Throwing martial arts

Game Talk The Drawing Board
17

That sounds like poor design.
You’re separating throwing into:

  • a sub-optimal skill that only exists to waste the player’s time.
  • a skill that can only be trained after completing a task as restrictive as forging. This skill has zero synergy with the previous skill, even if the player was using the previous skill with the exact same weapon just minutes before reading the martial arts book.

Weapons requiring different training is not enough of a reason to split skills, look at all the melee skills in the game: bashing can work both on hitting things with a rock as well as a sledgehammer, cutting can work on a knife just as well as chainsaw lajatangs, piercing can work on a shiv just as well as with a spear.

Requiring training is not something I’m fond of, it strikes again as singling out a group of weapons for no good reason, when there are plenty of other weapons that would require just as much if not more training.
A character can pick a whip or a chainsaw lajatang at skill 0 and still wield it, they can pick a minigun or a rocket launcher and have no problem reloading and shooting it (nor have any issues with firearms safety), or start using a modern hi-tech bow.

The character will suck at actually hitting things, true, and there may be better weapons to start learning, but you can still use them and train the skill all the same.

18

“Gun” skill contributes nothing to firing a pistol?
Y/N/M?

Where did I say that the player should be prevented from equipping and using any of the throwing weapons?

You keep saying “bad design” at misinterpretations.

{
    "type" : "martial_art",
    "id" : "style_swordsmanship",
    "name" : "Medieval Swordsmanship",
    "description": "The art of the longsword and other weapons, preceding the later development of fencing.  Designed for combat both unarmored and in armor, it includes grappling as well as defensive and offensive sword techniques, plus familiarity with other weapons like polearms.",
    "arm_block" : 99,
    "leg_block" : 99,
    "onattack_buffs" : [
        {
            "id" : "swordsmanship_attack_buff",
            "name" : "Perfect Defense",
            "description" : "Bonus dodges after an attack.",
            "buff_duration" : 3,
            "melee_allowed" : true,
            "bonus_dodges" : 2
        }
    ],
    "ondodge_buffs" : [
        {
            "id" : "swordsmanship_counter",
            "name" : "Displacement",
            "description" : "The enemy has presented an opening in their defense.",
            "min_melee" : 2,
            "melee_allowed" : true,
            "max_stacks": 1,
            "buff_duration" : 2
        }
    ],
    "techniques" : [
        "tec_swordsmanship_counter",
        "tec_swordsmanship_grab",
        "tec_swordsmanship_break",
        "tec_swordsmanship_zornhau",
        "tec_swordsmanship_unterhau"
    ],
    "weapons" : [
        "sword_wood",
        "sword_nail",
        "sword_crude",
        "zweihander",
        "zweihander_inferior",
        "zweifire_off",
        "zweifire_on",
        "arming_sword",
        "arming_sword_inferior",
        "longsword",
        "longsword_inferior",
        "dusksword",
        "estoc",
        "q_staff",
        "i_staff",
        "makeshift_halberd",
        "glaive",
        "pike",
        "spear_steel",
        "halberd"
    ]
}

What part of that style definition prevents equipping a sword?

19

woah wait. Throwing is throwing. you don’t need to slit it into wheather the item was INTEDED to be a trown weapon or not, everything different about that comes from the weapon, not how good you are at throwing things that were menat to be trown vs things that wern’t. Thats not seperate skills, unless ‘throwing weapons’ skill is really ‘ability to understandm, calculate and manipulate the spin of the weapon through the air.’
Not a martial art, at best/worst a seperate skill that goes hand in hand with throwing.

I think that should be something that kicks in at higher levels of throwing, not a seperate skill. Unless you want to branch it out into a full spread of weapon proficiencies which have some carryover with one another, and ‘how comfortable you are with weapon_ID_type’ or something. Thats a bit overeaching a plan so instead, go with:

High levels of throwing skill, give accuracy, and a better chance of getting the thrown weapons special_effect (through intentionally getting a specific side/ the blade to hit the target) this would allow throwing to be nerfed however much damage / chance of hamage / high damage is deemed apropriate, and add in various stuns, damage bonuses, or to change the damage type, on crits. Based on the weapon thrown. (rocks get some minor stun crit, blades actually land blade first inhibiting mobility slightly and doing more cutting damage etc…) This could implemented in relatively small stages, and be broadened later if deemed necesary.

