Provoke calculation, plus bonus armor observations.

[slida]

I a, m raising provocation the hard way, cause I like to just play the game, but I macroed musicianship cause I'm not a masochist. Anyway I noticed immediately that the formula I find posted everywhere: %chance to provoke = (musicianship + provocation)/2, is not correct, as at 100 music and 0 provoke, that would give you a 50% chance, and it doesn't. What I think it probably is is (%chance at music * %chance at provoke) where the percentages are equal to skill points i.e at 80 music and 40 provoke you'd have (.8*.4) = .32 which is actually your chance of succeeding at both music and provoke(I think that's how you do the math). So at Gm music you'd have (1.0 *.4) = .4, that is %chance to provoke = skill points in provocation. While I haven't done exhaustive testing, the testing that I have done bears this theory out(for GM musicianship).
Curiously, in the three tests of around 50 attempts that I did, failure was front-loaded, with an extremely high failure rate(15-20%) for the first 20 attempts and then a rebound of higher than normal success rates that pushed it up, every time, to just a bit below my skill, presumably, if I hadn't gotten bored, it would have evened out. It's an odd distribution. Anyway, if someone who's going macro it at the zoo or whatever wants to test it out more thoroughly, then more light can be shed on the subject.

In an unrelated part 2: GM armor is worse than 'of defense'. I haven't tested this exhaustively(again), but enough to where I don't wear it. I don't know if this is common knowledge, or era accurate, but I'd say this makes GM armor not worth that much, outside of aesthetics. I just find it disappointing so I thought I'd mention it. Testing GM weapons is obviously more difficult, but I wonder about them too.

In a surprise, semi-related part 3: I started UO, I can't really exactly pinpoint the date, but I'd guess around 6-7 months after the era emulated on this shard,so I can't make any 'era-accuracy' claims, but I do clearly remember that all metal armor(maybe not the helms, besides plate, can't remember) had dex penalties when I started. If it's not era accurate, then it's not, but it was a good thing, made armoring yourself more interesting and gave different pieces of armor more value overall. For instance, I remember that bone gloves had no dex penalty and were as good as platemail gloves(I seem to remember that it was an error and it got corrected at some point, thanks to some loudmouth(boo)).

I mentioned the last two because I had a warrior that had just enough blacksmithy to create exceptional armor and weapons for himself and got to know all the pieces and (sword)weapons really well. As far as dex goes there's no reason to wear any crafted armor below the most you can wear that's not plate, and that's everything thing besides plate. Leather/studded leather armor is pretty much pointless here, it had value when I played because there was no dex penalty for wearing it. And of course, any random piece of magic armor you encounter is probably better than what you are wearing if you're wearing gm armor. I thought it was worth bringing up, just in case.

[nightshark]

im fairly certain the chance to provo here is provoke skill * music skill, though it is not documented that way

the dex penalties on armor you are talking about came in after UO:R

[Soma]

im fairly certain the chance to provo here is provoke skill * music skill, though it is not documented that way

the dex penalties on armor you are talking about came in after UO:R

(music+provo)/2 I think

[nightshark]

im fairly certain the chance to provo here is provoke skill * music skill, though it is not documented that way

the dex penalties on armor you are talking about came in after UO:R

(music+provo)/2 I think

that would imply you have a 50% chance with 0 provocation.. which is not the case

[LudKrud]

it makes 2 skill checks,1 for music then 1 for the provocation.if you are at 100 then you never fail either of them.

at 50 skill on both you would have a 50% chance to fail on each check.

[Rammar]

In an unrelated part 2: GM armor is worse than 'of defense'. I haven't tested this exhaustively(again), but enough to where I don't wear it. I don't know if this is common knowledge, or era accurate, but I'd say this makes GM armor not worth that much, outside of aesthetics. I just find it disappointing so I thought I'd mention it. Testing GM weapons is obviously more difficult, but I wonder about them too.

This is largely true. Exceptional armor (a GM tag adds nothing but that guarantee) of everything but shields, plate, and helmets/norse/closed helms, has no more AR than their defense equivalents. In the case of plate and that head gear, exceptional has no more AR that of guarding. Shields are a bit more complicated since you'd compare everything against an exceptional heater.

However, that is only half the story. To match the durability of exceptional armor, magic armor must be substantial or better. If you lose that extra AR after a couple hits, you don't really gain anything, and will continue to lose it faster.

In the case of (melee) weapons, force does slightly more damage than exceptional across the board. Not entirely sure on this one, but I believe an exceptional weapon's durability falls somewhere between substantial and fortified.

[slida]

Thanks for the clarifications. I'd still say, that given the fact that people literally throw defense and guarding armor on the ground, that you're better off wearing that armor than ponying up for gm sets. Defense is better AR not equal(maybe on the minor pieces). That would be an interesting test, if the extra hit points keep the armor intact enough for a long enough time to provide overall better protection when starting at a lower AR to begin with.

[Kaivan]

A little information to help players to understand the significance of armor....

Exceptional armor inherits a 20% bonus to the base defense of the armor piece. To use the two extreme examples of leather armor and plate mail, the resulting bonus to the armor rating is 3 and 6 for their respective base armor ratings of 15 and 30 when an exceptional piece is created. In addition to the 20% armor rating bonus, exceptional armor also acquires a 20% bonus to it health, resulting in anywhere from 6 to 7 extra hit points for leather armor, and 10 to 13 extra hit points for plate mail.

These numbers roughly compare to durable defense armor, with defense providing a +5 bonus to the armor rating, and durable providing +10 hit points to any piece of armor it is on. Other armor pieces will have varying results in terms of the exceptional bonuses, and will compare differently with magical armor.

Also, for provoking, many of the comments here are correct. Provoking first does a pass/fail check on your musicianship, and then does a pass/fail check on your provocation. This means that a skill of 100 provoking and a skill of 0 musicianship will result in a 0% chance to succeed at provoking your target.

[Venom]

sorry just quickly, are these bonuses per peice or per set?

[the bazookas]

*great info*

Good stuff--I always like to learn about the specific details of the game. Thanks for the info