Chapter 153: Trees
Two days after sparring with Ameliah, Rain was still sore. His armor was uncomfortably tight too, already overdue for another resizing. Mercifully, though, his hunger had been less constant of late. The changes weren’t done, but it looked like they were at least winding down. That was good. While Tallheart could resize his armor endlessly, there was nothing any of them could do for his Forceweave. The stretchy fabric had its limits, and Rain was already feeling a bit like an overstuffed sausage.
It was the 27th of Fallow, not even a week since they’d entered the depths. It was amazing to think that so much had happened in so little time, but despite that, Rain was already anxious to move on. Tallheart wasn’t ready, however. Even now, Rain could hear the rhythmic clanging of the cervidian’s hammer as he worked on Ameliah’s new bow.
One of her old ones—technically half of one—was currently serving Rain as an oversized stylus. After Tallheart had shooed him away from his anvil, Rain had spotted the broken weapon lying where Ameliah had dropped it. To keep himself busy, he’d picked it up and started tracing simple runes in the dirt. The runes were mostly an idle curiosity, born out of a desire to better understand what exactly it was that Tallheart was doing. Soon enough, however, he’d given up and transitioned to just idly doodling in an attempt to relax. That, also, hadn’t lasted long. Now, Rain was still scratching at the dirt with the broken bow, but his thoughts were on something else entirely.
Yesterday, too soulstrained for more physical training, Rain had devoted the morning to working on his soul and the afternoon to running some experiments of more immediate practicality. Ameliah had asked for his help in planning her build, and he was determined to do a good job. That had involved getting a baseline.
Calculating the damage of a mundane bow shot was more straightforward than it seemed at first glance. The key thing to realize was that the arrow didn’t matter that much—not when it came to how the system calculated damage, anyway. Provided that the projectile survived being fired, the most important factor was the bow. Higher draw weight and longer draw distance directly translated to increased damage.
When an archer pulled on a bowstring, they were essentially storing energy. When they let go, that energy would then be transferred to the arrow. A bow, at least as far as the mathematics was concerned, was just a spring. The transfer of elastic potential energy to kinetic energy was one-to-one—assuming you ignored the mass of the bow, its motion, friction, and other such bullshit. When fired, the arrow’s velocity would sort itself out based on the energy stored in the bow relative to the starting mass of the projectile. Once it was flying, more bullshit non-idealities popped up, particularly air resistance; however, as long as the arrow wasn’t stupidly light or the target ridiculously far away, such things could be mostly ignored.
Rain wasn’t after a perfect mathematical description. He was just looking for a way to exploit the physics involved. Working with a spherical archer in a vacuum was good enough for that.
Unfortunately, his hopes had been dashed, just as they’d been dashed weeks ago when he’d tried stone-throwing with Velocity. There would be no taking advantage of the squared term in the kinetic energy equation. There was only one skill they’d found that directly increased arrow speed, and it explicitly stated that it didn’t affect damage. Whoever or whatever had designed the system, the label ‘killjoy’ definitely applied.
Undeterred, Rain had continued his experiments. Not having a way to measure the speed of an arrow, he had instead turned his attention to calculating how much work the archer was putting in.
The force required to draw a bow wasn’t constant. Before you started pulling the string, it was zero, obviously. The further you pulled it back, the harder it became. ‘Draw weight’ was simply what people called the required force at full draw. Rain had discovered that he hadn’t actually known much about bows from his old life. Granted, that wasn’t too surprising, but there was also a notable gap in his YouTube history on the subject. Fortunately, through his discussions with Ameliah and some practice, he’d found that it wasn’t that complicated.
The force needed to draw a bow was a linear function of distance, F=k*d. ‘F’ for force, ‘d’ for distance, and ‘k’ for ‘springiness’. He was sure there was a real word for what k represented, but he wasn’t going to beat himself up for not knowing it. It was just how bendy the bow was. If you drew a plot with force on one axis and distance on the other, ‘k’ was the slope.
Making that plot had proven to be a bit of a trial.
Rain had needed an accurate weight reference to make his measurements, and for that, he’d gone to Tallheart, asking him for a 5cm iron cube. With Le Nouveau Faux Grand K, a beam balance, a tree, a bucket, some rocks, a very patient Ameliah, and more time than he should probably have spent on this project, Rain had finally gotten himself a graph. From there, it was just simple calculus to get the area under the curve.
