Re: [Adonthell-devel] Thoughts on character implementation

[Kai Sterker]

On Sat, 08 Mar 2003 15:10:01 +0100 Nils Fohrbeck wrote:

> I suppose that in BG they cheat (which is exactly what we could do as
> well). While Characters can use items, monsters don't. Why should
> they? You can just say that an orc has a defense value as if carrying
> an armour (so you add the armour bonus to the basic value) and when
> the orc dies he dropps an armour. We can then to different types of
> orc (weak and strong ones), well actually  the different random levels
> (see your table) will do that. I do not think that the player will
> actually sit down and calculate which items will amke an orc how
> strong. 

They may or may not cheat. Thing is, as you say yourself, if they would
drop an armour (or something else for that matter) we have to put stuff
in their inventory. And if it's already in the inventory, they can very
well equip it. In the end, that saves us some work, as we don't have to
manually increase their stats to accomodate for armour or weapons they
use. All the code to calculate it from the items is in place, so why
shouldn't we make use of it.

It's true that no player will calculate things through. But players
might notice that Ork A was hard to kill (and wearing full plate) and
Ork B was easy and wearing leather. Some might not give that a second
though, but others might think that this made sense. And a third one
might even think: "hey cool, those orks even use different armour".

Sometimes, realism is actually easier than cheating :)

Kai