some half-Troll thoughs

[donalde]

I have now won game with hT in every class, my hT winners are on ladder: Tiili XI, my latest winner was hT Mage, Tiili X and Morko were Warriors, Anga Wen and Aina Here were Priests, Beleg Ohta II was Paladin, GrrazZ was Ranger and Ydnbpof was Rogue.

hT's constitution is big issue, it is not uncommon to see hT level 50 over 1k hp, some warriors manage up to 1300+. Huge HP pool, and regen makes hT's awesome race to play, who cares if they are noisy, stupid and clumsy. In end, one can make then anything wanted with gear. And as base is solid, they can be build to very formidable chars. Main weakness on hT's is definetly low DEX. Maybe is should be toned down even more, and give bit more STR.

Which rises amount of attack per round issue, I thing mages should not melee, so give them only 2 attacks, give ranges and priest at max 3, rogue and paladin can have 5 in every weapon, and warrior gets 6 on every weapon (well, maybe 5.5 with MoD) Or, tone down great, good and critical hits to only warrior classes, while ranger get more chances to good, great and criticals with bow, apply same to rogue with sling. Maybe even whole subject of dual wielding weapon could come in consideration, I can easily see hT Warrior swinging some kickass 2-handed weapon while wearing laods of armor, but in same time I fail to see sneaky hobbit rogue doing same, clanging like samwice gamgee's pots on plateau of gorgoroth.

There are still something odd in randart generation, I did see weapon with +12 speed and wis in one of my recent games, I think it was on warrior. Also, RNG seem to generate multitude of items with immunities. So, I think some more tweaking on randart generation should be done.

I think endgame is way too easy for pure spell caster classes, they can do pretty much anything they want, providing they have immunities and resistances in order. Pure warrior without lot of stealth is in problem, actually running away from monsters quite often.

and as for end few words on pits, nests etc. graveyards are fun to every other class but warrior. Demon pits are fun to warrior and to priest, deadly to other classes. Hydra pits are only cleared to see loot in that room, regardless class. Maia -pits, no bother. Vampire nests are way too easy. Maybe you could have wraiths nest somewhere in midgame, it would make things interesting, have one guaranteed excellent item on its floor. I have seem plenty of vaults in game, after statgain one starts to see lesser vault like every second level, and greater vaults more often than every 8th level.

Waiting to see where angband developes, hopefully my comments have some value..

[Derakon]

Half-trolls are certainly one of the more powerful classes. Having a large hitpoint pool is very useful, regeneration is one of the best intrinsics in the game, and high STR is always helpful.

Which rises amount of attack per round issue, I thing mages should not melee, so give them only 2 attacks, give ranges and priest at max 3, rogue and paladin can have 5 in every weapon, and warrior gets 6 on every weapon

Angband mages are not your average fantasy mages. Remember that Gandalf is perfectly willing to kick some ass with Glamdring if the need is there. While they're pretty bad at melee and bows, they aren't uselessly so, and I don't think they should be. Right now if you're playing a mage and you find an awesome weapon, you're actually tempted to use it; if melee combat simply was never a plausible option then every single weapon in the game would only have value for the stats it confers, which is IMO the wrong way to run things.

There are still something odd in randart generation, I did see weapon with +12 speed and wis in one of my recent games, I think it was on warrior. Also, RNG seem to generate multitude of items with immunities. So, I think some more tweaking on randart generation should be done.

Randarts are simply that, random. They do aim for having approximately the same of everything as in the standart pool (i.e. same number of body armors, same number of weapons, same general power level) but the generator is perfectly happy to let things deviate from the norm. Immunities may seem to be more common, but I think that's mostly just because several of the immunity-providing standard artifacts are very rare and thus not often seen, while the same is not necessarily true of randarts.

I think endgame is way too easy for pure spell caster classes, they can do pretty much anything they want, providing they have immunities and resistances in order. Pure warrior without lot of stealth is in problem, actually running away from monsters quite often.

