Armor remains at 0% with frail or brittle bones

[fractalnavel]

I haven't seen anything on this. I started playing a frail, brittle bones singleton on torment, and noticed after a bit that the armor percent remained at zero no matter what was equipped. Specific resistances were as expected and seemed unaffected.

 

I changed the level to easy, and created PCs with only frail, only brittle bones, and only delicate skin (in case this happened with any disadvantage trait). In both the frail and brittle bones cases, armor remained at 0% with the initial leather armor, while the delicate skin PC had armor as expected at 10%.

 

From an RP perspective, this F/BB guy is so bad he subverts his own armor ;-) Not a big deal, but I had been pumping strength to be able to wear better armor. Instead I should have been focusing on defensive skills (although being able to handle armor for other beneficial effects would be useful).

 

Bug ? Eh. Choosing this insane route means just accepting what goes with the territory.

[Randomizer]

Never tried it, but brittle bones has been used in other games. Raising defense and dexterity to avoid getting hit makes sense and so does getting parry.

[Aoslare]

Interesting. What was the most armor you equipped? I am curious if it actually caps armor at 0%, or if there is just a penalty of some variety (a flat -20%, say) which you weren't able to surpass with the initially avialable equipment.

[EvilEye]

Frail I think applies an initial -20% or so to armor, so you have to have better then the starting armor to overcome that.

 

I have a frail character up to 28% armor with a few spare items from a late game save . So its not as if its locked at 0%.

 

Brittle bones should work the same way.

 

Delicate skin just applies a penalty to resistances.

 

 

[fractalnavel]

Very early game yet. I was trying to decide whether I wanted to start over with less focus on strength, and your responses helped, thanks.

 

I hadn't gotten to the point yet where encumbrance concerns would have naturally allowed me to reach those thresholds, so I went back and just added the odds & ends I had available without regard to weight.

 

On the F/BB PC, armor pieces of 4x2% + 2x4% + 1x16% resulted in a total armor of 2%.

 

On a F PC, the same combination = 21% total armor.

 

On a BB PC, = 14%.

 

Huh.

 

I'll have to think about that a bit more.

 

Considered separately, a multiplicative armor penalty of 10% applied to F and 20% applied to BB results in the numbers above, but I can't get to the 2% for F/BB combined. Perhaps I made a mistake somewhere, or I'm missing some other important factor.

[EvilEye]

Keep in mind that hardiness increases armor by 2% / per point and luck increases it by 1% per point ( I think its 1% ).

 

All armor penalties and bonuses are calculated separately.

 

So if brittle bones gives - 20%, then with + 30% armor ( from say a breastplate ) it looks like this:

 

lets say a damage of 100 is dealt

 

the -20% penalty to armor increases this damage to 120.

 

Then the 30% bonus to armor reduces it by 30% which = 84.

 

so really you would have a total of 16% damage reduction.

 

Someone with more math savvy and a bit more time should make an online calculator

[EvilEye]

Ok, a bit of a correction.

 

I don't really know what % penalty frail and brittle bones, BUT, according to my math ( and I am no genius in math ):

 

frail is around -14%

 

brittle bones is around -24%!! ( holy crap )

 

This is from tests done with a breastplate that gives +34% armor and new characters with either penalty.

 

the guy with frail and the +34% breastplate had 25% armor in the character screen.

 

the guy with brittle bones and the +34% breastplate had 18% armor in the character screen.

 

There were no other armor penalties / bonuses, and no points in luck or hardiness.

 

Feel free to double-check my math. Here it is:

 

x = armor penalty from trait

 

y = resulting damage

 

damage is assumed to be 100 ( for easy calculation )

 

the .34 is the armor ( blessed breastplate ) = 34% or .34

 

 

frail:

 

100 + x * 100 = y

 

y - .34 * y = 75

 

100 - 75 = 25 ( armor % shown in screen )

 

 

brittle bones:

 

100 + x * 100 = 124

 

y - .34 * y = 82

 

100 - 82 = 18 ( armor % shown in screen )

 

 

you basically solve backwards for x. This is all probably a bit confusing and I suck at math so it could also be wrong.

 

Needless to say brittle bones surprised me with a much bigger penalty then frail, which means frail must have some other hidden penalties that are not shown anywhere.

[Erebus the Black]

You all make a basic assumption mistake about armor.

The mistake is that armor bonus is not as explained in the manual.

Meaning wearing a breastplate with .34 and leggings with .10

your total armor reduction is 0.34+0.34*0.10=0.34+0.034=0.374 != 0.44

(and this is without getting into the chance to block first I saw somewhere else (not talking about parry))

if you also had a belt with 5% hten your total armor is:

0.374+0.374*0.05=???

etc, etc...

the only thing I'm not sure of is how the order of the armor is calculated or if it even matters (having taken 3 courses in statistics I have a feeling it does)

[15357]

A bit off topic, but how do you even get 5 paces with frail + brittle bones + torment + singleton without getting killed?

 

[Randomizer]

You can reduce your chance of ever getting hit with lots of defense and dexterity. Luck helps too and in the early games you can luck out and only have your health drop to 0 instead of dying. You can build up resistance to elemental and magical attacks with hardiness and luck.

 

It's not as easy in Avernum 4 and 5 but if you are really patient it can be done on lower difficulties. In Avernum 1 to 3 it's much easier to do.

 

True you take lots more damage when you are hit, but you go up fast enough to counter most of the effects.

[fractalnavel]

Just for the record, I didn't stick with that effort long; big surprise, eh ? "Really patient": try mind-numbingly tedious. Besides, the net levels gained over a more rational build will level out, and not at a high enough level to entirely compensate for the negative traits. But that's part of the, um, "joy" of the undertaking ;-)

 

Another thing to note is that the marginal value of knowledge potions etc. goes down with trait negativity. Still, it's fun to have more skill points to play with earlier in the game.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: avatar42

the only thing I'm not sure of is how the order of the armor is calculated or if it even matters (having taken 3 courses in statistics I have a feeling it does)

Multiplication is commutative, so no, the order doesn't matter. Also, your own calculations are wrong, because you used 0.34 a couple of times when you should have used (1 - 0.34). It's actually much easier to calculate armour if you multiply together the percentage of damage that isn't blocked by each piece of armour, then subtract the end result from 1 to find the total damage blocked.