•
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Well now, things have changed again, in Elf's opinion
08/25/2019, 18:53:30
|
The Elf writes:
Does Dark Magic work better if your rep is negative? A couple of weeks ago, I killed old Witherfang for my Paladin's promotion, using naught but weapons and Elemental spells. It was tough, but doable. This time around, with my Dark and Light both at Master level and a party of similar level and strength, I whaled away with Shrapmetal. Result: 4 points damage. I changed to Implosion. Result: 26 points damage. Tried again. Shrap: never more than 5 points. Implosion or Ice Bolt: never less than 7. Brute force: variable from 4 to 24. In both this attempt and the one two weeks ago, my rep was Respectable.So tell me again, what's so wonderful about Dark Magic? P. S. ANY attack seems to be much more powerful if you can manage a direct head shot. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've found Shrapmetal to be virtually un-aimable, except for a vague direction of attack.
|
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Let me explain some things...
08/25/2019, 19:44:30
|
Ramillies writes:
First of all, the center line that shows the combat results (e. g. "Shrapmetal hits Longfang Witherhide for 5 points") shows only the last result. That means that when you hit him with 7 pieces of Shrapmetal, the 7 messages come one after another and you see only the last one. Another thing you should know is how the resistances work in this game. I'm not sure about Longfang's stats, but let's assume he's an ordinary Red Dragon, which has a physical resistance of 50. The resistances work like this: first, if your resistance is R, calculate P = R/(30 + R). In the case of the dragon, P = 50/80 = 62.5%. This P is the probability to cut the incoming damage in half. So if you use an Implosion which rolls 80 damage, there is 62.5% chance to reduce it to 40. But that's not all: if the damage is reduced, there is ANOTHER roll to reduce the damage, and you get to roll either until you fail, or until you reduce the damage to 1/16 of the original amount. So in the dragon's case, there is 37.5% that it takes the full 80 damage, 23.4% that the damage is reduced once to 40, 14.6% that it is reduced twice to 20, 9.1% that it is reduced thrice to 10 and 15.3% that it is reduced four times to 5. This weird mechanism has interesting effects. It, for example, explains the following scene that seems to occur quite often: you blast a monster with Incinerate for 150 damage (you had a good roll and the opponent failed to resist). Then you do it immediately again and it's only for 5 damage (your roll sucked and the opponent rolled 4 successes on resistance). That's just how the life goes in this game.  By the way, I don't like Dark Magic too much either. I tried Shrapmetal against some dragons, and one cast wasn't even enough to bring one down. (At dark magic level of ~30.) The math does work out, but that doesn't make the disappointment any smaller. And ad P. S.: I'm sorry, but there have been lots of such claims in the past and all have been refuted by more diligent experimentation. It's a bit like all the claims that in order to have the best enchant results, you need to do it in the evening when it is full moon or whatever.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I also wanted to add that...
08/25/2019, 19:47:53
|
Ramillies writes:
the only reliable way of determining how much damage you inflicted on an enemy with Shrapmetal, double bow shot or anything else that hits monsters with multiple projectiles at once is using the Horn of Ros that shows the exact amounts of hit points. Then you have a look before the attack, perform the attack, have another look and take the difference of both values to get the real harm inflicted.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Ramillies, I like your style. Thanks.
08/25/2019, 20:15:36
|
|
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I'm sorry, but there's something here I don't understand.
08/26/2019, 05:13:43
|
Peter2 writes:
You say "I tried Shrapmetal against some dragons, and one cast wasn't even enough to bring one down."Did you expect it to? I have never yet brought down one of the top monsters (those giving level 6 treasure) with one hit from anything. The weakest of the 3 top dragons, the red dragon, has 880 hit points, and I know of only 1 spell that can do anything approaching that and that's Mass Distortion. Unfortunately, it's a most unreliable spell and most of the time the damage it does is quite small. Also, it won't touch creatures immune to magic, and there are a fair number of those. The best I've ever done is to bring down an undamamged gold dragon with three casts of Shrapmetal, using casters with Dark Magic mastery and an effective skill level of IIRC about 57.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Red and Blue Dragons can be brought down...
08/26/2019, 05:47:04
|
ragwort writes:
w/ one shot of finger of death. Doesn't work against monsters w/ magic immunity. Need to have Master Dark w/ effective level 20 (rings!) for best chance. Finger of death says Master level 20 equals 100% chance of success but I've used against peasants and often doesn't work first or even multiple times.Downside of FoD is you don't get experience points unless using recent Grayface patch.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I forgot about that one.
