Eternity Discussion: Attribute Impactfulness in PoE vs AD&D

[Parabalus]

Stooping to shitposting instead of arguments. The end is near.

You started with the shitflinging in your last reply, don't see why it's bothering you now.

Weren't you in prison for a while? You should be used to it.

Reading comprehension: Failed. Spelling it out for you - each of these 6 points I made proves that the Attack rolls are calculated differently. Each of these 6 points proves that your statement "it's calculated the same way" is wrong. Attack resolution in PoE is not, repeat - not, calculated the same as in AD&D2.

Yes, they are. In both games you throw a dice and add ACC-DEF / AC-ThAC0, if greater than 15/1, good stuff happens.

1. No, enemy thAC0 and AC is lowered arbitrarily so that they remain a challenge as you level up, that's much surely more transparent.

Reading comprehension: Failed. I'm not talking about enemy THAC0 or AC. I am saying that Deflection and Accuracy are raising to much greater heights in PoE than the depths to which THAC0 and AC are falling in AD&D2. From this follows that individual bonus points you get during character generation in PoE are worth less, as the game progresses, than individual bonus points are worth in AD&D2.

(AC - ThAC0)

2. It's "THAC0 - AC".

2. I'm not certain how old you are, but if you started grade school you'd know that signs flip when you move over the equal sign. Read what I wrote and http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/THAC0 carefully, I'm sure you'll get it eventually.

You are trying to tell me that AC - THAC0 is the same as THAC0 - AC? 8 (THAC0) - 4 (AC) = 4 (AC) - 8 (THAC0)? How do you even manage when you go to the local shop?

It's funny to be getting patronizing remarks on maths ability from someone who is on record failing both at basic arithmetic and probability.

You are deliberately misquoting what I originally wrote:

• It's calculated the same way. For PoE roll d100 and add it to (ACC-DEF), good stuff if >15. For IE roll d20 and add it to (AC - ThAC0) , hit if > 1

From the link you can't read:

• Min d20 roll to land hit = (attacker's THAC0) - (target's effective AC + target's AC modifier)
  
  
• (Attacker's roll) + [(target's AC modifier) - (attacker's THAC0)] = result
  

Do you see the similarities?

You have no fucking idea what you are talking about. Which weapons belong to which speed classes IS documented, it's in the tooltip.

The keywords for weapon speed are useless. If you want to calculate DPS you need the values behind those keywords, and these are not displayed anywhere. I doubt anyone knows them with certainty.

You don't need a DPS sim to realise might doesn't favour higher base damage weapons.

Failing at probability once again. Compare hit for hit if you are getting confused. You are trying to argue that 3% of 10 damage is more than 3% of 20 damage of a higher base-damage weapon. At least you acknowledge with half mouth that DPS is not ascertainable.

You don't have to calculate the DPS to understand that for two weapons with the same DPS output, the one which strikes more benefits more from MIG if DR is present.

If you swing 4 times in a round, how many times would you apply STR bonus to damage?
For advanced users, if you swing 4 times in a round with a 50% CtH, how much added damage would you expect with 18/91 strength compared to 9 strength?

Depends on how many times I succeed in hitting, and what weapon I am using.

You surely must be trolling.

The damage bonus from strength is the same regardless of the weapon, this isn't 3.5 where there is a 1.5 modifier for 2h weapons. You yourself wrote this several times.

The factor which was kept static is total damage pre DR. You didn't, that's why you got wildly wrong conclusions.

How do you get static total damage on weapons which have different base damage? Rhetorical question. I see you are getting it by manipulating the number of hits, but you can't see the fault in your logic here.

In PoE weapons have different recovery speeds. Try picturing it like this, in IE terms:

You have 9 STR, which gives you +0 static bonus damage per hit.

You have an enchanted dagger in Bg2 which does 1d4+1 with 2 APR. This dagger strikes twice per round, for an expected damage value of 2x(2.5+1)=6 damage per round.

You have a magic 2h sword which does 1d12+1 with 1 APR. It strikes once per round for EV 1x(7.5+1)=8.5

So, the sword wins. Now imagine you have 19 STR, for +7 static bonus damage per hit:

The dagger will do 2x(2.5+1+7)=21

The sword will do 1x(7.5+1+7)=15.5

Weapons with different APR are rare in IE, but they are the baseline of PoE's system, but they all have the same inherit DPS.

