The problem of low hit points on humans

[Endoperez]

Taqwus said:
One way in which Dominions is a bit weird regarding the interplay of strength and skill is that the effectiveness of a weapon parry / defense skill isn't affected by relative strength.

For instance, to take a fairly extreme case: if a Hoburg with two Main Gauches of Parrying is fighting a Niefel Jarl with a Hammer of the Mountains, is the Hoburg going to bother to block the massively strong attacks, or is he going to rely on ducking and dodging? Unless he's got some incredible strength for a Hoburg... he'd be better off with Vision's Foe.

If relative strength affected defense skill somewhat (just as attacker's strength now impacts shield parries -- against the Niefel Jarl with that Hammer, even a decent shield may not be a great deal of help), then it'd be possible for a hero to have very high defense, turning away opposing blades with ease (until he fatigues...) but still have a rough time against giant-strength opponents.

Actually, that might be doable. Horned Helmet is both a helmet (adds a new piece of armor to the unit) and a weapon (adds a Gore attack). If Main Gauche of Parrying added a weapon (Main Gauche of Parrying, dam 3, att 0, def 0, lngth 0) and a shield (Main Gauche of Parrying, def 0, parry 5, prot 20), high strength could be used to over-power it. I statted the shield named Main Gauche of Parrying after Shield of Valor, which combines E1 (shield) and A1 (Air shield) items into one. They're at the same level of construction.

Of course, it's a bit far-fetched to do this for ALL weapons of ALL units - but it could work for some of the magical items.

[Taqwus]

Hmmm. A weapon that's both a weapon and a shield... makes sense, so long as the engine handles multiple 'shields' reasonably. The use is fairly obvious so long as there's only one shield, but if there are multiple shields with different prot values it becomes important to have a way of deciding which ones get checked for which hit rolls.