Random (official) GM posts

[thefarmer]

Well I heard slash resistence doesn't help with cutthroat either. I found it doesn't work with hamstring. Is it supposed to?

A kiramon defender darts behind you quickly and tries to hamstring you with its pincers!
[Roll result: 102 (open d100: 53)]
With a vicious double-strike the kiramon defender slashes at your right hamstring!
... 4 points of damage!

Re: Slash resist manuevers? · on 4/6/2009 10:08:49 PM 3145


Reply
Cutthroat and Hamstring are special maneuvers whose primary functions are to bypass the target's armor in order to do highly specific damage (to the vocal chords for Cutthroat and the hamstring muscles for Hamstring). Padding, resistances, flares, armor divisors, and the like are thus all bypassed when the maneuver succeeds.

Coase

Moar

[thefarmer]

From Droit, via KP:

Category: Game Design Discussions
Topic: Critters and Creatures
Message number: 4582
Author: GS4-MESTYS
Date: 4/27/2007 8:37:17 pm
Subject: Re: Stronghold Bowels


>Number one:

A massive boulder comes barrelling into view!
In a vain attempt, you leap to avoid the speeding boulder! The krynch strikes you squarely, crushing you beneath it and the ground!
... 45 points of damage!
Awesome shot collapses one of your lungs!
You are stunned for 6 rounds!
Roundtime: 20 sec.

This is pretty much as bad a result as is possible for this maneuver. The various negative status effects can be mitigated or completely avoided based on a standard maneuver roll (see last paragraph).

>Secondly, the illoke doing their "teleport to you" maneuver that gives them no RT and casting stone fist immediately. I can deal with the no prep time for stone fist, it's just how they can step out of the wall and cause instant death that annoys me. Can't they have at least one round of RT after teleporting to me from half the bowels away?

Both the Illoke jarls and Illoke elders have Transference (225) in their respective repertoires, which does take up a normal amount of roundtime upon casting. The only functional differences between their version and the players' is the messaging and their ability to use it to target players in the area.

Their Stone Fist is also mechanically a spell, and if they are casting it without first preparing, it is a bug.

>Third, does the bowels really have to be unlocatable? It's not like there are really many people in the Landing capable of coming in there and rescuing me anyway (illoke always like to swarm around a corpse and kill people instantly when they come in), but I'd sort of like the rare opportunity to have someone attempt to rescue me.

The prevention of magical location within the hunting ground is indeed intended. It's meant to be a facet of the area itself.

>Now, an honest question. Are the illoke supposed to teleport behind the opening (where the earth elementals and krynches generate)? They don't ever spawn back there, but if I run through to the opening, the illoke will inevitably teleport to me (often just after I attack something and get into RT) after perhaps five or ten minutes of being back there. There aren't even people in the main area to generate them in the first place as far as I know.

The room range of the Illoke creatures' version of Transference is solely comprised of the whole of the Thanatoph Bowels. Even if you're not in a section in which they normally generate, they can still teleport to a valid target anywhere in the area; and since it is all considered one area, they will generate in their normal range of rooms.

>Another honest question -- why are the illoke so vulnerable to arrows? They're stone-like creatures, and yet arrows to the eye tear through them faster than I can use my axe to kill kobolds -- because sniping to the eye takes three seconds, versus my five second swing to kill a kobold.

This is a result of the Illoke creatures' natural armor, which is roughly equivalent to chain hauberk. This is in contrast to many of their rocky allies, who tend to be closer to full plate. It's much easier to achieve an endroll to get that puncture death critical on the former versus the latter. You might consider swapping out to a nice dagger against them, assuming you ambush and have a reliable means of knockdown.

>Lastly, what exactly helps in dodging stone fist? It doesn't seem to be physical skills (since I get hit every time), and yet it doesn't seem to be magical skills (since casters get hit almost every time). -Grendeg

The Illoke creatures' Stone Fist spell is primarily based around the standard maneuver roll. Spells such as Mobility (618), Prayer (313), and Dauntless (1606) will benefit you. Ranks in Combat Maneuvers, Perception, and Physical Fitness will also be of assistance. The Dexterity and Agility stats also play a role.

-M.

