Combat Rework Proposal
I know there is one of these already, but I want to offer this as a plan B, or C or whatever the next number of the alphabet is.
So the biggest part of this change is rethinking how item tiers work.
Item bonuses would be limited by the tier of the item.
Tier 0 aka basic, would limit to 1 max bonus.
Tier 1 2 Max
Tier 2 4 Max
Tier 3 7 Max
Tier 4 10 Max
This would give you a reason to build high tier specialized items.
Or more mid tier generalized items, and make you want to upgrade to later tier items
In addition mods should be exempt from this, calculating after the cap.
Why? Because this would make mods actually valuable on lower level equipment, and make mods able to help bridge lower level equipment into higher tier well you replace them.
AC Should only be available on Helmets and Armor as a property, this helps limit the crazy numbers you can reach to twice what you can reach with weapons.
How this looks is, assuming stats are all equal mind you, also assume skill 10
Attack Ab 1 Base, 1 Weapon, 1 skill, 1 weapon focus
Defense AC 10 base, 1 armor, 1 helmet, 1 dodge this becomes 4 vs 13 meaning a 9 or better hits in pvp.
Now lets look at Tier 2, we will assume 30 skill, no mods.
Attack 1 Base, 4 Weapon, 3 Skill 1 Focus
Defense 10 Base, 4 Armor, 4 Helmet, 1 Dodge
9 vs 19, meaning you hit on a 10 or better
Now for Tier 4, we will assume skill 50 no mods
Attack 1 Base, 10 Weapon, 5 skill, 1 focus
Defense 10 Base, 10 Armor, 10 Helmet, 1 dodge
17 vs 31
Hit on a 14
Once we work up to the end game and we look at tier 5, 100 skill, and 3 mods for ab/ac per item
Attack 1 Base, 10 Weapon, 10 skill, 1 Focus, Mod 9
Defense 1 Base, Armor 10, 10 Helmet, 1 Dodge, Mod 18
This becomes 31 vs 40 which comes out about perfect.
Now then, I would say as part of this, I want to suggest this change again for mods
Basic Heavy Armor: 1 Red Slot
Heavy Armor 1: 1 Red Slot 1 Yellow Slot
Heavy Armor 2: 2 Red slots 2 Yellow Slots
Heavy Armor 3: 3 Red slots 2 Yellow Slots 1 Green Slot
Heavy Armor 4: 3 Red Slots 3 Yellow Slots 1 Green Slot 1 Prismatic Slot
Basic Light Armor: 1 Yellow Slot
Light Armor 1: 1 Yellow 1 Red
Light Armor 2: 1 Yellow 2 Red 1 Green
Light Armor 3: 2 Yellow 2 Red 2 Green
Light Armor 4: 2 Yellow 3 Red 2 Green 1 Prismatic.
Basic Force Armor: 1 Blue
Force Armor 1: 1 Blue 1 Yellow
Force Armor 2: 2 Blue 1 Yellow 1 Red
Force Armor 3: 3 Blue 2 Yellow 1 Red
Force Armor 4: 3 blue 2 Yellow 2 Red 1 Prismatic
As well as this one.
Blue: should remain a go to for force stuff absolutely, keeping that all consolidated into one is good for slot balance.
Red: Red should become pure offence, str, bab, ab, ect should all remain here, dex, ac, ect should move.
Yellow: Utility is a weird role for a single slot, it should become defensive in nature, it should gain dex, con, ac, and lose the luck boost, and any other weird off the wall skill boosts, this one should become the defense focused mods.
Green: Green should retain its’ weird skill boosts, but it should also gain the other skill boosts like luck up, ect, outside of crafting focused items green slots should be pretty rare, I am not even sure if they are needed they might need a redressing into general utility but I am not sure what that should look like at this time, perhaps some cool down reduction or some other such to make them valuable since they are not common, and will probably take things like special materials or prismatic slots.
Now then for stats, I think stats should have an absolute cap, from items, mods, skills ect.
I think this cap should be 60
Currently we have 500 levels primaries go up by .2 secondaries by .1 and tetreries by .05
this means that you will have at most 100 stats from primary 50 from secondary, and 25 from secondaries
A single skill at 100 gets you to 20, so assuming you start at 10 three skills to cap with the same primary get you to cap, that is a lot of levels, but this could be upgraded with equipment, base stats, and secondaries.
In addition 60 gives a modifier cap of 50, and a maximum variance of 51, if for some reason you are using a -8 ability against someones 60. But someone who went and decided to go and max out 5 primary str/dex abilities will not have 100+ stats vrs someone more balanced in design.
And finally as you may have noted there was not bab perk in the ac/ab breakdown, because I honestly don’t think they are needed and they make balancing that much harder when you have a perk to calculate on top of the skill giving you more ab, one of them needs to go, and I think it is better to kill the perk.
Edit, also forgot.
BAB mods need to not exist.
Anything item wise that increases BAB should not exist.