[RELz] Better Blocking
by Picador

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27947

Features

* Blocking is now all-or-nothing: an actor's chance to block an attack is based on several factors:

* Block skill
* Fatigue level
* Timing (blocking just before the strike is much more likely to succeed)
* Whether the actor is using a shield, a weapon, or bare hands
* Blocking now drains fatigue:

* holding a block drains fatigue every second, based in part on the weight of your weapon or shield relative to your strength
* successfully blocking an attack damages your fatigue based on the amount of damage blocked
* Shields and weapons used to block can now be shattered by strong blows:

* successfully blocking an attack has a chance of shattering the item used to block based on the damage of the attack and the health of the item
* to compensate for this, normal weapon and shield degradation from blocking is greatly reduced
* (PLANNED FOR NEXT VERSION) Spell-blocking

* a skilled blocker (Journeyman or better) has a chance to block incoming hostile spells with a well-timed block using a shield, an enchanted weapon or staff, or bare hands (if also a Journeyman or better in hand-to-hand)

Rationale

* Vanilla blocking is useless at low levels. Now even an unskilled fighter has a reason to block.
* Combat is now more exciting, since you have to time your blocks to make them more effective and to avoid draining your fatigue; you also have to time your attacks on blocking NPCs more carefully!
* Weapon and shield choices are more strategic now: item weight and health are much more important considerations
* Wizards and martial artists now have better reasons for training their Block skill
* Shattered equipment means you may have to carry a backup weapon or shield, and you'll either have to replace broken equipment or carry a lot of repair hammers
* Deadly Reflexes' "Timed Block" is a good idea, but it only makes very minor changes. This would serve as a replacement for that file (but would be compatible with the rest of DR)

Implementation

* Game settings: blockMax = 1.00, weaponmult = 1.00, hthmult = 1.00, skillbase = 0.00, skillmult = 1.00
* Quest script ref-walks every 1 second, places a token on every NPC and every creature with a weapon equipped (the PC also gets one at the start)
* Token script runs every frame:

* if actor.isBlocking ==0 and actor.getSoundPlaying (block) == 0, return
* each frame the actor is blocking:

* run a timer (resets when actor stops blocking)
* calculate a block chance based on: skill, timer, weapon/shield/HtH, fatigue
* randomly determine if block would be successful this frame

* success --> mod actor's block skill to 100 (i.e. 100% damage blocked)
* failure --> mod actor's block skill to 0 (i.e. no damage blocked)
* apply fatigue damage based on timer:

* fatigue damage = 5 + (weight of weapon/shield) * (100 / strength) * .2
* if getSoundPlaying (block), i.e. actor just blocked an attack:

* determine damage from attack by tracking health of weapon/shield used to block
* calculate chance of weapon or shield shattering: chance = (damage from attack / health of weapon or shield) - .02
* if weapon shatters, set health to 0
* if weapon does not shatter, restore some of its health so total damage done = (original damage) * .2
* acter's fatigue is also damaged by a successful block: fatigue damage = (strike damage) * .5
* The formula used to determine the chance of blocking successfully will look something like this:

* Baseline chance = 100% at Block skill 100 when timer is at 2 seconds, using a shield, at full fatigue
* Skill: multiply chance by (skill/100). Modify skill based on Luck per usual formula.
* Fatigue: multiply chance by (.5 + (Current fatigue / Base fatigue)), i.e. 50% effectiveness at fatigue zero
* Timing: 3x chance at 0 seconds, down to 2x at 1 second, to 1x at 2 seconds, to a minimum of .5x at 3 seconds or more
* Shield/weapon/hands: multiply chance by .75 if using a weapon, or by .5 if using bare hands
* Minimum chance: after doing the math above, final block chance is always at least 20%
* (PLANNED FOR FUTURE) A successful block (i.e. skill modded to 100) is accompanied by a mod of ResistMagicka to 100 if the actor meets the conditions (i.e. Block 50+, shield or enchanted weapon/staff or HtH skill 50+)

The numbers above are all subject to changes after testing, etc.

I haven't yet coded most of this stuff, but you can see from my proposed implementation above that I have a pretty definite plan. Comments, suggestions, questions, enthusiastic endorsemants, and scornful criticism are all welcome.

So this mod makes blocking like Morrowind?
well..... okeey
I don't i'll be getting this mod XD

From what I've read, Morrowind blocking was totally passive: if you had a shield equipped, you had a fixed chance to block a melee attack.

