Roguelike Scaling

Roguelike Scaling

Stolen Realm's roguelike mode scales player stats with flat linear rules while enemies scale

through multiplier tables. The two drift apart, and by the late levels your character is doing a

fraction of the damage it did at the start of the run.

This mod rebalances the curves from measured in-game data so a run stays consistent end to end.

The problem, measured

Every number below was read out of the live game with a headless probe that enters a real roguelike

run, force-levels a hero, and records the actual stat values. The enemy column is the game's own

curve for a baseline-100 enemy.

Vanilla, level 1 to level 25:

| | L1 | L10 | L20 | L25 | Growth |

|---|---|---|---|---|---|

| Player MaxHealth | 225 | 2954 | 16843 | 32724 | 145x |

| Enemy MaxHealth | 56 | 907 | 6400 | 12000 | 214x |

| Player weapon damage | 25 | 62 | 109 | 132 | 5.3x |

| Player ability power | 19 | 171 | 492 | 713 | 37x |

| Enemy spell power | 42 | 364 | 1092 | 1736 | 41x |

Health and ability power track the enemy curve closely because attribute points feed them

multiplicatively. Weapon damage does not. As a share of enemy health it collapses roughly 34x

over a run, and the effect on play is a turns-to-kill that stretches like this:

| Level | 1 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |

|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

| Turns to kill (vanilla) | 2.2 | 3.8 | 5.4 | 6.8 | 9.9 | 11.2 |

| Turns to kill (with this mod) | 2.0 | 2.9 | 3.0 | 2.6 | 2.6 | 2.1 |

The same drift shows up defensively: player health stays at 4.0x a baseline enemy at level 1 but

only 2.7x by level 25.

The fix

The mod multiplies the game's own values; it never replaces a formula. Nothing is hardcoded from

the game's balance numbers, so it cannot desync from a future balance pass, item modifiers, rogue

powerups and skill bonuses all keep composing normally, and switching the mod off restores vanilla

exactly.

multiplier(level) = (1 + rate) ^ max(0, level - pivot)

Weapon damage and attributes use separate rates and pivots, because they are not the same problem.

With the shipped defaults:

| | L1 | L5 | L10 | L15 | L20 | L25 |

|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

| Turns to kill | 2.0 | 2.9 | 3.0 | 2.6 | 2.6 | 2.1 |

| Player MaxHealth: enemy MaxHealth | 4.0x | 3.5x | 3.6x | 3.9x | 3.5x | 4.1x |

| Weapon damage growth | 1.06x | 1.31x | 1.71x | 2.23x | 2.92x | 3.81x |

Turns to kill stays in a 2.0-3.0 band for the whole run instead of stretching five-fold.

WeaponGrowthPerLevel was tuned by measurement, not by feel. The obvious guess of 0.16 was tried

first and rejected: it pushed turns-to-kill down to about 0.2 by level 25, so every fight ended in a

single hit. 0.055 was the rate that holds the band above.

Installing and removing is safe

The mod never writes to your save files. Every change is applied at read time: the game's own

numbers are read, multiplied by the curve, and handed back. Nothing is baked into a character, an

item, or a quest record.

• Install it and your existing characters and in-progress runs are untouched. Scaling appears

the moment you load in.

• Remove it and every number returns to exactly what the game would have given you. There is

nothing to migrate, repair or undo, because nothing was ever persisted.

• Turn it off (Enabled = false) and you get the same result as removing it, without a restart.
• Item drops, rogue powerups, skill bonuses and future balance changes all keep composing normally,

because the mod multiplies rather than replaces.

What the mod does not touch: the campaign mode by default (RoguelikeOnly = true), AI characters

(so enemy stats are unchanged unless you enable enemy scaling), and save data of any kind.

Scaling follows the run, not the character sheet

In a roguelike run the curves are evaluated against the run's level, not each character's own

level. These are not always the same thing: a character who has levelled less often than the run has

advanced, or a party member recruited part-way through, sits below the run level. Scaling off the

c