[Allereli]

Crumbly enhancive item value adjustment · on 4/7/2009 10:37:12 PM 1955


To better reflect the transient nature of enhancive items made to crumble after their final charges are gone, the assessed value of these items has been reduced. The silver value of enhancive properties of crumbly items will now be 2/3 of the value of the same properties in a non-crumbly item. Players might most readily see this change reflected in the reduced cost to recharge crumbly items using Adventurer's Guild bounty points.

Weapons, armor, and containers are already prevented from crumbling by the system, and are thus unaffected by this change.

Short-duration items that are activated for enhancive effect (like potions) are also unaffected by this change.

-Strath

This message was originally posted in Game Design Discussions, Items and Inventory. To discuss the above follow the link below.

http://www.play.net/forums/messages....1&message=1729

[DoctorUnne]

IOI: 4

>For the nth time this has been brought up, can we get at least an official comment on this? I have not once seen an official comment dealing directly with these same issues that have been brought up over and over.

I've commented on it many times before, but I can certainly do so again.

The problems with Stun Maneuvers largely fall into two groups: the balance of the skill, and the workiness of the skill.

As far as workiness, Stun Maneuvers definitely has some major issues, but I've spent a good amount of time investigating them and they're unfortunately very difficult to resolve. The problems with STUN MOVE and being unable to go in particular directions, for instance, have to do with the basic design of the movement system (which, as you can probably imagine, isn't something one messes with lightly). I've got a partial solution to that which will work in some instances, but solving it entirely isn't feasible.

As far as the balance, in general we don't feel that it's significantly out of balance. On the one hand, Stun Maneuvers is not intended to be quite as good as some of the other stun-mitigating skills, because Rogues have pretty good passive and active defenses. We look at professions as a whole, we don't compare similar skills in a vacuum, so Stun Maneuvers not being as good as Berserk does not, a priori, mean that Stun Maneuvers must be improved. On the other hand, there seem to be some misconceptions about how Stun Maneuvers works, which I can hopefully help with.

>Takes amazing amounts of RT regardless of success.
>-RT usually lasts longer than the stun for light stuns. Light stuns, of course, only work about 50% of the time, leaving you standing in the open with RT when you're no longer stunned.

It should take 5 seconds if you're mastered (more if you're not), which I wouldn't really call amazing. (If it's not taking 5 seconds, let me know.) By definition, this is more than a stun of less than 5 seconds, but if you have a 5 second stun and are mastered then you should have the maximum 95% chance of success for every skill.

>Has an amazingly high chance to fail and do absolutly >nothing but incur RT and waste stamina (which doesn't >matter because you are dead anyway if you need this and >it doesn't work)

I suspect you're exclusively attempting to use STUN MOVE. MOVE is by far the hardest skill; your success margin with MOVE can be as much as 40% lower than STANCE2, the next hardest skill, which is itself significantly harder than the ones below it. MOVE is definitely a crap shoot, but all the others can be pretty good, depending on your DIS bonus.

>-I may be wrong on this one, but last I checked we can't go into rooms that aren't basic cardinal directions.

You can go through portals with STUN MOVE.

>-Completely worthless for magical stuns
>-About 90-95% worthless for heavy physical stuns

Magical stuns are no harder to use Stun Maneuvers out of than physical stuns. (I don't know when this changed, since I believe it was true when the skill was released many years ago, and I'm not sure if we've stated this before, but it is so.)

>-Uses the same amount of stamina regardless of success. While this may make sense for something like subdue or sweep, that is because when you attempt subdue or sweep you still go through the motion whether or not you're successful. A failed stun maneuver attempt results in you doing nothing. Why does this cost so much stamina?

You're still trying just as hard when you fail as when you succeed. Just because you failed doesn't mean you didn't expend as much energy in the attempt.

(Note that all of these are what should be happening. Stun Maneuvers is weird enough that there's certainly a possibility that they're not happening, which would be a bug. If you like, I can watch you use the skill and see what your chance of success is under various circumstances, to make sure it lines up with what should be happening.)

