[DF] Suitable Dangerous Encounters

[Nymdok]

Again, I have it on the website

https://sites.google.com/site/nymdok...d-game-balance

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...NaUcxWEE&hl=en


Take a look :)

To da just count up 2 rows and to the left one row...Easy! :)

Nymdok

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by tjbuege

Barbarian = 65.7% * 7.02 = 4.61 points damage per turn
Cleric = 57.4% * 1.56 = .89 points damage per turn
Wizard = 57.4% * 1 = .5 points damage per turn

Does this finally add up correctly?

Tim

Except for the Wizard....

Its .574*.17 = .09 or a tenth of a point per turn, or more lucidly, 1 point every ten turns :)

Nymdok

[tjbuege]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Its .574*.17 = .09 or a tenth of a point per turn, or more lucidly, 1 point every ten turns :)

Of course! :) I forgot to copy down the .17, which I had stated above.

I've seen your site. That's what got me started thinking along these lines. Whenever I look at someone else's calculations, I always have to work through them myself. Helps me understand the math behind it.

Thanks again!
Tim

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Guard
1 v Wizard = (.574)(5.5)(2) = 6.3
3 v Barbarian = (.206+.47+.47)(4.5)(2) =10.3
2 v Cleric = (.206 + .38)(1.67)(2) = 1.96

A bastard sword is "unbalanced", so the Barb only gets to dodge, not to parry. Though you might want to change the weapon to one of the balanced swords.
Also, Wizard and Barb both have DR 1, so the guards should do 4.5 imp against each of them, but you used 5.5 imp for the wizard.

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Facing is one of those tactical questions. If there are 2 on the cleric, at least one of them is on his shield side, assumning the cleric is facing them. The hit proabability seems ot iron out the rest.

Good point.

I'll probably have to adjust my numbers to use deceptive attack on the Barb as well.

I just wonder why you want to put 4 guards on the barb. I don't know what Dungeon Fantasy plays like, and I guess he might have the HT to remain concious and alive for the duration of the fight, but if he doesn't, his guards would join the guards fighting the cleric and the fight would likely end with a TPK.

Let's look at another forgotten aspect, in particular with 4 guards: If the Barb doesn't kill the first guard on his first turn (there's a 30% chance), he can expect 18 points of injury that round. This puts him below HP/3, so his dodge is now 5 (and he cannot parry with his sword, as mentioned above), giving the >= 3 guards next turn a pretty good chance to hit him (dunno, maybe 70% of the time?). That results in even more damage than I assumed above.

Maybe I just have the wrong ideas about Barbarians in DF. In "gritty fantasy GURPS" it would seem like a month of resting is required after this fight ... Can someone enlighten me? Is -HT HP "not that bad" in DF?

Regards,
Ts

[DAT]

Nymdok -
Do I understand correctly that you have the Critical Success consequences (extra damage, damage bypassing armor, disarming, etc) and Critical Failure consequences (drop weapon, hurt ally, etc) also accounted for in your spread sheet?

Did you also factor in hit locations?

How about deceptive attacks?

A big factor that I can't see being able to factor into a spread sheet are meta-game effects (e.g., player: 'character creation customizations', 'play' style, and use of the 'Luck' advantage). My newbies playing a barbarian, cleric, and wizard might find 6 guards too much to handle. The Westmarches crew with a certain Minotaur Barbarian, Nymph Wizard, and a Dwarven Cleric could probably take on 24 guards without taking a hit (e.g., cleric can cast wall of silence around the party, wizard throw a concussion blast or two into the guards, and then the minotaur acts as a reaper where his average damage from an attack puts each guard hit into the negative HP range ... and he has two attacks a second).

I still really like the idea of your spread sheet for a first cut. I just don't think you can get arround needing to consider the meta-game issues.
-Dan

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Ts_

A bastard sword is "unbalanced", so the Barb only gets to dodge, not to parry......

Also, Wizard and Barb both have DR 1, so the guards should do 4.5 imp against each of them, but you used 5.5 imp for the wizard.

I'll probably have to adjust my numbers to use deceptive attack on the Barb as well.

I just wonder why you want to put 4 guards on the barb. ...

Let's look at another forgotten aspect, in particular with 4 guards: If the Barb doesn't kill the first guard on his first turn .....

