Elements

[Vryl]

This came up a while back in a different thread, but since it's been so quiet lately I thought I'd bring the topic up where it might be more visible to interested parties.

So far we know for sure that there will be fire and ice elements available, primarily to give a broader field of possible vulnerabilities and immunities to minions and adventurers. For instance, the pixies adventurers that were showcased in an early update were listed as being weak to fire: their high dexterity-based defense fails them when it comes to diving through a ball of fire. However, the pixie pyromancer is actually immune to fire, meaning that it will take no damage at all and must be killed by other means... perhaps ice, which was not brought up at the time.

There may be more elements than that, but the question that came up in the other thread was this: should elements have minor effects to them in addition to being a different type of attack? The examples brought up before were that fire could deal a little extra damage over time and ice freezing an opponent, reducing defense for the duration - especially if the hero relied on dexterity for defense. What does everyone think about these, and possibilities for other elements that Jake might have?

[Jake]

I'll likely post more about this later, but I am incredibly busy this week, so I just want to throw a few of my thoughts in really quick.

Current planned damage types are melee, ranged (these are both standard physical attacks), fire, ice, water, rock, air, lightning, and poison. I imagine there will be more, but these are the ones with icons so far (there are very few current abilities that use anything other than melee and ranged right now, though).

As Vryl said, with the exception of poison, the only difference between any of these is whether or not a character is vulnerable or immune to an attack--the goal being to encourage defenses that counter incoming characters. I like the idea of attaching different side effects to each of these damage types, but given the game's determinism and simplified damage model, I think this could be somewhat tricky to balance. I am definitely up for discussing and experimenting, though =).

[Vryl]

It might be worth extending the rock, paper, scissors game of matching attacks to specific defenses. For instance, ice damage could deal minor damage to agility defense because it's hard to be agile when you're cold. Lightning could do the same to armor defense on the general premise of metal and lightning not being a good mix, while either earth or air could decrease ward defense - depends on if you'd prefer to talk about mild concussion or how hard it is to focus your arcane powers when you have tomb dust blown into your eyes.

Nothing game-breaking, of course. Just something a player can keep in mind if they find they're having trouble with a specific type of hero... and something to help deal with those pixie pyromancers and their high defense.

EDIT: Thinking about it, you could incorporate all of the elements aside from poison in this, if you want to. Just as an example...

Armor: Fire will soften metal and scorch leather, so it would make sense for this to decrease armor defense. Lightning, on the other hand, conducts well through metal - you could make a small portion of damage go straight through armor defense.

Dexterity: As stated, ice could slow reflexes and muscle responses, decreasing defense. It's easy to slip on wet floors and hard to stay in the air with sodden wings, so water could deal a little unavoidable damage just like lightning does with armor.

Ward: Air can cause a long-term distraction by getting grit into a mage's eye, while rock can cause some damage because unlike pretty much everything else the rock wouldn't necessarily slide off the ward. The mage has to expend extra effort to push the rock off once it's been stopped.

[CodGod]

Personally, I definitely prefer this system:

with the exception of poison, the only difference between any of these is whether or not a character is vulnerable or immune to an attack

over this one, in which specific attack types get inherent bonuses against specific defences:

Armor: Fire will soften metal and scorch leather, so it would make sense for this to decrease armor defense. Lightning, on the other hand, conducts well through metal - you could make a small portion of damage go straight through armor defense.

Dexterity: As stated, ice could slow reflexes and muscle responses, decreasing defense. It's easy to slip on wet floors and hard to stay in the air with sodden wings, so water could deal a little unavoidable damage just like lightning does with armor.

Ward: Air can cause a long-term distraction by getting grit into a mage's eye, while rock can cause some damage because unlike pretty much everything else the rock wouldn't necessarily slide off the ward. The mage has to expend extra effort to push the rock off once it's been stopped.

for two reasons:

1: It seems to allow for a wider variety of total defences, as what a unit is vulnerable to and what it's defence type is are independent - the pixies use dexterity defences and are vulnerable to fire, while a swiftly flowing water elemental might also use dexterity but be vulnerable to ice (because it can be frozen). Any defence can be paired with any vulnerability (or immunity, for that matter), based on what makes sense for the creature in question. If lightning, as suggested, had an inherent bonus against armour, that's no longer entirely true, and it means any armour-based creature with lightning immunity is stronger than an otherwise identical creature with a different immunity, making balance more complicated for what seems like little gain.

2: I've very rarely seen a system in which the bonuses certain attacks get against certain defences actually make sense in practice beyond the most simple examples. For example, the suggested logic by which fire and lightning attacks might have a built-in bonus against armour defences makes sense in the given context of metal & leather armour, but armour in the game could (and I strongly suspect will) be much more broad and include things like the hard scales of a dragon, the stone body of a golem, or the shell of a noble snailfolk adventurer, none of which make "fit" with the logic of those attacks getting the bonus against them.