08/26/2019, 06:59:29
|
Peter2 writes:
I've tried it, but even with high levels in Dark Magic, it got through too infrequently to make me at all enthusiastic about it.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
That's true.
08/26/2019, 09:53:42
|
Ramillies writes:
However, my experience with the spell is just the same as yours. The spell description is either plainly wrong, or there's something else in the play that I don't know of.(I just happen to know this from the receiving side — the Minotaur King has the spell at 14 (Normal skill), so with each cast, there should be 14% chance to kill a character. My experiences from Kriegspire just don't support that — I'd say that the success rate was more like 1%.)
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
That's my experience, too.
08/27/2019, 12:41:36
|
Peter2 writes:
It takes too long to get an attack through, and while my Fingers of Death are not working, the opposition has made a real meal of my party.It's one of the reasons I've never seriously tried to defeat Q in a straight head-on battle. I might be able to do it with a party of knights, but that's not my style of party and against ACSS, eventually Q's attacks get through. I have to hide my party round the corner and let Q's spells waste themselves against the stonework.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I tried that once.
08/27/2019, 23:09:30
|
Ramillies writes:
And I won! It was close, though; he managed to kill off three characters and only one was left standing. However, when compared to the number of attempts he got while I had to get rid of his 16000 or how much HP, I don't think his efficiency was more than 1-2% per cast.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Just realized against peasant I was testing M5 scroll which would be 25% chance.
08/26/2019, 11:25:40
|
|
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I just tested against some Archers.
08/29/2019, 11:59:32
|
Ramillies writes:
They have no magical resistance, and I used the spell with a character that had Master Dark magic at 18 + Guinevere which should add 1/2, i. e. total of 27. The spell mostly worked, but there have been cases when an archer was clearly hit by it and still nothing happened. So the spell description is maybe just wrong? Or there is some other factor working, completely unknown.(P. S.: These were tests against the blue and red archers. When testing it on the green ones (with 10 magic resistance), the results have been much worse. There was roughly 50% efficiency, but I met one archer that got hit 6 times by the spell and still lived. According to my calculation, there is only 0.024% chance that this happens, so I wonder whether there has been some obstruction, maybe the spell hitting the ground or whatnot? But I could clearly see the spell hitting the archer.)
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
The chance an enemy will resist Finger of Death = 30/(30 + MonsterResistance + MonsterLevel)
10/04/2019, 16:12:33
|
Lightning Lance writes:
There is an extra calculation going on that explains why Finger of Death is often so useless.First, of course, there's the chance of the spell itself. You need master skill 20 to get 100% here. Secondly, the enemy can resist it. The calculation for it to connect is 30/(30 + MonsterResistance + MonsterLevel). So as you can see, higher level monsters are more likely to resist it. This is also the case for spells like Mass Distortion, Stun, Slow, Paralyze, etc. etc.
So if an enemy is level 30, even without any resistances, it will only work half the time... and the higher level the enemy is, the less likely it becomes that it will work. In fact, Mass Distortion is even worse: not only do you need an effective earth magic skill of 38 to deal damage equal to 100% of the monster's hit points, the monster can also resist the spell outright with that 30/(30 + MonsterResistance + MonsterLevel) calculation, but also! if all that goes through it can still resist the damage as if it was a regular damage spell. And all that is assuming the monster isn't just immune to magic anyway.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I meant the chance they won't resist it. Also it got posted twice, sorry 
10/04/2019, 16:16:15
|
|
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Why Finger of Death often gets resisted
10/04/2019, 16:13:37
|
Lightning Lance writes:
There is an extra calculation going on that explains why Finger of Death is often so useless.First, of course, there's the chance of the spell itself. You need master skill 20 to get 100% here. Secondly, the enemy can resist it. The calculation for it to connect is 30/(30 + MonsterResistance + MonsterLevel). So as you can see, higher level monsters are more likely to resist it. This is also the case for spells like Mass Distortion, Stun, Slow, Paralyze, etc. etc.
So if an enemy is level 30, even without any resistances, it will only work half the time... and the higher level the enemy is, the less likely it becomes that it will work. In fact, Mass Distortion is even worse: not only do you need an effective earth magic skill of 38 to deal damage equal to 100% of the monster's hit points, the monster can also resist the spell outright with that 30/(30 + MonsterResistance + MonsterLevel) calculation, but also! if all that goes through it can still resist the damage as if it was a regular damage spell. And all that is assuming the monster isn't just immune to magic anyway.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Well, your incessant talking about how awesome Shrapmetal was made me to expect that. 
