We should also look into trueshield, sometimes, its protection is just too good.

Well, I mean, I don't want to go that far off course, 'cause forging needs to be revamped. But really, if you just didn't have strength and such impacting wounds/damage, and based everything purely off the weapon made, you'd fix the difference. But then we'd have people running around as ...thematically odd races for certain. So meh.

I agree! Otherwise you end up with things like Ceren that can tank better than Warriors.

The only real difference there is health.

You can speak to an envoy about that if you want. This was meant to be a revamp of forging, not an invitation to attach every conceivable issue regarding warriors onto it.

Fine by me!

It would probably be better, and speedier if you just made 2 reports: warriors and forging. If you implemented positive tempering in the interim and maybe divorcing stats from weapon type, people would already be much happier. If you want them positively doing flips, please let us finally get 100% comm return on all comms, not just allmetal.

I need to clarify the statement on miss rates. It says that fast weapons would miss more. This is misleading. Fast weapons would miss more...than slow weapons by upgrading slow weapons. The idea is that fast weapons would not miss any more than they do now; no change. I was thinking that slow weapons could be upgraded to miss less. Thus this change would have no impact to existing fast weapons but would impact existing slow weapons in a positive way.

I think that right there would solve most of the forging problems just about instantly.

Yes I know, my brilliance scares me sometimes.

Ah, that was indeed misleading! Thanks for the clarification .

Ah, in this case then that would be somewhat similar to what Desitrus said and to that, I think it is a good idea.

Much easier to understand, by far. Sounds nice, no idea how the idea would perform in action though.

But in my mind there still would not be enough of a reason to use a slower weapon. Being able to get another hit while they are under knockdown stun is my best way to build up some wounds on them, and for that, I need a maximum speed weapon (and even know I can just barely get under stun).

If the upgrade also worked against parry/stance that would be awesome.

While stat allocation would be nice, it's not going to solve root problem that we're basing everything on statistical outliers.

So, without stat caps, you can get that outlier quicker with just allocation, but the base problem, and balancing difficulties, remain. capping this stuff makes everything more simple, and more fair.

Whatever we do, the best long term solution will be one that unshackles us from the capricious whims of extreme equipment statistics. Ultilmately, that would be painful for people who have equipment that falls into this category (doubly so for myself! I have a manse stockroom that would be impossibly devalued by this change, in addition to my own loss of time/equipment!) but it's the only way to really bury the issue.

Once you're operating on a system that doesn't rely on such things, the whole exercise becomes much easier to balance, because you've eliminated possibly the most troublesome variable involved by putting it within much more sane and controlled range!

Put stat caps in now, and save yourself that much more of a balancing headache when you DO go and take a look at base warrior changes and mechanics. It would be one less insane thing to try and figure in to wounding, swing probabilites, and otherwise the huge pile of code that must be warrior combat.

Just out of curiosity, if these changes were implemented would people be given refunds on the cost of their hammer?

It also seems like to me a huge part of the issue is the strength, capping out at 22 is good, but there should be some kind of diminishing returns as well, instead of the current system where it appears if you -don't- have 22, its pretty much GG go home.


Err... and by diminishing returns I mean something like

14 str = 200
15 str = 250
16 str = 290
17 str = 320


etc etc....

Each point in strength does give a boost in the overall amount of wounds, but each point over the median point means consecutively less.... (Keep in mind those numbers are completely outta thin air.)

Ok, we're putting forging on hold for a bit.

We've elected Desitrus to be our player point-person to help us find a way to address forging without falling into the void of addressing every conceivable issue related to warriors.

My ideas... Use them, or don't.

- Remove random numbers completely from forging. Instead of debating endlessly about caps, have every klangaxe be the same as every klangaxe and every rapier the same as every rapier. No more AFK forging - you get perfect stats for that type after a preset number of forges.

- Make precision, damage, and balanced weapons useful in their own right. This will allow for different strategies in PVP. There were many posts about the whole miss rate thing - one strategy to fix that could be to make precision impact miss rate and parry rate, and make only damage affect wounding and actual damage.

- Get rid of combat styles completely. The weapons should require different fighting tactics by themselves, and only one or two styles are even useful. It would be better for forgers and warriors just to have different weapons. (I know, I know - it's not forging. But read on.)

- Remove tempering and the idea about adding steel to weapon stats. Obviously this won't be needed with this idea.

- Change dwarven runes so that they don't touch stats at all. Instead, give them varied abilities with drawbacks/virtues in the vein of combat styles. (See, I told you!) Give weapons/armor one slot for dwarven runes, and make it so that they must be forged into the weapon and they decay along with the weapon. Instead of coal....

