Hardiness and Armor
| Author | Topic: Hardiness and Armor |
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Apprentice
Member # 4383
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written Monday, March 27 2006 09:30
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I've been running some tests to see if its worth it to increase hardiness, luck and use some of the damage decreasing traits. All tests done with the human race and on normal mode, using the goblin in the beginning cellar as the damage doer. Tests done over many times ( over 50 each ). The goblin has a chance of 50% to hit. ------------------------------------------------ Normal ( no traits, no armor, no hardiness, no spells ): goblin does 5 - 11 damage per hit Good Constitution at level 1: goblin does 4 - 11 damage per hit Good Constitution at level 30: goblin does 4 - 11 damage per hit Thick Skin at level 1: goblin does 4 - 11 damage per hit Thick Skin at level 30: goblin does 4 - 11 damage per hit Thick Skin AND Hardiness at level 30: goblin does 3 - 11 damage per hit Wearing Leather armor ( 10 defense ): goblin does 4 - 11 damage per hit 20 Hardiness: goblin does 1 - 9 damage per hit Protection spell ( skill 20 ): goblin does 4 - 8 damage per hit ( did not decrease chance to hit at all, the description is WRONG! ) ------------------------------------------------ So in conclusion both thick skin and good constitution seem to have the effect of wearing around 10-15% armor for each and do NOT increase with level. Combined it seems they add 22-30% armor or 2 seperate 10-15% armor checks. Much more testing with higher numbers is needed to determine exactly. Also armor does NOT decrease damage by a % per piece, instead it appears to have a chance to decrease damage %. What this chance is exactly only Jeff knows. Hardiness seems much more impressive then armor, apparently sometimes decreasing damage by 4/5 at level 20! The Protection spell did not decrease the goblins chance to hit at all as it stated, it was still 50%. [ Monday, March 27, 2006 09:36: Message edited by: EvilEye ] Posts: 22 | Registered: Thursday, May 13 2004 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Monday, March 27 2006 10:57
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Impressive work. I never really liked Hardiness as an ability, though... needing 20 to make a significant difference seems overly steep. What about different levels of Hardiness, say 5/10/15? -------------------- Thuryl: "Runescape: for people who are too stupid to save their games." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, March 27 2006 11:22
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20 Hardiness is expensive. Great armor is free after time spent searching and mutilating. —Alorael, who in a thoroughly qualitative test didn't notice any appreciable difference between having and not having defensive traits when wearing moderately good armor. The defensive bonuses get swallowed. Conclusion: those are two really unhelpful traits. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 4383
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written Monday, March 27 2006 11:50
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quote:Haven't bothered testing that yet. Since hardiness starts at 1 cost it only takes roughly 110 skill points to get to 20. Thats a lot but I am thinking you could neglect all other defensive skills except maybe luck so you might actually come out ahead in points. Kinda why I was testing it in the first place. Posts: 22 | Registered: Thursday, May 13 2004 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 6785
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written Tuesday, March 28 2006 20:42
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Hardiness increases armor at 1 point equals 1% reduction. So Hardiness 20 means 20% less damage which is what you got. It works better versus fire, energy, cold where it does 2% per point of hardiness. It's hard but you can raise enough skills: dexterity, endurance, and hardiness to 8 to get resistance which does 4%. Helps your fighters but not spellcasters. Posts: 4643 | Registered: Friday, February 10 2006 08:00 |
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His Mighty Tentacle
Member # 627
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written Wednesday, March 29 2006 05:45
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Good constitution and toughness, I complained that those were useless in the beta. I was right. -------------------- If I could make just one wish, I would want a tasty vlish. Geneforge IV. Still no tasty vlish. Posts: 1104 | Registered: Tuesday, February 12 2002 08:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Wednesday, March 29 2006 06:10
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Armor (from Hardiness or equipped armor) DOES decrease by a % of the damage. It's just that this % is often small, and pretty much all forms of damage in A4 have a very wide variance for how much damage they can cause before armor reduction is applied. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 4383
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written Wednesday, March 29 2006 08:54
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quote:No, its not what I got, read it again. 20 points in hardiness sometimes decreased 5 damage to 1 damage. quote:I never said it didn't. BUT. Its clearly random as to what % it decreases it by. I am guessing its from 0% - 10% for leather armor, instead of a straight 10%. So sometimes it will not decrease the damage by any, which is rather lame. I am guessing hardiness works in the same way except I suspect the % for hardiness is around 4 a level instead of 1 a level based on my results. [ Wednesday, March 29, 2006 08:59: Message edited by: EvilEye ] Posts: 22 | Registered: Thursday, May 13 2004 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Thursday, March 30 2006 11:18
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quote:You're making a false assumption here. You cannot directly see the amount of decrease in damage hardiness causes. Why? Damage is rolled randomly EACH TIME an attack hits. So, unless you have more information than you are giving (for example, if the attack had a damage range of 5-10 against 0 hardiness and 1-2 against 20 hardiness, over many trials of each), you can't draw that conclusion. I've never seen anything to discount the conclusion the damage is random, but armor % reduction is consistent. If you have new data I'd love to see it, though. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 4383
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written Thursday, March 30 2006 14:40
