Alternate Core Documents

[Dimestream]

Making comparisons against these 30DT 20% DR armors is like making weapon comparisons using a BEL. Nobody is ever going to use them in a realistic scenario, unless the party ends up fighting against or alongside a special enemy. Those weapons and armor are going to be used against the player, but players aren't going to be acquiring them realistically.

Well, yes. As I said, making all comparisons at Tier 4 equipment levels is not fair in the slightest. Most folk aren't going to have a rocket launcher until well into the game, so expecting damage to be dished out in piles of 200+ per shot is unrealistic. The same goes for armor: unless you're playing around with Alicorn shields (which Alicorns start with), you're not going to be seeing DT much above the 10-15 range for early game, maybe topping out around 25-30 for folks invested in it mid-late game. Two of the games I'm in right now, even though we're closing in on level ten, I still have only about as much DT as I have levels.

[AffeTrollkarl]

If we're talking about adding perks, I think those should go to non-combat ones. Medicine, Survival, Mechanics n' stuff could really use some more interesting perks, me thinks. Makes playing a non-combat character a bit more interesting.

Also ghoul perks~

[SilverlightPony]

My two bits' worth! I don't mind this system being a little more dangerous than other games I've played in. I can count on one hand the number of times I've felt truly threatened in games of Dungeons and Dragons. And getting into combat in other systems like Dark Heresy or Vampire the Masquerade tend to feel like we're having a friendly game of "who can murder the other's face first" moreso than it does life-and-death combat.

But I will agree with Kkat and others' points about critical hits being a bit over the top sometimes. But here's some handy bullet points about that.

I'm pretty sure that real-world application of this (read as 'in game testing' rather than just number crunching) hasn't been done at high enough levels to really justify making sweeping changes. Sure, all Tier 4 weaponry seems super dangerous. But that's because it IS. Those are supposed to be the most dangerous weapons in the world. And since there hasn't been enough high-level testing... let's not jump the (ridiculously high-powered) gun here.
Reducing crit multipliers to 1.5 for most weapons and 2.0 for Magic Energy weapons does cut down on the issue somewhat and makes a crit more survivable.
If you all around want everything to be easier to survive, I agree with Night Light: just give more HP to players and don't change the monster HP calculation at all. That way monsters will, in general, be weaker, and so will NPCs built as monsters. I personally think that takes the difficulty and sets it to Easy like you can in the actual Fallout games, and don't like it, but it's a matter of preference. Please don't change the weaponry more. uSea has already done such a fine job making the weaponry balanced, that it would be a travesty to have to start from scratch.
Clever Prancer is ENTIRELY fine in my opinion. Against someone who has built a character entirely to get as high a crit percentage as possible is going to be far less scary, but is still going to have the highest crit rate of anyone against the Prancer in question. Conversely, someone who isn't heavily into critting doesn't actually lose much against the Prancer, so it doesn't matter. You can't have all ranks of it and still have tank-like DT and DR from heavy armor, so I don't see the problem with leaving it as it is.

And now for a real world example! In Kkat's Stalliongrad campaign, Red Button has an Endurance of 4. Her DT, from level 3 to level 15, has never been higher than 14. She has no DR, no Rad or Poison resistance (Stable Dweller, ugh), and has been using only the lightest and most 'pew pew' of magical energy weapons up until her acquisition of a Gauss rifle. Not a single one of her perks is devoted to doing more damage or being more defensive. They're all invested in the Speech and Mechanics fields.

And yet, she has survived (not unscathed, but very much alive) the entire game so far. Despite having fewer HP than most characters and enemies, and lower DT than anything but the flimsiest monsters. The game requires you, as it is, to be a bit tactically smarter than you would be in an actual playthrough of Fallout 3. Take cover. Use special combat movement and actions. Cripple enemy limbs. Red Button survives because she doesn't run out into the middle of a firefight, call tons of attention to herself, and then complain about how much damage she's taking.

The game is only super lethal if you run out into the middle of combat, take all the bullets in your face, and then jump on your own grenades. Otherwise, it's just lethal enough to encourage smart planning on the players' part, or cooperation if the GM decides to ambush them. Flying solo in the face of a hail of bullets might get you killed. But that's why you don't do it alone. Friends are there to help you! It works like magic! I'm sure there's a good reason for that... friendship being what it is.

