cRPG uses the Native values for armor soak and reduce calculation. They influence how much damage gets through after a hit. Armor soak reduces the incoming damage by an armor depended value that is not scaled with the amount of incoming damage. The soak is mostly responsible for the glancing blows since it often lowers the incoming damage below the interrupt threshold, allowing the target to continue their action even while being struck. Because within the calculation the used armor value is randomized heavily (50%-100%) glancing blows are often frustratingly unpredictable. Fighting against a berserked tin can with a 1h sword with low PS is often enough rather luck-dependant that way because a glance means death if the opponent keeps swing no matter what.
Armor reduce is the second part of the armor calculation. It lowers the damage that is left after the soak subtraction. The reduce scales down the incoming damage by an armor dependent percentage. A reduce of 50% of course has greater effect on the 60 damage incoming from the longaxe blow compared to the meager 6 damage that are left after the soak stole most of the nordic sword slash. A proper reduce has the potential to keep 1hit insta deaths in check.
The problem now is that in Native and in the current cRPG the armor soak is alot more important than the reduce. Soak rules. I did some calculations and in most cases the soak had the biggest impact on preventing damage. This combined with the (from my point of view) often frustratingly random glancing blows gave me the idea to change the status quo.
I suggest now to lower soak values for cutting, piercing and blunt while increasing the reduce values by a good amount. The goal is to keep the average damage the same or even to lower it abit so heavy armor is compensated for the lesser glancing blow thingy.
Advantages:
* Less glancing blows, even with lower PS and cutting damage
- Less frustations for low levels
- Less randomness in fights/duels in heavy armor
- Better chances for agi melee builds
* Less 1 or 2hit insta deaths from heavy hitting weapons + high PS
- Makes a single mistake less lethal in an armor duel
- Makes armor more important to survive backrape
- Good armor helps better against high damage weapons like the heavy crossbows, lancers or heavy melee
Disadvantages:
* Archers with weak bows have an easier time actually doing damage against armor
* Piercing damage will become become better than blunt damage because it overcomes armor reduce best(solution is to lower the damage of piercing weapons like 1h pick, morning star or lances)
* Tin cans will feel more vulnerable because weaker weapons can hurt them which would have glanced before
There is an alternative solution suggested by Shik to lower the interupt threshhold to 0 so every hit no matter what would interrupt the tin can. Advantage here would be that the damage would stay the same. I don't like this much though because every hit interrupting would mean that spam with turning in attacks to the maximum would become viable. We had that in Native beta and I don't want that again.
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