### Author Topic: a question regarding balance  (Read 8684 times)

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##### a question regarding balance
« on: October 31, 2015, 07:42:21 PM »
hello, i am having a trouble with understanding that how certain items can be usable in different situations, for example -
1) i have a dagger that does 10 damage for 1 turn and a great sword that does 20 damage in 2 turns (dps - the same ) ( in what cases dagger will be better than sword , and in what cases sword will be better ? )
2) i have little hp and great defense and i have many hp and low defense (where damage to kill the player - the same )

how to give differences and advantages to all situations in different conditions ?

#### Holsety

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #1 on: November 01, 2015, 10:05:31 PM »
Roguelikes usually don't think in terms of dps?
A dagger traditionally does 1d4 (a four-sided dice roll, ie 1 2 3 or 4) damage, while a greatsword would be 1d10.
A broadsword could be 2d4 (two four-sided die, so 1 2 3 or 4 + 1 2 3 or 4, total result anything between 2 and 8 ).
Which comes down to a bell curves and so on and so forth.

In in-game practical terms, maybe there's a monster with 3 defense; a dagger would do 0 damage 75% of the time, while a greatsword would do 0 damage 30% of the time. However, that broadsword would ALWAYS do damage (unless you roll 1+1).
I guess that's one way to balance things.

Dungeons and Dragons balances things by giving different weapons a different chance to crit, and a different damage multiplier ON crit.
For example a Kukri or rapier will crit more often, but a Greataxe crit multiplier is higher than a rapiers.

If you talk about 20 damage in 2 turns, maybe the greatsword "locks" you into an attack for 2 turns, which means an enemy can hit you twice for every 1 swing you do. In that case I'd make it do FAR more than 20 damage, because fighting more than 1 enemy would be very deadly.

Take a look at how Brogue does weapons (pay attention to maces, axes, etc). Then take a look at how The Slimy Lichmummy does weapons.
I think you'll get a feel for balance from TSL .
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#### Ancient

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #2 on: November 02, 2015, 09:56:17 AM »
Possibilities are endless in balancing. For 2) my favorite is having health do hot regenerate automatically. The good defense character will have low costs for health replenishment and the other high. That is, assuming you have chosen your healing to restore flat amount of hit points which is not necessary. If typical health restoration brings back percentage of maximum hit points the second character has it better.

Good point about DPS Holsety - this concept has little meaning in roguelikes since these are generally turn-based games.
Michał Bieliński, reviewer for Temple of the Roguelike

#### reaver

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #3 on: November 02, 2015, 10:58:50 AM »
Good point about DPS Holsety - this concept has little meaning in roguelikes since these are generally turn-based games.

Even if they are turn-based, if actions cost *varying* amounts of action points/units (or whatever it's called), then it starts again making sense, no? My in-the-works game plans to use such a system, so I'd be interested to hear any strong (but reasonable) opinions against such a system

#### AgingMinotaur

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2015, 12:41:17 PM »
I for one welcome any attempts at rethinking basics like combat. Rolling the dice can add suspense to a tabletop rpg, but in traditional RLs, there's a lot of uninteresting windshield fighting because of how similar systems are often incorporated. Concerning this bit:
1) i have a dagger that does 10 damage for 1 turn and a great sword that does 20 damage in 2 turns (dps - the same ) ( in what cases dagger will be better than sword , and in what cases sword will be better ? )
it strikes me that the dagger will probably be a better weapon against weak enemies, say your proverbial giant rat, who themselves act quickly but with little force. Using a sword here might give your opponent a free attack, whilst the dagger might dispatch of it in a single turn. But something like an ogre may be better to fight with the sword: let's say such an enemy resists 5 damage for each hit. With the dagger you'll have inflicted 10 damage in two turns, with the sword you'll have inflicted 15 damage.

Having said that, I intuitively think that heavy weapons should be scaled so that the increased damage makes up for having to in effect pass one turn. So maybe the sword should deal 25 damage per 2 turns if the dagger deals 10 damage per 1 turn. One could also imagine some kind of penalty to defense when you are queued to perform an attack, or maybe even the possibility that creatures dodge by moving to an adjacent square during the turn it takes you to initiate.

When it comes to defense vs. protection (your second example), that's always been a difficult nut to crack. My impression is that in most systems, it's sounder to go for low defense and high protection (ie. lots of hit points) since it makes your strategy more reliable. Let's say a character with heavy armor may expect to get hit for 5% of their total hp every turn, whilst a character with good defenses might get hit on average for 50% of their hp every ten turns. In the long run, that amounts to the same, but the defense-based character will never know exactly when he's going to get hit, and sometimes he won't even know what hit him, since each wound is much more grievous. I guess a high-defense character could be a viable option if the surrounding system allows for strategies like dispatching of enemies quite quickly, retreating from melee etc. to avoid getting hit at all. Then, the tank would have to live with getting his hp whittled down, whilst the rogue could hope to escape most battles without a graze. That could be especially effective in a game without natural regeneration, ie. where healing is a commodity in itself.

