This Week I Didn't Find

[Derakon]

With that gear, you're a ranger. I don't care what it says on your character sheet.

[Sky]

is it too much to ask for a ranger with 9 shots, a x6 multiplier and +30 damage?

[Derakon]

is it too much to ask for a ranger with 9 shots, a x6 multiplier and +30 damage?

Such a ranger would deal 1620 damage/round firing little foam stress balls, so yes.

[Pete Mack]

@Sky--
+2 shots on an off-bow object will make just about any melee character utterly lethal...and even mages will do pretty well despite the high miss rate. A big heavy xbow of might (or x5 lothlorien) and you'll be doing 1000+ damage per turn with ego ammo.

[Sky]

what if you could shoot Grond (and it returned)?

[PowerWyrm]

what if you could shoot Grond (and it returned)?

Thor's Hammer.

[Sky]

i'm obviously making funnies here. Derakon maybe didn't get it.

I think that +blows and +shots should be limited to +1 on all off-weapon gear, and be about as rare as MBan / Ban activations. They are by far the most powerful modifiers, even above Slay Evil, and even one of those means you get a character that can win just relying on his extra shot/blow.
I had a ranger recently that found a ring of +2 shots, and at CL40 i can hold down the h button when fighting sauron, and he's dead before he can reach me.
Morgoth, well, some MBan were necessary, but more of the same.

[Derakon]

Sorry, you're right, I didn't get the joke. My bad!

I still feel that +shots is a fundamentally flawed concept. It's roughly equivalent in power to an item that doubles the number of blows you get per round. Imagine if warriors were getting 10 blows/round at level 25; it'd be insane. And yet we don't blink at giving rangers the same thing.

Replace +shots with +might and you're back on saner ground -- that's the equivalent of an item that gives you 1 bonus blow/round. Powerful, but not gamebreaking. And thematically it makes more sense to have a ranger that can place single extremely powerful shots than one that is a humanoid machinegun.

[Tibarius]

power dragon scale male

Feels like it would be reasonable to fold MISSILE into MANA. Alternately, FA has this. There's an element ALL which is one part each of every element.

V should also add Power Wyrms. How can you have scales of a monster that doesn't exist?

+1 from me for that statement !

[Estie]

Sorry, you're right, I didn't get the joke. My bad!

I still feel that +shots is a fundamentally flawed concept. It's roughly equivalent in power to an item that doubles the number of blows you get per round. Imagine if warriors were getting 10 blows/round at level 25; it'd be insane. And yet we don't blink at giving rangers the same thing.

Replace +shots with +might and you're back on saner ground -- that's the equivalent of an item that gives you 1 bonus blow/round. Powerful, but not gamebreaking. And thematically it makes more sense to have a ranger that can place single extremely powerful shots than one that is a humanoid machinegun.

You can balance a game to death.

[Pete Mack]

Kavlax is a power dragon, I always thought

[Derakon]

You can balance a game to death.

Absolutely agreed -- a common complaint about Crawl is that this is what's happened to it. But that doesn't mean you should ignore balance altogether either, and I'd say that extra shots is probably the oldest really outrageous balance issue in Vanilla today.

I also think that giving +might would feel better, because the player is doing lots of damage in single shots rather than lesser damage in many shots. Not to mention there'd be less ammo management hassle. And it's not like the player would be substantially unhappier to find a Sling of Buckland (x6) than a Sling of Buckland (x4) (+2 shots), right? It's still an awesome sling! It's just not "okay, now I kill literally everything in the game with pebbles because it's 300+ damage/round better than anything else I can do" awesome. Likewise, a randart that gives +2 might is pretty cool, just not so distortingly cool as one that gives +1 shots.

[Antoine]

Can't you divide all extra shots by e.g. 3? So that +2 shots became +2/3 of a shot? No more balance issue

A.

[Derakon]

Sure; extra shots is really just speed bonus to a specific action. Which might actually be a good way to communicate what's going on -- I know people in the past have been confused when they see they get 2 shots/round but still only fire once per 'f'ire action. "+20% faster shooting" would probably make more sense than "+.2 extra shots".

As a matter of taste I still prefer using extra might, but it's a good point that it's possible to balance extra shots by more finely dividing them.

(Though extra shots do still scale multiplicatively with the power of your launcher+ammo, while extra might scales linearly)

[PowerWyrm]

v) the Sling 'Cellindir' (x2) (+12,+25) <+3, +1>
     Found lying on the floor in a vault at 2200 feet (level 44).

     +3 wisdom.
     +1 shooting speed.
     +1 light.
     Provides immunity to fire.
     Provides resistance to disenchantment.
     Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
     Prevents paralysis.

     When activated, it grants or extends protection from evil for 126+1d25
     turns.
     Takes 132 to 145 turns to recharge at your current speed.
     Your chance of success is 58.9%

Imagine that with +2 extra shots...