Feature Specification: Movement & Encumbrance

[Dorn]

[quote="AlmightyTDawgI'm kind of unclear on the modal run feat. Would it be a separate RUN based on armor and small size? For example, medium/heavy armor still multiplied off of the base 15/20, and heavy plate differentiating run x3 versus x4 versus the run feat of x5?[/quote]

I think Ciph is saying that when selected it makes that PCs run speed at the standard non-emncumbered run speed. however they cannot hide/attack etc at the same time. It's like fleeing full on so you dont haver time to do anything else. Result? All PCs can escape when they need to same as they do now, but when not fleeing for survival 'realistic' (as per PhB) encumbrance counts.

And if not, if they're all functionally the same thing, what's the point in the movement penalty at the outset? All it seems to do is add inconvenience (halfling/gnome characters perpetually clicking the 'run' modal to catch up) and slow down travel. The only question of the movement penalty realistically is how it affects closing speed/distance and how easily one can run from an encounter.

I dont believe it is that much of an inconvenience. It's probably just mapping a quickslot to activate run as we currently do by deselecting hide/MS. As for having to do so to run and catch up...i dont think so. If a party is walking along then even a reduced run speed by a hin will be faster than a human walk. So they just have to 'normally' run every now and again. Same as all medium characters currently do to keep up wtih barbarians and monks.

I still don't mind heavy armor having reduced running speed, as the tradeoff of AC is the whole point. Would be nicer with horses in too, admittedly so that it is possible to adventure in heavier armor. I think this covers shorties running away, which I'm happy with.

Ditto. I would not want to see this argument stopped because of the racial one. WHATEVER we decide with the shorties, i see no reason why this cannot be taken into account.

And for those of us who've experienced combat on Shadowdale or any other lagged out server, the requirement of getting a modal to activate before you can vamoose isn't necessarily a good design decision. Unless they've notably tweaked the netcode in the new engine, this could be intensely problematic.

Solution? Dont host servers on bad boxes so they lag badly. And build intelligently. Basically lag deaths will remain lag deaths weather this comes into effect or not. You are moving at 10% slower will not make much difference when you;'re lagged and standing still getting hit

[AlmightyTDawg]

I think Ciph is saying that when selected it makes that PCs run speed at the standard non-emncumbered run speed. however they cannot hide/attack etc at the same time. It's like fleeing full on so you dont haver time to do anything else. Result? All PCs can escape when they need to same as they do now, but when not fleeing for survival 'realistic' (as per PhB) encumbrance counts.

If that's indeed what it is, to me that takes out a serious bulk of the value of the system, only adding encumberance for the purpose of making your overland travel slower. Now we're back to inconvenience for the sake of realism. I mean, I guess that's an RP choice, but it leaves an awful taste in my mouth. Particularly if you get to run away at full speed while still wearing the full plate. I don't want to subject short races to the excessive risk because we take away their options and we don't have a system designed to intelligently handle combat. The only counterbalance to heavy armor is to have a horse or movement potions.

From a canon perspective (excluding monks, barbs, and x3 running when one can do x4 running), there's
15 ft: Short, Med/Heavy Armor, Walk
20 ft: Short, No/Light Armor, Walk OR Medium, Med/Heavy Armor, Walk
30 ft: Short, Med/Heavy Armor, Hustle OR Medium, No/Light Armor, Walk
40 ft: Short, No/Light Armor, Hustle OR Medium, Med/Heavy Armor, Hustle
45 ft: Short, Heavy Armor, Run (x3, w/o feat)
60 ft: Short, Heavy Armor, Run (x4, w/feat) OR Short, Med Armor, Run (x4, w/o feat) OR Medium, Heavy Armor, Run (x3, w/o feat) OR Medium, No/Light Armor, Hustle
75 ft: Short, Heavy Armor, Run (x5, w/feat)
80 ft: Short, No/Light Armor, Run (x4 w/o feat) OR Medium, Heavy Armor, Run (x4, w/feat) OR Medium, Med Armor, Run (x4, w/o feat)
100 ft: Short, No/Light Armor, Run (x5 w/feat) OR Medium, Med Armor, Run (x5, w/feat)
120 ft: Medium, No/Light Armor, Run (x4 w/o feat)
150 ft: Medium, No/Light Armor, Run (x5 w/feat)

How many of these are we representing, and if we're not representing all of them, what's the rationale for keeping some and not others? I can see dropping the Run Feat (and extra + x1), but even without that, that only knocks out 75, 100, and 150 leaving eight different movement classes. Personally, I'm all for knocking out the Short/Medium distinction, which gets rid of 15 and 45, still leaving six movement classes. I don't know if I'm reading Cipher right, so I'm wondering how many are being represented.