I’ve been given the distict impression that even in irl weapon-tumble-manipulation, its a matter of practice more than teqnique, or taught skill. practicing until you learn how to judge the balence and end result of throwing. I don’t doubt that tutoring would massively improve the learning rate, such as NPC or book reading on throwing, but not manditory.

still going to have to disagree with this. What is a martial art about throwing? Bows I could see having a martial art, but throwing is too intuitive, and there is no counter_throw and such that would make any sense in having.

That is simulated with marksman skill. pistols and rifles and bows are all very different in how they feel to shoot, what remains the same is the fundamentals of finding the ‘comfort’ spot for you, the positon that you always fire from, with that specific weapon so your eye is always in the same spot aiming down the sights, not flinching, or pulling, or otherwise doing something that would cause inacuracy. That is the point of marksmenship. "Aim down the sites, and pull the trigger sounds easy, but there are lots of ways to be seriously inaccurate.

I see no mention of “not allowed to equip or use” where did you get that?

Eh... kind of memeish, and not fully relevent so its spoilered also contains comments on sexting F-word etc..language

image

20

You mean marksmanship? What has this to do with anything?

Notice the break line in my post. It’s there for a reason, namely, breaking from ‘response to you’ to commenting to the thread in general, namely, on Kevin’s and other’s “might require training” on slings and the like.

You specifically said:

You are proposing two skills, you are proposing that one of the skills is only usable while under martial arts, which means the entire skill is gate-locked behind a book, and all the training the player did with the generic throwing skill becomes useless once they read the book.

21

There is a marksmanship skill, not gun skill. It helps minorly with sights, be it on a bow, a pistol, or a sniper rifle. Frankly, most of it’s effect is on gun modding and crafting, not shooting.

That’s more an artifact of dividing them by damage type instead of dividing them by handedness. Had they been divided into one & two-handed, with perhaps pole and/or light on top of that, we’d still have about the same number of skills, just divided differently.

The gun skills also suffer from it’s own odd artifacts, like repeating crossbows and SMGs, or weapon mods letting you blur the lines between weapon types.

22

It’s “gun” in JSON. “Marksmanship” is flavor text.

23

Irrelevent, YOU said

so whetehr it is “gun” or “marksmanship” its a thing and it means that firing a rifle, has SOME effect on pistol shooting. to answer your question, don’t change topics just because your uncomfortable.

irrelevent turns like this make it feel suspiciously like arguing and passive flaming on your part instead of talking about throwing, whether it is OP, and if/what should be done that would make it more properly fill a niche.

→ moving back to topic

Arguably everything could/ should be fleshed out more, except in when purely in search of increased realism. To do that though, it would have to be broken down into a more gradual phasing. melee could probably due with an overhall, won’t argue there.

I do not think throwing becoming a martial art, or even attempting to use martial art mechanics is the right way to aproach the more masterful throwing skills, unless you make it FEEL like its not a martial art because it simply isn’t, and performing a precision throw shouln’t have the apearance to the player that they are doing some kind of martial art.

splitting the skill still feels wrong. Its advanced throwing. you can throw hard, you can throw accurately, and you can throw with such practiced precision that you can DECIDE whether you hit your target with one side or another of an off-balence weapon.

Throwing hard is mussle not skill, throwing accurately is skill, throwing so you hit with a specific area of the object is more skill.

look at it this way, if you split the skill, that means you can be MORE skilled at manipulating how the weapon hits the target then if you actually hit it. which is just wrong. You can’t be skill 2 throwing but be able to manipulate the weapons spin so it is in the perfect part of the spin when it passes the target instead of hitting it.

Thats like saying bow skill should be split into ability to predict the arrow wobble, and skill with the bow, or maybe I should say, like splitting bow into skill with the arrow, and the bow. Its nonsense, the two are learned together, with the ability to intuitively know where the arrow will shift due to shear proficiency, practice and skill. It is a sub-skill that forms LATER in the mastery, but not sepperately, mearly an extention of a deeper understanding of the tools/weapons of ones choosing.

24

Exactly.

I didn’t.

Exactly how I felt toward what I was replying to.

Exactly.

25

I feel like 90% of this thread is based on miscommunications and misunderstandings because certain people are very difficult to understand through text and appear to say one thing and mean another. The original thread was here for how to fix throwing, and i think we’ve established that breaking it into two skills or locking it behind a book isn’t optimal since that’s not done anywhere else ingame.

What we really need to do is work out a way to determine how much damage a thrown weapon should do.

26

Disagree.

Never ever ever said lock it behind a book.