However, before DR, MIG will increase the total damage equally. With DR, the relative increase is bigger in the one with more strikes, similar to the above example, since DR is static.

I have faith you will realise that taking into account e.g. a CtH of 50% cuts both expected values equally.

This is why it only makes sense to talk about expected damage when you are doing comparisons. If you give the above example a 50% chance to hit for both weapons, expected total damage would be same for both weapons, but BIG ONE would have bigger variance - however this has nothing to do with value of might unless you add complexity (does my big hit now kill the target faster, ie. overkill to save time for instance).

Aha, you seem to be half-admitting your own error. If we are going with the same hit probability, I'd have to take a 50% chance on each of the dagger's 10 hits, and on each of the other weapon's 2 hits, and then, guess which weapon is more probable to score all it's hits Hint, the one that exposes itself to risk fewer times. Friendly advice, stay away from casinos :D

Read the bolded part you quoted a few times.
I hope you don't stay away from casinos, I'm sure they'd love you there.

Me, no. But they'd love your type. By now you have tried to convince me, and everyone else, that:
1. (3% of X) > (3% of Y) where X < Y
2. X - Y = Y - X where Y != X, X > 0, and Y > 0
3. 10 coin tosses are as probable to give you 10 successive tails, as 2 coin tosses are probable to give you 2 successive tails.

I also have quotes of your posts to provide examples for each of these faulty assertions.

1. You don't understand that fast weapons suffer from DR more than slow ones
2. You're imagining things, read 2nd quote block with wiki
3. If you have 50% CtH and strike 5 times for 5 damage or once for 25 damage, the expected value both times is 12.5, the second has higher variance, this I wrote. No idea where you are getting your coins from. Amusingly you praise higher variance as a good thing.

25 dexterity gives -6AC, 10 is neutral starting point (both IE [this is favorable to IE] and PoE) , so DEX gives a linearized -0.4 AC per point. Those -0.4 AC gives the enemy -2% CtH. One point of resolve in PoE gives the enemy -1% CtH. So strictly for AC purposes, DEX is about twice as good as RES per point.

1. I'd like it noted that 25 Dexterity is a pretty cooked-up example for AD&D2.
2. 10 is not a neutral starting point, 8 is in AD&D2.
3. No one in an AD&D2-based game cares what's the linearized AC gain, because it's gained by the whole points. And IMO, that is much for the better.
4. Point 3. makes the rest of the calculations irrelevant to a player.

1. That makes the comparison more tilted towards PoE
2. read 1. 8-20 makes it -0.33 per point.

So, we make up the data in order to fit our assertion better. There is no such example in all the IE games, except maybe at the end of ToB.

What assertion? That DEX gives more physical eHP than RES? I never claimed RES is better, I clearly said as much.

3. If you are making a comparison between system, you need comparable units.
4. None of this is relevant to players.

Strawman, or Reading comprehension: Failed.
At this point am almost positive you do not understand a significant part of what you read. I am not comparing between systems. What I am arguing is that within the same system one point of one Attribute is more valuable than one point in another Attribute is valuable in another system. I think everyone has understood this by now, except you.

The initial reason I replied to you is because you were interested in per point comparison of attributes between IE and PoE. To compare them, you convert them to similar units, by the above DEX is roughly twice as good per point as RES for physical eHP.

This is just wrong. Do enemy ThAC0 values not increase between a goblin's whatever and Firkraag's -7?
They are relevant in both games, with the caveat that it's much easier to cap out in IE.

They do change, but does your +3 Hit Probability Adjustment (only attainable in an extreme case of warrior class with 18/00 Strength) ever become one 20th, or even less, as a contribution to your THAC0? That's what I meant, and said three times now.

Of course it does, why wouldn't it?

When thAC0 is -10 thanks to potion of power, bless, chant, -5 weapons, -5 gauntles, -5 kensai, lower base thAC0(!!!) and whatever other stuff you muster, the value of that -3 decreases. What confuses you here?

So, when you really stretch it, you can reach conditions where for one specific kit for one specific class, with specific equpment, you get a comparable decrease of the significance of an Attribute bonus, and then you compare that with a rule that applies to each class in PoE? You seriously propose this comparison as proof of your statement that deflection bonus from Resolve is equally significant as AC bonus from Dexterity?