Solution? Dont host servers on bad boxes so they lag badly. And build intelligently. Basically lag deaths will remain lag deaths weather this comes into effect or not. You are moving at 10% slower will not make much difference when you;'re lagged and standing still getting hit

I don't see that as truly workable, at least in the context of implementing a new feature of dubious worth. You're talking about adding a new feature with two independent sources of lag, effectively doubling the prospects. Certainly smart plaers would click direction first then try to get the run modal up, but you've built the system to be player-unfriendly. Right now, we have a presumption that lag death is player responsibility, but we're talking about putting in a feature which could statistically shift the balance there. I mean, since we're all up with canon and such, how do we account for the fact that it's simply not played as a real-time combat engine?

Or, put another way, if I get lag to a box does that mean I don't play there? Or am I able to say "okay DMs, I only want plots where there's no combat and I will log if there is?" I found a box with players I like playing with on SD and I had a great time there and only learned well after getting there how bad combat can be for me. Once I learn that, am I then obligated to leave for another server or just take my risks?

We accept lag as a possible fact of life, but I want to know what I'm buying here before I'm willing to sign off on something which could potentially induce more of it. Simply put, you want "run away" to be the simplest action with no modal feature associated with it.

[Dorn]

Part a) Not is said 'i think'....i may be wrong. Ciphers the one with the brain...not me.

But it's not just overland travel is it. It's how many times you get hit before closing with the enemy (makes the use of scouting and tactics important), it's PvP ability....it's basically showing that being a tank means you move like a tank, not like a dune buggy. I'd add something myself to say that you cant attack or hide or anything for 5 seconds after you use the 'flee' ability to make it truly effective. But then i'm off on my own ideas here so best shut up

As i said, we have been getting along with different paced PCs for NWN1. Why stop now? Even going by your table the fully heavy suited and booted hin could just jog a few times during a map square and keep up with a human wearing medium armour and thats without scouting or anything which normally holds up travel. Introduce the caravan system that many are talking about and the problem becomes even smaller for overland travel.

Part b)
If you are walking along ultra slow in both stealth and detect, but the dragon sees you, dont you have to cancel them before you run? Or do you automatically run?

From memory you have to cancel them. Thats 2 actions of the mouse or quickslot buttons. Now if it just took one mouse/quickslot action to run...how is that so inconvenient?

I dont really understand what you mean about this system creating an extra source of lag so i wont respond.

Other:
And what about us barb players? Their speed is one of the few redeeming features of this underpowered class (if played pure) and without the armour or size modifiers it becomes almost insignificant. Monk players as well would feel the pinch.

Anyway, i think cipher will have to say something before keep leading the hot-dawg up the garden path with my ill informed thoughts

[Ronan]

And for those of us who've experienced combat on Shadowdale or any other lagged out server, the requirement of getting a modal to activate before you can vamoose isn't necessarily a good design decision. Unless they've notably tweaked the netcode in the new engine, this could be intensely problematic.

Most of the current modal feats are not independant of the action que and combat round (though many seem to be, they aren't, and this causes perceived lag even where there would be none). In a recent patch, BW gave us the ability to add a feat that is independant of them. Toggling a simple feat like that would likely take less bandwith than clicking a location to run. It is one more thing to click, though, so the possibility for error and/or packet loss is higher.

If your in combat, you'd have the "run" mode active anyways. If you weren't, thats one more action to do. If your stealthed or in detect mode, you'd have to deactivate stealth/detect, which is no quicker or easier than pushing the run button (which would automatically remove you from stealth).

