Company News Biowarian Profile: Brenon Holmes

[triCritical]

You think. They are "needed" in a RT game like NWN as much as they are in a TB one. Only someone who is ignronat or at least pretending to would think otherwise. And, AOO's not "manifistation" (no word for Tri) of mapping a "temporal" (another new word for tri, two in a row woo hoo) game to Tb inr ounds; but a "manifistation" of mapping a temporal game with D&D rules.

AOO against castings.

A00 against creatures that run past an enemy.

AOO against an enemy when enteirng an occupied space.


These are all parts of the D&D combat rules so it would amke sense to at least try to have them in a D&D game and they work pretty damn good in NWN at that.

Then again, you don't play NWN 'cause if you did you'd know that.

Once again, stop posting ignorant comments about a agme you know very little about, Mr. Ignoramus. :D

You truly are a sad creature if you don't realize what AoO's are truly used for. What happens if in RT, two mages cast at the same time, do you get two simultaneous attacks. Of course then you would have to be at two places at the same time and have twice as many arms and twice as many swords and twice... Already AoO's in RT break down, they are just not logically consistent. The point is that you have to redefine the penalties for these faults in the phase based manifold (new word, try to pick which definition works for this sentence), AoO's are a construct of the DnD TB abstraction of real time combat.

BTW I have two degrees in physics. Furthermore believe it or not, mapping from the time domain to a different domain, is something physicist do. So while I may not know as many DnD technicalities as you I have a far better understanding of these petty details. Ignorant I am not, everything I said holds...

 

[Volourn]

Then again, you proved your ignorance again. In D&d, you get ONE AOO each round no matter what. Even if 80 wizards were to cast with arms' reach. Only exemption to this rule is certain feats which allows you to have as many AOOs per round as your dex bonus allows. Guess what? This feat doesn't exist in NWN. I wonder why? And, what ya mean two places at once? You daft? You can only AOO when in melee. You can't AOO with missle weapons though there is a certain combat option you can use to keep focus on a caster who might cast spells to try to interrupt him at the cost of your normal attacks.

You may know physics all you want. What a clap fest for your super knowledge? One thing you forget is that D&D rules aren't always the most realistic to begin with so arguing real life physics is pretty lame except within reason. You obviously don't know what AOOs are useed for.

Bottom line AOOs work in NWN pretty much as they would in D&D pnp. The only exemptions are being forced to take one, and one extra bonus feat.

Please come back when you aren't so ignorant of D&D rules. :twisted:

 

[Sol Invictus]

AOO + Great Cleave + Dexterity 18 + Horde of Goblins = Win.

 

[Volourn]

No doubt about it.

 

[Psilon]

AOO + Great Cleave + Dexterity 18 + Horde of Goblins = Win.

Used that just last night in the second floor of the Temple. Eleven goblins down after just the first attack. Just too damn funny.

 

[taks]

I think what Brenon means by "That said, with sufficient auto-pausing features... TB can be almost indistinguishable from RT" is that with a good RT with pause and auto-pause features, the player can have as much control over all the characters in a party as he can in a TB game. Personally I think the major difference is in movement (and thus range) related rules. I can't really think up a system to have as much control of movement in a party-based RT game as you can have in a TB game.

i'd buy that...

- 3E doesn't use 'turns' as a measure of time anymore (only in the sense of 'which combatant's turn it is'). I think IWD2 and NWN still had it, though, for whatever reason..

hmmm, aren't turns still used for spells? i think that's what was being referred to... i think the NWN implementation still used turns but really, all it becomes is another way of saying "100 rounds" or "5 minutes." no real difference.

either way, going from 12 hours (2E) to 5 minutes (3E) for stoneskin rubbed me the wrong way

taks

 

[MrBrown]

hmmm, aren't turns still used for spells? i think that's what was being referred to... i think the NWN implementation still used turns but really, all it becomes is another way of saying "100 rounds" or "5 minutes." no real difference.

Nope, just NWN and IWD2.

either way, going from 12 hours (2E) to 5 minutes (3E) for stoneskin rubbed me the wrong way

3.5E Stoneskin is 10mins/level. Not 100% sure what 3E was, but I think it was the same.

http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/v35/SpellsS.rtf

 

[taks]

3E was worse... er, shorter i thought but i'm at work so i can't check my books...

personally, i never understood the "turn" concept. rounds make sense, but turns always seemed wrong. i.e. a turn is something that passes after you've completed your action. everyone takes a turn, then a round is completed. going the other way, i have to admit 10 rounds per turn made little if any sense...

taks

 

[MrBrown]

3E was worse... er, shorter i thought but i'm at work so i can't check my books...