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quote:I already stated in my first post that the damage range for the first goblin is 5 - 11 on normal difficulty. I tested this hundreds of times ( no armor, no traits ). Never got anything below 5, or above 11. So what is unclear about that? Posts: 22 | Registered: Thursday, May 13 2004 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Thursday, March 30 2006 15:45
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You're right. Err, not sure how I missed that part. Sorry! So, you're right, this is pretty weird. Now I am thinking these results may be affected by some kind of minimum value requirement imposed at some point in the calculation, or by a weird way of dealing with remainders. The data would probably be easier to interpret if it dealt with a much stronger attack (say, ranging up to 50 damage). Obviously, such data is also more of a hassle to collect. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 4383
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written Thursday, March 30 2006 16:05
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Well, here is what I think is happening ( could be wrong of course ): For every piece of armor damage is reduced by 0 - % listed on armor. So if you had a 10% leather armor it would roll a number from 0 - 10. The number rolled would be the percent the damage is reduced by. So if it rolled a 5 then the damage would be reduced by 5%. So 10 becomes 9.5, which should become 9 due to integers truncating the decimal value. The reason I think it does this is because the previous avernum games reduced damage by a random number for every piece of armor. If you had a piece of armor that listed 1-16 then it would reduce damage by 1-16 every time you were hit by a physical attack. For hardiness I am thinking it just adds 4% armor per level to its own specific armor check, which is why 20 hardiness could reduce 5 damage to 1 damage. Of course, the exact number is hard to tell without bigger numbers. Posts: 22 | Registered: Thursday, May 13 2004 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6403
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written Thursday, March 30 2006 23:29
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No, Jeff specifically said how the armor percentages work, 10% means 10% off the total, 10 gets turned into a 9. -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Friday, March 31 2006 05:20
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Yes, Jeff was pretty clear about that. Also, if armor effect really was random as you suggest, then that means we would expect to see HUGE damage variances when a character wearing lots of armor is hit, much huger than the variances when an unarmored character is hit. And that's not the case at all. Also, about Hardiness: Hardiness does not give 1% armor per point. It gives 2% armor per point, BUT this bonus is not displayed, AND it is subject to the 10-cap many skills have, so 10-11 hardiness gives 20% armor, 12-13 gives 22%, 20-22 gives 30%, 23-25 gives 32%, and so on. That means that your test at 20 Hardiness is really providing 30% damage reduction. So reducing the range max from 11 to 8 makes perfect sense. Reducing the range min from 5 to 1 makes less sense, but because the numbers are so tiny, I really think it's a min value or rounding issue. To clarify this issue, tests with bigger damage values are needed. Also note that Luck displays a 1% armor bonus per point, but Luck does not actually provide any armor at all. Protection reduces all damage by 25%. Steel Skin does as well. They are cumulative. Prismatic Shield reduces elemental damage by 0-50% determined randomly for each attack. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 4383
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written Friday, March 31 2006 13:26
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Why don't you guys just test it yourselves instead of telling me I didn't get the results I got. If armor really did reduce damage by the listed percent EVERY TIME then I would never have got hit for 11 damage when I was wearing leather armor. NEVER. Its simple math. I don't see why you persist on your beliefs that "Jeff said this so it must be the way it is". Based on my results, which I trust, he was either wrong or you misunderstood what he said. Posts: 22 | Registered: Thursday, May 13 2004 07:00 |
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Councilor
Member # 6600
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written Friday, March 31 2006 14:05
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Dikiyoba is reasonably sure that Slartucker and other people have tested damage, defense, hardiness, and every other thing in the game. Differing results and conclusions are to be expected. Studies that don't match up with other studies are everywhere. Posts: 4346 | Registered: Friday, December 23 2005 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 2820
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written Friday, March 31 2006 14:16
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The numbers are too small in my opinion. In some obscure way perhaps each die used in damage calculations is affected individually by percentages. I don't know, but I think it would useful to do these tests again with much higher damage numbers and something like an iron breastplate. -------------------- Thuryl: I mean, most of us don't go around consuming our own bodily fluids, no matter how delicious they are. ==== Alorael: War and violence would end if we all had each other's babies! ==== Drakefyre: Those are hideous mangos. Posts: 1415 | Registered: Thursday, March 27 2003 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Friday, March 31 2006 14:16
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Spiderweb games are notorious for behaving differently on different machines that appear to have identical specs. Talk to anyone who was a part of the BoE Arena for an earful about this. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 4666
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written Thursday, August 17 2006 02:54
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I've done some testing by myself, here are the results: All tests done with the human race and on normal mode, using the goblin in the beginning cellar as the damage doer. Tests done over many times. The goblin has a chance of 50% to hit. Character has no traits/skills. No armor (0): goblin does 5 - 11 per hit Begginer's armor (19): goblin does 3 - 10 per hit Just my two cents... Note: Begginer armor means all you can find in the first room that provides some armor, it consists of: Leather Armor (10 armor bonus), Wooden Shield (6 armor), Sandals (2 armor) & Poor Leather Helmet (1 armor). Total armor bonus = 19. Posts: 1 | Registered: Sunday, July 4 2004 07:00 |