My copy of the Basic set lits its parry as 0. The barbie in this example has ST20, so he can effectively pull all this off one handed :)

Ugh...youd think Id prewrite this stuff a little before I put it up here :)
I got it fixed :)

Again, the idea was for it to be a difficult encounter.

True, the barbarian is the cornerstone of this party where Melee combat is concerned, and if he falls, things will go poorly. His high HP, High HT mean that its unlikely that he'll go down though (few major wound checks etc), whereas his opponents will be making those checks every turn (on average) assuming he doesnt just lop off limbs.

No I dont think you have the wrong idea about -HT and -HP. As always, thats not a situation you want to be in. It IS something that needs to be considered when we discuss the longevity of a combat encounter, I just dont have the model worked up to accoutn for stuff like that.

Nymdok
p.s. Anyone actually tried this encounter yet?

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by DAT

Nymdok -
Do I understand correctly that you have the Critical Success consequences (extra damage, damage bypassing armor, disarming, etc) and Critical Failure consequences (drop weapon, hurt ally, etc) also accounted for in your spread sheet?

Did you also factor in hit locations?

How about deceptive attacks?

....

Yes it accoutns for critical hits, but not critical hit effects.

Hit locations No, but this can help you understand when its better to attack the neck at -5 but has 0 dr or the torso at 4 DR for a given situation.
Look at the bottom of my webpage for a worked example.

Deceptive attacks in the psreadsheet are simply count two up count one to the left :)

To the rest of your questions, Im not nearly so arrogant as to presume I can guess all the things that might happen in a given combat, nor can i assign prob/stat numbers to them. Im just trying to set up initial conditions and make an educated guess on the outcomes.

Nymdok

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

My copy of the Basic set lists its parry as 0. The barbie in this example has ST20, so he can effectively pull all this off one handed :)

Ahh, I looked under the one-handed sword skill, which also lists the bastard sword, but as unbalanced.

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Again, the idea was for it to be a difficult encounter.

Now that you mention it, I re-read the title of this thread. ;)

Originally Posted by Nymdok

p.s. Anyone actually tried this one yet?

I hope I can _simulate_ a rough version of this tonight to verify my numbers. I got many small pieces of code set up to calculate the odds and they can handle individual rolls as well, I just need to wrap a suitable "combat loop" around them.

Can we fix some HT values for the participants in case I want to include that (or in case anyone else wants to test this encounter)? Like Barb HT 16, Cleric HT 12, guards HT 11?

Regards,
Ts

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Ts_

...Can we fix some HT values for the participants in case I want to include that (or in case anyone else wants to test this encounter)? Like Barb HT 16, Cleric HT 12, guards HT 11?

Im going to say

Barb HT:13/HP:22
Cleric HT:12/HP:12
Wizard HT:11/HP:10
Guard HT:10/HP:10

Thats in keeping with the DF Templates in DF1

Nymdok

P.S. as a Guess, Imna say this goes 6 rounds, and the wizard buys the farm. :)

p.p.s. You been writing code for this!?!?!? CHEATER!! I BEEN USING A PENCIL! Im kidding of course, but Id love to see your code. :)

[thulben]

Originally Posted by tjbuege

For example, say you inflict damage of 10d+2 (that's 12-62 points damage) vs a DR of 25. What are your chances of rolling penetrating damage? By my calculations there are 60,466,176 possible combinations of 10 dice (6^10). That's beyond my patience of figuring it out the long way! :)

The short answer to the question of "how many ways can I come up with the sum of n on 10 dice" is (x+x^2+x^3+x^4+x^5+x^6)^10, using the coefficient of x^n in the expanded polynomial

The long answer is that you essentially use the algebra of multiplying polynomials to do the bookkeeping. A normal 6-sided die has each number 1-6 on it. We need some way to keep track of every permutation. By using the exponent of a garbage variable as the value shown on the die, algebra gives us a simple method to do this. As you can see from the polynomial above, each number 1-6 is represented once. We then multiply it by itself 10 times to see what the effect of rolling the die 10 times would be. The nice thing about this method is that you can account for "non-standard" dice (i.e. the possible sums of rolling a 6-sided die with a 1 1's, 2 3's, and 3 5's with a standard one would be (x+2x^3+3x^5)(x+x^2+x^3+x^4+x^5+x^6))