Kodius,

Thanks for adjusting the BS experience.

Any chance you could look at the experience from ambush stun, slash, clout, screen, sight?

Stun, slash, and clout give basically zero weapon experience now, but in 2.0 they would typically move the weapon skill one mindstate if successful. Backstab experience seems similar to 2.0 which was very poor, but it will move mindstates at level after lots ambushes.

Screen is not giving as much light thrown experience as 2.0, maybe about 1/2 as much.

Thanks for looking at all of this, Kodius.

I did some testing in Sky Giants. I am not sure if it will help you, but here are the basic results:

I started with using solely Backstab on 20 Sky Giants. No buffs or enhancements of any kind, no disablers. Just straight backstab with the weapon that I've appraised for you below.

10 of them required 8 successful backstabs.
4 required 9.
1 required 7.
1 required 10.
1 required 11.
1 required 12.
And a personal best with 1 requiring 6.

I then jumped into using solely Attack while out in the open(No ambushing) with the same weapon at melee. I only bothered killing 10 Sky Giants this time because the results were quite telling by the time I had killed them.

7 of them required 14 hits.
1 required 15.
1 required 12.
and 1 required 11.

Skills:

Backstab: 760
Small Edged: 642

Using this forged steel Jambiya:

A steel jambiya is a light edged melee-ranged weapon.
A steel jambiya trains the small edged skill.
The steel jambiya is well suited for backstabbing.

You are certain that it could do:
fair puncture damage
somewhat moderate slice damage
low impact damage
no fire damage
no cold damage
no electric damage

The steel jambiya is dismally designed for improving the force of your attacks.

You are certain that the jambiya is soundly balanced and is inadequately suited to gaining extra attack power from your strength.

You are certain that the steel jambiya is appreciably susceptible to damage, and is in pristine condition.

In my personal opinion, does Backstab damage need to be increased? Considering it requires you to hide(thus eating up more time), and contests both defenses and Perception, I'm going to go with a solid "Probably". Backstab is meant to be a one-time opening devastating move. But with the massive changes in combat, I'm not sure it will ever work that way. I wonder if it's possible with the new system to perhaps instill very devastating bleeders with a backstab? Not sure how possible or useful that is the new system, but might be something to consider and other Thieves can chime in on the idea.

If you need more specific information or would like to see the log, let me know.

>>These appear to suggest to me that backstab damage is pretty awesome. Unless I'm missing something.

The time involvement. Having to hide for each backstab meant that the approximate time to kill each one was roughly the same. In other words, the damage improvement did not matter, thus contesting the two skills is more of a useless risk than a calculated risk with potential rewards.


Going solely off the most common strings in both, which was 8 out of 8 landed attacks for backstab(no misses) and 14 out of 14 attacks for Attack verb, the time involvement was roughly:

5 second delay per Backstab meaning each kill was roughly 45 seconds.

With Attack it depends more on the type of attack, but the highest delay is 3 seconds per swing(for me), which still comes out to roughly 42 seconds with 14 attacks AT WORST. Which was never happening, half of my attacks were 1 second attacks. Thus my average kill time with simply Attack was roughly 28 seconds.

I am killing faster with simply Attack than I am with Backstab.

Yeah, and just to clarify... Backstab has always had a larger damage bonus to the first hit on a target. I'm not sure the original intent was for it to be anything more than an opener, or finisher of an already wounded mark.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

The things you learn when the system gets tweaked.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.