Fortification

[Feithlin]

I have always wondered why the almighty Horoth could only offer a moderate fort. item while any level 9 or above character gets a heavy fort. item... Sure, it would make rogues and critical amenities useless, but reducing fort. against the most common logic isn't a very good solution imo.
Here is a proposition:
* Allow intelligent (perhaps humanoids only) ennemies wear fortification items according to their rank/level. They should probably get them later than characters, because characters are heroes
* Change Sunder this way (the bold part indicates what changes):

This melee special attack, when successful, results in a -25% fortification
penalty to the target for 15 seconds if it fails a
Fortitude save (DC 10 + Str mod).
Some creatures may be immune to the sunder effect

Destruction and Imp. destruction items would keep the same effect (-4 AC both, stackable with each other).
* Modify Fighter Strategy (Sunder) this way:
Fighter Strategy (Sunder) I (1 AP): adds +1 to Sunder DC and reduces fortification by an additional 5%, for a total of 30%.
Fighter Strategy (Sunder) II (2 AP): adds +1 to Sunder DC and reduces fortification by an additional 5%, for a total of 35%.
Fighter Strategy (Sunder) III (3 AP): adds +1 to Sunder DC and reduces fortification by an additional 5%, for a total of 40%.
Fighter Strategy (Sunder) III (3 AP): adds +1 to Sunder DC and reduces fortification by an additional 5%, for a total of 45%.
* Change Opportunist feat into:

A Rogue with this ability gains a 3% chance to double strike
with melee weapons and bypasses 20% fortification.

(this reduction stacks with sunder effect)
* Change Improved Sunder into:

This melee special attack, when successful, results in a -40% Fortification
penalty to the target for 30 seconds if it fails a
Fortitude save (DC 14 + Str mod).
Some creatures may be immune to the sunder effect.

Additionaly, Raid bosses should also wear Elemental absorption items...

[Talias006]

* Modify Fighter Strategy (Sunder) this way:
Fighter Strategy (Sunder) I (1 AP): adds +1 to Sunder DC and reduces fortification by an additional 5%, for a total of 30%.
Fighter Strategy (Sunder) II (2 AP): adds +1 to Sunder DC and reduces fortification by an additional 5%, for a total of 35%.
Fighter Strategy (Sunder) III (3 AP): adds +1 to Sunder DC and reduces fortification by an additional 5%, for a total of 40%.
Fighter Strategy (Sunder) III (3 AP): adds +1 to Sunder DC and reduces fortification by an additional 5%, for a total of 45%.

Fixed so that additional really means additional.

[wigthemaster]

I have always wondered why the almighty could only offer a moderate fort. item while any level 9 or above character gets a heavy fort. item... Sure, it would make rogues and critical amenities useless, but reducing fort.

I leave that for you to think about a little longer...

~Nerf an entire class, really?
Wig

[donfilibuster]

I agree monsters above cannon fodder should appropiate defenses (for both too few and too many).

However, fortification on items is a magical effect. As such it won't be something to overcome with physical attacks alone.
A rogue surely can learn the trick, or a bard, but a fighter enhancements gotta require some feat or int or something.
Sunder is probably not enough, something like AA's force arrows would make sense.

See http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems...#fortification
"This suit of armor or shield produces a magical force that protects vital areas of the wearer more effectively. "

Not to confuse with the fort of constructs, undead, oozes, etc. they are outright immune.
Having no vital areas there's little to do to them to cause critical damage except bursts and such weapon effects.
(altough burts of damage are supposed to occur on crits, to account to the weapon hitting a vital area)

Apart of all that, the natural counter from PnP was surely targeted dispel on items.
Not sure if it is general but i believe dispel is fairly underused in DDO.

The whole idea seemed to be that monsters should be dead by the time you could throw a debuff.
Let alone a counterspell, yet there's several situations where a counterspell can be used.
(such as spamming of sleet storm before you get break enchantment, preventing ice storms to put off firewalls, etc.)

Also note that saying fort shouldn't be a magic effect is like saying metalline should be a type of metal.

[Feithlin]

Fixed so that additional really means additional.

Thanks, corrected.

[Feithlin]

I leave that for you to think about a little longer...

~Nerf an entire class, really?
Wig

Perhaps you should read what follows

[Feithlin]

I agree monsters above cannon fodder should appropiate defenses (for both too few and too many).

However, fortification on items is a magical effect. As such it won't be something to overcome with physical attacks alone.
A rogue surely can learn the trick, or a bard, but a fighter enhancements gotta require some feat or int or something.
Sunder is probably not enough, something like AA's force arrows would make sense.