Technically, you didn’t even need calculus. You could do it with geometry. The line made a right triangle with the axes, the area of which worked out to E=1/2*k*d2.
On average, the steel training bows Tallheart had made boasted draw weights in the 80-kilogram range—kilograms-force if you wanted to be pedantic—or about 800 newtons. Crazy, but not too crazy. Rain didn’t feel bad about rounding, given how little he trusted his initial measurement. Ameliah’s draw distance was 63 cm, so by the formula, the energy stored was 1/2*k*d2=1/2*(800N/63cm)*(63cm)2=252J.
J was for joules.
Rain’s confidence in the accuracy of that number was abysmal, given all his sources of error, but it was something he could worry about when they were back on the surface.Ascension already had councils, so adding one for weights and measures wouldn’t require any significant changes to the codes.
To find the relationship between energy and damage, he had enlisted Ameliah again, who had been more than willing to shoot him at this point.
After compensating for her Sharpshooting passives and his own Force resistance, a full-draw shot had done 504 damage. Exactly twice the number in joules.
The evenness of the conversion factor was a little scary.
To make sure, he’d then had Ameliah shoot him with the bow only half drawn. The equation predicted that the base damage would be 126, and the result was 123. Rain had been even more surprised than Ameliah at how close his prediction had been.
Apparently, she had never doubted him, despite all the teasing she’d been doing about how he chose to spend his free time.
In any event, though the ratio between joules and damage was suspect, Rain could now use his formula to predict the damage of an arrow for various scenarios with some level of confidence.
Scenario one was an unawakened archer. Assuming a regular, wooden bow with a more reasonable, though still respectable, draw weight of 30kg, the formula predicted just under 200 damage from full draw. That sounded moderately fatal, given an average person only had 200 health, but it was more complicated than that. Someone hit with a 200-damage arrow in the forehead would be dead, no question. Someone hit in the toe would survive easily—minus said toe and barring any unfortunate infections. They wouldn’t even lose the full 200 health from the experience. The buffering effect of health was another complicated topic.
Staying on track, the second scenario was the case of Stint. At level five and invested in the Sharpshooting tree, he’d have access to Strong Draw. Assuming it was rank ten, the skill would double the effective draw weight of any bow he cared to use. 200 damage became 400. Also, being awakened, Stint had likely invested points into Strength. That would let him use a better bow like the steel ones, bringing the damage up to four digits.
It was an impressive number for someone at level five, and it was fairly indicative of why you tended to see more warriors than mages in that level range. Already, however, problems were starting to appear. Not everybody had access to a legendary blacksmith who could make a bow out of metal while keeping it supple enough to function. Bowstrings became an issue, as did the arrows, which also needed to be stronger to survive the rapid acceleration.
Skills made it worse.
The term for the effect was ‘item strain’ or, more commonly, just ‘strain’. The accepted rule of thumb in the adventuring community was that a weapon skill would deal 10% of its damage back to the weapon. It wasn’t that simple in practice. Not all skills did damage, but using them would still cause strain. The extension to the rule of thumb was, therefore, to guess based on the damage of a similar skill in the same tier.
At low skill ranks, most materials had sufficient hardness for item strain to be only a minor issue. By silver, however, standard equipment could no longer stand up to the forces involved. Warrior, mage, defender; it didn’t matter. Use too much power, and you’d find yourself unarmed, perhaps literally. Rain could speak from experience there; though fortunately, the Focus stat ring that had failed on him hadn’t detonated with quite that much force.
Getting back to the scenario, the Drilling Shot skill at rank ten would let Stint double his damage again, bringing it up to 2,000, or thereabouts. A steel bow would survive that, possibly even unscathed, but a wooden one would have trouble. There were skills like Sturdy Bow that helped, but they had their limits, as evidenced by scenario three.
Rain looked up from his doodling, a blue window popping into existence before his eyes.
sharpshooting.odt
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Sharpshooting
An offensive tree focusing on physical skills with bows and crossbows.
When it comes to defining what a ‘bow’ is, it needs to bend and have a string. Bows are fine, obviously, but so are crossbows, whether lever or crank.
