Martial Arts Rebalance for Judo

[Hymore246]

Summary

SUMMARY: Balance "Martial arts rebalance for Judo"

Purpose of change

Partially implements #32422
Update for the martial art: Judo

Describe the solution

"Judo is a martial art that focuses on grabs and throws, both defensive and offensive.

Current Buffs, Techniques, and Special Abilities

Name	Level Available	Type	Effect
Judo	Unarmed 0	Static Buff	Throw Immune (see below)
grab	Unarmed 2	Unarmed Tech	Down duration: 2
throw	Unarmed 3	Unarmed Tech	Down duration: 1, Knockback duration: 1, Knockback spread: 1

Judo "Immune to throws and knockdowns" explained: This effect sets a variable (throw_immune) to true in the game's code that is checked in a few instances to reduce the severity of certain special attacks and can possibly lead to a hardcoded counterattack against the attacking monster as well. This counterattack is a judo throw the requires a Dexterity roll to succeed and if it does, the monster will take 10-20 damage and be knocked down for 5 turns. If the monster has Zapback defense, the player will take 1-3 electric damage to their arms for making contact. Having the throw_immune variable set to true has the following effects:

• Cannot be knocked down as long as the game makes a check to see if the player is immune to to the "downed" effect.
• Cannot be forced to the ground by a melee hit that does high Stab damage.
• If you are standing at the top or bottom of a set of stairs as a monster attempts to climb them, you will be pushed backwards and possibly knocked down. With throw_immune set to true, you instead have a 33% chance to to ignore the knockback/knockdown and remain in place and a 66% chance to counter with a judo throw.
• During the second part of the Zombie Bio Operator's takedown attack, the player has a 75% chance to take 6-18 torso damage and be downed for 3 turns and a 25% to be "crit" with a "headshot" and take 9-21 head damage and be downed for 3 turns. With throw_immune set to true, instead of the above, the player will attempt to judo throw the enemy. A success interrupts the takedown with the counterattack and a failure deals 3-9 torso damage to the player but doesn't cause knockdown.

Judo is weak and underwhelming. It only has two techniques that basically do the same thing and nothing else. Throw immunity is interesting but is way too situational to be useful. Reducing a Bio Operator's takedown attack is great but you are going to take way more damage trying to kill it with Judo if you don't have a way to avoid the Zapback damage. At best I'd call the style a novelity.

Problems and issues

• Throw and Grab are the same.
  Technically Throw will knockback an opponent and down them while grab will just down the opponent. But they have no other attributes to speak of and you could honestly remove either from Judo and not even notice a difference.

• The "Judo Throw" is really situational.
  The "Judo Throw" hardcoded counter only affects single special attack in the game and it doesn't do it well either due to the Zapback defense.

• Doesn't offer much else.
  The style really leaves a lot to be desired in terms of utility. Knockdown immunity really isn't worth it with only two weak techniques to work with.

Rebalance Goal
Judo has a lack of variety and you can sum up Judo with the phrase "You throw people." Traditional Judo has 67 different throwing techniques. These vary in how similar they are to each other but they all ultimately end with the opponent on the ground. In game terms, you could easily claim that Judo's "Throw" technique is all of these techniques at the same time through ambiguity. This isn't a bad thing in itself since having 67 different throws that do the same thing offers nothing to the player. The problem is that summing up an entire martial art is one technique isn't good for game balance and isn't very fun either.

Judo is more than just standing throws but those techniques also have problems associated with them:

1. Sacrifice Throws
   For the most part, these throws cause the user to also end up on the ground at the end of technique. You ABSOLUTELY never want to do this in-game. Nothing a sacrifice throw technique could offer would be worth taking yourself to the ground and gaining the Downed status, even for one turn. In addition, you also have a chance FAIL getting up when Downed on top of getting attacked in an akward situation.

2. Ground Work
   This includes pinning, chocking, and joint locking techniques. All of these require the player and the opponent to be on the ground for multiple turns. As mentioned above, being Downed is bad and all ground work would require you to be grappled on top of that! More importantly, it is very questionable if these techniques can even work on most creatures in CDDA. Would joint locking work on an NPC? Sure! How able a zombie? Kinda, but they probably wouldn't care. A robot? NEGATIVE. Could you choke out a Zombie Hulk? No, they don't care if they can't breath. Pin a blob? Have fun trying that! In the end, ground work puts you in a lot of danger for techniques that probably are not going to work on most of creatures in the game.

So does all of this mean Judo can't be fix? No, but it does mean the style will be more condensed on what it can do.

