Eternity Graze is a terrible mechanic

[Ismaul]

If grazes are stupid, why have crits?

Crits are fun and can be dramatic. Not saying grazes are inherently a bad mechanic, just comparing them to crits (hit or miss) is dumb.

Well hey, why not have a big red Crit! thing appear when you roll max damage? Fun fun fun! If the damage range is variable enough, such crits will be dramatic too!

 

[Damned Registrations]

Grazes aren't inherently a bad mechanic; if the game allowed for focusing on them in various ways, like making a character that almost always gets grazed instead of hit, and takes less damage from grazes than normal characters who try to dodge entirely or soak damage from normal hits. Likewise, you could have a character that hit and misses less but grazes much more, and makes up for the lower damage by causing full poison effects poison even on a graze. Does PoE do this?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

If grazes are stupid, why have crits?

Crits are fun and can be dramatic. Not saying grazes are inherently a bad mechanic, just comparing them to crits (hit or miss) is dumb.

Well hey, why not have a big red Crit! thing appear when you roll max damage? Fun fun fun! If the damage range is variable enough, such crits will be dramatic too!

Can there be sparkle effects and dramatic zooming? If not don't bother.

 

[passerby]

Grazing is ok I don't mind it, but both grazing and critical hits can be achieved simply by multi dies, 2d6, 3d4, both have simillar range as 1 + d10, but most rolls will be average and extremes on both ends will be rare.

 

[aweigh]

i got an idea, eliminate to-hit rolls and have always-hit but then have the player roll to see if they get to do damage :D :D :D

 

[Damned Registrations]

Exploding dice are another option for getting extreme ranges with exciting 'oh fuck wow' moments. The thing about crits is that they can break the bell curve for damage by putting a peak on the end of it, which can be interesting in it's own right and has a lot of gameplay consequences. Grazes don't really do the same thing unless you build systems around landing hits aside from doing damage. Grazes aren't comparable to crits, critical misses are comparable to critical hits. Grazes are comparable to getting like +1 damage if you exceed the to hit roll by 5 or more. Which is something, but not nearly as interesting as a crit.

 

[Vault Dweller]

it is not the same argument at all. Crits have an actual gameplay interpretation, that you hit some weak spot. Graze is basically you hit no matter what or at least more often than not.

Crit - your attack hits the weak spot for extra damage. Graze - your attack hits in passing for half the damage. Both are determined by your to-hit rolls, both represent the opposite ends of the hit spectrum (hit for extra damage vs hit for half damage), both are realistic mechanics present in every fight regardless of weapons as one can be grazed with melee weapons, arrows, bullets, grenade/cannon ball fragments, etc. So it's really hard to understand what all the fuss is about.

 

[Ismaul]

The fuss is about how this is overloading the mechanics.

I thought it was about grazes being a mechanic for casuals? What, mechanics for casuals are too "overloading" for you now?

If grazes are implemented and they have no incidence on gameplay, and do not tie into other mechanics, then sure, they might be superfluous in that specific game. Doesn't make the mechanic pointless. Also, do you think VD would implement them in his game if that was the case?

 

[Vault Dweller]

it is not the same argument at all. Crits have an actual gameplay interpretation, that you hit some weak spot. Graze is basically you hit no matter what or at least more often than not.

Graze is you barely hitting them, it's the opposite of a critical.

Why do you need a mechanic for that? That is the same as rolling low damage on a die. I do not like this mechanic either, but I do not think "barely hitting" is the same.

Why do we need criticals if we can roll high damage on a die?

Crit - your attack hits the weak spot for extra damage. Graze - your attack hits in passing for half the damage. Both are determined by your to-hit rolls, both represent the opposite ends of the hit spectrum (hit for extra damage vs hit for half damage), both are realistic mechanics present in every fight regardless of weapons as one can be grazed with melee weapons, arrows, bullets, grenade/cannon ball fragments, etc. So it's really hard to understand what all the fuss is about.

The fuss is about how this is overloading the mechanics.

It's not overloading mechanics as it merely mirrors criticals on the opposite end of the hit spectrum. One does more damage, the other does less.

