Dodge and Nimble Suggestions

[Anonymous]

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.

[RusBear]

I can’t agree with all of this but in general the idea is right. Nimble must be defensive perk but not the tank…by fat. It must be the option, the tool but not meta with trollface.

[ThorHC]

I think the dodge/nimble issue runs much deeper to the very core of the game design.

Heavy armour offers you the most essential thing -> consistency in survival.
The heavy armoured brother is consistently able to withstand some bad luck. It gives you time to react and adapt to the situation – this saves lives!

The reasoning behind nimble character is sort of a glass canon. You trade consistency for other benefits – while this can lead to positive outcome in the low/mediocre threat battle, in the prolonged tough battles against overwhelming odds (sounds familiar?) the chances of dead brother are higher.

So the question is:
How to make nimble characters consistent in survival, while different from heavy armour?

The idea of damage reduction is simply idea of boosting armour under some (often unconsistent) circumstances… and this I dont like, it doesnt bring anything new to the table.

Personally, I see the way in more movement in the battle. I found most of the battles quite static as I find myself using rotation and footwork to change places (again consistency rules).

So here is my proposition:

-Initiative should be deciding factor in zone of control management – breaking zone of control should be separate entity from normal melee defense. High Initiative brothers can easily break zone of control, while heavy armour brothers have tough time at all.
Also high Initiative brothers have stronger zone of control then heavy armour brothers.

-Dodge perk gives you free 1-tile movement per round (=free of AP cost) when you are successful in breaking zone of control, this can be combined with footwork perk, it cannot be combined with rotation perk.

-Nimble perk gives you active ability (cost 4AP, 15Fatigue) – when the brother is successfully hit the damage which goes through armour will damage Fatigue pool instead of HP pool – if Fatigue pool is depleted then the leftover damage goes to HP pool.

[kem]

So, get rid of armor, get Iron lungs and spamm “recover”, bueno, you can tank, what, infinite damage? “Activeness” is mitigated with ini shenanigans, same way as with indomitable.
Sounds worse, than plain x4 HP with injury protection.

Concept of infinite HP is bad design, imho.

[ThorHC]

Recover perk spent 9AP, so you cannot use (spam) it together with suggested Nimble activity (4AP).
Without armour you would take full damage to Fatigue (+crit bonus in head), you have to consider +15Fatigue skill cost +any additional damage to Fatigue (f.e. maces).
I would say with average 130Fatigue you can take max. 3 hits in mid/late game.

[kem]

Yes, thats why I mentioned ini shenanigans.
1) Use skill turn 1
2) Tank for 2 turns
3) Recover at the end of turn 2
4) Repeat

If your fat & mdef is sufficient – immortality.

[ThorHC]

kem wrote:

Yes, thats why I mentioned ini shenanigans.
1) Use skill turn 1
2) Tank for 2 turns
3) Recover at the end of turn 2
4) Repeat

If your fat & mdef is sufficient – immortality.

I dont get it… where you get tank for 2 turns?
It would be a 1-round ability, so you spent 4AP and 15Fatigue for the boost. If the brother is fresh, then it will boost your Health (f.e.130Fatigue + 70HP = 200HP). If he gets hit, he really gains Fatigue considerably, he loose his Initiative, he loose his Zone of control

Recover ability 2nd round will remove 1/2 Fatigue back, however you cannot activate Nimble again that round (it cost 4AP) so this round any hit goes directly to HP pool. Going naked to the battle would still be a suicide.

I dont find this model overpowered or immortal as you depict it. It gives you relatively safe round, whenever the brother is fresh.

[kem]

Look.
Ini – determines turn order.
Fat – linked with INI in 1:1 ratio.
No fat accumulated – no penalty – you go first at round 1.
Lots of fat accumulated – that will link with ini and bring it well below 0 – so you will go last at turn 2, so you can pop recover and reset the loop.

That is how infinite indomitable/shieldwall works right now.

[ThorHC]

When you pop recover only half of the accumulated fatigue is recovered, so you cant actually “reset” the loop. You can get max. 50% of your Fatigue pool, that means roughly 60points in 130fatigue brother. That means half Fatigue/HP pool, also means half Initiation, you also waste whole turn to recover.

Moreover dodging blows increase Fatigue by 2 points, hit increase Fatigue by 5 (+10 for maces). Average weapon damage is roughly around 40 – you can also take critical head bonus to account.

You cant feed this as a reliable loop.

[kem]

Farmer’s/knight’s base is 120. 2 star @ lvl 11 is 160. That is exactly ’nuff to absorb 60 damage hit. Factor in attachments with flat damage reduction, so it is closer to 80 damage hits. Steelbrow is a thing. And proper mdef bros should not fail more than 2 5% rolls per turn. (2 avg damage swords/flails/mace hits).

That idea formulated exactly with game breaking parameters. Nerf it a bit, and it could be not game breaking, but it may become of questionable use.

[ThorHC]

I just want to make your statement clear:

You would risk to sent veteran brother with 160Fatigue and great mdef and rdef to the battle naked (or half naked with armour without Fatigue loss) with bare dagger to keep maximum Fatigue pool and expect to have immortal unit with this…
You can be stunned, sniped, poisoned, bleded, staggered, rooted, netted, asleep, charmed, fleeing and you would risk jewel of your company to go there without armour with an ability you cant use every round if you insist on combining it with recover perk. I can see a problem combining suggested Nimble perk with Indomitable perk, but it can be managed by simply making Indomitable not reducing damage done to the Fatigue pool.

I think it would be much better use if you take it as a one-round life insurance when things go dire with light armoured brother. You activate Nimble to survive the round in the front line by boosting his HP pool with your Fatigue, if you get hit you have to get out for atleast another 2 rounds to get Fresh again to risk the frontline. If you are not hit you just spent 4AP for nothing and nulified your Fatigue recovery.

[varow]

Good ideas, nimble definitely needs more depth and synergy with some perks, resembling how it was before when “Strong” gave more sense to build a nimble warrior, so it wasnt a common choice.

[Author]

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