Nope, also 10min/level.

http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd/srdspellss.rtf

 

[taks]

okie... that renders part of the earlier discussion moot.

taks

 

[Jed]

Too bad in NWN you encounter so much combat that as a magic user you'll have to rest every 5 minutes, thus negating the benefit of Stoneskin lasting 10 minutes per level.

@Volourn: How can you have flatfooted as a condition in a real-time game? What purpose would it serve?

 

[Volourn]

Enemies get +2 to hit you (part of being flanked), and your ac bonus fromd ex, tumbling, and the like is negated while flathooded. Any dex based monk or rogue can tell ya that it does make a big difference.

As for having to rest every 5 minutes, you shouldn't have to if you forgot how to play a mage. For staretrs don't waste spells on creatures that are easy. ie. Ones that your summons, henchmen, or even you can melee. Basically, what you'd do in pnp.

Geez.. bunch of amateur D&D palyers here.

 

[triCritical]

You may know physics all you want. What a clap fest for your super knowledge? One thing you forget is that D&D rules aren't always the most realistic to begin with so arguing real life physics is pretty lame except within reason. You obviously don't know what AOOs are useed for.

No its you that do not know what AoO's are used for. You admitted it yourself that an AoO is a bastardized Interrupt. So if this is true, then cleary AoO's are to punish characters for doing things, which leave themselves vulnerable during attack, while one character is frozen.

For instance, if I was making a DnD in a hypothetical RT ruleset, then when casting a spell, I would just get an AC penalty, but if I am an AoO range someone can also get a free attack, why? That makes no sense because in RT, I notice that a person is casting a spell, and I choose to take advantage of their vulnerabiliity. In TB I do not have this choice, hence the option is there to make someone pay for that.

As for the two place as the same time, you took it too literal. The point is that in RT, you have one attack per round and are granted a free attack, hence there is the oppurtunity for two simultaneous attacks. That is my point you dodo bird. So if you are engaged with one enemy someone comes in AoO range, what do you do? In TB is bloody obvious, in NWN its hacked and completely unnecessary.

Please come back when you aren't so ignorant of D&D rules. Twisted Evil

You ditz, you are arguing the semantics, or should I say the mechanics of the rule, which are not of importance. What is being argued is the validity of such a rule in RT. All you have said is limits for the rule and what can cause it. You still have not said why such a rule is necessary in RT. Learn how to friggin make a point you dufus.

 

[triCritical]

Enemies get +2 to hit you (part of being flanked), and your ac bonus fromd ex, tumbling, and the like is negated while flathooded. Any dex based monk or rogue can tell ya that it does make a big difference.

As for having to rest every 5 minutes, you shouldn't have to if you forgot how to play a mage. For staretrs don't waste spells on creatures that are easy. ie. Ones that your summons, henchmen, or even you can melee. Basically, what you'd do in pnp.

Geez.. bunch of amateur D&D palyers here.

LOL, some people have lives. As for resting, DnD was meant to be played NWN SP OC style. You can cheese the game any way you want it to, but it the play testers did not think you needed to rest every 34 seconds they would have made resting like BG, and would have given you the O' so Diablo town portal.

 

[Volourn]

"AoO's are to punish characters for doing things, which leave themselves vulnerable during attack"

That pretty much sums of what AOO are there for whether it's RT or TB.

You drink a potion, AOO.

You run by someone, AOO.

You cast a spell, AOO.


AOOs occcur when you do soemthing that leaves your "normal" defenses down. Unlike just being flatfooted, your oppoents can get an extra attack in you which normally they wouldn't be entitled to. This AOO philospohy works equally well in either RT or Tb combat.

You seem to think it actually makes sense for one to give FREE attacks while the other only deserves +2 attack. R00fles. Then aagin, you forget that NWN isn't full fledge RT. It's besed on "rounds' just like pnp D&D except turn based rounds its simutaneous rounds.

Bottom line is AOO worked fine in NWN , and is as neccessary to NWN D&D combat as it is to pnp Dnd combat.

Call me ditz or dodo bird all you want; it won't change the facts.

P.S. I'll tell you why its' "neccessary" in NWN combat if you time why it's 'neccessary" in TB D&D combat. Afterall, other non DnD tb games give players free attacks. At least very few I've seen. Fo certainly didn't. None of the other pnp RPGs did either. Heck, earlier editions of D&D didn't. Hmm.. Doesn't seem that neccessary afterall? Hmm..

edit: if you need edto rest every 34 seconds in NWN; you plainly suck. Period. I needed to rest about the same amount I do in other D&D games. Once, MAYBE twice per dungeon. That's it, that's all.

 

[triCritical]

"AoO's are to punish characters for doing things, which leave themselves vulnerable during attack"

That pretty much sums of what AOO are there for whether it's RT or TB.

You drink a potion, AOO.

You run by someone, AOO.

You cast a spell, AOO.