Either

or

27

yeah victor, thats not going anywhere, and as enjoyable as arguing for argumentsake can be… No.
you are now ACTIVELY getting in the way. PM me, we’ll enjoyably flame the shit out of each other, roast each other, and enjoyably argue in nonsenical circles whatever, let me know how you want to shit on each other, I’ll be happy to oblige. this isn’t the place for it.

->

k, so talking about weapons and being really badassly skilled in them got me moving so my mind would feel like my body was running in circles instead of it. My examples wern’t the best, unless I aproach it from a different angle. As I almost accidently mentioned, precision throwing, is a sub-skill, in the same way that longbow arrow wobble is a sub-skill of archery.

But you can learn to be EXCEEDingly good at a different bow, and never learn that skill, same as you can learn to be really good at throwing, but never learn to manipulate the spin. The inverse is not true however. You can only learn those sub-skills by being good enough at their base skill to even be able to learn them. So IF it DOES split, then it would have to be a unlockable skill, one that is only trainable AFTER the base skill is at a level sufficient enough for reliable results to be tweaked, or the easier way, of just learning it as an extention of the practice that got you good enough in the first place.

So, things like that should be a post level ‘8’ (or whatever) that it actually starts to have effect, which would be better imulated by having a bit of code that only starts to kick in at higher levels, having no effect at lower levels. A sort of mastery that gives something similar to crit bonuses. especially with throwing.

28

Please don’t be intentionally difficult to agree with.

29

Most bows are fairly similar to use, with a few minor exceptions. The overall skills and stances are the most important part, and those are the same for all types. And I think you’re heavily overestimating how much arrows wobble in flight. Once they’ve left the bow they stop seriously wobbling after a few feet.

I guess you’re just wrong then?

Specific throwing weapons then, that still locks high-end throwing behind a book/training.

30

Also didn’t say that. Specifically disclaimed that misunderstanding multiple times already.

31

In that case I have no idea what it is you’re actually suggesting. Two separate skills to do the same thing is stupid, so what else are you offering? If you want to discuss this further you really need to make another thread and lay out exactly what it is you’re suggesting.

32

(this is more of an in-general reply to your last few posts than to this post in particular)

When I first brought up adding special effects to throwing earlier on the thread, as a way to do less damage but retain some usefulness at low levels as a way to shoehorn throwing as a backup skill rather than a primary one, I also brought up a concern with it:

Namely, that some work would need to go into preventing stun-locking and similar issues.

It is also a little tougher than adjusting the damage curve to some desired value, it’s harder to give value to special effects and say how much damage they are worth in compensation, tho this is not an unbeatable task.

What are your thoughts on how to prevent those issues? What should the proc-rate of special effects be, roughly? How it should behave as the skill levels and across weapons?

Me? I am of the thought that ‘early’ weapons such as thrown rocks and sticks would be more ‘disable/delay’, so that low throwing is a backup skill to disable/delay foes before either running away or finishing the enemy with some other weapon, while later weapons like throwing axes would be more killing tools.

Ugh, I agree that such a split would be terrible. It’d be far more natural to unlock the effect at certain skill levels rather than split the skill. If the skill is split weapon-wise, something I’m not convinced there’s enough weapons in the category to justify, then in effect, becoming good enough to do special tricks with weapons of skill A would not give you anything for weapons of skill B.

33 
{
    "type" : "technique",
    "id" : "tec_swordsmanship_grab",
    "name" : "grab",
    "min_melee" : 3,
    "unarmed_allowed" : true,
    "melee_allowed" : true,
    "down_dur" : 1,
    "messages" : [
        "You grab %s",
        "<npcname> grabs %s"
    ]
}

  1. Martial art techniques, applied to throwing weapons.

  2. “throwing” and “throwing weapons” skills jointly influencing throws with throwing weapons, in conceptually the same way that “gun” and “pistol” jointly influence shots with pistols.

34

Why? What would that achieve? Are you saying there should be a martial art to boost damage with certain throwing weapons? Or add special effects to throwing weapons with that martial art?

Conceptually it’s the same, sure, but it would just be two simple skills building on each other. There are no other skills for either of them to interact with and they both only have a handful of items to work with. It’s intentional overcomplexity for no reason.

35

I dropped it to just “throwing weapons” in response to Aabbcc’s complaint that there aren’t enough throwing weapons to justify the classification breakdown that guns has.

36

Yes but it’s still two skills to do one thing, throw items, which means you’re far better off stretching the existing throwing skill, maybe adding special effects at certain levels.