Game mechanics

[Nelphine]

Finally playing my super hero centric game (2 life, Warlord/Artficer/Tactician/Guardian/Myrran/Spellweaver)

And I've ran into something that confuses me.
16 armor, lucky, endurance, Elemental Armor, Resist Elements. What should the armor level be against storm giants? 5 storm giants are doing about 15 damage in one round of attacks, which seems way too high.

15 damage from 5 giants is an average of 3. 3 from a strength 17 attack with +2 to hit, where expected damage is 8.5. Means I'm stopping ~5.5 damage per attack.

But I can't figure out how that works at all - 5.5 blocked implies ~17 armor at +3 to defend. Or 11 armor at +5 to defend. Neither of which seems to natch what I actually have.

I would expect to have 16 armor: 15 at +5 to defend, and 1 at +3 to defend due to diminishing returns, so I should block an average of 8 damage per hit, so I should be seeing 5-9 damage between all 5 giants.

Although 7 armor at +5 and 7 armor at +3 would be an average of 5.6 blocked.

[Seravy]

I would expect to have 16 armor: 15 at +5 to defend, and 1 at +3 to defend due to diminishing returns, so I should block an average of 8 damage per hit, so I should be seeing 5-9 damage between all 5 giants.

The difference comes from how your armor level is too close to the incoming attack strength, and at that point simple subtraction is way off from actual probability based results.

(in other words the average contains too many cases where you block more damage that is being done, which "erase" the cases where they manage to hit - but in reality that doesn't happen - taking 3,3,-5,-1 damage is 6 total not zero.)

Subtraction is only a safe approximation if the cases where blocked damage is more than dealt damage are rare. (Like, twice as many swords than shields is safe. )

[Nelphine]

So you're saying my sample size isn't large enough? I can run the battle twenty times. But I'm still unclear what the actual armor should be. How does armor piercing interact with elemental armor with resist elements with diminishing returns on +to defend?

[Seravy]

You have 16 armor, at +2 To Def, which blocks 7.8 damage on average.
The giants do 8.5 damage on average.

However, you aren't going to take 8.5-7.8=0.7 damage on average, which is what I tried to explain.
Why?
Because "average" includes cases where the damage taken is less than zero, but in real battle those cases raise the damage to zero. Which raises the average result.
If you put the same thing into a probability engine, (simplifying each attack and defense to a 50% chance to work)
these are the actual probabilities :

   

The "average" as we calculate it, is what you get if you include everything marked red.
The correct answer is what you get if you only include those marked green.
The two are roughly the same if swords>>shields.
Otherwise there will be more and more percentage of the cases in the red part and they can no longer be ignored.

[zitro1987]

I'm confused by this thread. Storm Giants have armor piercing. That grants them a much higher chance of dealing 2+ dmg per hit.

[Seravy]

Armor Piercing halves armor. The unit has 32 armor before Armor Piercing, 16 after. So it is already included.

[Nelphine]

Yes my specific problem is that I don't actually know what my armor is, after accounting for armor piercing, resist elements, and elemental armor, and how much of it actually should still be at +2 to hit.

How do you get 32?

[Seravy]

16 armor + 12 elemental armor + 4 resist elements = 32.
Then Armor Piercing halves it so it's back to 16.
So you have 16 armor at +2 To Def.


Bonus To Def works on the first 15, so it doesn't work for the last 1 point.

[Nelphine]

Oh I thought resist elements was +5 like bless or resist magic. Shows how much I know!

[Nelphine]

What happens if you have more than +7 to hit? (In tactical and strategic combat); I wasm't really paying attention and I just realized I have a super blademaster with a +3 to hit item, and holy weapon.

If I get her up a few levels, I could exceed +7 to hit easily.