Magic Damage?

[owen]

I wonder if combat would be more interesting with a second type of damage, namely “magic” damage. I’m stealing this idea from MOBAs, many of which have two types of damage (“normal” and “magic”). Mechanically speaking, the difference between normal damage and magical damage is as follows:

– Against an unarmored target, one point of normal damage removes as much HP as one point of magic damage (e.g., one hit point).

– Normal damage is reduced by “armor.” In the case of KeeperRL, the “defense” stat (which is strength + armor) would be what reduces normal damage.

– Analogously, Magic damage is reduced by “magic resistance” (or, magic armor, if you prefer). In the case of KeeperRL, I’d suggest that strength would NOT confer magic resistance. In other words, the only way to get magic resistance would be through items (wearable or consumable), traits, skills, or by the effects of spells.

– Normal attacks can have armor penetration, and by analogy, magical attacks could have magic penetration. So, for example, a war hammer (blunt) could have high damage but lousy armor penetration and it would do well against an unarmored target with lots of hit points. Conversely, a spear or pike (pierce damage = higher armor penentration) would fare better against armored targets.

Why do this? It’s a way to make the game way more positionally complicated while only adding one new stat. It also automatically makes every minion weak, by default, against magic, so that a level 25 humanoid can’t just roflstomp through the entire campaign.

Note that this is a different idea, mechanically, from creating a new class of magical items, which is why I didn’t mention it in the other thread, which is more about inventory and production and not combat. In theory, spellcasters could deal normal damage with their spells, and mundane minions could wield items that deal magical damage. In fact, you could just call them “red” and “black” instead of “magic” and “normal,” but the idea is that magic damage is dealt by spells or enchanted items.

Finally, to top it off, there is “true” damage, which is neither normal nor magical. “True” damage simply bypasses armor and magic resistance, and it diminishes HP. True damage would be usually be applied for a few special cases like damage from burning, poison, or other conditions.

[Keeperman]

How about this?

Physical damage types:
SHOOT: you(MsgType::ARE, “shot in the back!”); break;
BITE: you(MsgType::ARE, “bitten in the neck!”); break;
CUT: you(MsgType::YOUR, “throat is cut!”); break;
CRUSH: you(MsgType::YOUR, “spine is crushed!”); break;
PUNCH: you(MsgType::YOUR, “neck is broken!”); break;
HIT: you(MsgType::ARE, “hit in the back of the head!”); break;
STAB: you(MsgType::ARE, “stabbed in the “_s +

Magic damage types:
SPELL: you(MsgType::ARE, “ripped to pieces!”); break;

True damage types:
FIRE –
SILVER –
STUN –
SLEEP –
POISON –
BLINDNESS –
SLOW –
FORCE BOLT –
WORD OF POWER –

So “True” damage types could be mixed with physical damage.
eg. Flaming swords (FIRE + CUT) or poisoned arrows (POISON + SHOOT) etc.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Keeperman.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Keeperman.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Keeperman.

[Michal Brzozowski]

I’ve thought about this before, clearly something that works for MOBAs could make an interesting combat mechanic in KeeperRL. I wonder if it’s not possible to do this by differentiating melee and projectile damage? These things are already present in the game, and would only require some changes in formulas (I guess projectiles would bypass armor and strength, and would use a separate stat and class of items to calculate defense). What do you think?

[Keeperman]

Light armour or no armour could let creatures dodge projectiles. Leather armour is best because you can dodge but also absorb damage. Metal armour might make you a sitting duck.

[Keeperman]

Metal armour would be boss of Malee fighting.

Magic resistance or resisting true damage would need creature traits or magic items or spells.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Keeperman.

[owen]

Michal Brzozowski wrote:

I’ve thought about this before, clearly something that works for MOBAs could make an interesting combat mechanic in KeeperRL. I wonder if it’s not possible to do this by differentiating melee and projectile damage? These things are already present in the game, and would only require some changes in formulas (I guess projectiles would bypass armor and strength, and would use a separate stat and class of items to calculate defense). What do you think?

Well, my suggestion would still be to make damage type and weapon range being two orthogonal categories so that damage type A and damage type B could both be dealt at any distance. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to playing games that do it like that.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by owen.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Any particular game that you would recommend checking out that has this system implemented well?

[owen]

http://kingdomrush.com/play/

It’s a tower defense game for mobile devices, but I still think it’s quite well designed. I say this because it can take a few tries to figure out the optimal tower placement to win the game. It also allows the player to control one Moba-style hero who can walk around the map and kill things. The shareware version is on the web.

The game has physical, magic, and true damage, and I think this provides enough variety to make the game strategically interesting without adding needless complexity. There are four classes of towers: melee towers (which spawn units that deal a small amount of physical damage but whose main purpose are to retard enemies), ranged towers which deal single-target physical damage, magic towers which deal single-target magic damage, and splash towers which deal physical damage with an area of effect. Heroes can deal melee or ranged physical damage, and many of them have spells which will deal magic damage. (Spells are generally ranged, I don’t actually know if there is any melee-magic-damage combo although there theoretically *could* be). Creeps have resistance either to physical damage, magical damage, or neither, but never both.

There’s a detailed wiki with information on everything in the game. Here are two pages specifically about the damage system:

http://kingdomrushtd.wikia.com/wiki/Armor_and_Magic_resistance
http://kingdomrushtd.wikia.com/wiki/True_Damage

LoL and DOTA also have Physical, Magic, and True damage as I mentioned before.

Anyway, the point is that damage type and attack range are two orthogonal statistics in all of these games. Dota, in particular, also has a few interesting abilities that you could adapt for a roguelike.

[Author]

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