Alright, another weird issue that needs working out. I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but if somebody has any insight in the meantime, that'd be helpful.
Basically, it's the same thing as before, with the different damage types. Currently they are:
Physical: Slashing, Piercing, Crushing
Elemenetal: Fire, Frost, Shock
Divine: Dark, Light, Nature
However, there was a slight issue- I made too many magical types, so the odds of encountering, say, a Nature-dealing enemy would probably be waaaaaaay less than encountering a Slashing enemy.
There was an easy fix for this, though- I rolled Elemental and Divine into a Magical category on par with Physical, meaning each magic type is treated as about half as rare/half the value of physical ones.
As an example, consider resistance against slashing versus resistance against all Physical damage. Slashing is 1/3rd the Physical category, so assuming no discounts or price hikes anywhere, getting resistance against all Physical damage period ought to be about 3 times the price as the same amount of resistance to just Slashing, right?
So in the case of Magic, there's more categories, so each one is cheaper. Getting resistance to all Magic is the same as Physical, which means that resistance to all Elemental or Divine is half that of all Magic, and Dark or Fire is one-third that of all Divine or Elemental; and one third of one half is one-sixth, compared to physical's one third. Put more simply once again, there's twice as many magic types to worry about, so each one is half price to defend against.
So the net result is, essentially, that the game assumes running into a spearman or archer is about twice as likely as running into a druid or treant. So far, so good.
The issue comes when the players are selecting their own damage types. I hadn't really been thinking about this from the other end, so when I sat down to figure out weapons, a rather jarring reality occurred to me- fire mages are easier to counter than swordsmen. Uh oh.
So, I'm really not sure what the correct response to this is. Two have occurred to me.
1. That's fine. Sure, fire mages are easier to counter than swordsmen, but they're also less common, remember? The odds of any one player being a necromancer or frost mage are lower than being a warrior or thief, so it all evens out exactly like it should. There's no reason damage should work on a different system than resistances.
2. That's dumb. The "extra branch" system should be scrapped and each category of three treated equally- that is, Physical, Elemental, and Divine are the three equal overarching damage categories, with each individual damage type being treated as 1/9th the total resistances possible.
What are other peoples' opinions on this? I think I've dismissed the notion of doubling magic damage to compensate.
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Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 745248 times)