Extremely unconfirmed rumor: even something like a ballista can be okay if you can manage to pick it up before you fire it. Anden the Strong did it in Legends of the Green Wood. Probably bullshit. #todo: build siege weaponry, test.
There is no distinction between an “arrow” and a “bolt.” Common uses the same word for both.
Most physical skills require a valid target to gain experience. “Valid” is somewhat subjective. For bows, the condition seems to be that the target is either alive or a challenge to hit, such as a distant archery target or a falling coin. Or me :/
Tier 0
Seeker Shot
Tier 1
Sturdy Bow
Piercing Shot
Tier 2
Pinning Shot
Sniper Shot (Hidden)
Tier 3
Splinter Shot
Multishot (Hidden)
Tier 4
This document was one of several, a compilation of Rain’s hard numbers with Ameliah’s more intuitive grasp of what the listed skills did. Tallheart, too, had supplied a good bit of info, most notably concerning the T4s and hidden skills. He’d seen them in action, after all. As for the formulas, Rain’s default skill interface was still stubbornly refusing to give him anything other than the final number. He’d had to piece them together the hard way.
The end result was a bit disorganized, but reasonably accurate, he thought.
Nodding to himself, Rain opened another window.
sharpshooting.ods
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The Ameliah Number
189.8
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Skill
Type
Rank
Numeric
Meaning
Cost
4
Drilling Shot
Attack
10
2.9
Physical Dmg Multiplier
10 SP
5
Seeker Shot
Attack
10
1754
Turn Rate (deg/s)
10 SP
6
Hardened Arrowheads
Passive
10
2
Arrow HRD Multiplier
None
7
Sturdy Bow
Passive
10
2
Bow DUR Multiplier
None
8
Strong Draw
Toggle
10
2
Draw Weight Multiplier
None
9
Piercing Shot
Attack
10
50%
Hardness Ignore
25 SP
10
Sharpened Arrowheads
Passive
10
2
Arrow Dmg Multiplier
None
11
Endless Quiver
Utility
10
10
Copy Duration (minutes)
10 SP + x MP
12
Pinning Shot
Attack
10
60
Pin Duration (seconds)
50 SP
13
Sniper Shot
Attack
10
9.7
Physical Dmg Multiplier
100 SP
14
Bleeder Shot
Attack
10
10
Bleed Duration (minutes)
100 SP
15
Splinter Shot
Attack
10
20
# Arrows
(5% dmg each)
None
16
Multishot
Attack
10
20
# Arrows
(10% dmg each)
100 MP
17
Stacked Shot
Attack
10
11
# Skills
Sum MP
His spreadsheet application was still a bit jank, but it had already proven itself worth all the swearing. This window showed what you got if you crunched the numbers for every Sharpshooting skill using Ameliah’s stats with +10 from accolades. Ameliah didn’t have all of these skills unlocked yet, of course, let alone at rank 10. This was just Rain’s way of getting a glimpse at one possible future.
As an example, say Ameliah DID have the ranks listed. Rain could then calculate the damage for something like Drilling Shot, using a base damage of 500 from the 80kg-draw training bow. Drilling Shot was a 2.9x multiplier, Strong Draw was 2x, and Sharpened Arrowheads was another 2x. That worked out to 5,800 damage.
The steel bow needed to withstand 10% of that—more than enough to overcome the hardness stat of the unenchanted metal. It probably wouldn’t break it completely, though, at least not with a single shot. Sturdy Bow wouldn’t stop the weapon from taking damage, but it would allow it to endure more punishment overall. The arrow—also steel—would likely survive as well, even without Hardened Arrowheads. It wouldn’t bear any of the item strain, merely the mundane forces of the launch, considerable though those might be.
Returning to damage, 5,800 was about half that of an Overcharged Fireball with Ameliah’s previous build. It didn’t seem that impressive until you realized that Drilling Shot only took 10 stamina and a single arrow to activate. Further, it could be used as quickly as a person could draw and shoot, more or less. There was no cooldown beyond the default system tick of one second.
Rain’s eyes slid down the window, stopping to rest on Sniper Shot.
After the ten-second charge time, the skill would deal 500*9.7*2*2=19,400 damage. That was less than an Overcharged Fireball with Triplicate Casting, but it came with a redonkulous range and could be done for the measly cost of 100 stamina, one arrow, and, probably, one training bow. Tallheart hadn’t enchanted the weapons. He’d said it was for Rain’s safety.