See http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems...#fortification
"This suit of armor or shield produces a magical force that protects vital areas of the wearer more effectively. "

Not to confuse with the fort of constructs, undead, oozes, etc. they are outright immune.
Having no vital areas there's little to do to them to cause critical damage except bursts and such weapon effects.
(altough burts of damage are supposed to occur on crits, to account to the weapon hitting a vital area)

Apart of all that, the natural counter from PnP was surely targeted dispel on items.
Not sure if it is general but i believe dispel is fairly underused in DDO.

The whole idea seemed to be that monsters should be dead by the time you could throw a debuff.
Let alone a counterspell, yet there's several situations where a counterspell can be used.
(such as spamming of sleet storm before you get break enchantment, preventing ice storms to put off firewalls, etc.)

Also note that saying fort shouldn't be a magic effect is like saying metalline should be a type of metal.

Good point. The idea of the modification was also to make combats involve more than maintaining to mouse button clicked. The problem of dispel is that it would bring an all or nothing, which implies going back to the same situation. However, we could imagine a new spell allowing a caster to break a part of the defenses, perhaps a -10% Fortification debuff, non stackable with the same spell, but stackable with melee effects.

[steelblueskies]

Rogues- wrack construct
fvs with aov prestige- -10% fort chance on get hit.

[Talias006]

Rogues- wrack construct
fvs with aov prestige- -10% fort chance on get hit.

The Rogue ability is timered, and I don't recall if activation takes an action boost or not. So that's at best a situational ability to work around constructs Fort. It doesn't decrease any other non-construct Fort.

And the Favored Soul ability requires them to get hit for the Fort decrease to take effect. Not exactly a great premise for decreasing Fort among mobs.

Any other ideas about decreasing enemy Fort would be obviously welcome, as long as they don't add to the dumbing down or other nerfing of the game.

[Jaid314]

i couldn't agree more! i'm so tired of people being able to play things other than casters! quick, let's nerf those dirty melees (and ranged combat specialists as well) into the ground so that they're completely useless, then we'll pretend like we didn't make them completely useless by letting them have an ability that let's them be slightly less gimp than before!

never mind that it's going to cost them extra points that they don't have room for, or that it's going to require that they beat the ridiculous fortitude saves of every single important raid boss in the game! clearly this will improve fun for all involved, especially those of us that hate people who don't focus entirely on spellcasting!

(translation: i think this is a terrible idea and should not be implemented)

[Talias006]

Were you and I even reading the same thread?
I fail to see how implementing another means of Fort reduction could somehow nerf melee ability into the ground and making them utterly useless and obsolete.
Please, explain how you see this happening with any of the possibilities mentioned here.

[steelblueskies]

pretty sure he was saying that already happened, that such a buff ability wouldn't be enough of a buff to equalize things, that even if it were added it would likely eat a feat slot or require a contrived stat and gear setup, that can't be afforded while maintaining effectiveness otherwise.

in general he also indicated he has regeneration and a fear of fire and acid, what with being a troll and all.
moving on.

i agree that the two abilities i listed are situational or specific, merely pointing to two that do exist.

furthermore, the aov aura can be placed on another player and the debuff stacks up to 5 times. with no monsters with above 50% fort excepting constructs, this means with an aov fvs, and a rogue, you can arrange to debilitate pretty much anything with fortification.

now adding such abilities to certain other classes is clearly of debateable merit. i don't intend to enter that debate. merely providing information, primarily pursuant to you notes. stacking fort debuff would be mainly useful in many parties purely as a function of speeding up how fast the fortification is debuffed, or covering for situations where the aov aura is unavailable, or a boss has random aggro rendering the debuff on get hit unreliable.

rendering it out as a stacks with other classes version, and giving a form to all the classes, or even a few would be of minimal value, but when its useful, it would be really useful. pretty much junk for trash mobs though, as just about none(might actually be none, excepting constructs) have fort at all.

have you considered what you think should happen if fortification is debuffed below 0%? do you feel it should amp damage? have no effect?

[Feithlin]

have you considered what you think should happen if fortification is debuffed below 0%? do you feel it should amp damage? have no effect?

I'm not sure if it should be possible to decrease it below 0%, but reducing below 50% would already be a benefit for all melees (against what implies Jaid). The main benefit is that it would require the collaboration of different classes/builds to achieve it.

[pHo3nix]

I'm not sure if it should be possible to decrease it below 0%, but reducing below 50% would already be a benefit for all melees (against what implies Jaid). The main benefit is that it would require the collaboration of different classes/builds to achieve it.

I think jaid's point is that if you have to spend feats and enhancements on something to reduce fortification of a raid boss to the point where is now(50%), you are hitting just melees with the nerf bat, cause casters do not care about fortification So yes, while in theory raid bosses should have 100% fort, doing so would nerf melees(mostly rogues) really bad.

[Feithlin]

I think jaid's point is that if you have to spend feats and enhancements on something to reduce fortification of a raid boss to the point where is now(50%), you are hitting just melees with the nerf bat, cause casters do not care about fortification So yes, while in theory raid bosses should have 100% fort, doing so would nerf melees(mostly rogues) really bad.

