Upcoming Save vs Aff modification

[Davairus]

Hi guys,

Sometime in the next couple of weeks/month we intend to deploy a pretty major change to save vs afflictive. This has been in the pipeline for a long time, as it is in fact is a critical feature of afflictive module plans.

The change is, conceptually, instead of having just a 50% or do-nothing model for save vs afflictive, it will also fall off linearly. But the goal posts will also be moved. Spells will be able to do their FULL damage every time against targets with NO saves, instead of often being saved as they do right now. However, if you have FULL saves, then yes, hellstreams will do NO damage as you expect. Note that this rests on top of the existing 50% or nothing system, it does not replace it.

Well that is a slight over-statement, as it would be ridiculous for a spell to do just zero damage, but hopefully its clear how it will work.

There are several reasons why we want to make this change, here are a few of them:

1) It is not fun to take a string of bad luck and die in 3 hellstreams because you chance wearing say +30 save aff and fail every time.

2) Nor is it fun for an invoker to fight some warrior with only sanc/protection and find most of his spells are garbage and they are meanwhile dropping full hit/dam on his head wearing no saves at all.

So you can see that the concept addressed both of these scenarios. The afflictive spells will be less reliant on luck, and a bit more strategic, so if you were fighting say an illusionist, you'd have to get the mental/afflictive balance right. If you were jaunting around in full hit/dam with no saves, some invoker is going to just barrier up and blow you away.

What we are hung up on is just the numbers. In terms of "feel", what I would like to see is that this save aff vs invokers becomes every bit as important as save mals is when fighting classes with that, which if you have any imagination at all, you'll know its a really bad idea to fight with zero save mal.


I am mentioning this early because we're nearing release and I would like to give you guys a chance for feedback, rather than have a repeat of combat module where we end up with golf bags of weapons and it doesn't take well.

[Arishel]

Something like:

No saves = 100% Damage from Afflictive
10 saves = 90% Damage from Afflictive
20 saves = 80% Damage from Afflictive
Etc, etc. ?

I know you're probably like, really, this guy is putting this?

Please don't misunderstand my obvious misunderstanding for rudeness.

I like the idea here. It would allow for opportunity to capitalize for any afflictive casting class. I don't know the cap for saves and only work by feel for them anyway. I don't know the code lingo you guys use to implement all of this, but I do appreciate everything you are working for to make the game better for all who play it.

Should we also think of same spell reduction? I know that you have familiarized the attunement thing with invokers, but I think with anyone who is subjective to a type of pain, feeling, etc.. they begin to adapt to that pain, feeling, etc. There is a guy who hikes in his underwear in sub-zero temperatures, for instance. He has trained his body to withstand the cold for a little longer than the average person. I bring this up here, because it has to do with Invokers and afflictive.

[Olyn]