A-EftP - Pole weapons underpowered

[Thoth]

Although I have lurked on these boards for a number of years, this is the first time I've felt the urge to post something.

 

Pole weapons seem significantly underpowered to me. They take both hands, and should have some real advantages over a broadsword, which now has the same damage die, but allows for use of a shield or second weapon. Further, the stat boosts from melee weapons and shields are better than pole weapons. I would like to suggest two reasonable ways to improve the balance and create a proper role for a pole user.

 

1) Increase the damage from d4 to d5 or d6. Pretty straightforward.

 

2) Create perk or stat that significantly increases the cleave %. I favor this option, since it creates a niche of a pole user for managing crowds, and complements his/her role as a meat shield. There are a number of enemies that almost always cleave hit when they strike you. It irritates me that you max out at 20%.

[Lilith]

Yeah, pole ended up worse than dual-wielding in the long run in Avernum 6, and it seems like if anything A:EFTP has made things worse. Pole weapons have been in kind of a weird position balance-wise ever since armour's effect was changed from subtractive to multiplicative.

[Randomizer]

Pole weapons start off with better ones available in the demo without a major fight and having a higher minimum damage with the +10. You lose that advantage because you have the dual wielding or sword and shield for increased defense with similar damage near the end.

[Thoth]

That's sort of my point. Later in the game I regretted my decision to have a pole user, since he didn't do enough damage in melee, and would have at least had higher defense if using a shield. The game would benefit from having a niche for a pole user throughout the game. Any thoughts about whether the tweaks proposed above would achieve this?

[menotu]

more of #2 than #1 I think would be best from what I have observed so far.

 

maybe even a special, say 1.5 - 2.0 square radius pole weapon cleave discipline with a suitable fatigue duration would be the final higher level perk to add to balance it out?

[menotu]

On the subject of game balancing I was thinking that since these subtle issues of are always hard to predict and tend to have unintended or overlooked consequences and can quickly become very hard if not utterly impossible to model explicitly the next best thing to do may be to create a very simple monte carlo simulation engine inside of the game.

 

This would be purely for development purposes and would use the games already existing damage combat engine and stat tables etc. (i.e. uses the exact same rules for combat damage).

 

Then you just take a given item and a fixed character (or a representative few) and see what happens for each given item against the same set of opponents over hundreds or thousands of combats.

 

(this type of monte carlo simulation only takes at most seconds to do all these many "virtual combats" since there is no game action to go along with it.)

 

You would then have a relatively quick and dirty tool for comparing items or PC stats or combat rules objectively (at least in isolation in singleton hack&slash combat, simulating the use of spells, disciplines, item use, playing strategies, and multi character parties is obviously harder and likely not worth the effort to reward tradeoff) and seeing what results from either small or radical changes without having to be an expert statistical modeler that never makes a mistake and can foresee all things at all times.

[Thoth]

Creating a Monte Carlo simulation is a bit beyond what I can do, but conceptually, I think it is fairly clear: there should be a tactical role for every type of character build. The problem is that a pole user’s defense isn’t as high as a character that uses a shield, and their attack can’t keep up with a dual-wielder.

 

The opportunity seems to be a strong attack that affects multiple opponents, which the engine comes very close to achieving. There are traits that specifically benefit dual wielders, and others that only benefit archers or priests. A perk (halberd mastery?) that increases cleave chance 10% per level (max 3) would allow for a pole user that would hit two opponents 50% of the time, and be tactically quite useful on the front lines of a party. Alternatively, every level of pole weapons could increase chance to cleave by 1%, which would become fairly substantial after 15-20 levels.

 

I’m sure there are other options as well. The point is that a pole user should be able to do something that a melee user cannot, and at present there doesn’t seem to be a scenario where this is the case.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Another option would be to make pole weapon damage more balanced with dual wielding, such that dual wielders do a bit more damage to one target, and tend to get more passive bonuses, but pole users get the existing (low but not negligible) cleave chance. The first suggestion gives the two specs each a more distinct niche, but would be harder to balance, while mine is relatively easy to balance, but less distinctive.

 

In either case, I think we can agree that the game would be more balanced if dual wielding were nerfed compared to weapon+shield, and especially compared to pole.

[Vent]

In theory DW is more damages than all but 20% To Hit penalty. W+S is less damages than all and a smaller To Hit penalty, but a better protection. Pole is in between, more damages than W+S, no protection, no To Hit penalty.

 

All of that seems purely dependent of items defined in the game, but.

 

DW has a dedicated skill and a dedicated trait. And as W+S has no dedicated skill and trait it means a DW can switch at any time to W+S. A possibility that doesn't have Pole.

 

Moreover how the Math are done the damages difference increase when the 20% is always 20% and means a lot during first levels but less and less as there's more levels.

 

There's just an element to counter balance, you have 2 warriors and have both use the same weapon means ignore all pole weapons even if there's one great.

 

Balance better would means a lot, new skills and traits, different maths. But it would have been so simple to had some better and more impressive pole all along the game progression.

 

Myself for now I don't regret because I like using the best poles I find, and prefer diversity to pure efficiency. But I quote that currently it's not even one special pole I use but just a bronze halberd.