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Thread: Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

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  1. #1

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    This idea is born in answer to "100% Chameleon" trick in Morrowind, but has a much wider field of uses.

    Imagine, your Player Character can accumulate power-ups (with, for example, Fire Resistance) and wear many of them at the same time. How do you both give these power-ups substantial boost (20, 50, 70%) and at the same time prevent player from combining them and becoming 100% immune to fire?

    Of course, you can make it so the stronger one just superseedes the weaker one, totally annulling it, or you can make it as in AD&D series of games, where one cannot wear two items with the same effect...

    But there's a better way!
    Namely, 50% + 50% = 75%.

    In short, internally you keep not the resist/weaknes percent, but a strength factor. I.e. 20% corresponds to 0.8, 75% to 0.25, etc. Now, when you need to perform an *addition* of all these effects, you instead perform the *multiplication* of all the strength factors. Then you multiply the value you got by the fire damage PC receives, but in the interface output you display the total effect in a percent form as 100 * (1 - factor).

    This way *all* the power-ups will help to increase the resistance, but the more powerful ones will me much more useful. You'll need no less than *five* 25% power-ups to get 75% in total. And so on.

  2. #2

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    An interesting idea, which I hopefully still remember by the time I have to deal with such issues. :thumbup:

  3. #3

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    I saw one MUD with a good solution. There were plenty of ways to get resistances, including gear with innate resistances, gear with temporary enchantments, and buffs. But the buffs wore off quickly, the temporary enchantments took a long time to cast (per piece of gear!) and wore off at boot (at the end of the day), and most importantly, resists were capped at 70%. It's that simple. Combine a cap in resistances with multiple damage types coming at you at once (an avenging angel might have a fire/holy/physical sword, plus lightning or wind spells, to name just one example,) and the problem of too-high-resistance-too-easy is solved.

    That may not be the only way, or even the ideal way, but it's one way that worked well.

    Mason

  4. #4

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    Simply, let them get 100%. Just also have mobs and items that can lower that value.

    As an example, if you have a "Fire Shield Spell" that gives the player 100% fire resistance, then have a lava monster that casts "Fire Vuln" that makes the player 50% more susceptible to fire attacks. Thus now the player is only 50% shielded. Also, cap the resistance at 100% and take the Vuln's from the total resistance and not the sum of the parts .

    Now an engagement looks more painful.

  5. #5

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    I would just go with a Give with one hand, take away with the other approach...

    Make it rooted in the game's physical makeup, i.e. For fire resistance, make the player more susceptable to the cold.. so if they want 100% fire resistance, fine, but a cold wind will kill them.

    100% Cold resistance, but any heat at all and they start to take serious damage.
    100% resistance to Mele, means that movement is severely restricted making them a very slow tank.

    If they apply 100% resistance to fire then 100% resistance to cold, then the two effects either reduce to 50% of each or nullify eachother leaving the player completely vulnerable as you can't have immunity to both opposing elements.

    If the player tried to get 100% immunity to fire and 75% immunity to cold, then the 100% would cancel out the 75%, possibly making the player 75% more vulnerable to the effects of cold and 0% protected against fire.

    Let's face it, when something gets hot and is rapidly cooled, it shatters.
    If someone is wearing lots of metal armour to prevent crushing or piercing, they can't move very fast and they're susceptable to electrical attacks, they'd cook inside unless completely shielded.

    To defend against electrical attacks, you need plastic which melts and is not as strong as metal armour but good against the cold.

    The only thing which is strong and good against fire and crushing with no electrical problems is ceramic which is very heavy and bad at protecting against piercing and cold.

    If the player wore plastic underneath their metal armour, it would melt with the heat causing more damage but would protect against electricity.


    I think basically, it can be implemented using the physical laws of your world. That way, it seems more natural as opposed to imposing rigid limits which are part of some unseen calculation and give unexpected results.


    In Neverwinter nights, the D&D rules get around some things.. Spell casters can't wear armour otherwise they get Arcane Spell Failure, otherwise mages would be far too powerful.. wearing serious armour, summoning creatures and casting immunities to everything.

  6. #6

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    Um... you cannot say "100% Fire Resistance" EVER. Resistance implies something gets through! 100% resistance says that nothing gets through. Thus you have a very annoying paradox.

    Solution:
    Ultra-rare * Invulnerable items.
    More common resistance items.

    It's as simple as that.

  7. #7

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    OK, if you can't have a 100% as a percentage (I see your point), how about grounding it in real terms?

    Protection up to 100 degrees celcius?

    Protection up to 25000 volts?

    Or staged protection
    99% up to 50 degrees
    80% up to 90 degrees
    40% up to 110 degrees
    20% up to 120 degrees
    0% thereafter

    Then the damage would be realistic... as would the messages

    Monster attacks player with 200 degrees C, player does the flambe fandango

    Monster attacks player with 50 degrees C, player says, is it me or is it hot in here..

    Armour could have a heat dissipation flag over a period of time so that repeated attacks would add heat upon heat.. so 50 degrees and 50 degrees when being attacked by multiple creatures would add the values together.. or if a monster attacked repeatedly one after the other in quick succession, the original heat would not have fully dissipated and the new heat would be added to the remaining heat, doing appropriate damage..

  8. #8

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    Honestly I'd do a resistance method of "fuzzy" amounts. Then your rating determines the power of the attack needed to bypass, partially, the armor/enchantment and damage it. For example:

    Armor of strong fire resistance.

    Lets classify that as about 1500K in temperature. Obviously it is enchanted/made to resist those temperatures so exposure at or below that level should cause no damage except in prolonged exposure (like burning other armor due to the duration). However, exceed the level and the armor would quickly come apart. Like a variable resistor given too much current ... fzzzzzzz, POOF!

  9. #9

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    What about directional resistance?..
    armour at the front having more than the back and both having more than the sides,

    this could allow a crafty player to overcome a cumbersome yet tanked player.

    It would also allow a player to go up against a dragon but wouldn't provide any resistance against lava ( as the heat would cook the player from the sides even though he'd be protected from the front and back.. not to mention the head and lower part.. )

    This system would work for shields too.

  10. #10

    Rules of power-up addition safe from overbeefing the PC up

    Sure, but don't overdo the directional reference. It affects real life tanks and such, but body armor is designed to protect the whole body. Directional reference makes it unrealistic in favor of fairness; that is where the opposing weakness should come in. For instance, a body armor made to withstand heat would have a tough time handling bullets or swords, but might withstand blunt trauma like a cushion does.

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