23 replies to this topic

[Zyraen]

Just my tuppence, not that it matters.
But I think a base value covering 30-50% of the total value would be good.

ie, Heals up to 100 damage? would be...
40 + 10d6

8-44 is just a bit too much variance for me, I like to know that my heal spell will actually be decisive and not go like "wtf, how come he died anyway?" and check the log and see that it actually managed to go off and healed ... 8 HP.

8-44 is actually fine if you're mainly using Out of Combat heals, but if you're using Combat Heals, a more reliable portion would be better.

Think about it, why do we bother to memorise Cure/Heal spells? (well, I don't memorise Cure spells ever, at least not in BG2 and ToB...) Simple - so that we don't have to use a Rez.

In a slightly different perspective - would you bother buying, packing, and maintaining a parachute that has a 50% chance of failure, when having to bail / jump-plane occurs on a 0.00001% chance and results in 100% (well not exactly, but well) death without the jump parachute?

That's what a Cure spell should be, IMO.

PS : For those use Cure spells so that they don't have to use potions, remember that in BG2 if you equip a character with a Ring of Regeneration and go on a Map-Trek for 8-12 hrs, you end up fully healed. There are 2 rings of regeneration in the game, and 1 (well, 2) ring of Gaxx, plus I think another helm that also provides regen. Why use Cure spells Out-Of-Combat at all ? Plus you can also rest for forever and a day, maybe a couple of centuries if you wanted to, in BG2. Spamming Z button is a lot easier than clicking cast button, scrolling to find the Cure spell, clicking the target, waiting for a walk-over, a cast, and an effect, and then checking how many HP left to heal.

PPS : 8-44 skews the balance hugely in favour of the 29 HP blue bottle. Potion of Healing.

Edited by Zyraen, 17 April 2011 - 10:29 PM.

[Demivrgvs]

Just my 2 cents...

I think this needs to be something like:
Light: 4 + 1d4 + 1/3*(levels -1), up to (1-4)+8; at level 12
Moderate: 8 + 1d4 + 1/2*(levels -3), up to (1-4)+15; at level 18
Serious: 16 + 1d6 + 1/(level -5), up to (1-6)+30; at level 20
Critical: 32 + 1d8 + 2/(level -7), up to (1-8 )+60; at level 21

Even if I'm an engineer I really don't like to solve an equation everytime I look upon a spell to know what it may do. Formulas should be easy, like 'x + y every z lvl' or '1dx + y every z lvl' or 'x + 1dy every z lvl', and I don't even like the latter much because it's almost never used within PnP.

You confuse

Yes... cause:

20) 4 + 10d4 = 29

This is extremely bad, cause the dice is way way too random: as the healed damage is 8-44. It's not 29...

The min result of 4 + 10d4 is 14 not 8. Than, if you know a little about probability density you know that 4 + 10d4 means that 95% of times you'll be in a range more like 30-44.

CLW:
1) 2 + 0d2 = 2
2) 2 + 1d2 = 3.5
5) 2 + 2d2 = 5
10) 2 + 5d2 = 9.5
20) 2 + 10d2 = 17

CMW:
3) 4 + 1d4 = 6.5
5) 4 + 2d4 = 9
10) 4 + 5d4 = 16.5
20) 4 + 10d4 = 29

I think I said a similar thing ages ago when we briefly discussed this between us, but these tables really don't work at low lvls imo.

Lvl: Suggested CLW / SR V3 CLW
L1: 2 / 2-10
L5: 4-6 / 5-13
L10: 7-12 / 5-13

Lvl: Suggested CMW / SR V3 CMW
L3: 5-9 / 5-19
L5: 6-12 / 7-21
L10: 9-24 / 12-26

CLW is too much nerfed imo, to the point where I'd never use it early on, and it starts to heal a decent amount of hp too late to matter. At 10th lvl I don't care to heal 9hp, and it really pales within SR if you compare it to Larloch's Minor Drain (at 9th lvl it drains 10hp, damaging the target, and raising caster max hp if fully healed).

V3's healing spells are more or less fine at low lvls, other than the random factor as I do accept many players could prefer a higher fixed value, and I'm actually sympathetic to that. I though our main issues were that we'd like these spells to heal slightly more hit points in general, not less, and that low lvl versions tend to become too much obsolete later on (faster casting time was the only thing I could use to make low lvl versions slightly more appealing in the heat of a battle, but their cap is probably too low). Your suggested tables make the first problem more evident imo and while they seem to fix the latter problem, they do it late at the expense of mid-low lvl game which is when you'd cast those spells the most. Am I wrong?

Last but not least, I do agree with Zyraen that the fixed value should be more or less 50% of the total value.

Edited by Demivrgvs, 18 April 2011 - 11:28 PM.

[Jarno Mikkola]

The min result of 4 + 10d4 is 14 not 8.

Erhm, but it is 8, see we are moving from a smaller dice to a bigger one, not adding more dices to throw, which in turn makes larger the chance factor. So you start by throwing 4 dices that have (zero facets at level 1) and end up with four, if capped, that have for example 10 facets at level 20.

[Zyraen]

Hmm... just a quick note Jarno

Erhm, but it is 8, see we are moving from a smaller dice to a bigger one, not adding more dices to throw, which in turn makes larger the chance factor. So you start by throwing 4 dices that have (zero facets at level 1) and end up with four, if capped, that have for example 10 facets at level 20.

Demi is right, actually. If you have 4+10d4, the smallest you can get is to roll 1 (not 0) on all 10 dice, giving you 4+10 = 14. So it would be 14-44 on an absolute basis.

However, more dice does indeed help hugely, it increase the probability density in the middle. Put it this way...

1d11+1 standard deviation is a bigger as compared to 2d6.
2d6 has higher standard deviation than 3d4, which has higher standard deviation than 4d3.

So yes, adding more dice does actually increase very very very significantly the chance that you will get a more "middle" value. That said, the average value will still be lower.
ie 4+10d4 has a lower average than say, 20 + 4d6. Mainly because of the chunky fixed number (20 >>> 4)in front.