Jason Moyer on 7/6/2019 at 17:37
I can't say I ever had a problem with the to-hit roll stuff in any isometric RPG I've played. I wasn't a huge fan of it in an action game like Morrowind, but in a more tactics/strategy oriented game it seems like a weird thing to exclude.
Starker on 7/6/2019 at 18:16
Ah yes, as much as I loved Morrowind, cliff racers and whiffing attacks was not the fondest experience:
[video=youtube;bNXYrAkUntU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNXYrAkUntU[/video]
Disclaimer: this is a joke video that pits a low character with invincibility against a high level mob, though it is not entirely inaccurate either for the early vanilla game.
I do remember being similarly irritated about the high miss rate in Baldur's Gate, however. Combined with how fragile low level characters were, it made the combat kind of a crapshoot. Maybe it was because RTwP made BG also more of an action game.
Sulphur on 7/6/2019 at 18:24
Quote Posted by Ostriig
If visuals are the problem, a "miss" can be shown as a dodge, parry, flat strike and so on, like NWN tried. But the hit roll is a core mechanic in D&D and carries well into a party-based CRPG where misses can average out. Sawyer threw a dozen babies out with the bathwater for PoE's ruleset, but he didn't deprecate missing.
It's the visuals mostly, assuming a RtwP framework. It's just awkward pantomine fisticuffs - admittedly, we've already lived with that for decades since BG1, so YMMV. I'd give you a clever reply about PoE making things more interesting, but I can't for the life of anything remember what exactly differentiated its combat system apart from that it was... unwieldy. Interesting subversion through class types though.
Quote:
I dunno, the only mechanical details we have so far is that it will use an "adaptation" of D&D 5E and that it will be "party-based", could play like anything from the Gold Box to KoTOR. Or hell, Mass Effect if they push far enough.
If there's one thing that
didn't work for KoTOR and ME1, it was the turn-based combat mechanics grafted onto an ostensibly
first third person real-time game. Considering Larian's almost certainly going oldschool isometric with this, I'd rather they just stick to keeping it turn-based.
Ostriig on 7/6/2019 at 18:58
You might be thinking of PoE's (
https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Combat_(Deadfire)) Graze and Penetration. I found Obisidan's ruleset to be a bit overengineered for my taste, unwiedly like you say. It had some interesting ideas but I'd rather go back to any of the D&D editions.
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Nothing wrong with hit rolls, the problem is making them truly random. Cheating with the randomness a bit to disallow extreme outliers (like missing 3 times in a row with a 95% chance) makes the system completely workable without it feeling unfair.
In D&D terms 95% hit chance translates to only being able to miss with a 1 on your d20, and getting three critical misses in a row would definitely be called uncommon. Then the impact is further diluted in a party-based CRPG where you have several characters to mind, the only D&D game where I've found missing to be trully infuriating is NWN, where one low-level character with 1 APR means you sit there like a bellend through each goblin spawn. Rather, I think Swen's describing something else, like when you just need a 15 on the die to hit but you keep rolling under that. Could be frustrating, but it comes down to character build and game balance.
That said, I have no problem with allowing the player to cheat those numbers a bit as a difficulty setting, e.g. BG gives you a +6 to all rolls on Easy, Pathfinder Kingmaker lets you reduce enemy AC, or what you suggest to bump outliers. I played BG on Easy first time around, no big deal. But that interview quote gave me the impression they're looking at a more fundamental change to attack rolls. I suppose we can only wait and see.
Nameless Voice on 7/6/2019 at 22:13
The thing is, every unlikely outcome will happen to someone if you have enough players making enough rolls. That's why you want some kind of cheating behind the scenes to eliminate those unlikely cases.
I have this whole thing somewhat fresh in my mind since I was doing some research into it a few weeks ago for gamedev reasons. There are a lot of randomisation systems that you can use to preserve the variation of random die rolls while keeping the frustrating aspects out.