- Consigliere Ildran, Shizlock Holmesplice

[StrayRogue]

As far as the balance, in general we don't feel that it's significantly out of balance. On the one hand, Stun Maneuvers is not intended to be quite as good as some of the other stun-mitigating skills, because Rogues have pretty good passive and active defenses. We look at professions as a whole, we don't compare similar skills in a vacuum, so Stun Maneuvers not being as good as Berserk does not, a priori, mean that Stun Maneuvers must be improved. On the other hand, there seem to be some misconceptions about how Stun Maneuvers works, which I can hopefully help with.

Um, rogues have decent passive/active defenses? No better than a warrior who get berzerk. Can we get someone with some actual sense working with the profession?

It was a real shame when the huge guild skill revamp came in and beefed up most skills yet left subdue and stun man in the dust.

[DoctorUnne]

I saw that this post was about to get washed away on the officials and rescued it. It's Anathemus' last post before he left which detailed all of his findings on redux in one location. It's not from a GM but he did extensive testing and it's got a lot of good info on redux.

Comrades,

I am leaving GemStone. I simply do not have time to play any longer. Before I leave, I want to put in one document everything I?ve figured out about redux.

Even the most basic understanding of Damage Reduction (redux) has prerequisites. Redux applies to AS/DS resolutions, which look like this:

Anathemus swings a broadsword at you!
AS: +130 vs DS: +55 with AvD: +36 + d100 roll: +48 = +159
... and hits for 37 points of damage!
Deep, bloody slash to your right thigh!
You are knocked to the ground!
You are stunned for 3 rounds!

For any given hit, one can obtain a value for raw damage and crit damage.

Raw damage is that damage that is solely a result of the endroll (marked above in bold) and the Damage Factor (DF), which itself depends only on weapon type, torso worn armor, and various multipliers such as CMAN Mighty Blow.

Crit damage is significantly more complicated; the game takes the sum of raw damage and crit padding or weighting and divides by the crit divisor, which depends on location hit, torso worn armor, and relevant armor accessories worn. The truncation of this quotient is the crit rank, which cannot exceed a value of 9. The actual crit rank for any given hit can range from this maximum to one half of it, rounded up. Once obtained, the actual crit rank is checked against a crit table specific to the damage type (e.g. slash, puncture) and body part (e.g. left eye, abdomen) and a crit message is selected that corresponds to a specific amount of crit damage.

Note: Crit padding cannot reduce what would have been a crit rank 1 or higher to a crit rank 0, and crit weighting cannot increase what would have been a crit rank 0 to a crit rank 1 or higher.

The sum of raw damage and crit damage, plus damage weighting or padding, is referred to as total damage. It is generally accepted that redux does not apply to damage weighting or padding, making hits involving either quantity unacceptable for redux calculations. [Incidentally, this is probably worth testing by someone at some point.]

When the defender has redux, the amount of total damage taken is reduced. This is a fairly recent modification to redux, taking place sometime around or after the switch from GemStone 3 to GemStone 4. In GemStone 3, redux applied only to raw damage (hence the archaic names ?Damage Factor Reduction? and ?DFRedux?). As such, calculators or methodologies using this approach are no longer accurate and will provide wildly divergent measurements. Unfortunately, the full interactions of redux are not yet known. To first order, it is permissible to define a Redux Factor (RF) as follows:

RF = 1 ? reduced total damage / unreduced total damage

Thus, a character that experienced no reduction would have an RF of .000. Let us return to the example given previously.

Anathemus swings a broadsword at you!
AS: +130 vs DS: +55 with AvD: +36 + d100 roll: +48 = +159
... and hits for 37 points of damage!
Deep, bloody slash to your right thigh!
You are knocked to the ground!
You are stunned for 3 rounds!

Reduced total damage refers to the ??and hits for? message. In GemStone, damage is rounded to the nearest whole integer or one if it would be rounded to zero. This uncertainty is negligible in almost every case. To obtain unreduced total damage, one requires a DF table, the endroll, and a table of crit messages. The crit message is that marked above in bold. It is not necessary to know how much crit padding or crit weighting occurred in any given hit, which is good because such information is impossible to obtain in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Unreduced raw damage is obtained by subtracting 100 from the endroll and multiplying by the Damage Factor, which is itself obtained by matching the weapon type (falchion, handaxe, etc.) to the armor group (Clothing, Soft Leather, Rigid Leather, Chain, Plate).

