Damage, PC resistance and difficulty in A5

[Hume]

Randomizer said PC suffers a 30% damage resistance penalty in torment difficulty in Avernum 5. I tested, he has underestimated the penalty. it is a 50% penalty. I.E. the damage you take is doubled up to when you are unarmoured.

 

Here is my character with 61% fire resistance against Captain Dixon's fire bats.

On normal, bats does an average of 37.54 pre armor damage, and my PC takes 14, this is consistent with the 61% resistance. (11 times average)

On torment, bats does 49.75 damage, and my PC takes 40.75, my PC takes twice he should. (12 times average)

 

I also tested my 82% physical resistance. The spiders does an average of 54.57 damage and my character takes 20.43, which is again quite twice what should be.

 

Conclusion: foes does a third more damage on torment than normal (49.75 vs 37.54), then again doubled because of PC resistance penalty.

 

 

 

[Slawbug]

Interesting. Another data point (a much weaker or stronger monster) would be helpful to figure out if the +1/3 damage part is a flat adjustment, or if it's the result of stat boosts that themselves derive from a monster level adjustment.

 

For the resistance adjustment, you and Randomizer are saying two very different things. Randomizer has been saying it's a -30 adjustment to the resistance percent value, meaning that if you have 61% resistance it's treated as if it's 31% resistance. If I understand you correctly, you're saying it's a +100% adjustment to the damage taken, meaning that if you have 61% resistance it's treated as if it's 22% resistance.

 

It does look like we need more data. Although -30 is clearly wrong, -40 would actually fit the above data pretty closely, for one possibility. (Not saying the +100% hypothesis is wrong, just that this doesn't look conclusive.) Very interesting though!

[Lilith]

It does look like we need more data. Although -30 is clearly wrong, -40 would actually fit the above data pretty closely, for one possibility. (Not saying the +100% hypothesis is wrong, just that this doesn't look conclusive.) Very interesting though!

 

It seems like the best place to start testing to get a definitive answer would be to find the lowest displayed resistance percentage at which the "damage blocked" number exceeds 0 in the absence of buffs or debuffs.

[Randomizer]

This was the first topic to discuss the torment penalty when you scroll down to Brocktree's comments in post #13.

[Hume]

 

For the resistance adjustment, you and Randomizer are saying two very different things. Randomizer has been saying it's a -30 adjustment to the resistance percent value, meaning that if you have 61% resistance it's treated as if it's 31% resistance. If I understand you correctly, you're saying it's a +100% adjustment to the damage taken, meaning that if you have 61% resistance it's treated as if it's 22% resistance.

 

It does look like we need more data. Although -30 is clearly wrong, -40 would actually fit the above data pretty closely, for one possibility. (Not saying the +100% hypothesis is wrong, just that this doesn't look conclusive.) Very interesting though!

 

Not that different. I believe that since each armor piece works independently, there is no armor that can add its face value directly to the sum of resistance, so should the penalty be. Otherwise, it will make the late game overly difficult on torment.

 

You alternative hypothesis is clearly wrong if you also consider the physical damage. My PC has 82%, but it works like 64%.

[Slawbug]

Ah, you're right about that. I think I flipped the percentage when I did that out.

 

I believe that since each armor piece works independently, there is no armor that can add its face value directly to the sum of resistance, so should the penalty be.

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding this sentence. (For language reasons, not for game mechanics reasons.)

 

And Randomizer, is that *really* where the minus penalty thing came from? There must be another source since you've quoted other numbers (like -30) for newer games. Somehow I thought it had been better tested than that...

[Randomizer]

There might be another topic, but the search function ignores topics from the last board transfer.

[Hume]

I mean, if you have 3 pieces of 50% resistance equipment, you takes 50%*50%*50% = 12.5% of damage. The second piece does not add another 50% to the existing 50%. So the penalty should work the same way.

 

Otherwise, if you already have high resistance, the importance of any marginal change will be much more amplified. If you reach 90% resistance, a -30 penalty to the sum of resistance will mean you take 4 times as much damage. This means the game will get disproportionately harder and harder on torment than on normal as the game advances. Any feature like that should be avoided in game design.

[Slawbug]

The penalty might work the same way, or it might work in a different way. Mechanics are frequently consistent and predictable in Spiderweb games, but they aren't always. SW has tended to put energy into making mechanics elegant mainly when they are directly visible to the player. This one isn't. A single subtraction operation seems as plausible to me as a single multiplication operation, in principle.

 

That said, the numbers do seem to back up Hume's theory.

 

Randomizer, do you know where you got the other numbers you've used, like the -30? I assume they weren't made up. Was there testing involved?

[Randomizer]

I got the -30% as an estimate comparing the multiplicative resistance I should have for armor and resistances compared to actual damage and total damage. There is some variation since Jeff has the armor only giving a chance of protecting you and I never tried seeing at what point the armor started reducing damage.

 

I think there is another topic where numbers are given.

[Slawbug]

Okay, so for years you've been talking about ESTIMATES for this effect, for a number of games, as if they were exact terms...

 

Plus it looks like the effect might not be like this at all, but instead rather different.

 

 

Well, this was certainly a learning experience.