Sil Builds/Challenges/Concepts/Stupid-Ascension-Tricks

[HallucinationMushroom]

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=14077

Fun! I came close to winning on my very first try. Going to make some minor changes to my build and try again.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I'm playing a new challenge, that maybe some of you might like to try as well.
I'm entering debug-mode and giving my character a set value of xp to spend, but he cannot ever get any more. It's sort of a minimum experience challenge, but mainly this idea stems from the suspension-of-disbelief that a 4,000 year old elf suddenly gains all of these new powers/abilities over the course of a day, or days in Angband. I love the character build engine in Sil, and I'm not criticizing the gameplay, I just simply think a completed character at the start of the adventure might be fun and enlightening. Perhaps a hardcore backwards character creation that eliminates a lot of the early game survival roadblocks that make some builds too difficult, at the cost of max experience.
I am trying right now with 45,000xp, roughly half of what I expect by throne room, and I am also playing ironman for kicks.

Thoughts? Anybody else want to try with me? It's neat deciding what to buy at various price-points. I first thought I would use 60,000, but it looks like too much once I started burning the points. I'll post the character (if the game will let me?, never posted a debug before I don't think) if I manage to do well, or if anybody wants to see my skill selections.

[half]

Also good to know -- Cruel Blow doesn't just confuse a monster, it causes a morale penalty (-20) in "onlooking friends"

Mind you I'm looking at older source, this may have changed in 1.1.1

That's right. Using slaying weapons does the same. I think this is all detailed in the manual.

[Scatha]

What is the weapon weight on your fist? Is it stupidly easy to crit?

Actually this used to be the case, a long way back in testing! It turned out it was a very good assassination method (we also had a different critical rule then, going up with 3+weight instead of 7+weight, but a bigger threshold for the first critical). This wasn't the flavour we wanted to encourage, hence I'm afraid the penalty you see. I wonder if it could safely be reverted with the new rule. Being unarmed is certainly meant to be very bad, but at the moment it could almost be that you can't attack.

[debo]

Also good to know -- Cruel Blow doesn't just confuse a monster, it causes a morale penalty (-20) in "onlooking friends"

Mind you I'm looking at older source, this may have changed in 1.1.1

[debo]

From cmd1.c in "py_attack_aux":

	// fighting with fists is equivalent to a 4 lb weapon for the purpose of criticals
	weapon_weight = o_ptr->weight ? o_ptr->weight : 40;

So there you go. 4lbs is kind of a huge barrier to surmount, that's like swinging a broken sword that weighs as much as a war hammer

[debo]

What is the weapon weight on your fist? Is it stupidly easy to crit? A Cruel Blow ninja might be amusing.

The answer to this seems to be "no" -- I came out of Sil retirement for 5 mins to test this. I just hit with a melee - evasion difference of 9 and didn't score a critical, which means my "weapon weight" is at least two pounds? I might go sourcedive to see how this works...

[WaveMotion]

I suspect that for any player the greatest challenge would be the repeated "(You are fighting with your bare hands.)" messages.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I just tried this a few times. Ouch! I suppose if you played a pacifist, it wouldn't matter... or, maybe a super stealth assassin might be able to kill something with enough cruel blows? I'm not even remotely close to being this masochistic. Getting to the first forge might be possible, but not being able to kill a green centipede... wow.

[Starhawk]

What is the weapon weight on your fist? Is it stupidly easy to crit? A Cruel Blow ninja might be amusing.

[T-Mick]

Power, finesse, charge, and assassination do. Subtlety seems to work also.

EDIT: Momentum, however, has no effect.

[Psi]

I don't suppose subtlety works when you are not wielding a weapon?

[HallucinationMushroom]

Punching demons in the face?! Badass. I had a really strong guy one time and I thought, you know what, it would be awesome if I just reached down and yanked the silmaril out of the crown with my bare hands. It didn't let me even try... you gotta have a weapon for that at least.

I punched my way to the first forge not long ago to see how feasible clouded's use-only-what-you-forge challenge was... I didn't have much difficulty, but I did have to lead the green centipede out of the forge room. I haven't played him since.

[T-Mick]

I just learned that every point of strength adds a side to your unarmed attack. Anyone up for an unarmed challenge?

[Patashu]

If enough people want it, we could do that.

I'm picturing something like the Angels series of challenges in DoomRL - where the core gameplay is changed OR you're forbidden from doing something by the game, and you get kudos for winning under it.

You could then move the hard mode options (ironman, no connecting stairs, no artifacts) to be 'Angels' or parts of Angels to make people think about choosing them.