Disclaimer: This is a critique and review of my subjective opinion about warriors and some of the armor issues I have been reading about, and seeing in practice. Take it or leave it as you will, I only ask you at least read the entire thing before responding to any one element of this write up.

Introduction:

Overall, I am very impressed with how the warrior system comes together and functions. It is a fairly new approach for a MUD, and an impossible approach from the point of view of most graphical MMORPGs. Its downside is it is a bit challenging to learn, and it appears to be hard to balance in a game in which monetary investment can fairly massively change the variables. I especially like the use of weapons other then the sword, although the lack of spears and such is somewhat disappointing. I am also somewhat disappointed in the utter lack of usefulness of any armor other then great robes and plate. I will also address this in its own section below. Finally, somewhat tying it in with the armor problem, warriors seem to have almost no use for a shield because there is no option to use one, one handed weapon remotely in the effective range. If you are a very hard corp roleplayer, and maybe have access to Moon or Night for the purposes of bashing, you may be able to pull it off, but never completely in the PvP world. With that we begin with part 1.

Part I: Armor Usefulness and Warrior Archetype Expansion

In this section I am going to explore the usefulness of armor, and propose a fix that will change a little of how the combat skill ties into armor usefulness. We will begin.

The number one problem I have seen in the way combat works is the disparity between greatrobes and field/full plate, and the utter lack of a middle ground. Despite the fact that many classes can wear chain, and leather, and that scale, can only be used by warriors, only robes and plate are easily obtainable, and for good reason. While leather, thanks to stuffing, is the most useful of the 'off' armors, it is still horrible when compared to splendor robes, and comes in a distant second when compared to greatrobes. About the only advantage of leather over greatrobes is the ease in which leather can be mass produced and made, so you can more easily can access to desired stats. The problem there is that max stats for leather seem to be an average great robe.

Of course, there is nothing new discussed up there, and there is no point in alerting anyone of a problem unless you are also willing to offer a way in which the problem may be remedied. So I will give a spring board for this dialog with my own recommendation.

The idea came when I was looking at the annoucements and how the admin approached the issue of 'monk racial weapons' and it gave me an idea.

We take the skill of combat, and for each skill level in combat, the character gains +1/+1 to his armor 'score.' This will max out at 10, and can not raise the armor score over 90, ensuring to help the 'middle' armors instead of this making the top armors better. This bonus would not apply to greatrobes or splendors, as the skill would be from knowing how to much in -armor- to gain the most from its protection. Of course this alone is not enough. Full plate, and field plate are still better for the warrior. This brings me to 'fix 2' which would also answer the common request for a skill choice other then athletics.

Athletics Change, at inept... Plate. Gives the Athletics warrior the ability to wear plate, both full and field.

New Skill Set, Finesse

This skill will feature many things that would help the warrior fight in the lighter armors as well as diversify the types of warriors available.

WeaponParry- Stacks with Combat Parry

ShieldParry- Stacks with combat Shield Parry

Climb- Allows individuals to climb up into trees or roof tops.

RoofRunning- Run from roof to roof, or tree to tree, with out falling. (Works like sprint, but only at elevation, if there is a break in the elevation, like a road, room with no trees, etc… it will stop there.)

Balanced- Good foot work makes it harder to knock you down.

SneakAttack- by focusing on a single target, and that target tries to run, then the warrior strikes at the fleeing target doing double damage.

Sprinting- Same as Athletics

LeapingCharge- A leap from a higher elevation of your target knocks your foe prone, and strikes the target. Leaper can aim at head, chest, or gut.

Falling- As Acrobatics

HardToHit- If you have both balance and equilibrium, and this defense up, you will dodge any attack at you at the cost of balance. Mana drain while active, 3 power to put up.

Kicking-You may use leg balance to ‘kick’ your target even after swinging with both arms. Can not use arms if you do not have leg balance though.

Distracting- Distracting weapon work forces the target to focus on the warriors strike, meaning he or she only parries the warrior using distracting.
Streamers- By attaching streamers or other distracting hanging things from clothing and weapons, it increases the miss chance of other weapon users hitting you.

EnhancedKick- Does a little more damage, and can be targeted. Only causes wounding.

WallStrike- By running up and jumping off a wall or tree, you can bypass stance and parry for one hit. 2 power.

Low Stance- Stances to protect the chest now include the head.

ConcentratedDodge- Gain dodging as acrobatics (fabled level) for 10 seconds per power spent.


Warriors who take this skill can obviously no wear full plate, and all ‘chance’ effects are reduced with the heavier armor. None of these effects can be used with Great Robes. The percentages should be balanced so that scale is no better then chain, and no better then leather when all things are balanced out, so that it becomes more of a preference of the warrior.


Next change, allow tabards to be proofed, and worn with a cloak and coat, and fit over everything but plate. (Can put them over robes because proofings don’t stack)


Now onto the use of shields. A simple fix to me would be that if a shield is wielded, any attack made by a one handed weapon is double damage, and its wounding increases by a multiplier 1.5.

