Simulating melee combat damage

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AuthorTopic: Simulating melee combat damage
Off With Their Heads
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I'm trying to figure out how to make a PC attack himself, or at least how to simulate it. I talked with TM, and he had some good ideas, and then I went to put it into practice, and I realized I'd forgot something.

Assassination, Anatomy, and Lethal Blow: I have no idea how these skills affect damage. I was wandering through Walker White's Advanced NPC, because he did some work with this, and he says that accuracy is determined by:

Dex + Melee/Pole + Blademaster

Percent chance to hit is 30 + 5 * (Accuracy - Total Defense), where Total Defense is presumably Defense + Gymnastics.

I think I've established that pretty well, unless someone else knows otherwise. But damage has me stumped.

I know that Strength, Melee/Pole, Blademaster, Anatomy, Assassination, and Lethal Blow play into it, but I don't know exact specifics. Does anyone know specifics or a way to estimate damage done?

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Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00
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Assassination seems to randomly cause double damage (5% per level of Assassination, plus/minus 5% per XP level difference between attacker and defender? That's a pure guess but seems consistent with the way Jeff does things). Lethal Blow seems to randomly cause triple damage. It may or may not be possible for the two to act cumulatively on one attack.

I believe Strength, Blademaster, and Melee/Pole Weapons (or whatever stat the weapon is linked to; remember, in theory, it can be any stat) all add one die of damage per level of the respective stat (I'm sure about Strength and Melee/Pole; I'm making an educated guess that Blademaster works the same way). Anatomy may or may not work the same way; I suspect it doesn't, though. On the other hand, if you make it so that it does, I doubt it'll create horribly unrealistic damage values.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
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Anatomy (or so I suspect) adds a die of damage against humanoids. Based on the situation, this may-or-may-not be a wise thing to include.

Assassination working as Thuryl described it seems accurate; I would imagine that Lethal Blow works in a similar fashion.

Like I said earlier- the best way is to measure which stat (melee/pole) is greater, and assume that it's the weapon type being used. If it isn't, so be it. (And heck, there's still the possibility that somebody is wielding something bizarre like the Illusory Spear from Canopy- but that's a whimpy weapon anyway.) Bruisers should have higher-damage weapons, something arond 1-10/level, whereas magi should have weaker ones, somewhere around 1-5/level. Though it's a judgement call, and there is obviously no fail-safe solution, unless you want to check to see if any of the items that the party is armed with come directly from your scenario.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Agent
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Don't forget that dexterity has an effect on defense. Blademaster doesn't seem to affect damage very much.

It will be very hard to simulate exactly how damage a PC could do to itself, but I don't think anyone would care. Just make the effect of the self-attack proportional to how hard you want the process to be for the player.

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Posts: 1415 | Registered: Thursday, March 27 2003 08:00
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quote:
Originally written by Garrison:

It will be very hard to simulate exactly how damage a PC could do to itself, but I don't think anyone would care.
I agree -- in fact, I would go further than that. How would one go about attacking oneself in a normal manner? It seems like it would be different, and therefore do a different amount of damage ... unless there is some kind of recursive portal involved that allows one to attack forward and the weapon is reflected or teleported back to that character, or some equally weird situation.

EDIT:
quote:
Originally written by General Leon:

Bruisers should have higher-damage weapons, something arond 1-10/level, whereas magi should have weaker ones, somewhere around 1-5/level.
Normal weapons never do more than 1-8/level (which are e.g. Blessed Greatswords).
Sometimes I equip my mages with greatswords because I have extra ones and why not.
I don't think that is a good sort of assumption to make if you care much about correctness.

[ Tuesday, January 11, 2005 10:53: Message edited by: Isaac ]

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Creator of the 3D Blades of Avernum Editor for Mac. Get it at Ingenious Isaac's Illusion, my web page. Better yet, get Battle for Wesnoth, a wonderful free TBS game.
Posts: 192 | Registered: Sunday, April 4 2004 08:00