Sorry I'm confused. What does a google-made phone with a linux-based OS have to do with you no longer supporting your non-mobile Windows application?

Not bad... I would suggest, if you are going to dual wield weapons, do it with weapons of the same class. That way you get more benefit from weapon experience. Also, be careful with artificial limbs and armor of health - high HP values are one of the triggers for some of the more dangerous boss spawns.

Sorry to hear it crashed again. You might have a corrupt file. Try playing basic IVAN (0.50 or CVS) and see if the problem persists...

Hahahahaha!!

But yeah Half, that sounds like a pretty good game. Sorry you lost the character. Keep it up though, and you'll get another good one in time

To clarify on this in case you don't know about this trick: you can use scrolls of detect material to locate specific enemies by searching for their flesh - in this case, mystic dark frog flesh (or maybe just dark frog flesh, I'm not sure). Since they are made of their flesh, they'll light up and you can find them. Of course they'll have moved by the time you get there but it gives you a good general idea where to look...

Or in fact simple limb damage. I read the post to mean you lost max HP - if it was CURRENT HP loss, then you probably took damage to a couple limb to the point where it became unusable (but not yet severed). This could easily happen from poison, if you took a lot of it.

I don't know about that. I'm a proponent of more detail and realism in my games, but you do have to draw the line somewhere - if we make the mechanics too complicated people will have a harder time playing it.

However, in the interest of simplicity, you could make the armors and weapon types play rock-paper-scissors a bit...

High-flexibility (light) armor is more effective against blunt damage (perhaps a 20-40% increase in AV?), but is easily torn up by bladed weapons. (This would include cloaks!)

Chainmail (medium) armor is more effective against bladed weapons (again, bonus AV?) but is weak to piercing (AV penalty?)

Plate (heavy) armor is more effective against piercing damage (Maybe a small chance to negate the damage entirely? "The arrow glances off your plated armor!" Needs to be low, maybe 10% +2% per magic plus, -2% per magic plus of the enemy weapon) but vulnerable to blunt weapons (Perhaps some of the damage simply bypasses the plate armor?)

Best to keep it simple though... Also, I would welcome the addition of chain gloves and boots, as well as an alternative back-slot armor.

My suspicion is that you contracted leprosy, and your limbs started dropping off. That would result in both lost HP and lost strength (as well as dexterity/agility). Were the stat losses dramatic, or was it just a point or two.

Warheck, I don't like the idea of the skill having flat effects on damage reduction. I was thinking something more along the lines of, for each level of armor skill, the minimum damage reduced was raised by a small percent - perhaps 3-4%? A more detailed example of what I'm thinking:

if (attackHits && armorBlocksSomeDamage)
then {
float armorEffect = rand ((50 + armorSkill*3), 100) / 100  //The code currently works similarly, but without the armorSkill bonus.
int damageBlocked = bodyPartAC * armorEffect 
int damageTaken = incomingDamage - damageBlocked
}

Also worth remembering here is that certain armor pieces overlap - namely, cloaks overlap all body parts, and torso armor overlaps arms and legs. I think these overlaps only apply half the normal AC however. That last needs verifying.

Does this make sense?

I do however like the idea of reducing the power (or frequency?) of incoming critical strikes. I'm not sure exactly how crits work as they stand however; that would be important information before we start theorizing about how we can monkey with their mechanics.

For the record this could easily be a single skill, encompassing what I believe to be the two most important aspects of all this - minimum damage reduction, and armor penalties. This would also alter the balance in a more predictable way, by reducing the number of variables being altered. Additionally it would change the uses of armor - lighter armor would still be effective, but heavy armor would become competitive, and possibly even better if you put in enough time training in it.

Well - I figure armor skills would encompass everything defensive (not including shields). Dodging, protecting armor, armor protecting you... just like weapon skills influence everything including damage, to-hit, and speed. What I'm uncertain about is how it should be broken up: should it all be one skill? A couple skills? Different skills for different armor types, or different skills for different aspects of armor use?

So it's not totally thought out. However I think the key things that would need to be influenced by armor skill would be mobility and damage reduction. These two can be further broken down: mobility includes armor's adverse effects include dex and agi penalties as well as the PC's ability to dodge incoming attacks, while damage reduction encompasses both the likelihood of it's triggering as well as how much damage is actually prevented.

An additional complication is balance. If we simply add armor skills as another benefit to the player, we will be reducing the difficulty of the game. All relevant equations would need to be modified, and/or the skills would need to be given to enemies. The second option is the worse of the two. I suspect it would lead to longer, boring-er fights with a lot of misses and a lot of swords bouncing off armor.

As a rough draft I've divided the skills into three categories:

Mobility - Mobility would be trained by having attacks miss you, and by moving around. Being encumbered and having agility penalties would slow it's training significantly. High skill in mobility would improve your dodge chances, and increase base move speed. ((This could be balanced by reducing the base dodge chance))

Armor - Armor skill would be trained by having damage reduced by armor. Having more damage knocked off would train it faster. Higher skill levels would increase the chance of armor protecting you (not a sure thing), and increase the minimum (and maybe the maximum?) damage knocked off when it does trigger (normally armor blocks rand(50-100)% of it's AC worth of incoming damage). Specific armor bonuses might also apply? ((This could be balanced by reducing the minimum amount of damage armor prevents.))

Endurance/Encumbrance/I'm not sure - This one would be trained by running around with heavy loads, while wearing bulky armor, and so forth. It would reduce the penalties associated with such actions - less combat and hunger penalties for carrying large loads, smaller agi/dex penalties from chain/plate armor. I'm not sure about this skill, the dex/agi penalties don't necessarily have anything to do with the weight of your armor, but more how much it gets in your way when you try to move, an effect that could be compensated for with practice wearing and moving in armor, as the above skill. ((This could be balanced by increasing those penalties slightly. I don't envision this skill having THAT dramatic of an effect - running around while stressed will still be a fast route to a swift death))

Anyways. Thoughts?