I'm not entirely clear on what Cypher is proposing, so I'll let him clear it up. Personally, I'd rather file it away in hopes we later have good enough monster AI to do this without damning all heavy-armor wearers to an early grave.

[ç i p h é r]

'm kind of unclear on the modal run feat. Would it be a separate RUN based on armor and small size? For example, medium/heavy armor still multiplied off of the base 15/20, and heavy plate differentiating run x3 versus x4 versus the run feat of x5?

Sorry if it wasn't clear. I figured a summary would help people get an idea of the heart of the suggestion (without reading a 5 page thread) and to elicit remarks from those who feel strongly about the items noted. Upon review, I should probably just have noted the relevant section which seemed to garner broad approval:

I really like the idea of a Run or Double Move feat (given to all) if it could be modal (representing the character's present state) and thus mutually exclusive with other modes like stealth (hide) as well as attack actions. That would really address all the 'escape' problems that have been noted here (this is how one typically extricates themselves from a bad situation in PnP) and could also allow us to actually monitor running.

Which gives me another thought. Since we can't currently distinguish between the engines WALK and RUN speeds, perhaps we should normalize movement according to the RUN speed rather than the WALK speed. So we would apply a movement rate decrease on player login such that WALK is actually a very slow walk and RUN is actually walking speed. The run mode (feat) would then simply lift the movement rate decrease so the player is actually experiencing the speed increase. If RUN can be modal as stated above, then exploit or abuse is not possible any longer. You can't run around AND attack for example as is presently the case; PCs will be able to close the distance or get away.

To answer your question though, yes, it could be a multiple of the *decreased* movement rate (x3 or x4) if you prefer. Improved Run could increase the multiplier by 1 if we want to introduce that as an optional feat that can be selected (not given by default like Run). But regardless of the actual movement rate, the primary objective is to make the run feat *modal* so it can't be used in conjunction with other modes or with attack actions (thus preventing engine exploits and allowing escape), and secondarily, so we can actually distinguish walking from running. There's nothing restricting a player, in this proposal anyway, from keeping the feat active while traveling. It would have to be deactivated when an attack action is taken or some other mode is invoked however (this is where I think the greater scripting challenge lies).

The lag concern is legitimate, though everyone is affected by it equally, attackers, defenders, and escape artists alike. Attack actions stall, movement skips, defensive modes get ignored, etc. I don't know if you can say with any certainty which way the balance will tip in a lag heavy battle. In that respect, if risk is of paramount importance to your character, then you might have to concede the possibility of avoiding combat until the environmental circumstances change. It's an OOC situation which may require an OOC decision.

In regard to the movement rates you noted, we can achieve an equivalent speed for all those categories if we want to by adjusting up or down as a percentage of the base movement rate. That is the only mechanism available to us so while not exact, it will certainly serve the intended purpose.

[AlmightyTDawg]

The Stealth/Detect are good points. Seeing as Run would functionally be mutually exclusive, clicking a run would be functionally equivalent to clicking "Not Detect." I had something else in my head, so for those instances it's six of one half dozen of the other.

Being that it is, as Cipher describes, similarly mutually exclusive of combat, it does mean you need to click a direction and the modal both. I was generally less concerned with the Stealth/Detect cases because they are more or less prior to damage whereas in-combat makes a huge difference when you catch a fluke 20/20 off a x3 weapon which dramatically changes the nature of the combat.

I'm not necessarily sold on distance closing, but that's of course taking into account the phenomenally low "ranges" set by the base engine - which of course is itself a counterbalance to something else (draw resources?) I presume. I'd be interested to see if perception/attack ranges improve dramatically enough to justify that side of things beyond the theoretical.

One other worry, and I may be thinking ahead, is that there's a push to tie fatigue to the run modal, which could, for the sake of argument, keep everyone slowed to the slowest PC's pace so they don't generate significant fatigue. No running to catch up if it generates penalties.