As you can see form the description above, this mod is almost completely opposite: it makes your timing more important than in vanilla Oblivion, making blocking more active. It also makes blocking with weapons more viable. The only thing it has in common is that a given block is all-or-nothing, which makes much more sense in terms of simulation: lots of people have complained about how incoherent Oblivion's blocking system is, where you can block an attack and still suffer damage from it. With this mod, you either block an attack or you don't, and the only damage you suffer fro ma successful block is damage to your weapon/shield along with some fatigue from the weight of the blow.

This looks great! And probably wont be so hard to implement, especially since you have it coded out in pseudocode. Good luck! I'm definitely going to be getting this!

Thanks shingouki. I should have an alpha version ready to test some time this weekend. I'll post when I've uploaded the first version to TES Nexus.

I will probably implement the numbers above as defaults, with most of them modifiable in an .ini file. For example, the .ini should allow tweaking the minimum block chance (20%), the percent of blocked damage that goes to fatigue (50%), the percent of blocked damage that goes to your weapon health (20%), the damage threshold for shattering (2% of weapon/shield health), and the fatigue drain per weapon/shield weight (20%). This will allow people to, among other things, compensate for other mods that alter weapon damage, health, or fatigue.

Picador, you have my enthusiastic endorsemant!

This is a good idea though. I am particularly interested in how effective hand-to-hand blocking will be. Will it train less fatigue? Will its effectiveness depend on your hand-to-hand skill, your blocking skill, or both? Does hand-blocking still follow the all-or-nothing principle?

And, don't forget to update your vows and covenants mod every once in a while.

This sounds really, really good. However, I'd advise you to make an ini file for configuration if at all possible due to how differently people feel about game mechanics like this and also because that way no one has a reason not to get it. I'll download once you release it for certain, ini or not.

Sounds awesome, Picador. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread for sure.

This looks interesting. :goodjob:


Hmm, but something thing troubles me, maybe some of the mechanics "conflic" - for the lack of the better word - gameplay wise?



-> In practice, the player will avoid holding block because of the above - the high chance to fail makes it pointless to hide behind the shield at all.


But...



-> Holding of the block is not punished only by high failure chance, but also fatigue drain. On the otherhand, player already instinctly avoids holding block to avoid reduced efficiency, and in practice suffers clean hits for failing to block in time. Fatigue level affects the chance to block successfully. Frequent, even well timed blocking both reduces fatigue AND thus the chance to succeed.

-> The more successful your block is, the more you lose fatigue, and the more less likely your next block succeeds. Holding block reduces efficiency, and thus reduces fatigue blow from blocking - but holding block causes fatigue drain. Kinda feels like you end up fatigued and fail more and more blocks no matter what.



-> Not only successful blocking drain your fatigue more, but actually reduces your chance to block the next blow, AND has the chance to lose the weapon used for not only blocking, but also for attacking.



Don?t take this wrong, I have a posive feel about this mod, but don?t you think that the system, in its current harsh form, kinda doesn?t encourage to use blocking at all?

The only bonus available is reduced damage - however when successful blocks reduce your fatigue the more the better you block, which in turn makes it less likely for you to succeed in blocking, it doesn?t seem like succesful blocking is really worth it, especially if you risk breaking your weapon.



I don?t want to force my own ideas, so I?ll just leave it at that. Well nah, to make this post a bit more constructive, maybe an easy bonus-penalty-gameplay-thingy could be dividing the fatigue blow between the attacker and the blocker according to how succesful the block was? Series of perfect blocks wouldn?t reduce your fatigue or chance to block succesfully (think about it as deflecting or diverting the blow), but instead weaken the enemy attacks via fatigue effect. On the other hand, failed blocks would add up in the form of fatigue drain making it even harder to block well. Bonus for perfection, rapiply adding up penalty for failure?

Thanks, Fiore. In response:

1. Hand to hand blocking will drain less fatigue, since the effective weapon/shield weight will be zero. My current plan is to make its effectiveness dependent on your Block skill, although all relevant perks from Hand to Hand will still apply. Also, as noted, the optional spell-blocking feature will depend on both Block and Hand to Hand.

2. Yeah, V&C is sort of an extended hiatus. I haven't touched it or used it in my current game. Instead, I've been using and really enjoying Tejon's Birthsigns Revisited mod, which is animated by a very similar spirit to V&C, namely the goal of having different character "types" that actually feel very different from each other. I've been playing as an Apprentice, and the entire game (up to level 7 so far) feels completely distinct due to that birthsign. I'm looking forward to playing as a Shadow or a Ritual as well. V&C may have been too ambitious and unwieldy: it tries to incorporate a lot of things, and they're not always compatible or graceful together. I may try to break it down into more modular bits -- a death tracker, a "set fire to stuff" mod, etc. The surrender/truce system has already been redone better, and I think this may be the fate of VC's subsystems in the long run.