Unreduced crit damage is obtained by matching the crit message to the table. In very few cases, the same crit message can be used in more than one crit rank for more than one value of crit damage: it is best to discard these hits.

It is also best to discard any hit that has an especially low amount of damage relative to the granularity of GemStone rounding, for example a hit that only does 3 or 4 damage.

.

For this hit, we first find a reduced total damage of 37. Consulting a table, we find that a broadsword vs. clothing has a Damage Factor of .450, giving us a value for unreduced raw damage of:

URD = (159 - 100) * .450 = 26.55 = 27

Next, we obtain a value for unreduced crit damage of 17 for the rank 4 puncture crit to the left arm. Finally, we find a Redux Factor value of:

RF = 1 - 37/(27 + 17) = 1 - 37/44 = .159

Second Order

.

It has been shown that the ratio of crit to total damage (CDR) has a significant effect on the redux factor demonstrated for that hit. For the purposes of this section, it is useful to propose a baseline or average RF from which actual or observed values deviate, and the same for CDR. More specifically, the deviation of any given hit?s CDR from the baseline value in hundredths will cause a deviation of 2.5 thousandths in the opposite direction from the baseline RF. The baseline RF for a character is determined by level, redux skills trained, and spells known. The baseline CDR is somewhat more difficult to define, but in the interests of universality the author has proposed a baseline value of .24 for all characters and hits. This is not to say that the average hit for the average character has such a CDR, but that it is roughly representative of the mean for all usual hits. Returning to the previous example:

Anathemus swings a broadsword at you!
AS: +130 vs DS: +55 with AvD: +36 + d100 roll: +48 = +159
... and hits for 37 points of damage!
Deep, bloody slash to your right thigh!
You are knocked to the ground!
You are stunned for 3 rounds!

The CDR can be easily calculated as:

CDR = 17 / 44 = .386

Note that it is immaterial whether one uses both reduced or both unreduced values: it is fundamental to this understanding of redux that both crit damage and raw damage are reduced at the same rate, causing the redux factors to cancel out!

The deviation is thus:

delCDR = .386 - .240 = .146 = 14.6 hundredths

And one would expect a deviation in the RF of:

14.6 hundredths * -2.5 thousandths/hundredth = -36.5 thousandths = -.0365

Finally suggesting a baseline RF for this character of:

True RF = .159 + .0365 = .1955 = .196

Even with this correction, however, there is non-negligible randomization in the value obtained for RF. It is not within the purview of the author to decree what level of uncertainty is acceptable for any given player, but it is noted that after 10 to 15 hits further deviations of the averaged RF are quite small with this methodology.

It is extremely useful to have a single value with which one can usefully compare various training plans and situations.

.

Crit Divisors

.

Though this effect does not impact calculation of redux factors, it is worth noting that the crit divisor of a character with redux is measurably lower than that of a character without redux for equal armor conditions. This does not cause the character with redux to be at an overall defensive disadvantage to the character without. The quantitative effect is roughly:

1 ? RF/3

which is applied to the crit divisor in question. Thus, a character with no redux would have no crit divisor depression while a character with perfect (1) redux would experience a crit divisor of 6 in chain (2/3 * 9).

.

Order of Mark

.

It is also possible to formulate an entirely distinct theory of redux. Mark (who posts under SPYRIDONM on these boards) has proposed a two-RF theory that roughly speaking goes as follows: when the damage taken is under a certain threshold, a constant RF1 is applied only to raw damage; crit damage is not reduced. Once past this threshold, all damage is reduced more or less as stated above. There are several consequences to viewing redux through this lens, but it is the opinion of the author that both theories have their merits (indeed, for sufficiently large endrolls they become indistinguishable!).

.

Redux from Skills

.

