Combat Mechanics: Power, Damage, Healing

[Ferret]

In what is probably the most egregious case of undocumented features in Demon, free actions never count as your previous action. I admit this is not documented anywhere: I'm still trying to figure out how to do it without having to add 3 lines to everything that checks your last action or everything that is a free action.

I don't believe there are any free action physical attacks. That's usually more of a magic thing.

[wizzzargh]

I don't know if this would offend your dev sensibilities but could you make free actions just cost 0.1 of a turn or similar?

[Ferret]

Ah.. well. The problem isn't that they're free actions, the problem is that I coded it this way on purpose. For example, having free actions not count as your last action allows you to move, Reshape, and still Spin Slash with the movement speed bonus.

But, on the flip side, it does prevent Pyrokinesis -> Aurastrike Maul from working..

I agree I should do something, if for no other reason than this *is* probably one of the most importants undocumented feature in Demon, and the answer isn't remotely intuitive (if anything, it is anti-intuitive.) Happily, the next build was already slated to be new content/re-balancing, so that fits right in.

Most likely? I will go back to having free actions count as your action (sorry Reshape Spin Slash!), and fix specifically whatever problems there were that made me change it in the first place (I'll have to review my notes from that era and see what made me do in the first place.)

[Ferret]

Ah... right. Sub-abilities. That's why I made the change. Funny how that's coming up so often all at once. Good news is, that I know a better way to fix it now.

[geminimax]

Is Dragon Soul in any modifier?

[Ferret]

I don't believe so at the moment.

[Ferret]

The sub-ability/free-action nonsense is fixed.

Free actions now count as your last used ability for things that check that. For example, Combust + Maul w/ Aurastrike will work as expected: You can Combust as a free action, then use Maul and both hits of Maul will gain Aurastrike's bonus fire damage. Notably and no less importantly, Fiery Claw + Maul + Aurastrike does *not* work: Fiery Claw's "sub ability" (the Fire + Ignite effect) doesn't trigger Aurastrike, so Fiery Claw (which is Slash) remains your last used ability and doesn't trigger Aurastrike for Maul.

Thanks for poking me on this one, I shouldn't have tolerated it as long as I did given how particularly anti-intuitive the previous setup was.

[geminimax]

How does cunning work(I feel like this was asked before, but i'm too lazy to search )? Is it an additive effect? For example, if my tooltip says i get a 10% increase in the chance to affect enemies, will a 25% chance debuff have actually 35% chance to work(without factoring level difference and vitality)?

[Ferret]

Cunning's bonus is multiplicative: 25% becomes 27.5% with a 10% bonus.

[geminimax]

In the electricity abilities case, does the bonus chance from passives take cunning into account, or only the base chance?