Avernum 2 - ToHit 90 % misses

[LinusGustavsson]

The majority of attacks that I do that has 90% To Hit chance misses.

IS it just me feeling that this might be a balancing-thing, or am I just unlucky ?

[Slawbug]

You are just unlucky. Keep a tally and see how it looks then.

[Edgwyn]

There is a whole thread that is essentially on the topic. BL is that 90% is your maximum to hit chance, and it seems to work properly, so you may be unlucky.

 

Here is the thread

 

Avernum 2 combat is ruining the game for me

[LinusGustavsson]

Ok, good to know.

[Waladil]

I was the only one who posted in that thread empirical information on whether the min-max hit chances are valid as claimed. And technically I only tested the minimum hit chance, not the maximum. It is possible (although perhaps not likely) that there is something legitimately wrong with the 90% maximum but not the 20% minimum.

[BlackDragon]

's probably just confirmation-bias in action... but even so, I personally find that the shift from 95% max to 90% max accuracy is kind of annoying. What kind of legendary band of heroes miss their targets 10% of the time? ~_~

[Edgwyn]

Legendary heroes are always far more normal in actual life. By the time people get around to writing of your adventures, you will be hitting 100% of the time, your opponents resistances will have no effect on your attacks, you will be taller, better looking and more polite.

[BlackDragon]

Hah, I suppose that's ONE way to explain it. But hey, as long as Avernum 3: Ruined World doesn't drop us to a max of 85% accuracy, I suppose I can live with it either way. I mean, heck, if this keeps up, we'll be swinging with 70% accuracy by the time Avernum 6 gets its remake. >_>;

[TriRodent]

I've heard from various sources at various times that during the Vietnam War it took anywhere from 50,000-200,000 bullets fired for EACH enemy killed (adding up all the rounds fired divided by estimated number of kills). In light of that suddenly the 90% hit rate doesn't look all that bad...

 

(although I too am disgusted by the huge amount of 90% 'misses' round after round after round)

[Edgwyn]

There have been various number given for rounds fired versus enemies killed going back to at least WWII if not slightly earlier. Most small arms fire on a battlefield is suppressive fire. It is not aimed at a clearly seen person, but is merely to make it harder for the other guy to accurately fire at your guys.

 

The Vietnam era M-60 had a cyclic rate of 500 or so rounds per minute, but was typically fired with 200 round belts resulting in a maximum firing rate between 200 and 400 rounds per minute depending on belt changing time. In any case, it would be physically impossible to kill 200 people with a single 200 round belt even if they were all standing open not doing anything at all (which of course they wouldn't be). In actual field conditions a whole 200 round belt (in 10 round bursts) might not hit any human target.

 

Rifle fire is just as inaccurate but it takes quite a bit longer to expend the same number of rounds. One of the theoretical advantages of the M-16 family of weapons is that an infantryman can carry substantially more 5.56x45 ammo for the same weight than 7.62x39 and so they will run out of ammo slower while firing those thousands of rounds to kill one person.

 

In fantasy role playing, one attack with its say 90% chance to hit usually does not represent just one swing of a sword, but rather multiple swings, jabs, blocks and parries in a short (minute or less) period of time so it does take tens of swings to kill a giant rat.

[TriRodent]

I've always said that full auto is just an extremely fun way to convert dollars to noise... (provided that nobody is shooting in your direction at the time of course) In my 10+ years in the Army/National Guard there were only a couple when I didn't do my 'full auto is a waste of ammo' demonstration (this is back in the A1 days before the 3 round burst A2 was issued to most everyone). I'd have 3 of my bigger 'Rambo is a p***y' guys shoot one magazine each (60 rounds total) at a target using full auto however they wanted (generally sprayed from the hip.... sigh) while I'd shoot one magazine as fast as I could with aimed semi-auto fire at my own target. Almost always I'd have more hits on mine with 1/3rd the bullets than they would on theirs. Usually the point was made that suppressive fire is great & has a very important place, but if you're supposed to be trying to hit someone then just dumping a bunch of unaimed bullets into an area usually didn't do much.

 

But enough of an odd thread drift in a forum focused on spelunking.

 

In fantasy role playing, one attack with its say 90% chance to hit usually does not represent just one swing of a sword, but rather multiple swings, jabs, blocks and parries in a short (minute or less) period of time so it does take tens of swings to kill a giant rat.

 

And that right there is something that is regularly forgotten (often by me ). Each round in 'combat' is a compilation of roughly a minute's worth of actions rather than just a single swing of a sword at the enemy. And a minute can either go by really quickly or seem like forever when you are busy running around, diving behind cover, swinging a sword/jabbing a spear/shooting a bow/etc. One of those 90% miss rounds could just be one where the other guy managed to tie up your sword enough that you weren't able to swing it like you normally could or even if you weren't running around on the grid square, you were doing more (unseen) defensive actions. It really does even out in the end no matter how frustrating it is when you think you should be hitting the vampire that you're squared up against.

[Lilith]

Each round in 'combat' is a compilation of roughly a minute's worth of actions rather than just a single swing of a sword at the enemy.

 

Well, it depends on the system you're using. There are tabletop RPGs where characters' turns are expressly stated to last six seconds or (famously in the case of GURPS) one second.

[Edgwyn]

The one minute standard (from D&D and others) was probably a little long, but while I never played GURPS, one second seems way short. In one second I am not going to fire a bow, make a good swing with a sword, execute a proper combination with pick your favorite martial art, or fire (with reasonable accuracy) a pistol or rifle. Somewhere around six or ten seconds for an increment of combat is probably about right, but then fencers are not achieving touches once every 10 seconds in a bout, using weapons optimized for speed not for the ability to penetrate armor, so my comfort with high percentages of damaging hits increases with the duration of the combat increment.

[Slawbug]

D&D has actually used the six second standard for the last few editions. I think a minute makes more sense. Certainly, under the old spellcasting system where different spell components (verbal, somatic, material) were emphasized, it made sense for complex spells to take a minute of incanting, not a few seconds. Ranged attackers have to wait to get a decent shot, and melee attackers get a lot more value out of maneuvering than out of taking bad shots or exposing themselves unnecessarily.

[Edgwyn]

Its been a really long time since I played, but wasn't the one minute AD&D (1st Ed) round split up into "segments" of 6 seconds? Now that you mention it, I believe that spell casting times were listed and were longer depending on how complex the three components were. The people that I played with completely ignored that layer of complexity.

[Slawbug]

The rulebook does mention the "segment" division, but it's never really used by default. Warriors start with 1 attack per round, and most spells with combat applications can be cast within 1 round, but have a duration measured in initiative. That meant that not only did spells tend to go off slightly later than regular attacks, but spells could be ruined by disrupting a caster's concentration (i.e., hitting them) during the duration of the casting. Pretty serious balancing mechanism right there.