JE Sawyer on SPECIAL

[Vergilius]

Not the question you wanted to ask..
What you intended to ask was:
How can you kill a single enclave patrol with a pipe rifle?

But in truth it doesn’t matter as the answer is almost the same:

You do not kill them but avoid them instead..

[Megatron]

so to kill frank horrigan with a pipe rifle and small guns at 300% is going to take how many turns?

keeping in mind that if you have small guns at 300, all the other skills are going to be really low.

[Vergilius]

Pyro, first perhaps it is wise to notice that I never spoke of any 300% skill..

Second, one of the most common delusions about Fallout 2 is that you need to kill Frank Horrigan in a battle…

[OnTheBounce]

Okay, some people are apparently confused as to exactly what AC, DT and DR are/do, so here it is:

(Yes, I know this has all been cover in short form, but here it is straight from the manual

Armor Class - This is the chance that the armor will force the attack to miss, usually by deflecting the shot. The higher the Armor Class (AC), the better the armor. The AC acts as a negative modifier on the attacker[']s chance to hit. Example: A ganger is wearing Leather armor, which has is AC15. A desert ranger has a to hit chance of 65%, after all other modifiers. The chance to hit the target is only 50%.

So there you have it, AC is simply a number that - among other modifiers such as Range, Lighting and Cover - are subtracted from the base chance to hit, which is the Skill Level with a particular weapon skill. Therefore, the AC mod on ammo effectively gives you a bonus to hit the target since it reduces the target's AC by X amount. (Dude, I gots me some +3 Shotgun shells!")

Damage Threshold - If a character in armor is hit, then the first thing armor can do is block the damage. Damage Threshold (DT) is subtracted from the initial amount of damage (what the target would take it it weren't for the armor.) Example: The desert ranger hits the ganger from the above example. The attack does 20 points of damage. Owie! The DT of Leather armor is 4. The first four points of the ranger[']s attack is stopped cold, leaving only 16 points of damage.

There is nothing in the RPGs that reduces this, and this is why many weapons are simply ineffective against heavier armor. If damage exceeds the DT the DT is still subtracted, not simply ignored.

And finally...

Damage Resistance - The armor can also absorb the energy of the attack and spread it out over a larger area, reducing the damage proportionally. Damage Resistance (DR) is the percentage of damage, after the DT, that the attack is reduced by. Example: The ganger is in hurt shape. Fortunately, Leather armor has a DR of 20%, which reduces the 16 points of damage to 13 points. Here's the math: 16 - (16 x .2 = 3.2 (round down to 3)) = 13. The Leather armor stopped a little over a third of the total damage.

This is reduced by the DR mod of ammo, if the ammo type you're using.

Blarg: We think on the same wavelength at times.

It would be an interesting addition to include one of the old Anti-Tank Rifles, perhaps the Lahti, or even the old WWI Mauser "T-Gewehr". (An 8mm Mauser 98 scaled up to 13mm.) W/nearly all of these weapons you're looking at something that was fairly punishing for the user to fire, so it would be "nifty" to have a Critical Failure result that knocked the user down and perhaps crippled an arm, since there were documented cases in WWI w/the T-Gewehr breaking the firer's collar bone, not to mention that it would add an element of game balance to what would be a very powerful weapons.

Oh, these would need their own firing sound, too. Something that would make you jump out of your seat and soil yourself the first time you heard it, like the .223 Pistol and 14mm Pistol did in FO1.

Cheers,

OTB

[Crow of Ill Omen]

That all being the case, I'm right back where JESawyer started: why should AC include the chance of armour deflections when DT exists? Surely, a hit where damage fails to exceed the threshold is a deflection? Wouldn't it make more sense to more clearly abstract the hitting from the application of damage?

[Red]

So... in effect, AC in the Fallout logic, is a PERFECT representation of how you can "dodge" bullets... since it removes a percentile (well, in relation to the aimer's gun skill) chance to get hit.

It's written that it deflects it, but it might just as well avoid it entirely... or in effect, dodge it... Since you can't "do damage" onto armours, it's irrelevant wether the shot is dodged or defelected... it does no damage in either case. Making the whole dodging idea irrelevant! And whoever said that AC "might be a representation of dodging" was perfectly correct.

A dodging skill could probably contribute to lowering this number even further... Of course you'd need to use a fraction of the skill, as then w/ 300 weapon skill and 300 dodging skill, you couldn't hit the dodger... so using say 1/2 or something would probably be preferable...

[Red]

I don't see why "we should just get rid of DR". I can understand the change of AC (and please name it something else... It's really confusing in relation to current RPGs...), but DR and DT still make sense. If AC totally removes the deflection idea, then DR and DT are exactly what defines it (deflection that is), and to me it seems that just leaving DT is like using a traditional AC based system à la D&D where you just subscract or add to the value to figure out the damage. (I can never remember that whole THAC0 thing..., though I think 3e made it simple, the way I'm referring to it here...)

[Section8]

Yeah, AC affects ChanceToHit which implies missing something due to AC is more about not hitting them at all, rather than further convoluting the DT/DR system.

AC should be based almost solely on the idea of "this thing is moving fast enough that it's hard to hit" in such a way that it simulates the fact that while the action may be happening in discrete turns, it's still simulating a more realistic system. The AP to AC bonus at the end of a turn can be written off as "rather than moving and hoping not to get hit, you are using your APs to actively evade gunfire."