So you want to make Warriors into kind-of-monks?

Fail.

Edit: Correct me if I'm wrong. I stopped reading about half way down because my head started hurting.

Not at all... I am sad if that was what you got from it. I was thinking more along the lines of the agile swordsmen so popular in modern fantasy film and fiction. Not the martial artist types, but the fast moving, quick striking fighters. Mainly I was hoping to see a reason for a warrior to wear something other then full plate. That is my number one reason for not playing a warrior, I have no desire to run around in full plate, that isn't the type of warrior I really want to play, plus I don't want to dual wield and would love to have a sword and shield combination of some form, but I can still do pureblade, so I do not really mind about that as much.

(Yes I have played a warrior, I do not believe in blind speculation.)

So, you're looking for a swashbuckler sort of warrior?

That is a really good way of putting it... but also warriors who would rather wear scale or chain.


I'd also like to make a small note here: With this change, there would probably be less warriors taking forging, because if they are finesse warriors, they will get nothing from full plate, so they might take another trade, spreading out business for forgers, as well as the combat change I spoke about opening armor for non-warriors.

I may not be a well-known authority, but my thoughts are in bold. I'll read through the large opening chunk later.

I should mention that the list of skills I provided are a base set of ideas to give people a feel for what I am thinking stylistic wise. I know that as the list stands, it is not something that could be implemented.

The reason for the extra proofing Casilu is to more for non-warriors to encourage them to give up robes for armor, and also to encourage warriors to wear 'lesser' armors.

I don't think you'll find a warrior that wears robes. Also, even given the style, I don't think warriors would give up their 10k health, even for that. I think if you were to do something like this, it'd be better to start from the ground up with a new guild set then just add this into warriors.

You're missing the point, not for the robe wearing warriors, but for the robe wearing other classes. You should really read the text of my post, not jsut the skill stuff.

Give warriors the chance to take Acrobatics instead of Athletics instead, if you want, but also disallow them to take forging.

Or alternatively, allow athletics to spec into a strong Barbarian type of warrior or a quick Swashbuckler type of warrior.

I like the bottom one more.

Thoros or Desitrus or you with hyperactive?

Um..ouch?

The bottom one was what I was trying to propose, although swashbuckler more then barbarion.

Alright, did. Anyway, resilience kind of functions in that way with what you said about combat, the more resilience, the less damage you take from physical sources. Also, I'd still keep great robes because of their other resistances, even with the tabard-proofing, that means I have to leave an opening in some area and I'm far too crazed and obcessive to do that kind of thing. But, if the armor idea was really implemented, I'd make the additions in resilience.


Also, since I'm curious, what kind of effect does resilience have on damage reduction, anyway?

Well hey, might as well put in my own ideas since we're here and all!

But since speed isn't all that it's cracked up to be, hypothetically speaking, it wouldn't be as awesome as it was in past as well as we'd have 0 power to lunge, etc.

While a shield using warrior might be fun, I think it would be best just to come up with a completely different weapon type to go along with the shield and then combine attacks using said weapon and shield. Giving a blademaster with one sword double damage and 1.5x wounding wouldn't be good enough to make them viable. As an example, pinleg is a blademaster's main means of keeping someone from running away. If you only have one sword and pin, well, you can't really do much else unless there's some sort of synergy with the shield. One hander afflictions at the same wounding level are also typically easier to deal with and cure than the afflictions given out by two handers at the same wounding level. This would need to be accounted for in some way.

And unless it gets tweaked any time soon, I doubt you'll find too many forgers that would be eager to take up more "business" than they already have.

With weaponparry and shieldparry already stacking, I had actually considered a shield-using Bonecrusher as my PvP build for Selverad if I ever took it up, mainly for group fighting as a heavy tank. Tae'dae constitution, sip bonus, and heavy parrying would probably not even be all that great together, but it was an idea.

Alright, lets start a 'Shieldguardian' spec. Here are some skill ideas from me for it.


Shieldforms- Knowledge of shield forms.
Swords- Hit more accurately with swords, and give double damage and double wounds.
OffensiveForm- Lose 25% of the shields armor value, but can 'bash' with shield. The effects of a bash depend on wound level. Low wounds, light damage and if the oponent is off balance, recovery gains a second. This second does not stack or reset if the target is bashed again before recovering balance. Medium- Wind the target, light damage, heavy- chance of stun the subject, medium damage, critical-chance to drop parry and stance, plus a chance of stun, medium damage.
HighForm- Any kind of swing or strike down results in a parry and an immediate counter attack from the warrior. Can not stance while in HighForm, nor shield parry, but can weapon parry. The strike counts as a jab and will give jab afflictions.
DefensiveForm- Like High, but this form defends from the side the shield is worn (left or right) and jabs.
CrouchForm- Bending your back and legs, you cover youself with the shield, leaving little of yourself exposed, can only jab from behind the shield.

There is some ideas for starters

What's the but for? It looks like it's all advantages.

pinleg/shieldstun?