AoD did not need grazes, why does CSG need it now?

We realized we needed graze while working on AoD, about a year before release. The dodgers were begging for it but we were out of time as it would have required months of testing. That's the only reason we didn't add it.

 

[Ismaul]

So you want to punish dodgers who can avoid all damage? Am I getting this right?

Uhhh, you could also say he wants to lessen the damage they take in certain cases instead of taking a full hit.

 

[aweigh]

criticals are always fun tho. i always love making crit-builds in rpgs, even in jrpgs the "crit build" is always the most fun. Everyone loves larping a deadly mofo.

 

[Vault Dweller]

VD.

you do not need criticals either. I would replace them in other games with what actually AoD has, i.e. a special effect. since you do not need criticals, you do not need grazes.

AoD (and CSG) have both but regardless of whether a critical is an extra damage, special effect, or both, it's still determined by a roll. You roll within 1-5 or 1-15 if fully 'upgraded' range, you score a critical. Similarly, if you roll within +10 to hit range (or higher if you're using burst or shotguns), you graze your target.

So you want to punish dodgers who can avoid all damage? Am I getting this right?

Dodgers become nearly invulnerable at some point (and few would argue that playing dodgers was much easier than playing blockers). Raising enemies THC by 10% increased the difficulty in a noticeable way across the board and affected blockers as well. Adding graze mechanics would have allowed us to balance dodgers vs blockers without raising the difficulty for blockers (as medium or heavy armor would have easily absorbed grazing damage).

 

[Vault Dweller]

We've experimented with it quite a lot over the years (from the full demo in 2012 to release in 2015) and we couldn't find the right spot that would work for a wide range of dodge builds. We haven't tested any graze mechanics but I'm pretty sure they would have worked great. At very least they work great in CSG and I can assure you that they aren't about making your character a great hero who hit all the time. You'll miss a lot and you'll fight to survive in every fight.

 

[Vault Dweller]

How about you try the combat demo first (when released) and then decide whether or not you should be disappointed? After all, that's what the combat demo is for - to test combat mechanics early and gather feedback while things are still easy to change (before we start setting up the fights).

 

[Sacred82]

Graze was introduced for one reason alone: casuals were butthurt that their character misses a lot, and didn't feel badass enough in their arrpegees. So they introduced grazing. Thanks to that, characters hit most of the time, although they barely make any damage.

it's the other way round: casuals were used to having untouchable tanks (Josh cited the infamous "guy in plate armor can walk right up to a group of crossbowmen"), grazes were supposed to be a remedy to that. What exactly they thought grazes were bringing to the table other than simulationism I can't say, but a certain symmetry definitely makes sense here.

Right now it's:

16-50: graze
51-100: hit
100+: crit

A more even distribution of grazes, hits and crits would have been better, with misses left out of the picture. Meaning you would crit more often. The good cue that they took here from lots of PnP rules is that crits are just a +50% to damage, no goddamn instakills because someone lucked out with a greataxe or scythe. Even though the dual health mechanics would actually have made that kind of thing more acceptable in Pillars; but it still sucks balls. If determinism is on one end of the autism spectrum, then muhahahaing things in the face with huge damage criticals is on the other end.

Tasteful rape mechanics Autokill mechanics à la Wizardry are a different beast, they have a reason to exist as they are their own thing, not propped on top of the usual damage dynamics, and good autokill characters require a very different build than direct damage characters.


tl;dr you want a system that includes grazes so your system can also support frequent criticals, both depending on your build, and you don't want grazes to be negligible all the time or criticals to be fatal all the time.

 

[Chippy]

As soon as this idead came up in the office, Sawyer should have been made to watch Eddie Murphey: Raw. Therein Eddie Murphey tackles the subject of grazing.

 

[Skall]

I get the argument of grazing (and criticals) being maybe a bit less elegant than simply sticking to abilities that either target a weak-spot or "lash out," prioritizing speed and hit-chance over damage. However, in a non-tabletop game I don't think the extra calculations are a big problem. I'm dubious as to the potential popularity of "grazing builds," but the concept of grazing is quite intuitive and maximizing hit-chance is already a staple of CRPGs -- this just adds another wrinkle to it.

