Re: [Wesnoth-dev] New dwarven unit proposal

[Richard Kettering]

On Feb 25, 2005, at 7:15 AM, Joseph Simmons wrote:

> 20-21 gold. Probably ~8-2 melee (remember its magic). I figure you 
> can't swing a hammer very quickly. If you want more strokes, 6-3 
> maybe.
> Having a melee magic attack is not a new idea, AFAIK. The Shadow Mage 
> line has it. (that's not an official unit, but its used fairly often). 
> But that doesn't mean its not a good idea.

Sounds fine.

> > I would also like to suggest an aura for this unit.  My idea is a 
> > stoneskin aura, which would make all adjacent units subtract damage 
> > from attacks dealt to them.
> > The level-2 smith would cause an aura which would reduce the damage 
> > of all attacks by one.
> > Level-3 - two damage, level-4 - three damage.
> This sounds rather complex. Why not give them the same specialty, but 
> do something like leadership - it is more effective for lower levels? 
> Gives ~20% attack resistance to physical attacks per level difference. 
> So at fourth level, it give ~60% resistance to attacks... that might 
> be too powerful.

This does not break the kiss principle, because, unless something 
bizarre is going on in the code, it should be as easy as multiplicative 
factor bonuses to apply.  AKA, besides just multiplying the resistance 
by .80 (for 20% attack resistance), it just subtracts one from the 
damage.

Resistance is applied by multiplying the damage by a number - this is 
why units with resistance have numbers like 80, rather than 20 for 20% 
resistance.  It means that you multiply the damage by .80.

> > This should, perhaps be limited to pierce/blade/impact attacks, and 
> > should not be able to reduce damage below 1 damage per strike.
> I think the limitation to physical attacks is good, but it might be 
> seen as too complex. By reduce damage below 1 damage per strike, you 
> mean it cannot make them do 0 damage, right? That is i believe already 
> done for all damage-reducing effects (like resistance and bad time of 
> day). Or do you mean it cannot reduce damage by more than 1? That 
> would be odd, and I doubt its what you mean, but its how I read what 
> you said at first.

An attack cannot be reduced to doing zero damage - if it would, it 
still does 1 damage.  This whole idea is similar to the night elves' 
"Mountain Giant" in warcraft.  The unit had an ability which would 
subtract 12 damage from all strikes directed against it, though it 
would not reduce their damage below three (this given that weak units 
had a ~15 damage attack, and the mountain giant had 1600 hitpoints).

The idea behind this, and the reason that it is a simple subtraction, 
is that it scales very differently than multiplicative damage 
reduction.  The effect of this is that this makes units with attacks 
that have low damage values do very little damage, whilst not heavily 
reducing the damage of those who do a lot of damage.

If we did the 20% reduction vs. subtract by 1, consider the following:

dorf gets attacked by elvish fighter @5-4
4-4  vs.   4-4

dwarf gets attack by troll @20-2
16-2  vs.  19-2

And then compare a 20% reduction with subtract by 3:

dorf gets attacked by elvish fighter @5-4
4-4  vs.   2-4

dwarf gets attack by troll @20-2
16-2  vs.  17-2

The idea behind this is to make it so that powerful attacks from 
"strong" units punch through the defense, whereas weak attacks are 
soaked up by it.  A percent resistance would affect all attacks in the 
same way.