Some strength discussion/suggestions. Shield, armour and iron flesh

[owens]

Shield. A few people are calling out for shield skill (SH from here on) to be a strength based skill. This is not a good idea at all. High SH, IF and PS combined is probably too much (10ps 10sh hoplite anyone?). However a strength req on shields as well as the SH req could work. say 13 str for the heaviest shields.

Another common suggestion is an increase on the str requirement for armour. This seems logical to me. The armour requirements in cRPG are an artifact of vanilla warband and alpha crpg afaik. It is no question to me that the strength requirements are too low. With loomed armour and gloves a mere 12str gives access to 60+ body armour.  Consider high riding, athletics, shield skill and the changes to ranged damage vs heavy armour.

My final point of discussion is Iron flesh. It does not do very much. I would like to see IF as a prereq for armour or instead of/aswell as giving some hit points giving some kind of bonus to effective armour.


Please leave some comments. This mod is brilliant but could be improved in many ways. I think the change to the way agility works was a great start strength should be next on the agenda.

[Soldier_of_God]

On what you said, I agree that all shields should have a strength requirement, as they do increase in weight. holding up shields is hard work, and something like 1.5x weight would be appropriate.

Str armor requirement...

http://forum.melee.org/suggestions-corner/increase-the-difficulty-requirement-on-medium-heavy-tier-armours/

[Lactating Vegetables]

Agreed, how can someone who can hold an steel shield which weighs 11.5 but not hold any other weapon that weighs less?

[Thranduil]

Shield. A few people are calling out for shield skill (SH from here on) to be an agility strength based skill. This is not a good idea at all. High SH, IF and PS combined is probably too much (10ps 10sh hoplite anyone?). However a strength req on shields as well as the SH req could work. say 13 str for the heaviest shields.

Okay. Now it makes sense in my head.    I do like the idea of shield use being reliant on SH skill and STR. The current SH requirements are fine I think, so I personally wouldn't change that. I might go so far as to say a 15 STR for the heaviest shield though. It would help cut back on AGI based shielders with nigh-indestructible shields, though cmp did fix that in the patch I think. Most shielders would reach 15 STR anyways (at least, I've never bothered with a build that only had 4 PS) so I don't think it would be a problem, but it might provide a better variety of playstyles with shields and maybe a larger variety of shields getting used. Still, in most cases, the shield weight does a lot to slow down AGI builds, so 13 STR for the highest might be just fine.

[Miwiw]

Agreed. Being a heavy str player, there weren't many buffs lately and rather nerfs by buffing quite the opposite builds of agi players. For str builds are being compared slow to agi builds, why are str builds not much stronger than agi builds?
IF is not that much use unless you take 6+ while having at least 21 str (lvl 30 build).

Good suggestions.

[San]

HP and extra armour are pretty interchangeable for IF. I think something else should be changed regarding it.

Right now we have for strength: Power skills, Iron Flesh

Agi: Athletics, Weapon Master

Weapon master got buffed, increasing the distance in wpf between WM levels, and agi also governs shield and riding as well. Since you'll hardly ever get more than 1 power skill at a time, it's PS & IF vs ath, WM, and possibly 2 other skills. Out of the skills listed, IF just ain't cutting it for being nearly as useful, while PS/Ath are equivalent.

WM let's you swing better and gives you some damage. I was thinking letting iron flesh let you hold attacks better while increasing hp (yes, I compare the hp bonus to wpf's attack bonus), decreasing the drop off rate in damage for holding. Makes sense all around to me without overbuffing it or anything. Strength builds can't spam and rely on holds, so it seems to me like it would intrinsically help out.

Shield makes sense, but I do not think items can have multiple requirements like that. I also don't see much of a problem with <13 strength shielders considering high shield skill was nerfed, so axes are going to break them quite quickly compared to before. They're already limited on almost all other equipment what they could use.

[722_]

What if your strength level influenced how much armour you could wear before your start to loose WPF proficiency. for example the default could be 18 strength which gets you 10 weight of armour (what it is now)27 strength would allow you to wear 15 body armour without loosing proficiency but if you only had 9 strength you would loose 5 weight instead of gain it.

[Soldier_of_God]

So no troll, but what if IF gave +1 health and +1 armor instead of 2 health, as a hypothetical idea. I've always thought that IF should make the character harder to kill, like in fallout 3 or other rpg's with ironflesh like skills. strength got a huge nerf lately, and this may balance it out a little. only strength crutch would really benefit a huge amount (33/9 builds), min/maxers. most normal melee would have about 6-8 iron flesh, and it would reduce their health point total by 6-8 points, so it balances out, making strength more resistant to cut damage, so bodkins, throwing darts, and agi with pierce would have a slight buff, while strength would get a big advantage against cut.

[dreadnok]

Mega str builds are useless now. Better going balanced or agi

[Gravoth_iii]

Full str is about as weak as full agi now, 27/15 & 15/27 are about the same me thinks. Balanced still probably the best. I think attributes are pretty good as it is, wish the wpf at 5 WM or 6WM could be increased hybriding into throwing is kind of weak now with less than 7WM
As for Iron flesh i think its an underrated skill, i miss my 5IF, i removed some to maxout 9 WM instead but im not sure it was worth the trade.

Increasing str req for armours seems like an useless change to me, barely anyone uses heavy armour as it is and those who do are probably balance builds anyways. 60 body armour for someone with 12 str wont do much, he is still going to get pretty much oneshot by anything 7PS+.

Agreed. Being a heavy str player, there weren't many buffs lately and rather nerfs by buffing quite the opposite builds of agi players. For str builds are being compared slow to agi builds, why are str builds not much stronger than agi builds?
IF is not that much use unless you take 6+ while having at least 21 str (lvl 30 build).

Good suggestions.

I dont see why one attribute should be stronger than the other.

[owens]

^Gravoth try testing that with the damage calc.

Its simply not true.

[Tovi]

No strenght requirement, but SH should depend of Strenght level.

[Gravoth_iii]

What part? The 12 str 60 BA getting oneshot? A good 2h hit will atleast deal 90% damage so maybe you are right. Heavy armour is useless without having the hp to sustain it though. Take one extra hit, lose all your mobility advantages.

Consider high riding, athletics, shield skill and the changes to ranged damage vs heavy armour.

If you are talking about a 12 str build using this, it would pretty much never oneshot anything as 1h cav, and deal super shitty lance damage. A really shitty build in general, heavy armour does nothing when you cant deal damage.

[owens]

^ you dont make athletics sound very viable.

So either you are wrong or 90% of the community.


I wont reply to you until you test the values yourself. My IF solution solves both problems but will never be implemented.

[Gravoth_iii]

Oh no, athletics is viable, very viable. I've been an agiwhore throughout the entire history of crpg. But using heavy stuff with high agi removes the advantage of high athl. You are now only slightly faster than other enemies, yeah you can tank 1 or 2 more hits but with medium/light armour you could probably just have avoided those hits alltogether. Athl gets better the lighter equips you have, but then you can also not make as many/any mistakes.