And then there was tier 4.
Stacked Shot would let you fire a volley of twenty spinning, target-seeking, piercing, pinning sniper shots that split on impact and inflicted bleeding wounds. Ignoring the fact that the training bow would explode the instant you even THOUGHT about activating that kind of combo, the total damage would be 114,400, split across 400 arrows, each dealing 286 damage. Even that was far from the full story. Each projectile would ignore half of its target’s hardness, and, assuming it did damage, it would inflict bleed and pin before piercing. After the pierce, Splinter Shot would trigger again, splitting each surviving arrow into twenty, dealing minor additional damage to anything nearby.
It was essentially a Meteor made out of toothpicks.
Unlike Meteor, however, Stacked Shot was good for other tricks as well.
Say you activated the same combo only without Multishot and Splinter Shot. You’d get a single projectile dealing 57,200 damage plus bleed and pin. When it hit its target, it would almost certainly pierce, and then, thanks to Seeker Shot, it would turn right the hell around and hit the target again. And then again. And then AGAIN. Each time, it would inflict another stack of bleed and refresh the pin duration.
Granted, the arrow would probably break on impact. Even if it survived, the piercing would eventually stop after the target’s defenses whittled down the remaining damage, or, barring that, when the range of Seeker Shot expired. But still.
It was, on paper, completely insane.
And that was only one skill tree.
One.
Rain ran a hand through his hair, his doodle long forgotten. More windows appeared.
elemental_archer.odt
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Elemental Archer
A buffing tree focusing on magically empowering arrows.
Anything that multiplies elemental damage here also multiplies any elemental damage enchanted on the arrow.
“Arrow” is a keyword, like “Aura”. One Arrow buff can be used at once. They count as spells and are subject to things like Mastery/Synergy/Affinity, etc. They aren’t evocations, though, so no Overcharge, Guide Sending, Triplicate Casting, etc.
Arrow skills do nothing for the arrow’s physical damage, hurting it if anything. They cause item strain, but the arrow just has to survive it long enough to reach its target. The buffs will work with metal arrows, too, but will reduce accuracy significantly.
Tier 0
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
elemental_archer.ods
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The Ameliah Number
189.8
r
100
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Skill
Type
Rank
Numeric
Meaning
Cost
4
Fire Arrow
Buff
10
146
Avg Heat Dmg
5 MP
5
Ice Arrow
Buff
10
146
Avg Cold Dmg
5 MP
6
Shock Arrow
Buff
10
146
Avg Arcane Dmg
5 MP
7
Poison Arrow
Buff
10
292
Avg Chemical Dmg (over 10s)
5 MP
8
Stone Arrow
Buff
10
146
Avg Force Dmg
5 MP
9
Arrow Affinity
Passive
10
2
Elemental Dmg Multiplier
None
10
Radiant Arrow
Buff
10
146
Avg Light Dmg
5 MP
11
Stygian Arrow
Buff
10
146
Avg Dark Dmg
5 MP
12
Mental Arrow
Buff
10
146
Avg Mental Dmg
5 MP
13
Sapping Arrow
Buff
10
73
Avg Arcane Mana Drain (over 10s)
5 MP
14
Arrow Synergy
Passive
10
3
Elemental Dmg Multiplier
None
15
Prismatic Arrow
Buff
10
3.9
Elemental Dmg Multiplier
5n(n+1) MP
equipment_use.odt
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Equipment Use
Utility tree governing general equipment use.
The “Empowered” skills are toggleable. They are also hard on the item if the enchantment goes above the limit for the material. Allows Tallheart to save resources and effort if designing with this in mind.
Bows count as offhand, arrows as mainhand.
