Discipline

[ila]

Am I wrong to think it's a useless stat?

I've gotten it to Heroic but it really doesn't seem like it's doing much.

Is Heroic discipline, despite the adjective, actually very low?

[Arsicas]

Well, you can definitely notice a difference between newbie dis and someone with higher dis. What do you feel like it's not doing?

[ila]

It's hard for me to properly compare newbie Discipline to what I have now since I played very differently pre-mage, but the metrics I'm considering:

* Fighting penalties due to low vitals (health, mana, stamina) don't seem much different, I'm not confident about this though since I mainly just dodge attacks.
* Casting penalties seem slightly improved: maybe the point where I can fail spells from damage shifted by a degree. It's hard to be sure since my skill is also wayyy higher.
* I get charmed or feared very quickly without secondary defenses. Other people with even less discipline than me says it doesn't bother them as much.

It could be speculated the difference is very minor for all of this, but from talking to other players, it seems like "heroic" is actually fairy decent, subjectively speaking. This is where I might be very wrong: maybe "heroic" actually kind of sucks, and if I want to be better at these things, I need to aim much higher.

I should clarify that I'm considering its usefulness as a mage. It's possible it's more useful to other classes.

(Edited to reduce spoilers. ^^; )

[Israfel]

I also have heroic DIS. From the fighter perspective, I'm confident it's doing some good stuff for me but it's very hard to pin down. I don't track anything so it's all gut feel. Explicit output describing when there's a DIS check/fail would make it obvious.

For example, stuff like:

Code: Select all

You move to parry but your wounds inhibit you a bit.

You struggle to keep track of your multiple foes.

You feel that your team fights very poorly together.

Not suggesting we need all that. And for that matter I don't even know if DIS has anything to do with those example. I don't mind it being a mysterious dark horse stat. But if it's an issue for others it might be worth considering.

[ila]

It might be nice to have a general idea of how much pain bothers you, say on 'combat' or 'vitals', eg.

You feel good.
You feel okay.
You feel pretty bad.
You feel awful.

Mostly though, I wonder if it's worth trying to push even higher, or if I should focus on Wisdom instead as a mage.

It doesn't seem to affect supernatural mental effects much if at all, and it's hard to pinpoint where it ends and skill / other stats begin.

Edit: Or maybe if it just deals with pain tolerance, something like:

You're feeling okay.
You're able to tolerate the pain.
You're in pain.
You're in a lot of pain.

[Ioca]

I'm kind of a newbie about this stuff and I don't really know what discipline is actually intended to do. I've heard things like that it affects how well you battle while injured, or even that it affects the rolls of every skill you use in combat (like - "it affects how well you fight").

I've never felt like it's done anything for me, though. I don't feel like I fight worse in combat whatsoever when I'm injured, and never have, although I tend not to fight things that can hit me when I'm too hurt unless I'm confident I can finish the kill.

There's a fountain the game you can drink from in order to raise your discipline a pretty considerable amount, so I did that, but again it just felt like absolutely nothing had changed. I think that if discipline plays a role in anything, it must be very, very tiny! Maybe it could use a bump or yeah, something to indicate it's doing anything. ^^

[Zehren]

Dis helps with avoiding fighting penalties when injured. Also with spell concentration checks. Pretty sure it helps against both death and uncon checks. Even if many chars have less than heroic discipline, heroic discipline is still probably not super high from the calculations perspective. Stat changes feel subtle to me no matter which stat is involved. Obviously it stacks up, but even using say a very good minstelboy buff is still just an incremental improvement over unbuffed state. No instant gamechanger.

[Zehren]

I don't consider stats below immortal to be high, but that's just my personal heuristic.

[ila]

That's not really true. The difference between a full stat level might not be huge, but it's definitely noticeable for other stats.

Discipline on the other hand doesn't seem to do much differently even raised to heroic. I don't even notice it help much with spell concentration.

If the difference between brave and heroic isn't worth mentioning, why would it suddenly become better at immortal?

[Delia]

Discipline is always more mana to a mage, if nothing else. I am not sure how big a part it plays in casting interrupts but I guess it does affect it. One way to look at it is to think D&D. You hit a mage and you make their spells go poof. There is little to help with that save for things that make you harder to hit. I would also not think of discipline alone. It is just one part of it all. I would not be surprised if you had a good constitution on top of your good discipline and your spell concentration checks would be easier. Also bear in mind that discipline will always be much better for a fighter as fighters will tend towards deeper pools of hp and stamina hence much more pronounced mitigation effect over time. Mages tend to go quickly from top to bottom of the scale where fighters take more time lingering somewhere in the between. Take these with a pinch of tinfoil as these are just my gut feelings from years of playing.

[Allalltar]

Discipline is involved whenever a character needs to keep doing something despite distracting or painful influence:

- meditating despite noise
- fighting while wounded
- diving through oozing, stinging liquid
- swimming/diving while having less oxygen
- not caving in to fear causing effects.

It is of course a lot less obvious then the other mental stats, but upon fighting someone with high and someone with low discipline, you likely will notice the point upon which they're failing their discipline checks.