That's really all I have to say about this for now. The first and biggest question is, and always should be, "Is it fun?" Only if no one is having fun, or if the majority of a thing is NOT fun, should there be massive changes. No one likes their character being oneshot by a lucky roll on an enemy's part. But not everyone wants to play with weapons that are only marginally more lethal than having a slap-fight.

I wish I could put my thoughts into words this well. QFT.

[TyrannisUmbra]

Salvaged power armor is 500 caps, lacks the rare descriptor, and (pretty much) doesn't even have a faction tag. I fail to see why it would be difficult to find. I literally bought 3 suits of the stuff at once from random merchants.

It definitely shouldn't be available from random merchants. Salvaged power armor is power armor that's been stripped off dead rangers and modified to be useable without its power system -- Finding power armor on a dead ranger is hard enough, since any ranger would take his fallen comrade back to their bunker, as well as make 10x sure that their armor is kept safe and sent back as well. It's /extremely/ rare to be able to get your hooves on it, and the mechanics work required to make it useable without the power should have the price be at least 2, if not 3 times that.

Plus, the doc does state that it's probably Pony NCR faction.

Well, yes. As I said, making all comparisons at Tier 4 equipment levels is not fair in the slightest. Most folk aren't going to have a rocket launcher until well into the game, so expecting damage to be dished out in piles of 200+ per shot is unrealistic. The same goes for armor: unless you're playing around with Alicorn shields (which Alicorns start with), you're not going to be seeing DT much above the 10-15 range for early game, maybe topping out around 25-30 for folks invested in it mid-late game. Two of the games I'm in right now, even though we're closing in on level ten, I still have only about as much DT as I have levels.

That's exactly my point -- Armor is realistically a premium commodity, especially at mid-to-high levels.

As for your nice big post about how damage isn't high at low levels -- A lot of the examples I've been using were done with weapons of tier 2. Additionally, I'd also like to point out that the harder difficulties in FO3/NV have the player dealing half damage, while on normal the player tends to kill any target within a single round of VATS, barring some specific cases. On Very Hard, it tends to take about 3 full rounds, maybe 2 if you have a high-damage weapon. As for damage taken, the levels of damage players take these days is akin to the damage taken on Very Hard, where 3 raiders wielding mediocre weapons tend to put the player in critical health in a matter of a few seconds.

Sob story below, if tl;dr

Spoiler: show

Even playing high END characters, if the enemy targets me at /all/, I end up in a seriously dangerous spot. The week before last, my END 9 unicorn with the highest DT in the entire party was taking 50 damage per attack after DT reductions, from an enemy that attacks 3 times a turn -- From a single opponent. There were 5 opponents. One sniper who crit the 10 END character with only slightly less DT than mine for a few points below half HP, and 3 wielding tier-2 assault rifles, any one of which would have killed another party member in one round. If one of them had targeted my character, she would have been killed in the following turn. If one of them had targeted any of the other party members besides the 10 END, they would have killed them in the round. So they killed the 10 END. The rest of the party focused the sniper because on the turn previous, they'd shot /our/ sniper in the head for a few points of HP above outright killing her. She was only saved from CSR due to the fact that the sniper had made two shots.

And they were wielding mid-tier weapons, against arguably late-mid-tier armors, in my and the 10END's case. That's my real-world example.

I don't want to sound like I'm outright disagreeing with everything you had to say... I just disagree that you think damage is okay at any level above 5.

[Jackelmandingo]

My idea on armor perks.

Armor Specialization
Requirements
Level: 4 Ranks: 3
From experience or proper training in how armor works. You know what straps to tighten and which ones to leave loose.
Pick an armor type Light, Medium, or Heavy. Get for that armor type a bonus of +1 DT & -1% to enemy critical hit chance per rank of armor specialization.

Armor Expertise Light
Requirements
Armor Specialization in light armor.
AGI. 5 & PER. 5
Level:8 for rank:1 ,level:12 for rank:2 ,level:14 for rank:3
For light armor you gain a bonus of +1 DT & +2% DR for each rank of "Armor Expertise Light".

Armor Expertise Medium
Requirements
Armor Specialization in medium armor.
STR. 5 & PER. 5
Level:8 for rank:1 ,level:12 for rank:2 ,level:14 for rank:3
For medium armor you gain a bonus of +2 DT & +5% DR for each rank of "Armor Expertise Medium".

Armor Expertise Heavy
Requirements
Armor Specialization in heavy armor.
STR. 5 ,PER. 5 & END. 5
Level:8 for rank:1 ,level:12 for rank:2 ,level:14 for rank:3
For heavy armor you gain a bonus of +3 DT & +10% DR for each rank of "Armor Expertise Heavy".