Personally, I've never thought of banded/half/full as random wandering type of armor - I always saw it as suited to a known battle situation where retreat is either unlikely or easily facilitated and not dependent on speed. Impromptu Wall spells serve wonderfully in that regard, but again it presumes the typical party setting. Where each PC is an island, we'll have to accept either the premise that escape is difficult in heavy armor or it isn't. And if it isn't, I'm wondering what adding "walking" penalties does for us except possibly slow some/many players down. It's not like that can't be dealt with via compressed zones or builds, and there's still yet no good word on how adjustable or what the conversion rate is for the various speed settings we can muster. But I don't think it's a trivial change to the game world, and I do think without the retreat distinction the value is wildly diminished in my mind.

[JspecWip]

can't even post right......

[JspecWip]

[/quote]Personally, I've never thought of banded/half/full as random wandering type of armor [quote]

This is my view as well, but currently there is nothing that represents this IG. The heavy armours have no "real" drawbacks. I think this is the most important issue in terms of movement rates. Cipher has come up with an innovative approach IMHO. I can also see where opinions of a selectable run mode, and racial movement rates would differ. I also understand how these issues are all connected. I just don't want to see movement penalties for heavy armour shot down because people dislike the whole system. Even if everything else is lost, I hope that adjusted movement for heavy armour makes it live from day 1. If this doens't happen we'll have a messed up pricing/availibilty because its over powered.

Balancing this also means using the dodge tree of feats, or at least most of them, is not possible in heavy armour.

This is a major issue for me, and think its vital for balancing combat across the board.

Now I'll leave all the people alone that actually know how to implament what I whine about.

[Inaubryn]

The run feat should be modal, it should be mutually exclusive and it should be a feat. It should incease run speed by one speed increment. x3 to x4, x4 to x5. It should somehow be tied to constitution and/or some form fatigue to prevent it bein' used as a default. It would only be used in an instance in where greater than normal speed would be required.

So a human in heavy armor at x3 run speed takes the run feat and is able to increase his runnin' speed to the normally unencumbered speed. Similarly, s hin moves at 20ft/round and runs at x4 at 80ft/round. Taking the run feat would allow them to increase their run speed to x5 at 100ft per round. In my opinion this is how this should be handled. If people want to run faster they need to pay for it by takin' the feat that allows you to do so. Otherwise, they maintain their normal rates of speed encumbered or not.

Now, I'm jumpin' in on the end of this discussion, so I may be off as far as exactly what's bein' talked about. Lemme know.

[Dorn]

Two thoughts on reflection on the armour side of things:

1) If the movement penalties are savage for this we could reduce them a littel to make sure people feel costs of heavy armour as well as the benefits, but so they dont become immobile.

2) THis is a big change. I PERSONALLY think for the better but being part of ALFA for so long shows me one persons view are NEVER supported by everyone. Who makes the decision on this in the end? Does it include players? a vote? how?

[AlmightyTDawg]

Okay, given a night to sleep on it, here's my major concern here. Armor penalties for overland travel have always been in my mind just awkward drudge work. All you ever do is figure out the distance from point A to point B, find the slowest speed in the party, and divide to get time. And then you handwave it away. You don't have time at the PnP table taken up in proportion to the distance of the trip.

We more or less dispensed with that here in ALFA, where the actual doing of going place to place is a part of the realism. And we don't want people running cause that's not RP, even if it is 20 RL minutes to walk from place to place in a town to do your shopping. More and more I think people are coming to terms with the idea of transport/caravans to cut down on travel time, particularly if you can tie encounters to it. At least what it does is makes a time versus money decision for players.

But still, where it is really poignant is in combat. Besides the decision-making one needs to do with timing ("we must get to Azure City in ten days, so stow the plate you fool you'll slow us down") it makes the most difference in a tactical setting. Given the fact that there is a move-and-attack option, I'm not necessarily convinced that a default run is hugely problematic. Yeah, occasionally a mid-or-high-level character can sneak in a move action and two attacks in the round, but I guess if you were talking realism, if they only moved half as far, why would they lose the same number of attacks?

I think I need it better explained how default (non-modal) run leads to excessive abuse. Outside, at least, of Arena servers with folks who play this game as exploitatively as possible like an FPS.

