Originally Posted by Stabbey
Replying to Rack:

Since the attribute cap (that we know at this time) is probably 20 (5 fixed, 5 starting, 10 level-ups), I'll pedantically rephrase that example:

A STR 20, PER 5 warrior versus a STR 13, PER 12 warrior. That many stat points means you're probably fighting level 10 enemies or higher.

You think that the warrior with PER 5 - the same as a level 1 warrior - fighting level 10 enemies, should be able hit enemies often enough to out-damage the 13/12 guy. And you call that balanced.

No, that is not balance. If the 20/5 guy with the huge accuracy penalty can outdamage the 13/12 guy, that would mean that PER is not actually a useful stat to invest in. (That's another form of imbalance.)

EDIT: Well, I can see your point. Yes, individual hits would do much more damage for 20 STR vs 13, but I think a 13/12 should still do more damage because there should be many more hits than with a 20/5. If PER is going to stay, it has to have a big enough impact on fighting to make an actual difference. If you can ignore it and still end up doing more damage overall, that's a sign that PER is not being as useful as it needs to be.


Intelligence as a Wizard's only necessary attribute
For the record, I don't mind that wizards only have the one stat. Given the large focus on using elemental magic, I think having magic only be one stat will make hybrid characters much more viable than if they needed 2 attributes to use for magic. My concern is that it seems like warriors will have a much harder time because they have to use the solitary attribute point they get per level to keep three stats at reasonable levels and stay effective. It's the Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards problem.


The thing there is if you are building a Warrior and you have 15 points to put into increasing his damage then increasing Strength beyond 13 is just a flat out bad option. If a Strength 20/5 build deals the most damage but is the least reliable option then that's where you get tradeoffs.

20/5 gets you the most damage on average but it pays for that by being unreliable. An unlucky streak might lose you an easy fight. It's flat out worse against low hitpoint enemies. It's a real headache in situations when you absolutely need to do some damage. You tend to waste more of that damage on overkill.

13/12 is balanced. You can still miss, luck is still a factor but less so and your average damage is still pretty good.

5/20 is probably a bit extreme but still useful. At this stage you're very likely to hit most enemies no matter what. You might suffer a bit of "over-accuracy" with attacks more than 100% likely to hit. (personally I'd add this to crit chance as a further balancing measure). As an added bonus you are equally effective with Daggers, Swords and Bows.

If you design it around co-efficients then a balanced character is just plain better. That's just not an interesting option.

As far as the Wizards v Warriors curve it's nowhere near as bad as linear Warrior quadratic Wizard, both increase at a linear rate, it's just the Wizard can potentially afford to dedicate more resource to Int. That's still not an inherent problem, you just have to give the warrior more for every point he puts into Strength. You could argue there's an issue that the zero point is 5 Strength 5 Int but you can set the initial values to be whatever you want. Just balance 6 str against 7 int and you should be fine.