Better low AP weapon with actor effects

[rijackson741]

I have both a gripe and a suggestion.

My gripe: there are no decent one-handed weapons with AP of 4 or less with good actor effects:
Blackwater daggers or iron sword: Blackwater misery, which is a bad effect, not a good one.
Blade of the defiler: Moderate damage, moderate criticals, but terrible AC and BC. Not worth it to get 0-2 HP on a kill, because your chances of not killing, or getting killed first, is too high. With the new weapon proficiency skills and fighting styles the low AC hurts even more because you are just multiplying a low base percentage.
Barbed dagger: doesn't count, because you can only get it by finishing a quest one way.
Shadowfang: OK, it's got an AC of 40%. But a BSS has only 8% lower AC than that, and I don't have to suffer the chance of minor fatigue, which is a very nasty effect.

So I suggest a new extraordinary weapon that fills this role

I was thinking of a weapon that has random effects, either good ones on the source and/or bad ones on the target. There are a couple of ways of approaching that. The most obvious it to determine if any effect occurred (with, say, a probability of around 25%), and then randomly pick an effect from a list. I don't think the code is set up for that though (judging by the game; I've not looked at the code!), and I think there's a more interesting option anyway: having a large number of possible effects, but each with a low probability. This is my first weapon design, and I don't know if there are any rules that should be adhered to, so this will probably require some adjustment (assuming it's not just outright rejected )

Shimmering sword
Rapier, AP 4, AC 21%, AD 2-6, CS 2, CM 1.5, BC 5%

The base stats are based on looking at similar existing weapons

Possible effects:

Code: Select all

Courage		2x	3 rounds	On hit	On source
Minor speed		1x	2 rounds	On hit	On source
Regeneration		3x	3 rounds	On hit	On source
Heightened senses	2x	3 rounds	On hit	On source
				
Bleeding wound	1x	3 rounds	On hit	On target
Weak poison		2x	2 rounds	On hit	On target
Fear			2x	2 rounds	On hit	On target
Minor fatigue		1x	3 rounds	On hit	On target

The table doesn't line up very well (best I could do. Any tips on how to do it better?), but it's in the attached spreadsheet. Bleeding wound and Weak poison differ in name only, so I used different durations and multipliers.

Each effect has a probability of only 3%.

This is the probability of getting 1 effect, 2 effects, etc, on one hit. I've also shown the average number of hits required for this to happen:

Code: Select all

Number of effects at once		Prob				Av num hits
1										19.3916%			5.2
2										3.7603%			26.6
3										0.7292%			137.1
4										0.1414%			707.2
5										0.0274%			3647.0
6										0.0053%			18807.0
7										0.0010%			96985.4
8										0.0002%			500141.6
Prob of getting something:		24.0565%

So there's a 19% chance of getting one effect, but you don't know which one. There's less than a 4% chance of getting two, but it will happen often enough to be noticeable. In fact, if you hit monsters half a million times then, on average, there will be one time where you get all eight effects at once The chance of getting at least one effect is a hair over 24%. To counter the fairly good base stats and the chance of getting multiple effects at once, I kept the number of rounds and the multiplier for each effect low compared to the other weapons with similar effects.

I think this would be a fun weapon to play with.

[Zukero]

I think it's a good idea, but I'd use less Actor Conditions (5 or 6 max, and that's a large max IMHO), and throw in a negative one (either positive on target, or negative on source). Balance the chance % to find your numbers back (you seem like an expert statistician, so I'll let you do the math ).

Pro tip : to have more chances of seeing it included, create it in the content editor and attach or paste the JSON export here.

[rijackson741]

I think it's a good idea

I'm glad at least one person like the suggestion

I'd use less Actor Conditions (5 or 6 max, and that's a large max IMHO)

I started with 6, but increased it because I was after randomness. The more effects, the more random it is. I might have increased it even more, except that there are a limited number of suitable actor conditions. For example, "Dazed" is really not suitable. The only way to daze with a rapier is to get in close and hit your enemy over the head with the butt

throw in a negative one (either positive on target, or negative on source)

I thought about that, but when I looked at some other weapons I decided not. The Gleaming claymore of ruin, for example, has a 30% chance of Dazed for 3 rounds, and a 15% chance of strength for 2 rounds. That's two very beneficial actor effects in addition to some very nice stats. Xul'viir has a 15% chance of Bleeding wound x3 for 3 rounds, and a 10% chance of Dazed for 2 rounds. Again, two very beneficial actor effects in addition to some very nice stats (apart from the AP, anyway). There are some actor effects that are kind of a mixed bag though. Focused accuracy and Focused damage both cost 1AP, which if you are playing a character that relies on multiple hits is a pretty big penalty. Minor Berserker rage has a huge hit on BC, enough that at the wong time it could result in a quick death. Perhaps a compromise would be to add some effects like these.

you seem like an expert statistician

I do a lot of math, some of which is statistics, but "expert statistician" would be overstating it. Case in point, I have realized that my probabilities are wrong. The probability for one and only one effect is correct, but the calculation for the probability of two or more effects fails to take into account the fact that no effect can occur more than once. Oops! I'll try to post a correction soon.

create it in the content editor and attach or paste the JSON export here

OK. Thanks for the tip.

