Effects of each stat

Nexus Discussion Character Development Discussion
1

Like I said I think each stat should matter more, rather than there being hard caps you had to hit, that way you didn’t have to feel so bad about sitting at stat 17 and having it be no different than having 10.

Strength effect damage slightly before and the amount you could carry. The only active ability I think it affected was berserk. You got 5 bonus strength from berserking as well as the damage increase.

I think just making each point of strength boost the base damage of melee attacks by 1 would be a good way to make every stat matter. That way, you could hit harder than a human with a half giant, if you want to dump the stats into strength, but you won’t have a 20 strength ogre hitting for 150, while the human with 30 str and the same weapon is hitting for 110.

Dexterity effected damage for monks I believe, and I imagine it had a slight effect on missile damage, but I never really played a ranger much. It also effected snipe, backstab and touch of death. Sneaking and stealing were also effected by dexterity, but I also think size played a large part before, as I remember it being much easier to steal with smaller characters. Also effected your accuracy to some extent I believe but accuracy before was way more based on weaponskill.

I think dexterity should be in about the same position as strength, but for missile weapons, just add 1 damage to missile weapons for each, and whether they have a damage component to snipe/backstab I’m not sure, but they should definately effect accuracy or those two and touch of death.

Dexterity could also have tanking relevance though if we add in mitigation effects like dodge, your dexterity should probably effect that. I think parry should mainly be effected by weaponskill, but dexterity might also play a factor.

Piety effected mana regen, effects of healing spells/devices, and affected turn. You also go an extra 5 piety I believe when you prayed?

I think thats basically what you want piety to effect once again, perhaps also having piety effect things like paladin damage bonus (if people like the idea of giving them him a holy damage component to their attacks). I’m not sure that there is much else that would be effected by piety. You could increase the healing spells effectiveness either by 2 points base heal per piety, or add 1 point per base heal for piety and 1 point for intel, to incentive healers to go for some intel as well, but regardless you probably need to make healing scale more than damage. It may not even be bad to do 2 points of base healing per piety and 1 point per intel, so you prioritize piety but also want to prob have moderate intel as well.

Intelligence effected mana pool, magic damage, magic resistance and I believe the length of which buff spells lasted.

Like with strength and dex, I think you could just make intelligence add 1 base damage to magic spells for each point of int you have. I know you were going to probably revamp mage damage, but if you went with Solmur’s idea of the elemental proficiencies to boost damage, using intel to boost the base damage would be fine with that system I believe. The only thing tricky with intel might be the magic resistance balancing and also the mana pool scaling. I don’t think you can get away without setting caps for mana pool unfortunately, so maybe just doing them by 5’s and giving a mana pool bonus starting at 15 and going up every 5 from there. Spells from mobs hit pretty hard, so I’m thinking rather than only adding 1 point of damage reduction off spells per intel, you may want to do at least 2 damage mitigated off spells per point of intel, might even up it to 3 if spells are hitting superhard, but may need to figure out the numbers there more after testing.

Constitution I saved for last because I think that will be the hardest stat to balance, and I ran out of time for now, so I will have to finish this post later to discuss con and also stat penalties

2

Con in the old iteration of nexus did nothing except give you health and stamina bonuses at certain oddly set caps, as far as I was aware. I would like to see it be made into a more interesting statline and have more perks so that classes that invest a moderate amount in con doesnt feel like just wasted stats.

One way to do it would be have con give damage deduction. Maybe just a flat 1 damage off for every point of con. It would probably have to come off the attack after the reduction from armor. If you took the flat damage off before armor it wouldnt be overly effective.

Then for the hp bonuses you could spread out the caps. Do an extra stamina bonus every 5 starting at 15, and then do a health bonus every 5 stats starting at 17. I don’t think you can really avoid doing caps for the stam and health bonuses but if they are spread out some it makes con a little more meaningful to have and with a cap every so often it doesnt feel like you are wasting so many filler stats in between.

One problem with this might be tuning low level areas, as if you took -30 damage from your 30 con and the low lvl mobs only hit for 10 you would take no damage. My solution might be that mobs at low levels did true damage that ignores con bonuses, that way tweaking low lvl areas would be easier.

And this is why i said con would probably be the hardest stat.

Another route instead of flat damage reduction could be passive armor. Maybe a static 2 armor per point of con. That may end up scaling better and cause less issues, idk.