I also think it's potentially beneficial for games where only a specific build-type has access to "burst" abilities based on equipment/skills. That's definitely not to say that any build should be able to do anything, but rather to minimize dead-end scenarios. For example, if I'm an armoured tank in AoD wielding a two-handed axe, I'd hate to encounter a scenario where it's practically impossible for me to even touch a high-dodge thrower. Even if it's inherently a bad matchup, I'd like to have the option of not only using my low-AP jab over a high-AP killing blow to maximize the amount of rolls, but to also maximize the amount of "chip-damage" via grazing over my build's typical high-damage focus.

Even in games where there's only one type of standard attack, grazing could be useful in the above scenario. 0% to-hit chance are rare, but a 2% to-hit chance would be quite banal and almost as bad. If combat takes hundreds or rounds to resolve, all the tension leeches out and it becomes an exercise in patience and, most likely, reloading. Grazing chip-damage at least compresses the duration of the fight without completely nerfing the dodger; getting hit happens more often, but these blows aren't necessarily crippling and can keep the fight more interesting.

 

[Elex]

Crit - your attack hits the weak spot for extra damage. Graze - your attack hits in passing for half the damage. Both are determined by your to-hit rolls, both represent the opposite ends of the hit spectrum (hit for extra damage vs hit for half damage), both are realistic mechanics present in every fight regardless of weapons as one can be grazed with melee weapons, arrows, bullets, grenade/cannon ball fragments, etc. So it's really hard to understand what all the fuss is about.

crits are not "extra damage".

A crit is generally an auto it, no matter the effect or the stat of the enemy.

A crit can deal less damage than a normal hit, a low roll can still deal less damage than good roll with an hit.

A crit can potentially deal zero damage if the target is immune to that damage.



20 and 1 are number that "skip" checking for the enemy stat.

it's not about the damage is about the automatic succes: no matter how terrible or how good is someone that roll an attack, he can still be dangerous or fail.


if you remove the "automatic success" or "automatic fail" crit/hit/graze become only different words for the same exact thing: and so they become pointless overcomplications over a simple system that deal static damage.

 

[Sacred82]

I also think it's potentially beneficial for games where only a specific build-type has access to "burst" abilities based on equipment/skills.

get that MMO shit out of here

That's definitely not to say that any build should be able to do anything, but rather to minimize dead-end scenarios. For example, if I'm an armoured tank in AoD wielding a two-handed axe, I'd hate to encounter a scenario where it's practically impossible for me to even touch a high-dodge thrower. Even if it's inherently a bad matchup, I'd like to have the option of not only using my low-AP jab over a high-AP killing blow to maximize the amount of rolls, but to also maximize the amount of "chip-damage" via grazing over my build's typical high-damage focus.

The original concept probably didn't just get watered down in regards to no misses, but also specific combat roles, in Pillars. Rogues and Rangers were supposed to be "strikers". If you wanted to crit something with halfway decent defenses, you would have put the rogue or ranger to the job. In the end Fighters started with just the same accuracy, and even a Priest can have the same accuracy with his god's favored weapon as all 3 of those classes (unmodified).

Generally speaking, the original idea is exactly where this kind of system makes sense. You can have low accuracy tanks or support, who may still get lucky with enough buffs/ debuffs on the enemy. You could also mitigate some of that low accuracy with stats if you so choose, with corresponding trade-offs. You can have medium accuracy off-tanks and support who are decent at dealing damage, but not consistent without getting support to hit enemies in turn. And you can have high accuracy strikers, where you can never go wrong by putting those in attack mode, no matter the defenses of the target. If the target proves too difficult for your strikers to hit/ crit consistently, you know you need to do something about that enemy.

The system allows for a lot of flexibility in char building and tactics by tying accuracy multiplicatively to damage. I never realized the advantages the System offered in the beginning because I thought your DPS need both high accuracy and damage stats; but that's not the case. Contrary to e.g. D&D, where they couldn't help but tie accuracy and damage to the same stat even.