[Viewing_Glass]

I like DR as much as the next pony, but the DR on Medium and Heavy should probably be reduced. Not sure what the appropriate values should be though.

[Jackelmandingo]

Max on medium is 15% ,on heavy is 30% . That's why PER on all of them you know where the weak spots are.

[Kkat]

Okie dokie lokie!

The following changes are temporary and subject to reversal.

Clever Prancer has been revised to the following: Through agility and reflexes, you have become deft at striking where it hurts while preventing your enemies from doing the same. You gain +2% to your critical success chance for attacks, and reduce your opponent's chance to score critical hits by 25%, rounded up. If wearing light armor or no armor, these bonuses are doubled.

Knight in Shining Armor and Combat Veteran.

With pegasus lightning tricks in mind...

Tough Hide has been revised to give +2 DT and +4 Stun.

Critical hit damage has been reduced to 150% / 200%.

[Jackelmandingo]

i liked the idea of 2x / 3x for base dam.

[Zepheniah]

My idea on armor perks.

Armor Specialization
Requirements
Level: 4 Ranks: 3
From experience or proper training in how armor works. You know what straps to tighten and which ones to leave loose.
Pick an armor type Light, Medium, or Heavy. Get for that armor type a bonus of +1 DT & -1% to enemy critical hit chance per rank of armor specialization.

Armor Expertise Light
Requirements
Armor Specialization in light armor.
AGI. 5 & PER. 5
Level:8 for rank:1 ,level:12 for rank:2 ,level:14 for rank:3
For light armor you gain a bonus of +1 DT & +2% DR for each rank of "Armor Expertise Light".

Armor Expertise Medium
Requirements
Armor Specialization in medium armor.
STR. 5 & PER. 5
Level:8 for rank:1 ,level:12 for rank:2 ,level:14 for rank:3
For medium armor you gain a bonus of +2 DT & +5% DR for each rank of "Armor Expertise Medium".

Armor Expertise Heavy
Requirements
Armor Specialization in heavy armor.
STR. 5 ,PER. 5 & END. 5
Level:8 for rank:1 ,level:12 for rank:2 ,level:14 for rank:3
For heavy armor you gain a bonus of +3 DT & +10% DR for each rank of "Armor Expertise Heavy".

I like DR as much as the next pony, but the DR on Medium and Heavy should probably be reduced. Not sure what the appropriate values should be though.

Max on medium is 15% ,on heavy is 30% . That's why PER on all of them you know where the weak spots are.

To reference FNV for a moment, the DT of high end power armor there is 36 with 35% DR. The DR also applies before DT, making the armor extremely protective, but justifiably so, due to it being, well... power armor. (The lower tier power armor had 25 DT and 25% DR.
(The DR values are drawn from the game's lead developer's [JSawyer] unofficial patch for the game, ironing out many things that were incomplete in the final release.)

Now, while having DR apply before DT would be too much of a shift in the current system, these perks would bring Power Armor up to an appropriate level in power quite nicely if they granted only the DR bonus. In combination with the Combat Veteran perk and stacking the DR twice, you'd have 35% DR and 40DT power armor.
For the comparative protective value, I've calculated an AMR crit (at normal x2 and once at x3) and an AMR regular hit against both versions. (Since that's the weapon designed to fight PA and precluding any other perks.)

Spoiler: show

FNV: (35DT, 35%DR, DR before DT)
The AMR hit does an average of ~30 damage.
The x2 AMR crit does an average of ~95 damage.
The x3 AMR crit does an average of ~160 damage.

FoE: (40DT, 35%DR, DR after DT)
The AMR hit does an average of ~40 damage.
The x2 AMR crit does an average of ~105 damage.
The x3 AMR crit does an average of ~170 damage.

On a purely comparative basis (still precluding damage perks), the armors in this state have an approximately equal defensive capability (noting that the FNV AMR does more damage but the FoE AMR was used for both examples.) and I'd go so far as to say that the FoE variant is overall weaker, especially when considering that the FoE damage perks are more powerful (Since this is both purely armor and isn't factoring in tough hide or alchemy, the protective qualities of power armor would be well to do should it cap out at 35% or a more even 40%, since this isn't factoring in damage perks and they're as a rule stronger than defensive perks [+1d10 > tough hide, 100% of the time]).