AOOs occcur when you do soemthing that leaves your "normal" defenses down. Unlike just being flatfooted, your oppoents can get an extra attack in you which normally they wouldn't be entitled to. This AOO philospohy works equally well in either RT or Tb combat.

You seem to think it actually makes sense for one to give FREE attacks while the other only deserves +2 attack. R00fles. Then aagin, you forget that NWN isn't full fledge RT. It's besed on "rounds' just like pnp D&D except turn based rounds its simutaneous rounds.

You're almost there. Now kick the other half of your brain and you might get it. Why do you get a free attack just because someone is vulnerable? I'll tell you

In Fallout I could walk right next to a SM and then hide, and the SM would not even know I was there. Why not? I was totally vulnerable, I walked right in front of them, yet he did nothing... Why not? Because that is one of the deficiencies in TB. Hence, why the interrupt was created, and DnD's bastardized version of it, AoO's. In RT, if a character is vulnerable, you just attack them, pretty friggin self explanatory, hence no need for AoO's free attack.

You seem to think it actually makes sense for one to give FREE attacks while the other only deserves +2 attack. R00fles. Then aagin, you forget that NWN isn't full fledge RT. It's besed on "rounds' just like pnp D&D except turn based rounds its simutaneous rounds.

r00fles, What ever the fuck that means!

In NWN, at any point you can disengage, even while casting, and attack a vulnerable enemy. Hence no need for the free attack, its just more cheddar mounted on top of the mozerella and parmesan.

Bottom line is AOO worked fine in NWN , and is as neccessary to NWN D&D combat as it is to pnp Dnd combat.

Whether it works fine in NWN, is a mechanical issue. And on top of that I had serious issues with AoO's because you they could be initiated due to movements that were part of the animations.

As to being necessary in D&D combat, only for those that are skilled on mapping a TB system to a pseudo time domain system.

P.S. I'll tell you why its' "neccessary" in NWN combat if you time why it's 'neccessary" in TB D&D combat. Afterall, other non DnD tb games give players free attacks. At least very few I've seen. Fo certainly didn't. None of the other pnp RPGs did either. Heck, earlier editions of D&D didn't. Hmm.. Doesn't seem that neccessary afterall? Hmm..

Why its necessary in TB combat is simple, I already addressed this, but simply to remove a deficiency in TB combat. Just about every TB game made recently that doesn't suck and handles micro level combat includes some kind of interrupt. The only RT games or pseudo-RT game to include the hack is NWN's and the expansions. There wasn't in KotOR!

edit: if you need edto rest every 34 seconds in NWN; you plainly suck. Period. I needed to rest about the same amount I do in other D&D games. Once, MAYBE twice per dungeon. That's it, that's all.

Seems like Bioware didn't agree with you, otherwise they would have let you do it. Because as it stands its cheese and normal games should not allow such dairy.

 

[Volourn]

Huh? They pretty much allowed you to rest in the Bgs eries as well. Nothing new. You could rest at any time in TOEE as well. Big whoop. And, oo,, Bio disagees with me. Cry me a river.

LOL You use KOTOR as ane example. R00fles! If I recall, KOTOR's combat isn't exactly that good so poor example of combat. Lame.

And, sorry, AOO work fine in NWN. As well as they do in D&D. Simple as that.

 

[triCritical]

Huh? They pretty much allowed you to rest in the Bgs eries as well.

Yeah you could rest, but not everywhere that was the big difference. Moreso, BG was not Diablo-esque and resting normally meant your party would get awakened by some tough enemies. How many times did I hear, you may not rest here. In BG you pretty much had to clear the dungeon level to rest, and even then you would probably get awakened.

LOL You use KOTOR as ane example. R00fles! If I recall, KOTOR's combat isn't exactly that good so poor example of combat. Lame.

I use KotOR, because that is the closest thing I can think of to the Gawd Awful combat in NWN.

And, sorry, AOO work fine in NWN. As well as they do in D&D. Simple as that.

Good comeback.

So this is what you have said over this discourse.

1) NWN has interrupts -> AoO's.
2) They work like yadda*3.
3) They work fine in NWN and DnD.
4) They work fine in NWN and DnD.
5) They work find in NWN and DnD.

So basically you are going to continue to spew forth nonsense till your keyboard breaks. And in the end you will have come up with no logical reasons why there is AoO's in a RT or pseudo RT game,

 

[Volourn]

I told you why. It;s pretty much the saemr eason why it's in pnp D&D, or tb combat. One target opens up their defenses sufficiently enough for someone close by to sneak in a "free attack" or as the call it an attack of opportunity. It's really that simple yet you bring some ridiculous RL physics to the discussion in a game dedicated to twisting the realities of combat to its own end. Period.

Bottom line, if you beleive that it isn't neccessary in NWN RT then it shouldn't be neccessary in tb D&D either.