08/26/2019, 09:47:39
|
Ramillies writes:
When I saw that it won't be able to bring down a dragon, I said to myself: "Hmmmm, what could be wrong?" Only then I made a rough calculation of the expected damage and saw that I really had no reason to expect that .It only made me a bit upset because at that point, it almost looked like that disposing of them with good old melee weapons worked just as well as Shrapmetal. (I would never imagine how powerful would a CCSS party be in a normal melee until I tried myself. Especially the sorcerers with two daggers get so many attacks in, and if every fifth or so is for triple damage (easily exceeding 100), it just adds up so fast.)
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Dual wielding
08/26/2019, 11:01:45
|
The Elf writes:
I keep seeing references to fighting with a weapon in each hand, even from NPC's in the game. Yet I find it impossible to put a weapon in each hand. What is it--do you have to have mastery in whatever weapon or something? (I've been so busy levelling up all available people in Water, Dark, Light, and Fire that there're scarcely any points left over for melee! Plus, my crew isn't even up to level 40 yet.)In most other RPG's (yes, Virginia, there are other RPG's--I've actually played a few,) dual wielding is a separate skill that has to be learned. How is it done here?
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
You need a Mastery in Sword or an Expertise in Dagger.
08/26/2019, 11:23:57
|
Ramillies writes:
At Expert Dagger, you can wield daggers in your off-hand (and something else in the main hand). Similarly, at Master Sword, you can wield swords in your off-hand.However, if you don't use Grayface's patch, it doesn't make too much sense to use it, since your resulting attack time will be equal to the sum of attack time of the both weapons. So you will be very slow and your "damage per time unit" will actually drop (or at best stay the same) by dual wielding. With Grayface, the attack time is just the larger attack time of the two, and it starts to be viable. (Fun fact: when you obtain Blasters, you can dual-wield Blasters with Swords or Daggers, and the melee weapons do count towards the total attack and damage! So imagine a blaster rifle with a dagger of The Dragon, for instance...)
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I don't think ANY game designers have a real feel for dual wielding
08/26/2019, 12:49:35
|
The Elf writes:
In some games, the speed and damage done are an average of the two weapons, plus a small percentage bonus for damage. In others, damage is the sum of the two, plus a big speed penalty. In most cases, it doesn't really pay to use two weapons. (Are you listening, Bethesda, Wild Tangent, Runic, et al?)
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I'd agree with that – even the table-top D&D systems like Wizards of the Coast get it wrong in my opinion.
08/27/2019, 11:57:24
|
Peter2 writes:
Even under the most advantageous conditions, two-weapon fighting (TWF) under AD&D rules suffer a -2 penalty to the ability to hit an opponent with an attack. They have either not found – or more likely they have totally ignored – the recognised schools of two-weapon fighting, such as the Renaissance style using a rapier and a dagger. How on earth did they imagine the Main Gauche dagger got its name?OK, accepting that the left-hand weapon cannot strike as easily or as often as the one in the dominant hand and is used in part for parrying, there is no reason for the weapon in the dominant hand to suffer any attack penalties if used in a recognised TWF style. I've not been through the calculations that would be required to work out what would be needed so that the game woould not be unbalanced, but it would probably be playable (and more realistic) to limited the style to light weapons only with a dagger in the off hand, leave the dominant weapon unpenalised, and either give the dagger a -3 hit penalty with no armour bonus (from parrying) or -4 hit penalty and +1 armour bonus, or possibly a -5 hit penalty and +2 armour bonus.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I think that all of them just think: "Dual wielding! That has so much potential to be overpowered!"
08/27/2019, 23:58:11
|
|
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
I too think that's the reason.
08/28/2019, 12:50:48
|
Peter2 writes:
But TWF is already quite severely disadvantaged in that (1) it needs a special feat to overcome some of its massive penalties, and (2) it can only be used in a full round attack. I don't see it being especially useful for a character other than a rogue, and if it weren't for the rogue's potential sneak attack bonuses, it wouldn't be a huge benefit to him/her either. Consider: the only way a rogue can get into position to use TWF is to be within 5 feet of his target at the start of the round, and to get the sneak attack bonus he needs either to have surprise or to be flanking his target. How likely is that? So, given the right conditions, a rogue has the potential to do a LOT of damage, but the conditions needed are quite restricted.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Interesting, however I'll still greatly favor Shrapmetal
08/27/2019, 16:28:24
|
Greate Pier the Worse writes:
Yes, it takes 3 to 5 casts at point blank range (at L57 effective skill, to kill a top tier monster), but when using an SSDC party, that means you can potentially drop one of those monsters in just one round of combat.