[rijackson741]

This took a bit longer that I thought it would. To make it more random I made it more complicated. Then I decided that I had made something so fiendishly complicated nobody would understand or use it . So then I made is more reasonable again. I took Zukero’s advice, and dropped it to only 6 effects, that are all reasonable effects to expect from a rapier. Any less than this and the randomness effect starts to break down. I also set CS and CM to 0. Lastly, I fixed the probability calculations.

Name: Shimmering sword. I wanted a name that captured the variability, and this is the best I could come up with. If someone can come up with a better name, be my guest

Base stats: AP 4, AC 25%, AD 2-6, CS 0, CM 0, BC 5%
I wanted base stats that are reasonable, and could be used in either sword and shield or dual wield fighting styles. Since it’s a rapier, I gave it a small BC of 5%, as a plus to anyone using it in dual wield.

These are the effects I now have:

SS1.png

I left them as all good effects, because although there are a lot of them, each one has a very low chance of occurring. Zukero’s comments are noted though, so maybe this could be changed. I’ll wait for more opinions though (hopefully there will be some ) before making changes.

There are three effects that are good for the source, and three that are bad for the target. At first I tried to balance all of them so that they were all equally good, but then I decided that having some better than others made for more variability. Each effect has a 5% chance of occurring, which means there is a 26.5% chance that at least one effect will occur each hit, and, assuming 4 hits per round, a 71% chance that at least one effect will occur per turn. That’s fairly high, but it’s not out of line with some other weapons (for example, the Gleaming claymore of ruin). The probabilities of getting one or more effect are:

SS2.png

The table also shows the number of possible combinations of effects, and the average number of hits required to get a given number of effects at once. So a player will sometimes get two effects at once (but only 3% of the time), and occasionally will get three effects at once. If they use the weapon for long enough they will even get four effects at once, but it will happen very rarely. More than that is highly unlikely.

Overall, I think I achieved what I wanted, which is a low AP weapon with Actor effects, and a weapon that’s very different to anything currently in the game.

Spreadsheet with calculations is attached.

[Zukero]

Sounds good to me.
For the name, I have a few ideas : "Lucky Strike" , "Blade of the Provider", "Breathing Rapier" (it's alive ! ALIVE !).
You can head to the content editor now it's easier than you may think.

[Spark]

Rapier of many colors.

But according to its origin it should be scepter.
It also seems logical to have "magic properties" on scepter.

[rijackson741]

Well, I was going to go with "Lucky strike", but "The scepter of many colors" is a really great name There are currently only two scepters, so there's not a lot for me to base the stats on. Chaosreaper has AP4, so I'll stick with that (I can't change that anyway; the point was a low AP weapon). For AC, AD, CS, CM, BC, the two existing scepters are about as different as they could be! The only thing they have in common is no BC, but it seems to me a scepter could reasonably be used to block, so I'll just leave the stats as they are. I don't know how to balance them any better anyway, because if the weapon makes it into the game I don't know where it will end up. The later in the game, the better the stats should be, so I think someone else will have to fine tune it.

So I'll just change the type to scepter, and the name to "The scepter of many colors".

Any other comments or suggestions before I wade into the content editor?

[Duke]

quick question: Is a scepter one handed? Otherwise, I like the idea of this weapon....we definitely need more in this category as you point out.

[rijackson741]

quick question: Is a scepter one handed?

An excellent question I asked myself that too, and so I wandered over to Loneford and purchased a Runed scepter to check that out. Yes, it's a one handed weapon. I assume that applies to all scepters.

Edit: I guess I'll add one thing. The probabilities given above are a little bit deceptive. They are actually the probabilities of getting two or more effects on one hit. But the effects last two or three rounds, so an effect from one hit could overlap with an effect from another hit. So, if there's a 3% chance of getting two effects in one hit, there is also a 3% chance of getting one effect on the first hit, and a second effect on the next hit. That's makes me wonder if perhaps I should reduce the chance of getting an effect from 5% to 4%.

To judge that, I need a question answered though. I am confused by "rounds". Outside of combat a round is 6 seconds. But inside of combat, a round is turn based. So when an effect has a given duration, in rounds, which type of round are we talking about? Can anyone clarify this for me?

[Zukero]

Both types.
In combat, a "new round" event is triggered each you start a new turn.
Out of combat, it is triggered every six seconds.
I don't think the timer is reset after combat, so that would be :
ROUND->3 seconds->Start combat->Combat rounds->End combat->3 seconds->ROUND