TL;DR: I'd much prefer that (for example) a knight in copper armour be using the armour defence and separately have a vulnerability to lighting as two different properties of the unit, than a broad rule that lightning attacks always get some bonus against the armour defence, because it means more combinations of defence/weakness and allows each individual creature to make sense for it's own abilities while keeping the individual systems simpler and easier to understand.

[Vryl]

Personally, I definitely prefer this system:

with the exception of poison, the only difference between any of these is whether or not a character is vulnerable or immune to an attack

over this one, in which specific attack types get inherent bonuses against specific defences:

Armor: Fire will soften metal and scorch leather, so it would make sense for this to decrease armor defense. Lightning, on the other hand, conducts well through metal - you could make a small portion of damage go straight through armor defense.

Dexterity: As stated, ice could slow reflexes and muscle responses, decreasing defense. It's easy to slip on wet floors and hard to stay in the air with sodden wings, so water could deal a little unavoidable damage just like lightning does with armor.

Ward: Air can cause a long-term distraction by getting grit into a mage's eye, while rock can cause some damage because unlike pretty much everything else the rock wouldn't necessarily slide off the ward. The mage has to expend extra effort to push the rock off once it's been stopped.

for two reasons:

1: It seems to allow for a wider variety of total defences, as what a unit is vulnerable to and what it's defence type is are independent - the pixies use dexterity defences and are vulnerable to fire, while a swiftly flowing water elemental might also use dexterity but be vulnerable to ice (because it can be frozen). Any defence can be paired with any vulnerability (or immunity, for that matter), based on what makes sense for the creature in question. If lightning, as suggested, had an inherent bonus against armour, that's no longer entirely true, and it means any armour-based creature with lightning immunity is stronger than an otherwise identical creature with a different immunity, making balance more complicated for what seems like little gain.

2: I've very rarely seen a system in which the bonuses certain attacks get against certain defences actually make sense in practice beyond the most simple examples. For example, the suggested logic by which fire and lightning attacks might have a built-in bonus against armour defences makes sense in the given context of metal & leather armour, but armour in the game could (and I strongly suspect will) be much more broad and include things like the hard scales of a dragon, the stone body of a golem, or the shell of a noble snailfolk adventurer, none of which make "fit" with the logic of those attacks getting the bonus against them.

TL;DR: I'd much prefer that (for example) a knight in copper armour be using the armour defence and separately have a vulnerability to lighting as two different properties of the unit, than a broad rule that lightning attacks always get some bonus against the armour defence, because it means more combinations of defence/weakness and allows each individual creature to make sense for it's own abilities while keeping the individual systems simpler and easier to understand.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for replying. I would much rather have these kinds of suggestions discussed as a group than post them for Jake to accept or deny based entirely on his own reaction.

I have to agree with your second point, it is hard or impossible to have a rationale for an element doing something extra that makes sense for everything it would be applied to. I wasn't entirely happy with the reasoning I put down in the example, I just thought it would be better to have such an example - one that covers all of the elements - than just one that might seem to favor certain elements (as was initially discussed in the Batty Belfry thread).

I don't see the problem you have in your first point, though. We're discussing minor effects, not crippling ones. A knight with lightning immunity might be slightly more powerful than one with water immunity, in my example... but that is far less of an issue than Jake's pyromancer pixies, who are immune to the only fast way to kill the rest of the pixies. A point or two of damage that ignores defense isn't going to slaughter opponents, so resisting the effect won't change much. Assuming that this example was used, and I'd rather have it worked on and either adjusted or replaced.

[ThirdAnguis]

I've got to side with CodGod on this one. Unless the entire combat system is based around rock-paper-scissors mechanics, there's not an overwhelming reason to tie strengths to vulnerabilities. If I've decided that I want to play with an ice-themed set I'd much, MUCH rather have a little bit of trouble with the occasional ice-resistant hero coming through than to be fighting a constantly losing battle because a third of all intruding adventurers are immune to my theme and able to curbstomp me. Rock-paper-scissors mechanics enforce balanced tombs rather than themed ones, which seems to run counter to the "build how you want" concept implicit in the branching paths being developed.

[Jake]

The immunity/vulnerability system is definitely staying in place, but the idea behind this thread is to consider giving the elements some more unique traits.

In the current plan (and this isn't actually going on in the alpha, in case you hadn't noticed), poison is the odd-one-out, because it deals diminishing damage each round of combat (if you deal two poison damage, it'll deal one damage the next round, and disappear the round after--unless something heals the character). Vryl is trying to find ways in which other elements could function along those lines, and I want to give it some thought, because it is kind of weird to have a single damage type that acts differently.