New Buffs, Techniques, and Special Abilities

Name	Level Available	Type	Effect
Judo Stance	Unarmed 0	Static Buff	Knockdown Immune
Throw	Unarmed 0	Unarmed Tech	+25% Bash damage, Down duration: 1
Disarming Throw	Unarmed 1	Unarmed Tech	+25% Bash damage, Disarms, Down duration: 1
Back Throw	Unarmed 2	Unarmed Crit Tech	+50% Bash damage, Down duration: 1
Grab Break	Unarmed 3	Unarmed Tech	Grab Break
Counter Throw	Unarmed 4	Unarmed Dodge Counter	Down duration: 1

Knockdown Immune work the same as above.
Judo Throw (hardcoded counter) works against the normal grab special attack as well as the bio operator takedown and does 10-20 damage + extra Bash damage equal to the player's Unarmed skill level.

Weapons: bionic claws, cestus, nail knuckles, pair of brass knuckles, pair of steel knuckles, tiger claws

Important Changes

• Judo now has style weapons.
  This requires a bit of an explaination. Most techniques in the game are useable with unarmed weapons. Throws shouldn't allow unarmed weapons because you need your hands free to actually grab the opponent. So the throws are set to not allow unarmed weapons. However, some unarmed weapons are technically "worn" on your hands instead of held in your hands. In this case, it would be fair to allow those weapons to be useable with throwing attacks since you can still grab the opponent. As such, those specific unarmed weapons are now Judo's "style weapons" and all techniques can be used unarmed or with those weapons.

• High bonus damage on all throws.
  There are two reasons that all the techniques have high bonus damage.

1. Falls can hurt a lot. Falling the wrong way can injuy and even kill you. Judo is all about controlling how your opponent falls. As a sport, Judo never causes a fall that would injure someone. However, in CDDA where everything is trying to kill you, you can bet that the Judo practitioner will be throwing opponents in the most painful and harmful ways possible.

2. You can't knock down a Downed opponent. To elaberate, when the game is randomly selecting a technique to use, it will ignore any technique that inflicts knocks down a target IF the target is already Downed. As a result, Judo takes a big penalty since every technique force the opponent to the ground. The damage boost makes up for not being able to throw the same opponent on successive turns.

• Judo Throw work against the Grab special attack.
  Judo Throw was very niche and didn't affect gameplay much but changing it to also work against the Grab attack that almost every zombie has makes using Judo a lot more desirable.

• Judo Throw has better damage.
  Judo Throw's damage is hardcoded to be 10-20 bash damage and cannot crit. Adding the player's Unarmed skill level makes Judo Throw better as the game goes on and helps show the player's progression in unarmed combat without being so high as to break the game.

• Back Throw moves opponent behind the player.
  Standing throws in judo have two results: the opponent falls to the ground in front of you or they fall to the ground behind you. The former is already cover and with the new "side_switch" technique attribute, the latter can be done as well! This allows for more strategy when using Judo since you has better positioning control.

New technique attribute: "side_switch"
"side_switch" is a technique attribute that when set to true, causes an opponent hit with the technique to be moved behind the user. This movement is relative to the direct the opponent is in relation to the user. If the opponent is to the left of the user, they will be moved to the right of the user. If the opponent is to the north, they will be moved to the south of the user. Northwest is moved to the southeast. Etc. If the destination space is occupied by a creature or an impassible object, the opponent will not be moved.
When used with "knockback_dist", the opponent will switch sides first, then be knocked back the appropriate distance.

Advantages

• All techniques knock down opponents.
• All techniques do higher than average damage than most techniques.
• Judo Stance makes you immune to most knock downs.
• You can counter grab attacks, takedowns and also have a dodge counter.
• Back Throw lets you move opponents in a way no other style can.

Disadvantages

• Once your opponent is on the ground, all you can do is normal attacks until they stand up. It takes longer overall to kill with Judo.
• Back Throw can potentially cause you to become surrounded if you are not careful in groups.
• Despite the crowd control options, groups can be very dangerous if you are not careful and plan ahead.

Describe alternatives you've considered

If the style is too strong...

• Reduce the overall damage bonus on all techniques.

If the style is too weak...

• Allow Judo Throw to work against other special attacks such Smash.
• Increase the damage of Judo Throw.

Additional context

References:
Judo wikipedia page
The Ultimate List of All Judo Techniques

[ghost]

So you're telling me I can back throw zombies off rooves now? OwO

[Hymore246]

So you're telling me I can back throw zombies off rooves now? OwO

Yes, if your standing on the edge of the roof when you back throw.

[Destragon]

Can the back throw be used to make two zombies collide with each other (or with a wall) or will the throw simply not happen when the space behind you is already occupied?

[Hymore246]

Can the back throw be used to make two zombies collide with each other (or with a wall) or will the throw simply not happen when the space behind you is already occupied?

If the space is occupied, the technique will still trigger but the opponent will not be moved.

[SirPendrak]

Can we backthrow hulks off the roof?

[Hymore246]

Can we backthrow hulks off the roof?

Yes, although it will probably punt you off the roof first. Throw and Back Throw are ambiguous in their descriptions of how the throw is performed so I would image this would be less of a "pick up and toss" throw and more of a "leverage, momentum, tripping" sort of throw.