Also you're getting constant feedback on how well your characters are performing in the current situation, rather than waiting to see if a miss-miss-miss-hit-miss-crit sequence based on hard counters and lucky crits turns out appropriately effective for that character in the end.

if you remove the "automatic success" or "automatic fail" crit/hit/graze become only different words for the same exact thing: and so they become pointless overcomplications over a simple system that deal static damage.

what's your argument for an automatic succes/ fail mechanic? And no "I don't like the alternative" isn't an argument.

 

[Daidre]

Graze and Crits worked ok in POE but Obsidian decided to reinvent the wheel in Deadfire and added Armor Penetration as extra level on top, with Crits getting 1.5 PEN and dealing even more dmg and grazes often Underpenetrate (WTF they were thinking with this terms) for up to -75% dmg that is multiplied with default -50%. Now grazes do glorious 1-2 dmg and some dots do not apply on grazes. How this contrived mess is better than binary hit/miss in D&D is beyond me.

 

[Elex]

what's your argument for an automatic succes/ fail mechanic? And no "I don't like the alternative" isn't an argument.

The point is simplicity and easy to undertand.
when you know the roll is a crit, you already understand the result; is a succes. when you see a fumble you already know is a fail.
Easy and simple but at the same time effective.

If a game start to have, almost hit, almost miss, almost fail, almost critical, the ruleset become a convulted mess.

at that point you have 10 different stuff for rappresenting the fact that the target is hit.


If some build become too hard too hit, there is no need to put in graze etc..
A bounded accuracy system do a better work at that with a better result

 

[BING XI LAO]

Graze is simply a good way to blunt the rough edges of RNG if you ask me

 

[Sacred82]

what's your argument for an automatic succes/ fail mechanic? And no "I don't like the alternative" isn't an argument.

The point is simplicity and easy to undertand.

Then elaborate on why video games should strive for simplicity at all times.

when you know the roll is a crit, you already understand the result; is a succes. when you see a fumble you already know is a fail.
Easy and simple but at the same time effective.

Uh huh. So we're talking about combat resolution in a video game. You take care of strategy and tactics; the computer handles the calculations in combat. At best you're reading a combat log. How important and how "time effective" is it to see a natural 20 or 1 come up and to know instantly(?) that this is going to be a crit or fumble instead of reading a few words/ numbers more and the combat log spelling out the result for you (*crits for X slash damage* or *slashes at goblin but misses*)?

If a game start to have, almost hit, almost miss, almost fail, almost critical, the ruleset become a convulted mess.

well, I guess with D&D or Pathfinder, you can have a better idea about the 'crit potential' of a character specializing in offense (feats and equipment that emphasize threat range and high AB to confirm a hit). Question is if that's such a great thing it needs to be done by any game, let alone every game. The very simplicity of it can also be a downside as it makes things pretty predictable when they're not supposed to be deterministic. In Pillars, at best you know that you have a high - very high accuracy character. Unless metagaming or if you turn on Expert mode you don't know just how high the enemies' defenses are. That means you actually have to pay attention to how combat plays out in terms of just hitting things; debuffs are always helpful of course, but there's enough trash combat in the game you just want to steamroll or autoattack things to death regularly without drawing on spell/ ability resources.

 

[Ismaul]

crits are not "extra damage".

A crit is generally an auto it, no matter the effect or the stat of the enemy.

it's not about the damage is about the automatic succes

That is only one way crits have been implemented. Your view is very much tied to D&D and the d20 system.

But even in D&D, crits have also been about damage in addition to auto-success since 3E (in 2e it was just auto-success, granted). In 3e, when you crit and confirm the crit, there's a damage multipler applied (default x2, unless the weapon or a feat makes it better). In 4e, when you crit you don't roll for damage, instead you deal max damage (and crit confirmation is no longer a thing). In 5e, you roll an extra dice of damage from the weapon's damage, and also an extra dice for sneak attacks and the like.

 

[Ismaul]

If a game start to have, almost hit, almost miss, almost fail, almost critical, the ruleset become a convulted mess.

I don't see what's so convoluted in having miss, weak hit, normal hit, and strong hit as possible outcomes of an attack or action. It's pretty intuitive.