Anyways out of time again will continue later.

3

Now as far as stat penalties, I think a majority of the ridiculous penalties can be done away with, like the penalty of having low con you took like what 3 times normal damage? I know it was a crapload of extra damage. Having con negate a damage per point of con off the top, if you take 1 con, the level 6 mobs might be geared to hit for an average of 15 con, so they might hit for 25-30 and if your at 1 con, taking full damage from them would be alot at that level.

I think with each stat mattering, alot of the penalties will just be covered by the fact they lack those stats.

Low dexterity causing stumbles and fumbles I think would be fine, but I don’t think we should leave in the low dex penalty of not being able to clear a room AT ALL with like 7 dex or less, thats just an antifun mechanic to get people killed.

Low intel not being able to talk is another antifun that was put in place to prevent min maxing. In fact it may even make sense to just change the name of intelligence stat to something like Focus or Concentration (altho that would cause abbreviation problems…con and con…lol) or Ingenuity. Basically it just has to be a stat that effects magic and magic based effects. A change to the name would primarily be for RP purposes, that way you wouldn’t have to necessarily act like a drooling goon to fit your low intel stat with your ogre, or play some kind of brilliant philosopher if you had high intel.
Leave in the failing to be able to cast spells, and along with having like no bonus to their spells and small mana pools, I think anyone with low intel is properly punished.

Low piety really sucked in that it made you double death alot. Double deaths being removed from the sounds of it, it might not be bad to have high piety perhaps give you a chance for a half death, where you only lost 1/4 of a level instead of 1/2. The other penalty to piety was healing from devices was based off the casters piety, so the fighter using his device on himself detraumed for like 30 but when a priest casted detraum on me it healed for like 150 or some crap. I don’t think devices should be based off piety, they should maybe just have a flat base rate and not be effected by any stat. Devices are crucial to solo, and with a low player base we probably should consider the fact that making some of the content soloable may be in the cards to get things going.

Strength I think the only real penalty was not being able to carry anything, and if you want to make strength determine how much you can carry thats fine but you may want to include a 100 lb minimum or so and maybe after stat 10 you start being able to carry a bonus 10 lbs per str.
You could possibly do strength restrictions on weapons and armor, mainly armor. Lets say you needed at least 10 str to use leather armor, 20 to use plate. Otherwise you would have to use cloth only.

4

Recommendation for the rename of intellect: Mind or Knowledge.

I think as an additional effect, Piety could affect how much healing you receive.

Con could also be used to determine how much armor a character could wear, with tiered damage reduction coinciding with tiers of armor. I.e. plate armor might have DR 20, while leather only had DR 2, but you need 30 con to wear plate armor, and only 10 to wear leather.

5

I wouldn’t mind piety adding to the amount you get healed for, as long as theres a baseline that you can get healed for. Before piety effected your self cast heals, so if you had one piety and used a device to heal yourself, you would heal yourself for next to nothing. Detraum that usually healed for like 40 could heal you for like 3 and I remember casting vigor on myself for 0. As long as theres a baseline that you can heal for, and higher piety stacked on top of that, I think that would be fine.

Before it was mostly the piety of the caster that factored in, so a priest with high piety healing you, even if you had low piety, would heal you for a crapton. I want to say some of the higher level priests would barely ever even have to cast higher level spells because their vigors and detraums would eventually heal for so much you only needed to use the other spells in “Oh shit” situations. I think the piety of the caster should still be the main factor, but perhaps the piety of the target could factor in slightly as well.

And armor restrictions could make sense for str or con, but I think it goes better for str as you would need to have ample strength to wear plate and still move around, PLUS str doesn’t really have a big negative for going low in it, so attaching it to str might make more sense, whereas low con, your not getting the health bonuses.

6

I think what could be interesting is having the baseline heal derived from the caster’s piety stat, meaning that their investment into Piety is always worthwhile. The recipient’s Piety score could then add some kind of modifier or “crit heal” bonus.

You could also break out into Piety-based and non-Piety based healing. Healing coming from a Bard aura, for instance, should not be based on Piety, but instead on their instrument skill and level. Piety based healing could be very strong if both characters have high piety, but for characters that do not want to invest in their Piety score, they may prefer to take a Bard over a Cleric or Paladin.