Obviously, these effects cannot be very extreme, or else players will have trouble running themed dungeons, but I think we can do things like one lightning damage ignores armor defense, so one (not all!) will always get through versus armor (CodGod is absolutely right that "armor" here really represents a broad spectrum of natural defenses, as well). Ice damage could reduce agility by one point, as it chills and slows characters. I don't think that these are huge rock-paper-scissors changes that can't be overcome, but smaller bonuses to make the elemental damages feel more like elements, instead of just different icons that just mean damage.

One problem I do have with implementing this would be how to make the effects apparent to players during combat. Each of these elements would require some different visual action to make it apparent that, for example, one of the ice damage icons is about to knock out a point of agility.

[Vryl]

The immunity/vulnerability system is definitely staying in place, but the idea behind this thread is to consider giving the elements some more unique traits.

In the current plan (and this isn't actually going on in the alpha, in case you hadn't noticed), poison is the odd-one-out, because it deals diminishing damage each round of combat (if you deal two poison damage, it'll deal one damage the next round, and disappear the round after--unless something heals the character). Vryl is trying to find ways in which other elements could function along those lines, and I want to give it some thought, because it is kind of weird to have a single damage type that acts differently.

By the same token, not all elements need to do anything. I just wanted an example where they do for arguments' sake, and would honestly prefer my first example if one was going to be used without being altered. If anyone else has suggestions on what elements could do, I'm sure Jake would be thrilled to have a variety of options to experiment with.

[CodGod]

The immunity/vulnerability system is definitely staying in place, but the idea behind this thread is to consider giving the elements some more unique traits.

In the current plan (and this isn't actually going on in the alpha, in case you hadn't noticed), poison is the odd-one-out, because it deals diminishing damage each round of combat (if you deal two poison damage, it'll deal one damage the next round, and disappear the round after--unless something heals the character). Vryl is trying to find ways in which other elements could function along those lines, and I want to give it some thought, because it is kind of weird to have a single damage type that acts differently.

I definitely agree it could be cool to give similar small unique effects to each element, I just feel quite strongly that having those unique effects be an inherent paper/scissors/rock mechanic that interacts with the existing broad defences system is the wrong way to do that, for the reasons above.

So rather than lightning's unique thing being a bonus ability specifically against the armour defence, I'd prefer it be something like, for an off-the-top-of-the-head example, dealing a certain amount of lightning damage means there's a chance for a little bit of that damage to arc/chain to the next target in the queue instead of (or as well as?) all the damage being dealt to the one you were aiming at. Something which is specifically unique to lightning and could be a little useful in some situations, rather than something that's unique to the combination of lightning with the armour defence.

Basically, I'm all behind each element having a little thing that makes it special, and I agree brainstorming those could be productive (and fun!). But I see no reason for those to all be directly against specific defences, and at least a couple of reasons for them not to be.

So I'm gonna go think of some more things to suggest, and in the meantime, hopefully more people will post ideas to discuss.

[Jake]

I definitely agree it could be cool to give similar small unique effects to each element, I just feel quite strongly that having those unique effects be an inherent paper/scissors/rock mechanic that interacts with the existing broad defences system is the wrong way to do that, for the reasons above.

Yeah, I guess I was trying to stress that it isn't *very* rock/paper/scissor-y, in that none of the damage types should ignore any of the armor types, just that some damages could have a tiny advantage against certain defenses; this just seemed like one of the easy ways to generate a unique effect for an element, because there aren't a whole lot of mechanics to play with here, as the core combat system is pretty simple. I am still entertaining the idea, but I would really rather not dip into these defense-specific effects, because I think they may overcomplicate things and be difficult to convey to players. Elemental damage isn't tremendously common, so when players see it, I want its behavior to appear consistent--a player isn't likely to see a bunch of lightning attacks against different defense types in rapid succession to drill some armor-specific property into their head, so we would need some really obvious visual indicators.

So rather than lightning's unique thing being a bonus ability specifically against the armour defence, I'd prefer it be something like, for an off-the-top-of-the-head example, dealing a certain amount of lightning damage means there's a chance for a little bit of that damage to arc/chain to the next target in the queue instead of (or as well as?) all the damage being dealt to the one you were aiming at. Something which is specifically unique to lightning and could be a little useful in some situations, rather than something that's unique to the combination of lightning with the armour defence.

I really like the idea of lightning damage arcing off to other characters! However, all of the combat mechanics are deterministic, so there can't just be a "chance" of it happening; it has to be a calculable outcome, given only the characters' stats and statuses. My first thought is maybe lightning damage that is negated by defense might arc to the next character--and so on, if that damage is still partially negated by the next character. So a fully fatigued character will take the full charge (passing on nothing), but a high-defense character might pass the damage on to a less armored ally. This effect also has the bonus of never dealing more damage than its initial damage rating, which makes it easier to balance.

I think fire could work similarly to poison, where damage declines each round, except where poison sticks with the same character each turn, fire could stick with the same slot each turn--which would of course typically be the primary slot.