weapons: multiple blows versus multiple slays

[Larvitz]

What a timeless question, lol.

I'm not sure which would be better, I guess it would depend on the situation... but usually I find multiple blows works better since it affects all monsters, as opposed to slays, because you know... limited extra damage.

I guess the best would be a light multiple blow weapon that just happened to have a few slays tacked on to the end. =P

I haven't found any of those though... I usually sell Slays for lovely extra enchanting scrolls... nothing is more satisfying then a personally enchanted weapon to a (+12, +11), lol. ^_^ I lieks em.

-Larvitz

[starstealer]

Well - look at the question posed in the competition subforum - to wield a long sword of extra attacks (+10,+10) (+2) vs a katana of westernesse (+10, +10) (+2).

The long sword gives him 3 attacks per round with 2d5 damage; the katana gives him 2 attacks per round with 3d4+1 damage (with a net +2 to hit given stat adjustments). However, the katana has 3 useful slays (orc, giant, troll) and SI and FA that make it an overall better weapon (frees up 2 ring slots and outdamages the long sword significantly versus the three slay types.

And as for a light multiple blow weapon that just happens to have a few slays - that's essentially Sting (at least - I remember Sting as being a combination Westerness/Extra Attacks artifact - not sure if it has changed at all...).

[Larvitz]

Well - look at the question posed in the competition subforum - to wield a long sword of extra attacks (+10,+10) (+2) vs a katana of westernesse (+10, +10) (+2).

The long sword gives him 3 attacks per round with 2d5 damage; the katana gives him 2 attacks per round with 3d4+1 damage (with a net +2 to hit given stat adjustments). However, the katana has 3 useful slays (orc, giant, troll) and SI and FA that make it an overall better weapon (frees up 2 ring slots and outdamages the long sword significantly versus the three slay types.

And as for a light multiple blow weapon that just happens to have a few slays - that's essentially Sting (at least - I remember Sting as being a combination Westerness/Extra Attacks artifact - not sure if it has changed at all...).

LOL, these are some very valid points.

Oh, and I've never found Sting before... so perhaps that's why I didn't think of that aspect of it... around what depth is it usually found?

[starstealer]

Hmm - just looked it up in the spoiler and it is quite a bit better than I remember it - though admitedly - I don't think I've found it since pre 3.0. Anyway - the spoiler search is your friend:

http://angband.oook.cz/artifacts.php?q=sting&t=&w=&v=Angband+3.0.6

[Larvitz]

Thanks you. ^_^

[vorondil]

I suppose this is just a general reply, but I like to do the dice distribution at http://www.anwu.org/games/dice_calc.html with my expected maximum blows for each weapon.

It's pretty clear to me that branded weapons are much more powerful than any slay weapon except maybe slay evil since you get your damage dice multiplier on branded weapons versus any monster not resistant to the brand whereas with slays you get the multiplier only against a certain class of creatures.

As a math major, I'm really interested in how often we can say that blows are better than damage bonuses/slays. It sort of makes me want to spreadsheet the spoiler and then, since we know the exact distributions of enemies, we can do a histogram that generates every monster in the game at least once and tracks its AC. After that we can set an expectation for blows landed pretty reasonably based on the expected AC of all monsters in the game, or even by say 500' chunks. We can cross tab that at to-hit bonus increment levels of, say, +5 to-hit.

You lose about 5% of your expected gain from blows in any case since in the long run 5% of blows do not land (it's in the game engine). Does that disadvantage get blown out of proportion by heavy-AC monsters?

I don't know, but I think if I did it I'd probably find that blows are still more advantageous in many ways than slays or damage bonuses.

[takkaria]

wouldn't be nice if we had a way to easily compare two weapons. I usually have to set up a spreadsheet and input the data. It would be nice if the game could compare the two swap weapons (inscribed with the @w0) and even take into account the different slays.

On the 'I'nspect screen for a weapon, V 3.1 will tell you how many blows it will do if it was wielded with your current equipment selection, along with how much damage to normal or slay/brand-affected creatures. So consider this feature request fulfilled.

[Larvitz]

Takkaria: Yayah! That will be awesome if they did that. ^^

[d_m]

Vorondil: if you were really going to do that, what you'd need to do is do the histograms by expected dungeon-level distribution.

At low dungeon levels you are correct that brands are better, but in my experience at deeper dungeon levels many brands become mostly useless (acid brands might stay useful the longest).

Certainly against uniques SLAY_EVIL is often better, but I would guess that SLAY_DRAGON and SLAY_DEMON are better on dungeon level 98 than any brand.

[vorondil]

Vorondil: if you were really going to do that, what you'd need to do is do the histograms by expected dungeon-level distribution

That is well remarked. I probably should just spreadsheet up all the relevant data about monsters or (better) see if anyone else has a spreadsheet or a database.