- Cross trade reliance. Artisans/tinkerers need forged coms, forgers need spellcraft/lorecraft coms for dwarven runes. This is good for business, and forgers will be selling stuff other than weapons/armor.

- Worthwhile leather for Monks and chainmail for Guardians. This will create options with their own drawbacks/virtues for each, and those classes will have to choose between being better against magical or physical classes.

- Unless you've got a plan for polearms, take it out. I've never seen anyone forge a polearm ever for any reason.

- Make forged daggers useful for Psionics. I don't know much about this, but I'm sure it couldn't hurt.

- Throwing weapons with their own specs. Axes for damage, shuriken for precision, darts for speed, and daggers for balanced. Allow them to be envenomed, but not runed. When forging these, either make them cheap and fast by themselves of have them forged in groups or 10 or more.

- Keep all artifact bonuses the same as they are now. Make a new artifact that allows you to attach more than one dwarven rune to your weapons/armor. Only one dwarven rune can be in effect at a time, but you can switch between them by TOUCHing the artifact rune. While I'm talking about artifacts, maybe make one that you can place on scabbards that slows decay of weapons.

- Don't touch Masterarmor.

- Don't give forging to Monks.

- Addition of a DISMANTLE ability that allows one to remove non-metal comms from weapons before smelting.



That's all I've got for now. I'll add more if there's good feedback.

I'd do flips for this. Flips and a half.


Ohhhhh that's so much better than the way prior posts made it sound. But if uptempering were added in, why would anyone ever forge a speed weapon? Wouldn't it just be better to start with say a claymore then uptemper to 280 speed? Or would the increased speed cause it to miss more? Even if the second case were true, in order to get to the higher speed, I'm presuming other stats need to be sacrificed. If the miss rate increases as speed increases, -and- other stats also go down, why would anyone ever use a speed weapon?

I like.... no, make that absolutely adore, Dakkhan's dismantle idea.

The random numbers really do need to go.

The current stat caps don't need to be touched.

If the RNG absolutely -must- stay, the stat minimums should be raised.

Variety is an illusion.

Fullplate already is a derivative of standard plate armour what with the last change. (Take standard plate, imbue 50% reserves, get +10/+10 and nodecay, kind of like a special rune, as Estarra suggested).

I like the idea of post-rune modification.

However, artifact hammers don't need any more effects than they already have, unless you want to make forgers without them unable to compete. The quadruple forging speed is more than good enough.

And the biggest point..... Monks do -not- need an armour buff, nor do they need forging. Heeeellll freaking no. Their 'armour' is in the massive hindering afflictions they can throw out. I was under the impression they were not even going to be allowed to use robes and that leather armour was going to be a requisite for stuff like acrobatics (how they pull off some of those moves in billowy, flowy robes is beyond me), and that was the premise behind Tailoring's Batting skill, but we all see where that went... Anyways, the point was that Masterarmour as the trans skill already works the way you proposed it should. All that would need to change is the name. I'm kind of surprised that nobody pointed this out already.

I'm incredibly disheartened that Estarra gave up after less than three hours of forum talk, meaning that I didn't even get to weigh in whilst she was still actively reading the thread.

As someone who was a forger without a hammer for years and hated the process, I think there are some good ideas here. Here are my thoughts as well as some other suggestions.

- I love the idea of tempering to adjust a weapon. It makes much more sense than being stuck with the result of the totally random process.

- To address the smelting and reforging issue, why not have an option where you could do something to the blade that would return it to its default and then reforge it rather than smelt and start from scratch. Essentially it would be refining the blade by heating it to its first state. It would allow designs that aren't allmetal to be viable.

- On the miss rate issue, I always hated warriors and missing. I think it would make more sense if there was an adjustment where the strength of the blow could vary instead of a miss. It would be a straight percentage of damage done. Rather than a miss, a weapon could do a light hit (which would be 50% of normal damage). This could really come into play when dealing with the problem with speed and precision. Essentially make an adjustment here rather than in stats themselves since it seems stat adjustments wreak havoc on racial balance and balance in general.

- I love the idea of an armour option for monks. I personally hate robes and think monks should have another choice that is comparable. However, the new option should mirror robes in terms of strength. Any other decision would make monks more imbalanced. The simplest suggestion I have is to remove batting from tailoring and introduce a new skill to forging that would allow leather armour to be hardened to match robes. I guess the main issue I see her is the loss of splendour robes for some monks. Having never had splendour robes, I can't weigh on whether or not it is unfair.

- I agree that forging should stay with warriors. I will be the first person to say that monks need some help in terms of tradeskill selection, but I am not sure that access to forging is a great solution. As annoying and difficult as it is, monks may just need a new tradeskill (kind of like what happened for guardians-wicci/bards).