That is all. :twisted:

 

[triCritical]

I told you why. It;s pretty much the saemr eason why it's in pnp D&D, or tb combat. One target opens up their defenses sufficiently enough for someone close by to sneak in a "free attack" or as the call it an attack of opportunity. It's really that simple yet you bring some ridiculous RL physics to the discussion in a game dedicated to twisting the realities of combat to its own end. Period.

Has nothing to do with real life physics, it has to to do with mapping time domain combat into something different, last time I will waste precious keystrokes on you,

Case A: In a TB game such as Fallout, or even DnD god forbid, I can be hiding walk up an enemy wave at them and then walk away and hide. All the while the enemy stands there frozen. This should not be allowed in a tactical game.

Case B: In a RT game such as Diablo, or BG, an enemy walks out from hiding and waves at me, and just when it begins to walk away, I impale the bastard with my big long pike...

Now, if Case B more closely matches every day combat, and I am to reconcile Case A so that it more closely resembles Case B, I have to determine how to make this work out in Case A, follow along. How do I do that, its quite clear. I define criteria for impaling characters when I am frozen, and call this hypothetical system AoO's! I mean its Eureka. This is how you solve problems in the real world, a systematic logical approach.

So now with Case A, under the defined criterion, I can play a game like SS, or ToEE, and while I am frozen, you cannot come out and wave to me. Likewise, under case B, you could not have done this to begin with, so now why give the RT people a new attack. Of course that would require your folks at Bioware to actually be smart. LOL!!!

Bottom line, if you beleive that it isn't neccessary in NWN RT then it shouldn't be neccessary in tb D&D either.

Now that is just slow thinking Volourn talking again. Like I said, Case A has a problem, not Case B. Now go back to playing DnD and downloading pr0n.

 

[Transcendent One]

Case B: In a RT game such as Diablo, or BG, an enemy walks out from hiding and waves at me, and just when it begins to walk away, I impale the bastard with my big long pike...

I maybe wrong, but I believe in BG your characters' attacks came based on a six-second personal initiative round and their placement during the round was determined by speed factor of the weapon. So your character would move up to the enemy, but the attack won't happen until it's time, which means that what you described would not be possible. I don't know, I was always confused by such crap in this system.

Maybe Volourn can explain.

 

[Spazmo]

tri, there's something you're missing here. Even if it is RT, it's also still D&D (although a horrible perversion thereof). You still only get so many attacks in a round. That's why you need AoOs to handle that stuff. Yeah, in a full RT system like Diablo, you can just click on the bastard who runs in front of you and you'll attack him, but since NWN still basically runs on D&D, you can't do that.

 

[Volourn]

OMG The end.

 

[triCritical]

Case B: In a RT game such as Diablo, or BG, an enemy walks out from hiding and waves at me, and just when it begins to walk away, I impale the bastard with my big long pike...

I maybe wrong, but I believe in BG your characters' attacks came based on a six-second personal initiative round and their placement during the round was determined by speed factor of the weapon. So your character would move up to the enemy, but the attack won't happen until it's time, which means that what you described would not be possible. I don't know, I was always confused by such crap in this system.

Maybe Volourn can explain.

I am quite aware of what you are talking about. That is why I have been saying pseudo RT along with RT. BG is more akin to phased based where things move simultaneously with just facade animations. However, in BG, you can still terminate what you are doing in a round and begin a new attack at any point. Is it possible to miss an attack, in that case, quite possibly. However, this is a discussion of how you would handle hypotheticals. Actually I believe NWN uses 6 second rounds and BG uses 5 second rounds, it made low AC battles quite the marathon.

tri, there's something you're missing here. Even if it is RT, it's also still D&D (although a horrible perversion thereof). You still only get so many attacks in a round. That's why you need AoOs to handle that stuff. Yeah, in a full RT system like Diablo, you can just click on the bastard who runs in front of you and you'll attack him, but since NWN still basically runs on D&D, you can't do that.

Actually, I think this strengthens my argument. Now you are getting a free attack, when your character should not be physically capable of doing it. This makes more sense in TB, because technically your characters is in a meta round, hence why the AoO is a very special attack. But the point is that it should be up to the player in NWN style phased based to make the tactical strike on a vulnerable opponent, or continue with the previous attack.

The point of the argument was that its not trivial to go from TB to RT with pause. I think the AoO problem makes that abundantly clear. Hell people like Volourn don't even know what its for, and he lives, breathes and eats DnD. Honestly, if someone asked me to make a RT DnD games, or for that matter a pseudo phased based RT game, it would be much different then what Bioware did, I however do believe I would have preserved the idealogy of the combat, which IMO is something Bioware completely missed. Sort of like when I see people translate Fortran to C++. They just do a brute force translation without thinking, when what needed to be done was sit down for a second and think about what was being done.