The problem with combat to me, though, is how much more of it in ALFA there is. Every fight you get into increases the odds that you're subjected to a statistical fluke, a fight that has an unforeseeable and unrecoverable set of crits right in a row or what not. Couple this to a real-time engine requiring quick decisions (not a DM saying "what are you doing?" and you getting time to respond after doing the math on your character sheet), and the prospect of lag built-in, I tend to be very sketchy about inhibiting someone's ability to run or reposition as the situation requires. Certainly you can respond to this statistical imbalance by making death less meaningful, but I don't think ALFA wants to fall away from the permadeath environment. Nor, on the other hand, is ALFA going to go away from slow advancement.

So the system you set up I think needs to reflect what you're looking for. To me, armor or size penalties for walking /alone/ are nuts, but maybe that's because my experience has shown that I spend about a hundred times more walking than fighting. It just places emphasis on the drudgery of the game. Then of course, you're compelled to add in armor changing time so people don't respond by traveling in light armor and then magically putting on their plate when they near a fight, so now you add another layer. To me, size penalties for shorties are too much of a hinderance statistically to three of the major races given our format. And to me, size penalties for armor are justified in combat, because it is legitimate to have a typical set of traveling chain and some plate for when you know what you're getting into. Three points of AC can frequently make a 50% to 300% improvement in decreased damage rate/survivability, including versus crits. I think that's a reasonable spot to make your tradeoff.

But what I worry about in what Cipher came back with is that it seemed to add the drudge and then dispense with the combat side of things. As it turns out, he had something different in mind, but I'd like to see it further specified.

[Ronan]

A few things that have gone unmentioned,
-Creatures would all need this feat as well (easy), and would have to incorporate it into their AI (harder).
-If creature AI is not improved, PCs will only have to run faster than the slowest party member, who will get eaten. Currently mobs chase and chase and... I don't see how a modal run feat takes care of this, unless you only give it to PCs. If thats the case, then PCs will be able to escape from nearly anything.
-Perhaps a fatigue system (provided it was applied equally to creatures and PCs, of course) could go in place of such a system, where PCs wearing heavier armor could experience quicker fatigue?

But this is a game balance issue, correct? Currently, I'd say its pretty clear the short races are more than a bit unbalanced. Dwarves are so powerfull I wonder what WotC was smoking when they wrote 3rd edition. However, we should keep in mind that Obsidian might do a bit of balancing themselves. Its pretty clear to anyone with an understanding of the rules that gnomes, dwarves (and to a lesser extent halflings) are considerably more powerfull than half-elves, elves and half-orcs.

[Dorn]

and humans!

[Ronan]

Well, IMO humans are rendered powerfull by the fact that darkness provides no penalties to combat in NWN. To me it looks like WotC removed the 2nd edition restrictions on classes for some races with no regard for how good these previously-restricted races would be at these other classes. But this is getting too off-topic...

[ç i p h é r]

I think I need it better explained how default (non-modal) run leads to excessive abuse. Outside, at least, of Arena servers with folks who play this game as exploitatively as possible like an FPS.

The main exploit is with ranged attacks. A player can literally run and shoot in stride and not allow a melee character to make an attack in return. I've seen this executed to perfection with an arcane archer running in circles (different server).

The main abuse is with movement rate. The engine doesn't distinguish between walking and running, so in the absence of any tradeoffs, the default rate of movement tends to be the run. I presume the prevalence of this tendency is why we imposed the no-run rule. Having a run mode could give us a hook for more scripted control and normalizing the default run speed eliminates the opportunity to run freely.

Ronan makes a valid point about creatures, though I believe we did accept the fact that an unarmored creature would be faster than an armored humanoid if a movement rate penalty is applied. That means there wouldn't be a need to increase movement rates at all beyond what they are normally to facilitate the run. NPCs also wouldn't be smart enough to exploit or abuse running in combat or otherwise so I don't think we need to worry about adjusting their AI or movement rates; they can run as they normally do.

I think that small sized creatures would still suffer regardless of what we do with run so while I noted that in the summary above, it was just to account for what had been proposed in the other thread. The general consensus may be to remove that from the proposal entirely and I'm fine with that.

I'll gather my thoughts a bit more once I return from my trip and see if I can better respond to the points that have been raised here. I'm struggling to give this any serious brain cycles as my days are rather exhausting ATM.