If the system is adapted in such a way, then heavier armour should actually have negative AC modifiers (which is more than made up for with DT/DR) but signifies you as "easier to hit due to less agile movement"

AC also works with natural armour for critters, based on size. ie trying to shoot a rat or a wasp is more difficult than trying to hit a supermutant. Of course the supermutant in turn has higher DT/DR so is still a much more challenging opponent.

[Dan]

Not the question you wanted to ask..
What you intended to ask was:
How can you kill a single enclave patrol with a pipe rifle?

But in truth it doesn’t matter as the answer is almost the same:

You do not kill them but avoid them instead..

But if you want to finish the game with a pipe rifle you need a high skill with small guns.
Unless your idea of finishing the game with a pipe rifle means you do everything with a pipe rifle in your item slot without actually firing.

[Rosh]

I don't see why "we should just get rid of DR".

Agreed. It's a senseless lobotomization that should be tweaked instead of put into the scrapyards. It adds more flavor to the armor system, which if balanced well it could add some variety and also give reason to have certain armor types over others.

[OnTheBounce]

AC should be based almost solely on the idea of "this thing is moving fast enough that it's hard to hit" in such a way that it simulates the fact that while the action may be happening in discrete turns, it's still simulating a more realistic system. The AP to AC bonus at the end of a turn can be written off as "rather than moving and hoping not to get hit, you are using your APs to actively evade gunfire."

Good point about the end-of-turn unused-AP-to-AC-conversion.

I forgot something relevant, the p.135 entry deals exclusively w/armor, so here is something else that plays in w/the definition of AC:

AC - Armor Class - How likely you are to be hit in combat. Slightly different than Damage Resistance (see below). High AC is better than low AC. Based strictly on Agility.

Also:

Armor Class - This statistic reduces the chance of an opponent to hit your character during combat. If you have an AC of 30%, which is pretty high, all characters that attempt to attack you have a -30% to their chance to hit, in addition to the other modifiers (such as darkness, range, and cover.) If you never get hit, there is no chance of your character taking damage. [Emphasis added.]

If we factor these in we get a more accurate picture of what AC is, namely simply that - for whatever reason - an attack has no chance to affect you. One mistake I think a lot of people make is that they try to stick to very narrow definitions of what something in a game is, and forget about the beauty of abstraction. It doesn't matter whether your armor deflected a shot or you skillfully dodged it, or your enemy is queasy from having just having gotten his first glimpse of TubGirl; the bottom line is that you weren't hit and your HP dial doesn't do that dizzying spin toward negative numbers.

If the system is adapted in such a way, then heavier armour should actually have negative AC modifiers (which is more than made up for with DT/DR) but signifies you as "easier to hit due to less agile movement"

I see where you're coming from here, but the problem is that heavily-armored characters will actually be at a disadvantage over the dodging types if you go w/this, at least later in the game when critical hits are all too common, both by yourself as well as your enemies. A solution to this might be that the Critical Hit maths could be reworked. I can't comment on that because I'm not sure on the exact mechanics of it, though.

I thought about the merits of a "mobility factor" or something that would effectively give you a multiplier to that portion of your AC based on your AG, but the problem w/that would be that targets w/no armor on (which would have a higher "mobility factor") would be terribly hard to hit at low levels, and you'd find yourself wishing that someone would come charging you in Metal Armor so that you actually stood a chance to hit a target for once.

AC also works with natural armour for critters, based on size. ie trying to shoot a rat or a wasp is more difficult than trying to hit a supermutant. Of course the supermutant in turn has higher DT/DR so is still a much more challenging opponent.

Hey, give the wasp its credit: AC 55 is nothing to be scoffed at!

Basically, I see no reason to get rid of any of the current system, AC, DT, or DR. (I agree that AC should be renamed so that Gary Gygax's fingerprints aren't too apparent, though. )

• AC can be seen as an abstraction representing factors that combine to leave your character unaffected by an attack, which serves as a safeguard against Critical Hits. (Sidetrek: Why are extra-damage crits so common? When was the last time you were crippled?)
• DT can be seen as the armor's ability to simply "shrug off" an attack, yet it does leave the target vulnerable to Critical Hits from weak weapons that could strike a weak/unprotected spot on the suit and damage the wearer that way.
• DT and DR taken together serve to make armor more interesting/varied/balanced for the reasons that Section8 stated above.

One thing I've been tossing around is that it's simply too easy to hit in the FO universe. Perhaps the weapons should give fewer bonuses, because when you factor in the AC mod from the ammo, then add the "to-hit" bonus of the weapon you're looking at - in some cases - a pretty hefty bonus. A good example is the Hunting Rifle vs. the Assault Rifle. Although the latter has a range of 45 your chance to hit w/it are nearly always lower than w/the former thanks to the AC mod of .223 as well as the range class and to-hit bonus of the Hunting Rifle. I think the maths need to be reworked on that.

OTB

[Red]

One of the reasons it might be so "Easy" to hit is because of that whole "time" thing... Meaybe during design they foudn if it was too long to kill an oponent it'd getboring...

Personally I don't see anything wrong with the hits, but i think criticals should either be toned down... Instead of doing *2/*3/*4 samge, do +25%/+50%/+75%... (or something along those lines...)

Either that or reduce the critical hit chance altogether - as it makes sense that the criticals are so good (ie, you hit a vulnerable part et al)..

I think one of the things which is confusing in fallout is the AC term, as you'd normally associate the AC term to what's been defined as DT in the game...