A thing I like about DR Timed Block was that it also increased weapon damage to make combat more immense, if you don't block, you will pay for it. So I released a mod to work in addition to this mod. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27937. Looking forward to release

Hey Picador this sounds amazing! It's a great idea, a needed fix to vanilla block system I'd say. I have some suggestions though, here they come:

Concerning the base chance of succesfuly blocking:

* Fatigue: multiply chance by (Current fatigue / Base fatigue)
I'd made it so fatigue doesn't count as much as the skill but rather a half or a third that much. ie ((Current fatigue / Base fatigue)+1)/2, threfor fatigue multiplier ranging from .5 to 1.

* Timing: 3x chance at 0 seconds, down to 2x at 1 second, to 1x at 2 seconds, to a minimum of .5x at 3 seconds or more
Personaly I'd like it to be very timming dependant, and a x3 multip here seems unnecessary. I'd like an extreme setting where 0 sec would be 100% (x1) and 2 sec 50% (x0.5), but counting fractions of seconds and not just entire seconds, so really you'd get a x1 mult only the frame after you rise up your shield. Perhaps this makes more sense when it's up to block with swords, for the aesthetic factor, constantly moving your weapon up and down, wich might seem a bit weird with shields.

* Shield/weapon/hands: multiply chance by .75 if using a weapon, or by .5 if using bare hands.
I really don't get how could someone block a katana strike with his or her hands but I guess there has to be a chance of success even for those that do these things.
Now seriously, I'd ponderate that value with the weight of the shield or weapon, perhaps X * (weight/20) for shields and X*(weight/40) for weapons (these values hasn't been checked, it's just an example)


About the "fatigue" loss, it could be quite annoying loosing stamina simply by standing with your shield up, and as Skycaptain says it could lead to an exponential stamina loss and therefor and exponentialy increasing rate of failure. Perhaps to solve it you could make the 'fatigue' loss happens only once, the moment we rise the shield or weapon to block instead of each frame. Make the loss bigger if you want to compensate it. This could also deal with the tempation of going moving your shield up and down, because if you have a big big shield you'd probably prefear to stay hidden behind it even if the chances to block are halved, because otherwise you'd end up exhausted. Adding the item weight to the chance of success calcs would in fact allow staying hidden behind a daedric shield with a decent chance of success, and would also make light shields/weapons be much more timming-based, wich can allow two very different types of fighting that actualy makes sense.

A small chance for the shield to shatter is ok, I don't get exactly how that 0.2% is checked against the strike damage but I guess that's right. The only thing is that it may be quite strange that chances are the same either if you block properly or not but I guess that's right too, as the main factor here is the item remaining health.

One last thing, maybe you could make it so if you are hit (blocking while block skill at 0) you don't get fatigued. You'll be loosing health so maybe that's enought. Otherwise it makes blocking and failing chances actualy worse than simply not blocking.


Anyway this are just my suggestions and I'm gonna download it once it's released had them or not.

This was of the "conflicts" that was bugging me but I couldn?t articulate it, so I simply lifted up the conditions - but you made me see what I was after:


Perfect timing should get bonus, while hiding behind the shield reduces efficiency. Holding the block shouldn?t fatigue, IMO, since it?s already penalized.

Instead, trying to EXPLOIT the system by tapping the block key constantly should be penalized, in the form of fatigue loss that would come from each press of the block button. This would make the player both avoid holding the block, and consider WHEN to ACTUALLY press the key.




This as well; blocking "badly" should never be worse than not blocking at all.




Again, just participating and throwing out thoughts.

I'm hearing some very good ideas by both Picador and Skycaptain. I've been happy thus far with the Deadly Reflex Timed Block, but I can only see discussion of the topic resulting in further improvement.

Hey SkyCap! As the granddaddy of this mod idea (obviously a descendant of your Timed Block), your input is greatly appreciated.

I hear your concerns, and I have in fact thought these specific details through. I may well change the numbers during testing, but here's why I think it will work as proposed:

1. Health and fatigue are scaled differently. A starting character has about twice as much fatigue as health, and it recovers very quickly, usually at 10 points per second (although various mods change this). That's a LOT of free fatigue, every second.

2. A Novice blocking burns about 20 points of fatigue per second (-10/sec net). My system (which would have to be careful not to double-drain a Novice) would be designed to more or less match this amount, but vary it based on strength and shield weight. This is one area where I'll have to look at my formulas a little more carefully: e.g., the (100/skill) factor needs to be tweaked to avoid swamping low-skill actors. Perhaps (100/[skill+30]) is more appropriate (I'll edit the proposal to reflect this.)

