Post
by Thuvia » Thu Aug 22, 2019 12:19 pm
I've finally gotten around to reading this (hopefully I didn't miss anything obvious) and wanted to add some thoughts about bash.
1. While Step 2 in the bash code deals with relative BMI differences only when they are greater than 1, the "stockiness" messages seen when conning a player or mob change for relative BMI differences greater than 0.1, instead. This naturally makes me wonder if the bash code is accidentally off by a factor of 10, since BMI would play a limited but noticeable role in many everyday PvP combats otherwise. Conversely, changing the BMI formula to 100*Total_Weight/(Height*Height) would similarly make the current bash code impact PvP. You'd want to change the stockiness messages to operate off of relative BMI differences greater than 1, as well, in that case.
2. I seem to remember talk way back that the game was originally designed for a max Defense of about 200 or so. If so, it makes me wonder if Step 3 in the code originally subtracted the Defender's PB/4, rather than adding the Attacker's PB/4, the change possibly having been a simple way to "fix" the problem of higher-than-intended Defense instead of tweaking stats on multiple pieces of equipment. Or the opposite may have been true, where the Attacker-PB code was always (accidentally) present, and Defense was upped to compensate for Bash being too strong.
3. For Step 7 favoring Clubs, I wonder if some Circlemud code is being used wrongly by accident. If the bash code is reading a type flag number, rather than the "club" type being spelled out, it is possible that this bonus was meant for All weapon types. We know that either a Weapon or Shield has to be equipped to bash, and shields themselves confer no bonus (other than the potentially-accidental PB-boost, see Point 2 above). In Circlemud, the Weapon type is flagged 5, while some Imm I believe made a post showing the relative positions of the various weapon flags (a different list), with "Clubs" being 6. Not a match, but type 4 in that case is "Sickle", so if the game ignores that then Clubs would be slot 5 and would get the prac% bonus. As an alternative, the same general reasoning above may still be true, but a "6" was targeted instead of "5" by mistake. Or, maybe I'm just wrong (quite likely) and Clubs really are meant to be special.
4. Regarding the 95% max chance in Step 8, I wonder if this is in the spirit of old DnD, where a roll of "1" on a d20 would always "fail" for certain actions, regardless of other modifiers.
5. Finally, I believe someone asked about weapon condition. While it does not impact OB, it does reduce the dmg roll.
Last edited by
Thuvia on Tue Aug 27, 2019 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.