine with retaliation, nice.

  Code:

A giant frog comes into view.
The giant frog closely misses you. You furiously retaliate!
You headbutt the giant frog! You riposte. You slash the giant frog!
You kill the giant frog!

[crate]

So the thing about riposte is it doesn't change anything about how you play. You don't train dodging to get more damage because the returns on that are awful. You don't do anything different tactically in combat because getting attacked is still bad. So all riposte does is change how much damage longblades do. This does vary a bit from character to character, but, uh, that's also the thing that aptitudes do. Cleaving and reaching change how you fight; riposte doesn't.

If the intention is flavour and buffing long blades, then sure, nothing really wrong with riposte. It doesn't interfere with gameplay (I'll ignore the shield concerns; you could argue that that is interfering with gameplay) so it's not something you have to remove for the sake of gameplay. If the goal is to make long blades feel different from other weapons, it doesn't really do that. In choosing between maces and long blades you still choose the one that has the best balance of damage per investment; it just happens that that's long blades instead of maces now.

edit: also monster accuracy doesn't really vary enough for riposte depending on dodge rate to be a big deal.

For a character with 11 EV, assuming 1 monster attack per player attack, the difference in damage against a monster with the accuracy of a rat (as low as possible) and the accuracy of an orb guardian (nearly as high as actually happens) is less than 15%. Monster attacks actually happen less often than player attacks, which shrinks the difference even more.

(The rat has 48% accuracy, the orb guardian has 78%. This difference does get bigger if you decrease player EV ... but 11 EV is what you have on turn 0. You can also make this matter more by increasing riposte frequency or damage, but that's putting you in "riposte is the majority of your damage" territory, which I think is not a great solution).

[Lasty]

Riposte does change two things about how you play: first, you get effectively mini-cleaving that scales with EV; second, you can deal damage while taking actions other than attacking. This applies most in situations where you're fleeing from fast monsters, repositioning within combat, using emergency options, etc. These two effects can and should change some of the choices you make tactically.

I agree that riposte doesn't significantly affect my skilling choices, but it does very slightly increase how much I want to train Dodging. Polearms and Axes don't in any way affect my skilling choices, aside from the choice to train that weapon skill.

[Sandman25]

I got impression that riposte never activates vampiric ego, is it correct?

[dynast]

Riposte changes the way i swap shit on my hand when playing casters.

[LunarHarp]

It seems odd thematically that you riposte with a great sword but not with a rapier.

[dynast]

It seems odd thematically that you riposte, considering you a a dude slashing your way through hordes of enemies and not into a swordplay festival.

[Dracunos]

It seems odd thematically that you riposte, considering you a a dude slashing your way through hordes of enemies and not into a swordplay festival.

It's far less strange to me than a Hill Orc swinging his axe in complete circles around him, and somehow managing to deal reasonable damage, yet not getting the weapon stuck on any one of those 8 enemies he is slashing at. I imagine axe users as twirling around in complete circles, tagging enemies one at a time like that little stopper thing on the 'wheel' of fortune.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Somehow I have the feeling that creating a sense of realism isn't one of the primary design goals behind riposte. Or behind any other change for that matter.

[dynast]

It's far less strange to me than a Hill Orc swinging his axe in complete circles around him, and somehow managing to deal reasonable damage, yet not getting the weapon stuck on any one of those 8 enemies he is slashing at. I imagine axe users as twirling around in complete circles, tagging enemies one at a time like that little stopper thing on the 'wheel' of fortune.

Clearly you never played MU online.

[crate]

Riposte does change two things about how you play: first, you get effectively mini-cleaving that scales with EV; second, you can deal damage while taking actions other than attacking. This applies most in situations where you're fleeing from fast monsters, repositioning within combat, using emergency options, etc. These two effects can and should change some of the choices you make tactically.

I agree that riposte doesn't significantly affect my skilling choices, but it does very slightly increase how much I want to train Dodging. Polearms and Axes don't in any way affect my skilling choices, aside from the choice to train that weapon skill.

I don't buy it. The cleave effect is super weak and even if it wasn't I don't think the goal was to give long blades cleave. The effect of dodging on damage is ridiculously tiny. Riposte feels like longblades just print more messages now. It occasionally kills enemies that weren't going to do anything anyway, but they weren't going to do anything anyway.

edit: one thing it does do is make it hard for players to know whether long blades do more damage than a different weapon. This is pretty bad, because players already complain about this because crawl's weapon damage is dumb.