Shattered Kingdoms

Haste/Gstr finally got fixed and I heard many people already bitching about the penalties. Which means that those spells might of been debuffed enough to be made useful.

Enlarge/shrink with damage is fine for regular combat. The *only* issues are with damage + multipliers such as cleave and backstab.

How do you fix this? Is it really broken?

Part of me says, "This isn't broken, if you do the prep work, you get the benefit."

Part of me says, "The multiplier for those attacks needs to be throttled based on being shrank/enlarged."

Again, this should only impact attacks with a multiplier.

After the more recent complaint of enlarge + backstab from several weeks ago, I went ahead and did some testing on it. My findings were that enlarging from normal to giant size does not increase backstab damage.

I thoroughly did 5 normal sized backstabs with no buffs from a GM rogue on a Champion scout with no spell buffs. They all landed around the same ballpark. Then I enlarged from normal to giant size and did 5 more. The damage did not increase at all.

Finally I tested it with spells such as giant strength and frenzy, which did make a noticeable difference after another 5 testings. I posted my findings on Java's site. I wish to note here, however, I have never enlarged to backstab outside testing purposes, and when I did test, it was after several complaints already.

Other disclaimers. I have not tested this with cleave, I don't have a character to do that. I also did not test the non-special melee hits because the dodge/parry/shield block is too random, it could have taken hours to average the results.

It leads to believe it was either: ninja tweaked already from before the testing several weeks ago, which is most likely what happened; or, that 'enlargement does more damage' theory has always been urban myth, something that makes sense, but wasn't real.

Before you dispute, please do some testing. From reading this thread it seems a lot of players just go by word of mouth.

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Someone asked why players favor giants and minotaurs over dwarves and sprites. From my test findings, while I was not able to test whether if sizes determine differences in damage with normal hits, the spell giant strength raised from 325 to 525 pounds carrying capacity did.

In another words, giants and minotaurs come with 25 and 24 strength scores respectively - 'good to go' warriors, where as dwarves come with less, and sprites much less at 15. Dwarves and sprites however, can do reasonably well with spell ups, and more often than not it's the players behind that know what they are doing, rather than the actual races anyway.

***

In summary:

1. From my own testings, enlarging a human to giant sized does not increase backstab damage. Spells buffs however, do, especially the giant strength spell.

2. Giants make good warriors because if a player trains their strength score to maximum, as long as they can walk up to people and type bash target, they are more than likely get the job done. I suspect this actually has very little to do with the fact they are giant sized. It's because they have 25 strength score.

3. "BUT BUT OMFG SOME DWARVES HAVE ROCKED BEFORE!1111!121one!31~" This is more than likely because the actual player knew what they were doing, and because they did, disadvantages in sizes (if it exists) and stats were enhanced by some means.

Either enlarge multipliers work or they don't. It shouldn't be like that warriors get meleee damage multiplier while a rogue/helly doesn't get the multiplier when backstabbing/cleaves. Thats just plain out stupid.

Minette:
I think the interesting testing would be normal melee damage as this is where the problem occurs with giants/minotaurs dishing out too much damage.

I am not sayin that a l33t player with super elite gear can't play a dwarf/sprite warrior but the normal player almost never choose a small/tiny sized race as warrior because why should you? As Konge stated it is easy to get f.ex. haste which outweighs a giants (too good) dex.

WTF? Giants and minotaurs don't dish out too much damage, that's part of their racial bonus, both races have glaring weaknesses. Hell, Minotaurs can't even wear helmets.

The problem is humans who have no weaknesses doing the exact same damage as a giant.

They do not do the exact same dmg, are all of you people crazy? Drop this topic, everything is fine, Dulrik MADE it this way for a PURPOSE.

Agreed.

A gstr, enlarged human does the exact same damage as a giant, period.

Minette: If in your testing enlarging someone to giant-size does not increase damage, you need to take a close look at how you test things.

Going from giant size and wielding a giant-sized weapon is doing the same as medium size and wielding a medium-size weapon in your testing - doesn't make sense.