As always,
Minotauros
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#### Rickton

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2015, 02:53:22 AM »
hello, i am having a trouble with understanding that how certain items can be usable in different situations, for example -
1) i have a dagger that does 10 damage for 1 turn and a great sword that does 20 damage in 2 turns (dps - the same ) ( in what cases dagger will be better than sword , and in what cases sword will be better ? )
A dagger is probably better for picking food out of your teeth than a sword.
But in all seriousness, most games give weapons different properties, for example, a dagger can also be thrown while a sword can't, or if you attack an unaware enemy with a dagger you backstab them for massive damage while you can't do that with a sword.
Aside from special properties, a dagger could also be a faster attack, or have a higher chance to hit.
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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #6 on: November 03, 2015, 07:51:02 PM »
thanx to all for explanations!
reading it i remembered another one advantage for the dagger - if both weapons would have non-scalable bonuses ( for example - damage + 5 ) then dagger would inflict more damage.

#### Ancient

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #7 on: November 04, 2015, 12:04:30 AM »
Even if they are turn-based, if actions cost *varying* amounts of action points/units (or whatever it's called), then it starts again making sense, no? My in-the-works game plans to use such a system, so I'd be interested to hear any strong (but reasonable) opinions against such a system
Actually, it still does not. If I press the attack buttons very fast my rusty thoroughly corroded -5 tin opener will do more damage per second than your broadsword.
Michał Bieliński, reviewer for Temple of the Roguelike

#### mushroom patch

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #8 on: November 04, 2015, 08:16:49 AM »
re: the OP, if you're not sure how a combat system in a roguelike game might differentiate daggers, swords, and other kinds of weapons you should try playing some roguelike games and see how they do it.

re: discussion about the term "DPS" used in connection with roguelike games, the appropriate way to deal with such a transparently useless and pedantic point, as it appeared in the response by Holstety, is to ignore it, not reply to it so that someone else gets the chance to re-up it. smh

#### reaver

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #9 on: November 04, 2015, 08:17:53 AM »
Even if they are turn-based, if actions cost *varying* amounts of action points/units (or whatever it's called), then it starts again making sense, no? My in-the-works game plans to use such a system, so I'd be interested to hear any strong (but reasonable) opinions against such a system
Actually, it still does not. If I press the attack buttons very fast my rusty thoroughly corroded -5 tin opener will do more damage per second than your broadsword.

I think that's then what you have flat damage reduction for, as all your tin opener attacks will be absorbed. Also, being turn based and all, mashing won't help much besides wearing out your keyboard, I'm talking about damage-per-game-second...

#### Ancient

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #10 on: November 04, 2015, 02:26:21 PM »
Then you are talking of damage per (standard length) turn, not damage per second.
Michał Bieliński, reviewer for Temple of the Roguelike

#### Quendus

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #11 on: November 04, 2015, 02:49:47 PM »
Apart from armoured enemies and numerous low-health enemies, another use case where the dagger wins is if the player has a set chance on every attack to inflict a status effect on the enemy. The enemy is more likely to avoid the effects when the player uses the sword.

#### Paul Jeffries

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #12 on: November 04, 2015, 09:52:23 PM »
Setting aside things like damage reduction, critical hits and so on, there are two important unknown factors to consider in the dagger vs sword question as-asked:

1. Are you modelling DPS (I think it's perfectly obvious what you meant by that term) using wind-ups or cool-downs?  i.e. when using the sword do you skip a turn, then inflict damage, or do you inflict damage, then skip a turn?  If the former the dagger has the advantage, if the latter the sword does because in those cases there is a 50% chance of the weapon killing the enemy one turn before the other would.  An additional disadvantage of the first option is that the enemy could potentially 'dodge' the attack by moving away in that first turn.
2.  What other options do you have in combat other than attacking and how frequently will they be decisive?  This is really a question of how much worse the sword is than the dagger because the sword is locking you into a certain course of action for a turn.  Whether or not this matters depends on what else you could be doing during that turn - drinking potions, casting spells, running away and so on.  The dagger will give you a faster 'reaction speed', better able to adjust your tactics on-the-fly to changes in the situation, but if all you're likely to be doing is bumping away turn after turn anyway then that may not work out to be all that much of an advantage.

#### mushroom patch

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##### Re: a question regarding balance
« Reply #13 on: November 06, 2015, 09:27:34 AM »
Then you are talking of damage per (standard length) turn, not damage per second.

no shit smdh