Topic: Dodge and Nimble Suggestions

Two abilities I think need addressing. 1) Dodge and 2) Nimble.

I think Dodge should be addressed by completely changing it (and renaming it to avoidance or something dodge won’t make sense).

I think Nimble should be addressed by combining two elements of current/past perks (current dodge and old nimble), while adding decision making elements that would mimic a nimble fighter.

Dodge

Replace Dodge with: Chance to avoid roots based on initiative. Currently these are 100%, it is one of the only thing in the game that has 100% chance of hitting. Additionally if they are caught then evasive should increase the chance of breaking free, it makes sense that someone less encumbered would have an easier time breaking free than someone heavily encumbered. What we did here was provide initiative as a stat that is useful to pump, which before it was not, we will give initiative a bigger boost later. Additionally “Dodge” no longer makes sense as a name. I would recommend calling it “Avoidance” that makes sense for what this is suggesting.

Nimble
Now that dodge is gone we can fix Nimble…by incorporating dodge! Nimble combines the elements of dodge with the old elements of Nimble. It adds additional decision making layers that promotes a push and pull you would see an unencumbered fighter utilizing.

Before tossing out the change first I think it is important to establish some expectations of the perk that are both immersive and would feel good in the game, while not being over powered.

1. It should make brothers hard to hit. In particular against a single target, but becoming more detrimental against multiple targets.

2. When a brother does get hit, they should have been able to mitigate some of the damage dealt because it should be a more glancing blow. But we don’t want it to benefit naked brothers (or 30/30) brothers nor 300/300 brothers. We want the 100-200 range armor wearers for this ideally.

3. These brothers should feel like there is an ebb and flow to an engagement. Attacking vs defending across the multiple turns in a round. Waiting for the big slow enemy to make a move revealing a weak spot and striking. Being patient waiting for attacks to come and avoid them.

Let’s see if we can do that. We have 3 expectations so there will be 3 parts to this.

Part 1: difficult to hit Well this is easy lets just grab old dodge and tweak it so it is more valuable and deserving of a later slot…but balanced because it is getting some additions. In short buff old dodge WITH a fatigue cost, I would bump it up to somewhere around 30-40% of initiative (number would need tweaking). The fatigue cost would come for each strike against the brother: 5 fatigue per attack avoided (you are trading fatigue for health/armor). It takes energy to avoid getting hit.

Okay from an evasive standpoint, does it feel immersive and good in game, while not being over powered?

I think it does. Yes it means you will be looking at 60-70 mdef initially. However the fact that missed attacks add fatigue means that as the fight goes on this will be reduced. If you are facing one enemy you are likely to only generating 5-10 fatigue per turn from dodges. Not bad but it would add up. If you are facing 3 enemies now you are looking at 15-30 fatigue per turn…You may be safe for the turn but your survivability declines rapidly. So one or two targets we are looking good. Big weapons that should be easier to avoid and only attack once we are looking good. Multiple targets we are looking good. We should see lots of missed attacks against our brother, but it does have a cost, and it is making sure a naked brother surrounded by enemies does quickly. All good things.

Part 2: When a brother does get hit they should be able to mitigate some of it due to attempting to avoid it. This is kinda borrowing from the old nimble…but hopefully making it better. We want initiative to be the important stat, so I would have it be something along the lines of:

(Your initiative – your attackers initiative) x % health of your armor = % damage reduction to both health and armor.

Again the exact numbers could be tweaked slightly for balancing purposes, just by adding a modifier to the % health of your armor.

Example 1: 100 initiative vs your attackers 50 initiative in full health armor. It would be (100-50) x 1.0 = 50% damage reduction to health and armor. (and if the opponent is faster there is no negative effect).

Example 2: 100 initiative vs 50, 75% armor. (100-50) x .75 = 37.5% damage reduction.

Example 3: 100 vs 50, 50% armor. (100-50) x .5 = 25% damage reduction

Example 4: 75 vs 50, 100% armor. (75-50) x 1.0 = 25% damage reduction

Example 5: 75 vs 50, 50% armor. (75-50) x .5 = 12.5% damage reduction

Example 6: 100 vs 25, 100% armor. (100 – 25) x 1.0 = 75% damage reduction.

So did we successfully turn hits into glancing blows? YES!!

Did we successfully avoid this overwhelmingly benefiting naked brothers? YES!! If you are in 30/30 armor, you at most are taking two hits and then you have absolutely no damage reduction.

Did we successfully avoid this benefiting 300/300 brothers? YES!! If you are slower than your enemy then you get no damage reduction from this.

Great but did it benefit the 100-200 armor range? Again yes. If you have 150 armor it will take a few hits to be destroyed, so while while 30/30 armor will grant you MORE damage reduction on 1 MAYBE 2 hits. Your 150 armor will grant you damage reduction on multiple hits.

HOWEVER why would we have someone like this? Are we not just back to the old nimble which falls flat against 300/300? If we start attacking then we use fatigue and will kill both our dodge % AND our mitigation %. Plus taking attacks means these numbers decline as well.

Which brings us to the last part.

The riposte. Nimble grants a “third” turn per round for the brother, the nimble brother gains +5 matk and ratk for their next attack PER PASS in a turn. Normally each character gets 2 turns per round in a fight. A Nimble brother would get a 3rd turn that resolves AFTER the 2nd turn of everyone else.

What did we just do? A brother in light armor should have options, they should be able to alpha strike in a turn AT THE COST of defense (fatigue build up reducing dodge AND mitigation). Or they should be able to bide their time and find an opening. That is precisely what we just did.

Light/Medium armor means that this brother is going to be one of the first or the first character to act in a round. A 3rd turn means he will be one of the last or the last to act in a round.

Everyone currently gets 2 turns per round. A 3rd round means this brother ALSO has the option to act last. But why take this? Well you reward the patience, by increasing the likelihood of a strike landing. If you pass your first turn you get +5 attack. If you pass any action points on your second round you get +5 attack again (+10 total) for the third round.

This creates decision making.

* Do I alpha strike? Shield wall is up, maybe it drops, I can hold my fatigue for defense and pass and attack later. Or I can alpha strike.

* Round 2: Do I attack once (+5 atk) and pass? Do I attack (+5 atk) and attack again (+0 atk)? Do I pass to next round?

* Round 3: Do I attack once (+10) and pass to conserve fatigue (defense), or do I attack more (building up fatigue, reducing defense). Or do I just straight up pass (reducing fatigue building up defense).

This makes a nimble brother play like someone that is biding their time waiting and avoiding attacks, while seizing their opportunity to strike when an opponent is weak.

In short we created a 1) evasive brother, 2) who can take a couple glancing blows but not tank 2 handers with their face for days, nor can they get beat on like a 300/300 armored brother can, 3) With increased decision making options and versatility that help balance this all out.

A final bonus there are several perks that are weaker due to how fatigue and initiative work. By going about it this way you remove the need to pump mdef and rdef and instead opt into pumping fatigue+initiative+attack. With Fatigue and Initiative providing your defense. This means abilities that were often times weaker (overwhelm and fearsome) because you were not likely to pump initiative high enough to go first also become more viable with a build like this.

HOLD ON HOLD ON HOLD ON That is a lot of stuff can you condense this down into a tool tip that explains the actions concisely…otherwise this is all meaningless.

Specialize in light and medium armor using speed to your advantage! Gain 30% of your characters initiative as melee and ranged defense. Gain % damage reduction based on how fast you are compared to your opponent and the % health of your armor. Gain a 3rd turn per round.

This is 51 words 280 characters total.

Compared to “Overwhelm” which is 75 words and 443 characters. So there is even room to expand.