Just giving you guys an update. Still working on coding this mess, but I'm at the point that I can playtest some of it. It's been awhile since I've played this without my own mods and you weren't kidding, these girls miss a lot in combat. Looking at the code, the girls have a base 60% accuracy, but I swear I miss at least 3/4ths of the time. I think I've figured out the math for the combat improvements, and I'm going to scale everything in relation to the bard's bravery song. Song of Bravery currently gives the girls a 10% accuracy boost. I'm going to add a lute item for bards and scale songs based on it. Magic lutes will increase the accuracy bonus to 15% and fabled lutes will increase it to 20%.
I'll make magical weapons a 5% accuracy boost and fabled weapons a 10% boost. This will give well equipped girls the equivalent accuracy boost of song of bravery. This should make almost any party combination better.
I'll give girls in any kind of special combat stance (stealth/tanking/parrying/bear form etc.) an additional 10% accuracy. This is to make some of the under appreciated girls a little better.
Enemies affected by certain debuffs will have their evasion chance reduced. The game's code treats a target's -evasion the same as an attacker's +accuracy, so this will effectively increase the girl's accuracy. I'll reduce enemy's evasion by 10% if they have an immobilizing debuff on (stunned/knock down/paralyzed/frightened). The existing evasion debuffs (Faerie Fire/Mass Entangle/Hunter's Mark etc.) will stay the same. I think I'll cap the -evasion at 10%, otherwise a girl with 4 different debuffs would have -40% evasion. Hopefully this will encourage people to mix up party combinations a bit.
An enemy affected with frozen/sleep will have a 0% chance to evade. Taking damage will cancel the sleep effect. I'll probably make frozen canceled by fire attacks.
Some examples in case this isn't clear:
Rogue using stab = 60% accuracy
Rogue using stab with a fabled dagger = 70% accuracy
Rogue using stab with a fabled dagger while in stealth = 80% accuracy
Rogue using stab with a fabled dagger while in stealth with bravery song = 90% accuracy
Rogue using stab with a fabled dagger while in stealth with bravery song on a stunned enemy = 100% accuracy
This should help combat without ruining the challenge. It will be up to the player to determine how accurate a girl is based on how much they want to equip girls/buff the party/debuff the enemy.
If anyone has any ideas on how to improve/do things differently, let me know. I'll probably tweak it based on feedback anyway.
Last thing, while I was playtesting some of the new abilities, I realized this...
All the new abilities will need buttons. If someone can make these, that would be great. Each one needs a grey version for unselected and a yellowish/orangish version for selected. They need to be the same size and style as the existing buttons. You can check your game/gui/combat_button folder to see all the existing buttons. If nobody can make these, I'll just leave them as the ? as a placeholder. Based on what I listed last time, the new abilities that need buttons are:
paralyzing arrow (huntress special arrow)
sleep arrow (huntress special arrow)
berserk (new barbarian skill)
entice (new enchantress skill)
curing word (upgrade of drow healing word)
battle arrow (valkyrie ranged version of battle strike)
bandage (newish valkyrie skill)
terrify (new heretic debuff)
smoke bomb (new ninja skill)
holy aura (new paladin skill)
wing blast (new arcangel skill)
