First release

[Quirk]

We have a new version, everybody.

[Quirk]

And another new release.

[Infinitum]

(...)
All this is a way of saying that mechanics that involve rolling dice are a royal pain to get right.

Point. Still, there's some precedent with Morgoth's curse and damage rolls do have enough variance to not make it a complete dud most of the time. Another way of doing it could be armor piercing working as reverse strength, reducing the side of the enemy defense dice? Translates into a somewhat clean .5 average damage increase with less variance per enemy defense die. Maybe a bit underwhelming idk haven't run the simulations really.

[krazyhades]

you don't find it a bit...dicey?

[debo]

Re: dice problems -- anydice.com is really great for analysis.

[Gwarl]

Updated on angband.live

[Quirk]

Downloaded; no obvious bugs on startup. You fixed the initial forge appearing at 50' if taking the up stairs? A little conflicted on Hammers; on the one hand they need a boost, on the other I find percentage abilites somewhat jarring. There are other ways eg re-rolling in case of completely negated damage rolls.

Rerolling complicates calculations like nobody's business.

For instance, taking a really simple example of 1d3 attack vs 2d4 armour, with 64 possible outcomes, there are 1/64 ways to do damage (ignoring for now how much); adding a reroll nearly doubles the chance of connecting, but even two more rerolls won't match the odds of doing damage going to 1d4; if you start with 1d4 attack, one reroll is nearly but not quite as good as going to 1d5; if you start with 1d5 one reroll is better than going to 1d6...

In actual fact the more your damage roll average exceeds the armour roll, the more the reroll makes some damage probable over and above over the case where no reroll is in play. However, once we start calculating the average damage, the higher dice for the non-reroll case come into play again.

So, the case you would want them to be good - when the average armour roll is decently better than your average damage roll - is a case where rerolls are likely to be underwhelming. And calculating when they are actually good is a sit down with pen and paper job.

I'm not going to pretend that absorption percentages are entirely simple to work with mentally either, but I think the relationship is more intuitive and you always have the floor of doing 1/4 damage even if the armour roll completely exceeds the damage roll, so if you're facing a lightly armoured enemy you are probably better without them and against a heavily armoured enemy they start to come into their own.

All this is a way of saying that mechanics that involve rolling dice are a royal pain to get right.

[Bucephalus]

I explored the entirety of upstairs DL 50 with a nominal smith, not finding a forge, before descending in disgrace—then, found one (guaranteed).

I like this, a lot.

I've rightfully sung praises to this branch. If you're not playing, try it.

Sil-Q (release 3) (10/15/2017) - https://github.com/sil-quirk/sil-q/r.../tag/v1.3.1-q2

[Infinitum]

Downloaded; no obvious bugs on startup. You fixed the initial forge appearing at 50' if taking the up stairs? A little conflicted on Hammers; on the one hand they need a boost, on the other I find percentage abilites somewhat jarring. There are other ways eg re-rolling in case of completely negated damage rolls.

[Quirk]

New release.

[Quirk]

Say what? Rings of Damage were so nice. Why remove them?

Precisely because they were too nice, and broke the relationship between weapon weight and damage (like Momentum).

From another thread:

There are two things breaking the logic of strength and sufficient weight for larger dice, one is momentum, the other is damage rings. Without them you had a clear choice: increase the size of your dice or increase the number of your dice. And there also was the question how to leverage peak strength when buffed, which tends to be 4 points higher still.

When an ability looks like an autopick to you, yes you ripforareason , then it just might be too good, especially if it knocks out a whole lot of gameplay as irrelevant.

Light weapons can get some toys back when they aren't magical autopicks any more.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Rings of Damage are now Rings of Archery (these are an actual thing, google thumb ring).

Say what? Rings of Damage were so nice. Why remove them?

[Patashu]

Guaranteed forges! Fear, sleep and mastery buffs buffs! These look like some exciting changes. Looking forward to how this variant evolves.

[Quirk]

New release - please check the first post for details.

[Quirk]

Firstly: thanks, this means a lot. You've inspired me to get out of bed and get back to trying to get forges to spawn reliably at depths 100, 300, 500, 700 and 900 as a first step to improving smithing.

Changes to stealth: I'm OK with this. Early game Sil is pitiless, and makes getting certain builds off the ground (smiths, archers) essentially a gamble. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Today I think I'd like to fight nine wolves at once. Heck, I'll even do naked!".

Whether or not this is the "right" solution for early game, I think it was broken, and I think you've fixed it.

This was almost a little accidental. I was trying to improve stealth a bit, but much of the feedback I was getting was from people having it fall apart from them later on. I considered undoing it. Now I'll keep it.

Impale: YES. Prereqs make for an interesting choice. Polearms and greatswords, truly Sil's bastard weapons, have been redeemed by this, IMO. One obvious question: If I can hit a guy two squares away if there's another guy between us, why can't I do that when there isn't?

Oooh. In the place where "you attack the air", maybe I could check one step further if you have a polearm or greatsword and see if you can reach.

Whirlwind: Looks good on paper. Of course the reason nobody took this is because the only circumstances where it was viable were also character-endingly untenable, utterly avoidable, and obviated by herbs of rage.

This may even be too good, but if it is I'll try to find some trade-off. Fall-backs I've considered are stopping the first time you score a hit, and decreasing your evasion slightly.

Knock Back: I always felt this was underrated. Not sure how I feel about this.

Going to keep it where Throwing Mastery was, now, and see if it gets more popular as something easily accessible early on without prereqs. It does make for a different play experience and that's valuable.

In summary, and with all due respect to half (who turned my favorite roguelike into something arguably better), these changes have me questioning how I could go back to vanilla, and that's if you were to stop now. Please keep it up.

Right! On with smithing.