Tier 0
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
equipment_use.ods
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The Ameliah Number
189.8
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Skill
Type
Rank
Numeric
Meaning
Cost
4
Empowered Underwear
Toggle
10
2
Enchantment Multiplier
None
5
Empowered Overwear
Toggle
10
2
Enchantment Multiplier
None
6
Deep Durability
Passive
10
2
Durability Multiplier
None
7
Empowered Mainhand
Toggle
10
2
Enchantment Multiplier
None
8
Empowered Offhand
Toggle
10
2
Enchantment Multiplier
None
9
Empowered Amulet
Toggle
10
2
Enchantment Multiplier
None
10
Empowered Charms
Toggle
10
2
Enchantment Multiplier
None
11
Deep Hardness
Passive
10
2
Hardness Multiplier
None
12
Deep Sharpness
Passive
10
2
Sharpness Multiplier
None
13
Empowered Rings
Toggle
10
2
Enchantment Multiplier
None
14
Empowered Armor
Toggle
10
2
Enchantment Multiplier
None
15
Smell Bound Item
Passive
10
5
Range (km)
None
16
Repair Bound Item
Utility
10
289.8
Repair Rate
10 SP/s
17
Recharge Bound Item
Utility
10
289.8
Recharge Rate
289.8 MP/s
18
Unknown
?
10
?
?
?
19
Equipment Mastery
Passive
10
50%
Item Strain Reduction
None
heavy_armor.odt
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Heavy Armor
A defensive tree focusing on heavy armor. Skills are generally about boosting defenses and protecting yourself. A piece of armor is considered “heavy” if it is mostly rigid. Typically, this means metal, but it also allows things like stone, crystal, wood, etc. Chain does not count as heavy, even though it is metal.
Some related trees are Light Armor, Shieldwielding, and Threat Attraction. There’s some other armor stuff scattered, like Bramble Armor and Hauberk of Spite.
Tier 0
Tier 1
Requires Heavy Armor 5
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
heavy_armor.ods
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The Ameliah Number
189.8
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H.Regen
79.1
/hr
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Skill
Type
Rank
Numeric
Meaning
Cost
4
Heavy Armor
Passive
10
2
Increased Mass
None
5
Mountain Stance
Stance
10
3.9
x Harder to Knock Back
None
6
Thickened Plate
Passive
10
2
Durability Multiplier
None
7
Hardened Plate
Passive
10
2
Hardness Multiplier
None
8
Resistant Plate
Passive
10
189.8
Resistance Adder/slot
None
9
Conductive Plate
Passive
10
50%
Conversion Adder
None
10
Draining Plate
Passive
10
2
Dissipation Multiplier
None
11
Deep Plate
Passive
10
2
Max Saturation Multiplier
None
12
Heavy Resistance Enhancement
Passive
10
2
Resistance Multiplier
None
13
Ethereal Helm
Passive
10
100%
Helmet “Clearness”
None
14
Grease Exterior
Utility
10
100%
Slickness
10 MP/s
15
Regenerative Plate
Passive
10
79.1
Repair/hr
79.1 HP/hr
16
Heavy Armor Inventory
Utility
10
19
Pieces
?
17
Unknown
?
10
?
?
?
18
Living Armor
Xform
10
3
Plate Skill Multiplier
10,000SP + 100SP/s
potpourri.odt
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#todo make this file less of a disaster
List for Ameliah:
Subelement Affinities
Synergy Skills
Affinity Skills
There are also “affinity” spells with keywords that aren’t subelements. Is there an Aura Affinity???
Seriously, the formatting in this file is cursed. Why is this one a number?! Why won’t it go away!??
Elemental MasterySkills
Not everything with “Mastery” in the name is a Mastery skill. Channel Mastery, for example, is its own thing.
Elemental Resistance Skills
Could there be a bow kata?
#todo ask Val about Light Mastery
#todo ask Val about tree recombination
#todo ask Staavo about the definition of a ‘weapon’
#todo ask Staavo if oatmeal is a soup
#todo start official skill compendium
#todo figure out hyperlinks between documents (wiki-like?)
#todo build a search tool for #todos
#todo sit down and actually work on all the #todos – an hour a day?
“Hey,” Ameliah said, startling Rain quite severely. He moved aside the windows so he could see her standing there in her iron armor. She was smiling at him with her visor raised and was holding an enormous, cruel-looking recurve bow in her left hand. The weapon was made of a dark, dull metal, matching that of the oversized arrows peeking over her shoulder.
Adamant.
Only then did Rain realize that Tallheart’s hammering had stopped.
Rain must have been making a funny face, as Ameliah was laughing as she reached through his interface to offer him her hand. “Shall we test it out?”
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