It is somewhat more difficult to obtain a value for RF from skills alone. It has been shown by Porcell that the relative values of the redux skills are as follows:

Primary (physical fitness): 1
Secondary (armor, TWC, ambush, MOC, dodge, CM, shield): .4
Tertiary (weapon): .3

It has further been shown that the threshold for obtaining redux is roughly 109 redux points, though this number increases for levels under ~21. For instance, the threshold for a level 16 character has been observed to be above 126 redux points. Level also has an impact on how much redux a character derives from a particular amount of redux points: a higher level character will experience a higher redux factor value than a lower level character. The amount of redux factor gained per redux point tapers off fairly rapidly around 400 redux points for a level 40 character. It should be noted that the concept of whether further training is ?worth it? for the purpose of higher redux is irreducibly subjective and cannot be answered in a universal fashion. The author?s intent is only to provide numbers from which an individual can draw a more informed conclusion. The most complete testing to date is available on Krakiipedia at the following location:

http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Redux

The spell penalty is even less well understood, but preliminary findings indicate the following:

Foremost, that the penalty is multiplicative rather than subtractive. At each step of penalty, a modifier of 12/13 is applied to the base RF, where a step of penalty is defined by the character?s level divided by 20 and a seed of 2 as follows:

For a character at cap, up to 100/20 = 5 spells can be learned without penalty, and up to 5 + 5 + 2 = 12 spells can be learned without leaving the first level of penalty. For a level 100 warrior with a maximum of 100 spells, the penalty would be:
(0) 100 ? 5 = 95
(1) 95 ? 7 = 88
(2) 88 ? 9 = 79
(3) 79 ? 11 = 68
(4) 68 ? 13 = 55
(5) 55 ? 15 = 40
(6) 40 ? 17 = 23
(7) 23 ? 19 = 4
(8) 4 ? 21 < 0

(12/13)^8 = 52.7% modifier of the unpenalized RF.

.

.

.

It should be made clear that all statements made herein are made to the best of my empirical knowledge. I have no direct access to the code of the game itself, and as such it could work in an entirely different fashion from what I have proclaimed. The reason I endorse my findings is that they are to a large degree functionally equivalent with the workings of the game if not necessarily mechanically equivalent.

.

As a final note, I am pleased to be a part of this community. I hope that this information proves useful in the future.

-Anathemus? player

[Stunseed]

< I saw that this post was about to get washed away on the officials and rescued it. It's Anathemus' last post before he left which detailed all of his findings on redux in one location. It's not from a GM but he did extensive testing and it's got a lot of good info on redux. >

He posts as Latrinsorm here. You're not missing him.

[DoctorUnne]

He posts as Latrinsorm here. You're not missing him.

Oh word? Hahaha sorry I'm still fairly new. What up Latrinsorm? I'll rep you for being Anathemus.

[Rimalon]

From Oscuro:

>>I would have gotten more but people kept sancting and sanct-breaking crystals are freakin' worthless.

Yeah...about that...apparently I missed "carrying the one," so to speak. The formula has been fixed. It should favor the breaker a little more now. This is retroactive, so any existing shards will work fine.

>>The formula is only based on level and MIU, right Oscuro? Can I ask how much each one goes into a successful sanct break? I'm wondering now that you fixed the un-carried ones if I'm overtrained in MIU.

Level isn't a factor. There's a flat bonus for the breaker and every 2 ranks of MIU is equivalent to one rank of the applicable spell rank (MjS or Bard) or lore rank (Spirit Summoning or Telepathy) and each side gets a d100 roll.

----------

I told them those shards were fucking broken from Day 1.

AT LEAST THEY'RE FIXED NOW.

NO ONE EVER LISTENS TO ME RARRRRRRRRRRRRG!

[thefarmer]

Since nobody posted it, I'm reposting.

From Oscuro:

>>I would have gotten more but people kept sancting and sanct-breaking crystals are freakin' worthless.

Yeah...about that...apparently I missed "carrying the one," so to speak. The formula has been fixed. It should favor the breaker a little more now. This is retroactive, so any existing shards will work fine.

>>The formula is only based on level and MIU, right Oscuro? Can I ask how much each one goes into a successful sanct break? I'm wondering now that you fixed the un-carried ones if I'm overtrained in MIU.

Level isn't a factor. There's a flat bonus for the breaker and every 2 ranks of MIU is equivalent to one rank of the applicable spell rank (MjS or Bard) or lore rank (Spirit Summoning or Telepathy) and each side gets a d100 roll.