I have no idea how you connected any of those statements to RES <--> DEX, when you yourself claim you are not comparing between systems.
You said

They do change, but does your +3 Hit Probability Adjustment (only attainable in an extreme case of warrior class with 18/00 Strength) ever become one 20th, or even less, as a contribution to your THAC0? That's what I meant, and said three times now.

+3 hit costs is 15 attribute points, from 8 (you yourself said this is the starting point) to 18/00 and it gives you 15% to hit. 15 PER gives you 15 ACC.

The broader answer is that the thAC0 from base strength is IE is less significant than +ACC from PER, because in IE enemy DEF (AC) is both less competitive (caps out at -16, which is thAC0 attainable in SoA) and your sources of ACC (-thAC0) are more numerous.

Extreme case of 18/00 strength? Surely you're joking.

You can have 18/00 Strength on a small number of classes and after a good amount of time spent rerolling, so no, I'm not joking. You are welcome to explain why I would be joking, and why something attainable for a small number of AD&D2 classes can be compared to bonuses attainable by every class in PoE.

We are talking (or at least I am) about the games where it is readily available.

This is pretty tangential though, as the discussion is (was) about the value of attributes at CC - but the fact is that the impact of your choice is diminished in IE because of the easier access to stat improvement.

Strength is better than MIG per point for melee damage, I never claimed otherwise (says as much in the first post), since it's basically MIG+PER (+damage/-thAC0) rolled into one, DEX gives you more physical eHP than resolve.

Ok, if by "eHP" you mean armor, then we are in agreement.

As I already wrote to correct myself: Actually, no. The Strength bonus to damage doesn't scale with weapon damage in the way that the Mighht bonus to damage scales with weapon damage. You are wrong on that account as well.[/QUOTE]

You have trouble coming to terms with the fact that 10x(10*1.3) is the same as 2x(50*1.3).

Anyway, this is all good fun, but it has nothing really to do with the initial question anymore, which was somewhat related to Deadfire. If you really want to continue this I suggest our benevolent overlord splits or retardos this.

Grazes exist, but I'm not sure if it's universal or only a few abilities allow you to graze.

They were never completely removed. I am now unsure about the same thing as you.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-coming-april-3rd.119184/page-50#post-5403065

Did he every try leaving grazes for damage but removing it from status effects?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yes, I can see you've given up trying to understand what is being said to you, Parabalus.

You have trouble coming to terms with the fact that 10x(10*1.3) is the same as 2x(50*1.3).

And how many times do I tell you that out of those 10 you are not very probable to score all 10? Everyone else understands that by now. You insist in believing that you will throw a coin 10 times (50% chance of heads or tails) and score the same result every time.

+3 hit costs is 15 attribute points, from 8 (you yourself said this is the starting point) to 18/00 and it gives you 15% to hit. 15 PER gives you 15 ACC.

Documenting you saying that it costs 15 attribute points to get from 8 to 18.

Do you even know what "18/00" means, and that you don't need to spend more points to get to the "18/XX" value?

1. You don't understand that fast weapons suffer from DR more than slow ones
2. You're imagining things, read 2nd quote block with wiki
3. If you have 50% CtH and strike 5 times for 5 damage or once for 25 damage, the expected value both times is 12.5, the second has higher variance, this I wrote. No idea where you are getting your coins from. Amusingly you praise higher variance as a good thing.

You haven't the faintest idea of what you are talking about. You don't understand what I wrote, do you? You fail at aritmethic so bad that you can't even understand someone pointing out your errors. And then you have the gall to try to teach and explain things? What is it that I'm imagining? Look at what you've written word for word.

I'm talking about coins to make it easier for you to realize your error.

The damage bonus from strength is the same regardless of the weapon, this isn't 3.5 where there is a 1.5 modifier for 2h weapons. You yourself wrote this several times.

My bad. The answer should be: "Depends on how many times I succeed in hitting., and what weapon I am using."

You are deliberately misquoting what I originally wrote:

• It's calculated the same way. For PoE roll d100 and add it to (ACC-DEF), good stuff if >15. For IE roll d20 and add it to (AC - ThAC0) , hit if > 1

From the link you can't read:

• Min d20 roll to land hit = (attacker's THAC0) - (target's effective AC + target's AC modifier)
  
  
• (Attacker's roll) + [(target's AC modifier) - (attacker's THAC0)] = result

Do you see the similarities?

