Weapon vs. monster chart: here is one of the core bugs of FT

[0rion79]

Hi all. Yesterday had the wish to make another one of my tests about FT and I have used the tables on this forum (thanks to the guys who prepared them) to make comparisons both among each category of weapons and both among the monsters who drop weapons and the minimum character stats that you need to get them.

The general conclusion is the confirmation that most of the weapons (and equipment in general) that you need to proceed in the game are hold by too strong monsters, that you can't kill without the weapons that they drop ... unless you spend time to grind experience, but then you get stuck in the game rather than proceeding.
Usually, when you get those items, your party is at a much higher level than the one matching the found item and has access to much better equipment through shops. So the items found by killing monsters, or rewards or chests (that usually are guarded by or involve the killing of monsters) are usually useless except to be sold for gold.

Also, there is a huge waste of items: too much equipment for low levels, often with more than one item per level category, and drastic lack of equipment for high level characters.

Last but not least, clubs are horrible weapons and the ogre confirm himself as the worst recruitable mercenary, since he almost never can overcome enemy armor (he deals too few damage) and may help only by landing critical hits.

how to read the tables
There are several pages: one for weapons (all together), legs, armors, shields, helmets, mage's stuff and miscellaneous. I have completed most of them.

Level (1st column) it indicates the minimum level that a character must have to use that item. Numbers marked in yellow indicate that there is more than one item for that category.

X: indicates the lack of an item for that level.

Main PC min skills: it indicates the minimum skill points that a character usually has when he is ready to use that item. It is calculated on the main character (the green swordman) starting with 6 skill points, and that gains 2 more per level which are distributed among strength (to overcome enemy armor and deal damage) and dexterity (needed to hit monsters). After this, the damage dealt by the previous-level weapon is added. I did not include other values: that would have been too complicated.
It is reported in other non-weapon tables too, as "PC level".

Watch-monster's skills it indicates the kind of monster guarding the dropped treasure (as a watchdog), because the monster directly drops it, or is involved in the quest to obtain it or is simply dwelling in the area where the treasure is located.
The score is the sum of his armor and dexterity values, since both of them must be exceeded to have a small chance to kill the monster. Usually, the player must deal 30% more than the monster's armor and have his dexterity by 4-5 points greater than the monster's, just to be sure to always hit.

important: the table must be red confronting the PC's main skill with the monsters' scores. When the main PC's skill is equal or lower than the monster, then it means that the monster is too strong. Then go and look when the main PC is strong enough to beat the monster and you will see if there is any better item that can replace the one that would be obtained as reward.
In some rare cases, like the yellow bandit archers, the monster gives just too much in terms of treasures and XPs if compared to its effective stats and item level.

Note that the Main PC scores do not suggest that a character and his party are able to defeat the monsters who are guarding treasures, but that the player has at least a vague hope to defeat them! That's because my stats do not include bonuses from special items (like gloves, rings, boots or the dexterity bonus granted by shields and so on) and mainly because, as stated right before, to beat monsters the player must have a greater dexterity than the monster's and deal more damage than his armor. Monsters usually compensate this because they tend to swarm and may score a lot of critical hits and have a very high damage skill score.
Monsters with the asterisk (*) are particularly strong under this point of view: mages and sedge weapons especially. The rainbow spider too is very strong because it is very fast and may deal an amazing amount of damage even if its stats are barely comparable to the much weaker green dwarf.

Solution: not an easy one, sadly, because it involves an important job to modify both items values and level, both monster values. The best thing to do would also be to re-distribute items with more regular intervals every 2-3 levels at least.

[0rion79]

Lol: expected this thread to generate a more interesting discussion about game balance!
Maybe too much mathematics here

[toad]

nice ratio^^)

[0rion79]

Thank you! It wasn't that difficult with Excel but it helped to have a visual awareness of the game balance: the yellow archers are among the main problems in the game because they suddenly give too much experience and gold.
Also,many low-level monsters are too strong if compared with the kind of treasures that they guard, while the high-level monsters are too strong because often there is no equipment to face them at all.