The way encumbrance is used in this game always struck me as a bit backwards. Dwarves are slow but strong, like little forklifts. Elves are fast but weak, like racing bikes. Humans are considered 'the norm', and fall in between. (Not the best similes, perhaps, but please bear with me.) If you put a heavy load on a forklift it doesn't slow it much, but it will take a heavy toll on a racing bike. Therefore, I think encumbrance penalties should be reduced by 1 for dwarves, stay constant for humans, and be increased by 1 for elves. It seems logical to me, anyway.
I think it's too complicated. I'm not a big fan of cards having different effect on different races. Most logical way would be to encumber based on percentages, for example 50%. So dwarves would move 1, elves 2. But of course since humans move 3, it's not going to work. Also there are different levels of encumber so it definitely wouldn't work.
They have never deal with anything regarding non integer number or integer division, and rounding up or down. It's hard to see this kind of mechanics got introduced.
Alternatives: "Movement is reduced to a maximum of X." This would be a large buff to Dwarves, as "max 1" effects would probably be less common than the current "minus 2". Would be a huge blow to Sprint though. "Movement is reduced by X to a minimum of 1." If you want to stop them entirely, use Halt, terrain, knockback, discard etc. Some new Dwarf racial cards, like "Forced March - ignore encumbrance, but take a damage for each square moved" or something.
Sure, nobody plays elves anyways. This might just as well push em into the pit then elf lovers can rejoice when they finally get buffed.
Yes, that's why I said it wouldn't work. I only meant that it would be the most logical way for encumber to function. Yes, something like that could work too. But it's so different from current system that I doubt it will ever happen. True. Yesterday I fought an exhibition match with a guy who had a rating of 1000-1100. Funny thing was that he had a team of elven wizards and it had been so long since I last saw those in mp that they looked weird. I had a kind of "what are those?" first reaction to them With cards like Firestorm and Nimble Strike, having a 17 hp soft target running around is pretty pointless.
Maybe, but they're pretty slow. For 17 hp I really prefer Obliviating Bludgeon. Edit: And in a game where wooden clubs have slashing attacks and some swords have only bludgeoning attacks, I guess I shouldn't expect encumbrance to be logical either. It's a great game. If it wasn't, people wouldn't get upset and complain about the parts they don't like.
I play elves in SP, but I don't seem to be very good at it, particularly in some of the mid-level adventures (they haven't made it to the high level ones yet). Not enough places to run and hide, I suppose.
I agree it is illogical, not so much with encumbrance in general, but with heavy armour that encumbers you. Seems like a dwarf would like that armour, but it turns out it was made for an elf!
I agree. Still, there is no rounding involved. It is simply below half health or not. The value of health considered is still always integer
It would have to calculate decimals when determining half of, say, a dwarf warrior's 33 HP (fun fact: all HP values in multiplayer are odd numbers), and if the game's code doesn't allow for non-integers to be stored in any variable at all then it would likely crash when trying to use the resulting non-integer in a calculation/comparison. So it's unlikely they can't deal with non-integers at all. I'll agree that avoiding the issue whenever possible is a good design choice, though. Having to stop the game so a player can do do some mental math would slow the game down a lot.
I'm not saying they can't deal with it. I'm saying they've been shying away from any design choice that got to do with floating point number. There are many issues and inconsistency when dealing with rounding of floating point number. A 3 in integer can be represented in floating point as 2.999999 or 3.000001 and will be rounded differently. Most dice roll in this game probably does not use floating point but rather a random int function from Java (Jon said that in some "too much RNG" thread iirc). About Wounded Block, I mentioned there are no rounding since the comparison does not need to round any numbers. In case HP is even, do an integer division ( 32/2 = 16, if HP is 15 or less, trigger). In case of odd number, do a floating point division. (33/2 = a floating point number between 16 and 17, that means any HP 16 or less will trigger). Come to think of it, Blue Manchu can still implement some of these division mechanics, at least just by 2, so long as they enforce it to always round in 1 way. Division by 2 is an easy mental calculation of players. Whether it is rounded up or down, it may still feel a bit unfair for players if this mechanics is applied to small number (less than 5) like we are suggesting for encumbrance. Using it for large number like HP is more acceptable in the case of Wounded Block.