Again: You do not substract THAC0 from AC, you do the opposite -- substract AC from THAC0.

Making up formulas and terms on the go won't help. You clearly wrote "AC-THAC0" and then when I corrected you sent me to read links.

Yes, they are. In both games you throw a dice and add ACC-DEF / AC-ThAC0, if greater than 15/1, good stuff happens.

As I demonstrated in those 6 points, it does not work like that, there are differences.

Learn some basic maths before you jump into arguments about RPG combat systems next time, k?

For posterity, my arguments were, are, and remain:
(1) 1 point of THAC0 bonus ("Hit probability") is more valuable than a 1 point bonus of PoE's accuracy at the moment of character generation
(2) 1 point of AC bonus ("Defensive attack adjustment") from Dexterity is more valuable than 1 point bonus of PoE's Deflection at the moment of character generation
(3) The increases of APRs are steeper, and more significant than 3% bonus to Action Speed per 1 point of PoE's Dexterity.

 

[Haplo]

This is why the new PEN system makes sense (on paper), because fixed DR always screws small strikes in total damage.

Don't you mean that's why percentile reduction makes sense. The PEN system is a rather obtuse implementation of it!

It looks pretty stupid, no idea what JES is going for.

Didn't New Vegas have a simple DT/DR system where you just took the better reduction out of the two, kind of like Underrail?

I guess. But WHY the better value? Why not both, like in the Fallouts? If they want to keep some kind of weapon penetration stat, then have it pierce the DT part, like in PoE1.



Btw. I agree with you that in the discussions about damage in PoE neither weapon speed nor DR should be discarded. But these walls of text became a little too much and it did not seem we were getting anywhere.

 

[Parabalus]

Holy fuck, I saw the portraits on the Deadfire Wiki. They look god-awful. Maia actually looks great, though. They royally fucked up Pallegina's portrait. Her Pillars 1 one was actually nice. She looks like a fat lesbian in the Deadfire portrait. God, I hope the ones in the Wiki aren't the final versions.

I only saw this after the fanedits, wish I hadn't - that . She even has colored hair.

• Min d20 roll to land hit = (attacker's THAC0) - (target's effective AC + target's AC modifier)
  
  
• (Attacker's roll) + [(target's AC modifier) - (attacker's THAC0)] = result

Again: You do not substract THAC0 from AC, you do the opposite -- substract AC from THAC0.

Making up formulas and terms on the go won't help. You clearly wrote "AC-THAC0" and then when I corrected you sent me to read links.

Do you understand that both of the above are the same? They aren't made up by me.

 

[AwesomeButton]

How is 8 - 4 "the same" as 4 - 8, are you insane?

 

[Parabalus]

How is 8 - 4 "the same" as 4 - 8, are you insane?

Hint: look at the position of the equal sign. You have something on the other side.

 

[Efe]

awesomebutton is trying to trigger parabalus, right?

 

[AwesomeButton]

awesomebutton is trying to trigger parabalus, right?

How is 8 - 4 "the same" as 4 - 8, are you insane?

Hint: look at the position of the equal sign. You have something on the other side.

Which one of you needs special help, or is it both?

From the AD&D2 Player's Handbook:

Have the people who wrote that http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/THAC0 explain to you what it means.

 

[Parabalus]

awesomebutton is trying to trigger parabalus, right?

How is 8 - 4 "the same" as 4 - 8, are you insane?

Hint: look at the position of the equal sign. You have something on the other side.

Which one of you needs special help, or is it both?

From the AD&D2 Player's Handbook:

Have the people who wrote that http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/THAC0 explain to you what it means.

Look at those numbers. Look at 14-6=8. Now look at 8+(6-14)=0. Why do you keep insisting that the latter isn't true?

 

[Iskramor]

How is 8 - 4 "the same" as 4 - 8, are you insane?

In the membrane

 

[Kruno]

awesomebutton is trying to trigger parabalus, right?

How is 8 - 4 "the same" as 4 - 8, are you insane?

Hint: look at the position of the equal sign. You have something on the other side.

Which one of you needs special help, or is it both?

From the AD&D2 Player's Handbook:

Have the people who wrote that http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/THAC0 explain to you what it means.