Yep. Casters have a slow start and a slow middle game, but make up for it by having a strong endgame. Warriors are the reverse -- they come roaring out of the gate, trampling everything in their paths, but eventually start running into enemies that can't trivially be dealt with by having lots of HP and a good melee attack, so the endgame is trickier for them. Each class plays differently; this is a good thing.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback! Hope you keep playing.

[donalde]

Anyway, thanks for the feedback! Hope you keep playing.

prolly try something different, like winning with all human classes. (most average class, thus weakest in average)

[LostTemplar]

prolly try something different, like winning with all human classes. (most average class, thus weakest in average)

Honestly, difficulty difference between class/race combinations are quite small. Try artifactless play or(and) ironman for challenge, it is way more difficult than any possible race/class challenge.

[Pete Mack]

Honestly, difficulty difference between class/race combinations are quite small. Try artifactless play or(and) ironman for challenge, it is way more difficult than any possible race/class challenge.

The difficulty difference may be small, but the play style sure is different. Compare H-T Paladin and Kobold Rogue; both are relatively easy, but they are totally different in gameplay.

[Timo Pietilä]

prolly try something different, like winning with all human classes. (most average class, thus weakest in average)

Try elf. Elf is way worse than human with about any class. Penalties to STR and CON are big issues, and they have smaller hit-die to boost that CON penalty. INT bonus is nowhere close big enough to compensate those two even when playing mage (you will have trouble with HP as mage). Kind of exact opposite to hTroll, penalties where hT has bonuses and vise versa.

[Timo Pietilä]

Angband mages are not your average fantasy mages. Remember that Gandalf is perfectly willing to kick some ass with Glamdring if the need is there. While they're pretty bad at melee and bows, they aren't uselessly so, and I don't think they should be.

I would say same about priests. These are not like those wussies you see in church, these are combat-oriented badasses. Paladins with emphasis in magic.

[Bagplant]

I spent a while recently working on half-troll mages in 3.4.1, culminating eventually in a winner (http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=13965). These were also the first characters I played after upgrading from 3.3.

My impressions:
- Early game was easy, due to high health and regeneration. Melee ability isn't comparable to classes like warrior or rogue, but it's good enough to contribute some damage and stretch your mana a lot further. Combined with regeneration, you can use hack-and-back tactics to kill most things.

- Stat gain was hard, almost to the point where I felt like I needed some luck to get through it. Mage melee skill doesn't scale well with level and is almost useless at this point, so I was almost entirely dependent on spells. That and the increase in monster toughness made the limited mana pool much more of a factor. This was made worse by the fact that I'm quite a fast diver and 3.4.1 increased the rarity on most key items. It was very common for me to be attempting stat gain with just my starting INT, no free action, SI and/or rbase, and often without even anything much in the way of ego items. Low stealth and poor saving throw were also problematic as I rarely had any gear to mitigate them by this stage. I had a few games where I felt like I hadn't made any real mistakes but simply didn't find any of the items I needed, and ended up dying slowly by attrition as key supplies ran out. (The alternative - hanging out endlessly in the low 30s looking for rare stat potion drops - I never considered on the grounds that I'd probably get bored and quit).

- Late game was easy again because I was a mage, and because of the extra health. By this stage most racial weaknesses can easily be mitigated by equipment, with one or two exceptions (100% saving throw was never achievable).

Overall I enjoyed it and felt it was a fun class combo to play. The only thing that really bothered me was the games where I never found any INT boosting items or potions, when I would usually die somewhere in stat gain without really knowing what I could have done differently. Pushing through stat gain with various resistance gaps and FA/SI on swap items was difficult, but I felt it added to the game rather than detracted from it for me (I certainly wasn't bored!)

My funniest moment was fighting a ghost without SI, trying to guess where it was and aim blindly. I assumed that life drain simply stole a percentage of your current experience every time. Turns out no, it's a flat amount and if it happens enough it can and will bust you all the way down to level 1. Thankfully I noticed in time and had a chance to escape, which I did by reading a teleportation scroll (naturally I was down to 3 INT by this time, so no mana or spells). That got me away but landed me right next to a dark elf priest... Fortunately I had a wand of stinking cloud and I was able to kill him with that, which took me back up to level 10 and restored my stats.