Estimated damage

[fizzix]

I think that it might be a good idea to balance the new weapon system with affixes and slays based on expected damage for various classes at various stages in the game. Also, we need to figure out what the damage from slays and brands should be relative to the damage from finesse and prowess bonuses. I've attempted to take a stab at this in a spreadsheet.

The metric I'm using are two values. The first is the average damage that a player would get with a very good weapon that has no slays active. Figuring that every character can get this weapon by picking up the items off the floor over 4-5 dungeon levels. I estimate this means a weapon in the 90th percentile of damage output. The second number is what you would get from an exceptional weapon with active slays. Something you'd get from clearing a level 10 times or emptying a greater vault.

Now, the numbers I have up are completely made up. And I'm looking for critiques and suggestions on them. Anyone has edit access with the link, but I suggest making a new sheet on the spreadsheet if you have changes, or add them in a way where it's easy to tell what the changes are.

[RCIX]

Are we sure we don't want/need/have any low-level slays? Something also looks off for the endgame levels of non-slay weapons vs slay weapons, though I can't put my finger on what.

[Estie]

A factor 2.5 for branding bonus seems a bit high; in current vanilla its certainly less, maybe 1.5 or 2.

Otherwise these numbers seem fine averages to me, however, I am a bit worried about variety: I remember a priest who killed M with ~350 damage/round, and one had ~700; on average, Id put the damage of my many melee priests at ~450.
For me its important that there can be good and bad runs, and I would hate it if every game ended up with more or less the same character power.

[fizzix]

There will certainly be variability. Which is why I couch things in terms of 90th percentile weapon and 99th percentile weapons. The standard deviation question we'll leave for now, but from playing around a bit, I think the problem will be too high variance rather than too low. It's good to have endgame ranges (for warriors fighting Morgoth) of 400 to 1000 but probably not good to have 2000.

Also slays are pvals, but they all act as a multiplier to total damage. Previously slays only multiplied dice, but now they multiply the total damage, so the actual multiplier needs to change. One question that has come up recently is how much should these new multipliers be? Should they be capped, allowed to stack indefinitely, or have diminishing returns?

[Estie]

Making brand multiply all of the damage is imo problematic. Thats like extra attacks, and those are a) rare and b) at most 50% (mage 4 attacks -> 6 attacks from a +2 weapon).

Why not mulitply dice only as its now ?

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Estie

Making brand multiply all of the damage is imo problematic. Thats like extra attacks, and those are a) rare and b) at most 50% (mage 4 attacks -> 6 attacks from a +2 weapon).

Why not mulitply dice only as its now ?

It does, currently. When talking to fizzix last night I hadn't actually looked properly at the code, but the relevant step in the calculation is:

total_dam = dice_dam * (prowess_mult + slay_mult[best_slay])

So in fact the best slay is still only multiplying the base damage from dice. The difference is that the +dam from prowess is now added at the same time instead of afterwards.

So with apologies to fizzix, we don't need such a drastic recalculation of the slay multipliers.

We DO, however, need to think about how they should stack. The stacking of slays and brands on an object (from receiving the same affix more than once) is now a natural consequence of them using pvals, and provides a good way of making a smoother power curve throughout the dungeon.

My suggestion was that multipliers should start off about half what they are now, so x2/x3/x5 should become x1.5/x2/x3 (which is half the +%). Then a second application of the affix would equal the current multipliers, while a third (very rare) would exceed them on endgame weapons.

Fizzix went on to suggest that we should apply diminishing returns, so that each subsequent application of a slay adds only half the additional multiplier, e.g. x2 then x2.5 then x2.75 etc.

I like diminishing returns in general, but combining these two would mean that slays and brands would never reach their original strength. So perhaps something like x1.8/x2.4/x3.6 which would then become x2.2/x3.1/x4.9 with a second application and x2.4/x3.45/x5.55 with a third.

All views welcome.

[Estie]

Meh, there was talk that brand/slay should bypass armour which would increase their power as well; I would simply have all slay/brand flags (weak, normal, *slay*) double the dice (x2) for now and see what it leads to. Fine tuning can be done later.