COGG BBS

First of all, 75% of a character's Ranged Combat skill may now apply to Dodge rolls, just as is the case with Melee Combat. The greater of one's Melee- or Ranged-based numbers will be applied (they don't stack with each other).

Second of all: Dodge and Shield Use skills are now completely supplementary. They simply add 50% of the skill to the relevant defense roll. So if you have 500 Shield Use skill, that's +250 to your Block defense on top of whatever you're getting from Melee or Ranged. This should solve the issue of the defense skills having been useless if they were significantly below your Melee or Ranged skill, because the system would previously just take the better of the two bonuses.

So now, if you have 700 Melee and 200 Dodge, your Melee skill isn't making your Dodge investment useless. Your Dodge is still adding +100 do your dodge roll on top of the 75% you get from your Melee skill.

This means that people can invest as much as they want in the supplementary defense skills instead of feeling they need to be more or less even with their Melee/Ranged skill to be useful.

This also means that someone who invests in a defensive skill will have higher defense potential than someone who only invests in Melee and depends on parry.

Some number examples:

A character with 300 Melee, 300 Shield means they would have:
300 parry (100% of their Melee skill)
225+150 = 375 block (75% of their Melee skill, plus 50% of their Shield skill)

A character with 700 Melee, 700 Shield means they would have:
700 parry
525+350 = 875 block

A character with 700 Melee but only 200 in Shield would still benefit from that relatively low defense investment with:
700 parry
525+100 = 625 block
Block not quite on par with parry because they have a much lower shield investment, but when it comes to non-parryable attacks, they're still going to have a very respectable 625 Block defense, where in the old system they would only have a 525 Block defense from their Melee, and their Shield skill would just have been ignored because its bonus of 200 was lower than 525.

What this is all aimed at achieving is that it's no longer pointless to have a defense skill that's significantly lower than your Melee or Ranged. If you have a whopping 700 Melee but can only afford points to bump Dodge up to, say, 300, that's fine. It's still going to benefit you, rather than be 100% wasted like it was in the old system.

Is graceful dodge impacted by this? Do your range/melee skills get applied to those rolls as well when in roundtime?

All Graceful Dodge does is take a percentage of your Dancing or Acrobatics skill to go toward Dodge rolls *instead* of the Dodge skill. It's a skill substitution, and doesn't change the way dodge mechanics actually work (other than having the requirement for low roundtime/encumbrance to be considered).

So you're saying I should make a dodgy dancy ranged fighter. Also, is ranged used vs ranged attacks only, or is it effective at avoiding melee attacks as well? What about melee defending against ranged?

They're equally effective against both. Presumably, either combat training includes some basic "how to not get killed while you're trying to kill" instruction.

I like these changes for combat characters, but the one problem I see is what if I want a character that doesn't do combat, but I want to be able to dodge? A big appeal of graceful dodge for example is that your non combat character can now dodge and survive in combat without having to know how to fight, but with these changes you're now getting 50% less benefit from that.

So I'm not sure if it was intended this way, but this was a pretty big nerf to non fighters. I luckily have some melee in my build now, but originally I didn't and just had dodge, and I would have been pretty bummed out about this update if that was still the case.

And taking from a conversation on OOC today, a point was raised with the fact that technically Melee/Ranged combat contributes more to dodge than the Dodge skill does.

If a character doesn't have any melee/ranged, and is just trying to be a defensive character with be it dodge or block, it's very inefficient. They could easily sink those points into melee/ranged, and get a lot more bang for their buck.

Hmmm. We could flip it around so you only get 50% from Melee/Ranged, and 75% from Dodge? Combatants who train both are still going to be better off than someone who only trains Dodge, as they should be, but then people who only want to specifically train Dodge get more for their effort?

And/or maybe some kind of ability where as long as your Melee and Ranged are below a very low amount, you get 100% of your Dodge skill applied? Or like Slippery Coward, it can apply 100% of your Dodge skill but only if you haven't made any of your own attacks in the past 10 seconds, and are purely on the defensive. Or make it a tactic, where it tanks your offense but gives you 100% of your Dodge benefit to defense.

Any of those sound good? Any other ideas?

I went ahead with the first option of flipping them around, so Dodge and Block skills now contribute 75% to their defensive rolls, and Melee and Ranged now only give 50% to doge and block rolls. Get a feel for that and if it still feels off, let me know.

I like the second idea as well, for increasing dodge effectiveness from slippery coward. Although I suggest adding on a bit of a luck or risk factor, so the longer you're in combat, the more likely you are to roll low. I feel like there should also be a way to substitute acrobatics and dancing for full dodge rolls, but probably within a society or specialization of a guild.