If you sum up efforts, you could end up with a fortification than 50%, which would be beneficial for melees.
I also mentioned Energy absorption on the casters' side, because it seems a basic protection for a high level vilain.

Bosses would be more difficult without contribution of all the raid, but if everybody was participating, it would become easier, perhaps even more than what it is now. This is what a raid should be imo: a participation of each member to reach a higher result than the simple sum of all of its members.

[steelblueskies]

If you sum up efforts, you could end up with a fortification than 50%, which would be beneficial for melees.
I also mentioned Energy absorption on the casters' side, because it seems a basic protection for a high level vilain.

Bosses would be more difficult without contribution of all the raid, but if everybody was participating, it would become easier, perhaps even more than what it is now. This is what a raid should be imo: a participation of each member to reach a higher result than the simple sum of all of its members.

again purely for the purpose of fleshing out the thinking here.
You would require 4/12ths of a raid party to be one of each savant type to bypass a respective portion of each elemental protection.
Likewise even if fortification started at 100%( which would be a unilateral physical damage nerf more heavily felt by some than others classwise) you could still get a range of debuffs on a target dropping them to 0% fortification or below.
As noted the aov aura debuff on get hit is 10% each time and stacks up to -50% alone.
Adding even -10% to each remaining melée class you could hit -120% or more.
With your rogue and sunder changes you start approaching -200%.

Now consider, such an approach would require ensuring a party has multiple debuffers.
Also consider that it would generally be easier to build a character to not rely on critical damage, and thus classes who primarily function around critical damage would be significantly impacted in the negative.

For further consideration, whereas fortification impacts only critical damage in melée, elemental resistance or protection, even fortification, have no impact whatsoever on spell critical hits. This adds disparity between melée and spellcasting classes. Also remember fortification is a rolled chance for critical damage to apply.
You can give a monster 95% fortification, and thanks to the bad random number generator in game, still find a party only failing to bypass it 10% of the time in a fight. You must also consider how the engine handles resistance, vulnerability, and absorbtion. If you have a character debuff a monsters resistance to a negative value, but the monster is wearing absorbtion it is possible to still wind up doing more damage than if the monster had 0 or positive resistance and no absorbtion.

The last item to consider for the moment is the benefit gained.
Requiring an action purely to require an action, generally will be poorly received.
Melée can ignore this in general by simply focusing a build on base damage instead of crit, and bypass bothering with the extra action or possible build requirements.
If you make the fortification debuff a part of the enhancements or feats they may take anyway, then you have changed essentially nothing.

How would you seriously address such concerns.

[Feithlin]

Now consider, such an approach would require ensuring a party has multiple debuffers.
Also consider that it would generally be easier to build a character to not rely on critical damage, and thus classes who primarily function around critical damage would be significantly impacted in the negative.

Well, most melees gain a lot from bypassing fortification, be they kensei, rogues, paladins or barbarian.

For further consideration, whereas fortification impacts only critical damage in melée, elemental resistance or protection, even fortification, have no impact whatsoever on spell critical hits. This adds disparity between melée and spellcasting classes.

This is true, but on the other side, elemental absorption affects non critical hits, which fortification doesn't. The level of absorption should be calibrated on the overall damage, including both critics and non critics.

Also remember fortification is a rolled chance for critical damage to apply.
You can give a monster 95% fortification, and thanks to the bad random number generator in game, still find a party only failing to bypass it 10% of the time in a fight.

This is already true with 50% fort, or with anything in the game. You could roll only '1' on your dices.

You must also consider how the engine handles resistance, vulnerability, and absorbtion. If you have a character debuff a monsters resistance to a negative value, but the monster is wearing absorbtion it is possible to still wind up doing more damage than if the monster had 0 or positive resistance and no absorbtion.

He would probably have both absorption and resistance.

The last item to consider for the moment is the benefit gained.
Requiring an action purely to require an action, generally will be poorly received.

The first reaction after every modification is always DOOOM! Just look at the TWF or spell casting revamps. After some time, everybody gets used to it.

Melée can ignore this in general by simply focusing a build on base damage instead of crit, and bypass bothering with the extra action or possible build requirements.
If you make the fortification debuff a part of the enhancements or feats they may take anyway, then you have changed essentially nothing.

Building around base damage isn't very effective in terms of dps. If forticatification was modified this way, some people would include the debuffs in their build, because they have room for it, be it in terms of AP or feats, while others would rely on them to reach their full dps.
The only problem I see is that is that people could prefer to ignore rogues if they can't easily bypass fortification, which I clearly wouldn't like, since the idea is more to make everyone play their tactical part in the fight. I don't see solutions yet, but there are probably one I don't think about.