In terms of pure DPS it may not be the best solution, but pure DPS is hard to land against anything that's actually moving and worse yet, fighting back.Realistically (with some practice) I find that Shrapmetal just kills larger monster quicker than anything else.
Plus, it's Physical damage, to which Gold Dragons are NOT immune.
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
At skill 57, probably yes.
08/27/2019, 23:26:59
|
Ramillies writes:
My skill never exceeded 30. Honestly put, the late game of MM6 and MM7 alike is not that fantastic from my viewpoint — it's mostly lots and lots of combat, which is quite mindless in MM's. Hence, most of the late game reduces to a "brick on 'A'", and by the time I blow up the Hive, I'm glad it's over. So I'm definitely not the one who would extend the game too much behind its "natural" length.And at level 30, it just isn't worth it. To bring down one gold dragon, you need 3 "perfect" (with all 7 missiles) hits on average, and that needs 150, but more likely 200 mana. It's nice that my characters have 1000 mana each, but even that won't last for long (if we add all the buffs, healing, flying etc.) I like more sustainable solutions. With all of that melee, I could swarm the dragon with so many attacks that he wouldn't be able to respond more than 2-3 times. I can deal with him face-to-face in turn-based mode, just take those attacks, and spend 30 mana for a Power Cure occasionally. (By the way, I have the same problem with Peter's method of clearing Darkmoor. Dragon Breath is awesome, but all of my characters' mana is sufficient maybe for a single hall of eyes.)
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Yes! I had forgotten just how relentless. . .
08/28/2019, 12:31:51
|
The Elf writes:
. . .all the fighting was. Most RPG's follow a pattern thus:
1. Enter dungeon, poke around a bit
2. Find that the place isn't deserted, as it first appeared
3. Fight off a few monsters
4. Recalculate: fight off more monsters
5. Go to next room/level, repeat steps 2 - 4
6. Enter last room
7. Fight off myriad monsters
8. Start to leave, but wait!
9. Fight off tough Boss
10. Breathe sigh of relief.MM's, though, are a bit different. EVERY room or level has tons of monsters. You will probably fight well over 100 of them before you kill the Boss, and maybe even some after he's disposed of. In defense though, I'll admit that MM's are among the very few games that allow you to save in the midst of a battle and teleport in and out to heal up before continuing. (When we tackled the Werewolf Lair, I think we TP'ed in and out more than 30 times.)
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Agreed. It's very tempting to tackle the werewolf lair fairly early on in the game, but . . .
08/28/2019, 13:03:42
|
Peter2 writes:
. . . I've found it hard going at that stage. This game, I left it until my party was just over level 40 – after tackling Gharik's Forge, in fact – and I only needed to beacon out and back in again either twice or 3 times.And there was a nasty surprise in Snergle's Cavern as well. You've fought your way to the final chamber, you're preparing the final assault, you open the door – and a dozen or so more dwarves appear right behind you. Slight case of Oops! Crash band wallop – oh, nasty!
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Yeah. Snergle's Cavern is just the worst case of what Elf speaks about.
08/28/2019, 15:49:28
|
Ramillies writes:
I actually don't remember dwarves behind me, I just zoom in, run around, shoot arrows, fireballs and any other suitable munitions and occasionally give a hit or two in melee. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse,...
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
How about the sweet little Temple of Baa in Castle Ironfist?
08/28/2019, 16:30:45
|
The Elf writes:
I took a tally: 95 skeletons AFTER you've killed all the Baa-stards. And don't forget, you're generally lower than level 5 at this point. What I did was to run upstairs as quickly as possible. Only 3 or 4 skeletons will follow you into the hall. Upstairs, run to one side of the room, as close to the balcony edge as possible. Shoot as many as you can reach. Eventually, they'll crowd the underneath side of your balcony, where you can't get at them. Then you run over to the other side and repeat. When there are fewer than 20 left, just come downstairs and finish them off.Dragoons' Cavern is a little easier: you can finish the quest without finishing the dungeon. (Just ignore all but the first batch of Oozes. I did come back later to polish them off, though. By that time, the rewards were pretty lame--but I could have used them the first time around.)
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
As I said earlier *grin* I totally agree.
08/29/2019, 04:49:08
|
Peter2 writes:
That's exactly how I tackle Temple of Baa and Dragoons Cavern. Mark you, the Temple gave me a hell of a time until I found the secret door at the back of the altar! 
|
|
|