EDIT: Sorry, what I just wrote makes no sense. I meant the (100/strength) multiplier, which actually looks pretty good to me still. Consider: at 50 strength, you can block all day with a 10-pound shield, since your fatigue drain is only (5 + 10 * (100/50) * .2) = 9 per second, and you regain 10 per second.

3. Given the magnitudes mentioned above, I really don't think that absorbing half the weapon damage as fatigue is very significant. A serious hammer-blow doing 30 damage only drains 15 fatigue -- less than a novice drains holding his shield up for one second, and only 1.5 times as much as you recdover each second. If you're doing precisely-timed blocks, you can absorb that hammer-blow every 1.5 seconds indefinitely without losing any fatigue. That seems pretty generous. (Note: Obviously, this multiplier should be tweaked if someone is using a weapon-damage mod.)

4. You may be right about the fatigue penalty being too great. Perhaps a formula like attack damage (where zero fatigue means 50% effectiveness) is more appropriate. I'll adjust my proposal accordingly.

The premise of the mod is that damage to your shield and/or your fatigue is always preferable to damage to yourself, which strikes me as a reasonable proposition for simulating sword fights. I'm trying for realism (or rather, "fantasy realism"): blocking a heavy blow should fatigue you, holding a block stance should fatigue you, and being fatigued should reduce your effectiveness. Playing with Realistic Fatigue and Realistic Injuries installed has converted me to the cult of fatigue-centricity: they add so much more texture to the game experience that I wouldn't think of playing without them, and I'm convinced that the game would benefit from more focus on fatigue and less on health as the only measure of how an encounter is progressing. I think the problem is scaling everything to preserve the proper incentives and game balance.

To that end: you may be right that I may need to reduce the overall magnitude of the fatigue damage, the blocking penalty due to fatigue, and the chance of weapons shattering. I may also need to really think through how this works out at different power levels -- I almost always think in terms of the sub-50 levels of skill and attributes, and perhaps these rules scale poorly to level-30 demigods swinging Daedric Claymores at each other.

Remember, though, that vanilla Blocking (even with Timed Block) is pretty useless for most actors until they hit high levels: at skill 30, you block a whopping 15% of damage with a successful weapon block, and you need to keep doing that to train yourself any higher. TB only raises that to 24%, I believe: 25% base, plus .75 times 30/100, halved for using a weapon. Still not worth it. In contrast, this mod allows a perfectly-timed block by that same 30-skill warrior to block the entire blow 67% of the time, or 44% if his timing is one second off. Of course, he will be worn down over time if he keeps blocking... but then, so will his attacker if he keeps attacking. To me, this simulates (fantasy) battle quite well: a moderately skilled fighter can probably parry the first few blows, but over time he will get tired and his blocks will start failing more and more -- all the more reason to go on the offensive early on in the fight, or block and follow up with a counter.

These numerical tweaks require modeling and testing. In any case, I think the algorithm is sound, with only the numerical parameters in need of fine-tuning.

Thanks! I'm glad you agree that this mod is worth making.



Agreed. I've already edited my proposal accordingly, as mentioned in my reply to SkyCap.



I think we actually agree on this point, but we seem to have different ideas of scale. My idea is that even a low-skilled blocker should be able to block most blows if his timing is perfect: under your proposal, even a perfectly-timed block would only work 10% of the time if your skill is 10%.

One of the major reasons for this mod is to give low-skilled fighters a reason to try blocking. If you only let them block up to their skill %, then it's even worse than vanilla for them.

And yes, of course fractions of seconds would be used -- the chance would be updated each frame. Sorry if that wasn't clear.



Lots of unarmed combat systems have techniques for protecting yourself from an armed attacker. Most of them involve closing in to prevent them from getting any leverage with their weapon. Sometimes this involves suffering some damage from the weapon.

Hand to Hand blocking is already complicated in Oblivion, though -- in most cases, it doesn't actually prevent you from being damaged. So don't worry, this won't make Oblivion into a kung fu game.

As for your weapon/shield weight proposal... I'm not sure I understand it. Can you clarify?



That is kind of a cool idea. My intuition (and limited experience) is that a block has to be precisely timed, and that it tends to be a fairly strenuous movement even if it doesn't connect. So I think your proposal could add a lot to the mod: a big drain when you first raise your shield, then a very small drain each second. Let me think about it.