Look at those numbers. Look at 14-6=8. Now look at 8+(6-14)=0. Why do you keep insisting that the latter isn't true?

Counting is hard!

 

[AwesomeButton]

Look at those numbers. Look at 14-6=8. Now look at 8+(6-14)=0. Why do you keep insisting that the latter isn't the same as the former?

Sure, commutative law. Guess what: 6+(8-14) is also equal to 0! But this is not how attack resolution works according to the rules. Before you roll the d20 there are two known values - your THAC0 (modified for the weapon you are using, etc.) and the enemy's AC (modified for the armor he is wearing, ect.). The unknown is what dice roll gives you. Hence the order of operations is: Substract AC from THAC0, and compare the result with what the dice shows. Preform all operations on the known values, and then compare with the newly established value.

If what's more simple for you is to solve
X (dice roll) + (6 (ac)-14(thaco)) > 1
or
X-8 > 1

instead of going "14-6? So I have to roll an 8 or more", then your mathematical genius is clearly beyond my ability to comprehend.

 

[Efe]

some retard split threads again.
could i convince anyone here to protest by posting it over there once again exactly to the letter?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Holy fuck, I saw the portraits on the Deadfire Wiki. They look god-awful. Maia actually looks great, though. They royally fucked up Pallegina's portrait. Her Pillars 1 one was actually nice. She looks like a fat lesbian in the Deadfire portrait. God, I hope the ones in the Wiki aren't the final versions.

I only saw this after the fanedits, wish I hadn't - that . She even has colored hair.

• Min d20 roll to land hit = (attacker's THAC0) - (target's effective AC + target's AC modifier)
  
  
• (Attacker's roll) + [(target's AC modifier) - (attacker's THAC0)] = result

Again: You do not substract THAC0 from AC, you do the opposite -- substract AC from THAC0.

Making up formulas and terms on the go won't help. You clearly wrote "AC-THAC0" and then when I corrected you sent me to read links.

Do you understand that both of the above are the same? They aren't made up by me.

why did they make her fat

 

[Sacred82]

I don't care how impactful PoE's attributes are in terms of combat. Fact is, they're not simulationist at all.

No one knows exactly what Might is, except it makes you hit harder with a sword and makes you kill people deader with a fireball. Also, for some unknown reason, it helps you intimidate people. Now, we either must assume all high Might wizards (which is like 90% of all wizards) are also buff af, and all high Might fighters have some potentially lethal magic coursing through their veins. Or else, people can simply feel how strong my magic is due to my Might score. Both options are borderline retarded.

Does the same attribute that allows me to pound people into the ground allow me to try and bash open anything else in the gameworld? No, not outside of scripted encounters.


Now, this level of abstracttion would be ok for an absolute hack 'n' slash/ dungeon crawler like Icewind Dale. But PoE has always aspired to being more, not least due to its insane amount of worldbuilding asperger.

 

[Average Manatee]

Strength obviously has more effect in melee combat in D&D, that's no contest.

PoE's defense system sucks. The whole glacing/crit based on a sliding scale sucks. Binary hit/not hit is more impactful. Same goes for defending against spells etc. So all D&D defense/accuracy abilities are superior to PoEs (I'm including stuff like WIS/CON saving throws in addition to DEX because only an idiot would make a D&D game at this point and use AD&D rather than 3rd ed). In D&D I know if I stack armor I become unhittable. In PoE if I stack any type of defense I literally need to do a summation of the integral between an attack roll of 1 and 100 for each enemy to figure out how much something helps me. I came here to play games, not do calculus.

+% speed sucks. I'm not sitting around with a damn stopwatch to check how fast things are happening. It works in games like Diablo when I can click and hear the smack of skeletons crumbling quicker. It also works as a buff like haste, because I can see a character do more. It doesn't work as a stat because I can't tell shit.

What else? INT, the retarded thing that increases spell AoEs? Like how is that even a thing that makes sense? "I'm a might mage, I make a hot fireball, I'm a smart mage, I make a bigger cooler fireball"? When creating a character I don't even know if half of the classes have AoEs or whether they suck or not, how do you make a stat system so shitty that it's impossible to know whether a stat is completely useless or the most important thing in the game? Oh right, the game hints that intellect is a recommended stat for barbarian. Ya fucked up Obsidian.