You may have misunderstood something here. All blocks in this mod are "perfect" if they succeed, perfectly useless if they fail. So you only have a chance of shield shattering if your block is successful.

The way this is measured is by tracking the health of your shield/weapon each frame, and monitoring for drops in health that happen when you've blocked an attack (checked using getsoundPlaying).



Again, this is a misunderstanding. The fatigue drain only happens if you successfully block (i.e. no health damage).



Great! Looking forward to release.

Yes, I see now what you guys are talking about. Like I said above, I think I will make this change in the form of a large fatigue hit on first block-tap, followed by a very small drain per second after.

This exploit my not be necessary, though: it takes a moment for a shield to actually raise after you hit the right key, so some fatigue will drain during that time, and if you lower it at the wrong moment, you may miss the attack. This happens to me all the time when using DR's Timed Block.

IMO, raising your shield again and again in response to possible attacks that never come in actually simulates combat pretty well: combat is full of false starts, feints, two-steps, and bad guesses. It's kind of like the hand-slapping game.

Nonetheless, I think I'll make this change.



Okay, I don't know what you guys mean here. No block, no fatigue drain. Did I really miscommunicate that so fully?

To clarify, then: you don't suffer any fatigue damage from a hit that is UNSUCCESSFULLY blocked. I should perhaps clear that up in the description above.

Yeah, I have made a few small mods (tweaking a few game settings) that I use right now privately; I'll have to think about whether I should bundle any of these alongside Better Blocking to help with game balance.

Namely, I have a mod that decreases Health for all NPCs and the player about 30% as well as increasing weapon damage and weapon durability about 50%. This means that combat is much more deadly and is over much more quickly, but it also preserves the balance between the player and creatures: their health is not decreased, but the damage they do isn't increased, so the player's increased weapon damage and decreased health balance out. (I think I like armor to degrade a little faster than normal, so I left that setting alone.)

That mod works really well to make combat more deadly without throwing the creature/PC balance off, but it leaves spellcasters a bit weakened. Accordingly, I use tejon's Willful Resistance mod, which tweaks everyone's Magic Resistance / Weakness based on their Willpower, and I set my .ini file to give everyone a baseline 50% weakness to magic. This makes all hostile magic effects more powerful.

Just a couple of simple tweaks, and I really like the way they rebalance my game. The only thing missing is an effective and immersive block system

As a supreme magicka user i believe magic already has enough attention (LAME, Supreme Magicka, Midas Magic, Mighty Magick) And I don't think any mage will feel gimped when using a magic overhaul.

Long discussions about blocking... :grad: :grad: Do you hear? Is a good mod coming!

@picador:


Ah, it all sounds good, I understand now, it all comes down to numbers used.

I always think about EFFECTIVE drain when someone talks about drain - with fatigue the actual drain can be just as well non-existent, only the replenish rate suffers. I see now your ideology there - there?s no free hit taken, only ones that damage health and ones that fatigue, and it?s matter of directing it towards fatigue rather than health.


It?s all good, actually, since all in all fatigue is not very important in Oblivion. At first I thought there should be a way to deflect all harmfull effects with a perfect block, but...nah, this could be interesting.




EDIT: BTW, does anyone know what the hell is the point in the "authorization mismatch" thingy? I?m not allowed to use 5min typing a post? Talk about encouraging well written posts...

The funniest thing is that if your refresh the writing page you can post the post normally. :violin:

Usually happens when you're timed out. Apparently, you get a token every time you try to post a new reply and it comes with an expiry date/time. Might also happen when someone makes a post while you were preparing yours.

Will this mod work properly with vim and vigor?

Yeah, looking back I realize I was not clear about that at all. Whenever I talk about "fatigue drain" or "fatigue damage", I mean it in the strict and formal sense, not the end-result sense: you can have receive 10 points of "fatigue damage" per second without ever seeing your fatigue dip below the maximum.

I figured this would allow people to integrate the blocking mod into their own build, whether that build emphasizes fatigue or not: if you use Realistic Fatigue and have to stop and rest every few seconds, this will make your blocking one more thing to worry about, but if you have a pretty vanilla fatigue setup, this won't be any more distracting than the inconsequential fatigue drain from swinging your sword around.

Remember also vis-a-vis "perfect blocks" that a high Block skill can result in adverse effects on your opponent: staggering, etc. So even if you suffer a little fatigue damage, you might still be one up on your opponent after a good block.

No, probably not. VV completely reconfigures what Fatigue is used for, and it would be messed up by the manipulations in my scripts.

I may put in an INI option to disable all fatigue effects, though. I'll flag that issue for the first release.