Additive Multipliers

[nullfame]

Any class *other* than a warrior is better suited to melee a burner or an electrifier or a charge drainer.

OT: another radical idea would be to fix this. Give warriors some extra saving throw on inventory damage? Maybe some constant (0.33)? Maybe some constant times current saving throw (0.5*ST)?

I can see throwing arrows and bolts not working well, but shots and stones? Seems like you ought to be able to throw those reasonably effectively.

I agree this seems right but then you can't reduce all launcher multipliers by 1. Otherwise why carry the sling x1.

Putting a 50 missile max in the quiver is too low. I'll easily burn through 50 arrows on a short dungeon trip. 100 max I think is reasonable though.

I don't think this is what Timo meant, but I think 1 slot should be 50 arrows, not 99. That makes it too easy to carry lots of ammo.

I'm also for removing enchant scrolls from stores (and fixing curses or getting rid of ?*removeCurse* by making ?removeCurse do the job a la ?*identify*) though I don't think that will fix the problem on it's own. There would still need to be more. Giving ranger only one extra shot at 30, etc.

[Timo Pietilä]

I thought you were saying 50 missiles total.

That's the suggestion. 99 is what it is now.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

PD: I'll reiterate Timo's question. In what way are they overpowered? Is it the damage per shot, or is it primarily because of extra shots?

I'm not sure that eliminating enchant weapon scrolls from town would help that much. Early on, they're significant, but once you get down to mithral/seeker depth, even the non-ego missiles usually have enough of a bonus that the scrolls are either completely useless or give only a minor improvement.

[PowerDiver]

I agree this seems right but then you can't reduce all launcher multipliers by 1. Otherwise why carry the sling x1.

The reason to carry an x1 sling is that without it, iron shots are useless. To be able to use them at all you would have to wield a sling. That is assuming the change that you cannot throw ammo for damage.

[PowerDiver]

Are they then overpowered? If they are fun then what way are they overpowered?

My suggestion is as it has been for a while: make ego ammunition more rare. Better yet make ammunition more rare. period.

Remove guaranteed 99 ammo from general store. Remove ammo branding. Reduce quiver to 50 arrows max.

That makes missile weapons much less powerful without taking away the fun factor.

It is like buying out the store 5 times looking for restore potions after you get hit with a time attack that saps 5 str from all of your stats. It is not fun, but it is necessary. You do it to have fun later because the annoyance is less than if you do not do it.

We will never agree about making ammo more rare. I think every single monster that can shoot arrows should drop 40-99 arrows, always, when you kill it. In town, I believe there will eventually be a consensus that items should come in either a fixed supply available per game or else be infinitely available at all times. Unenchanted ammo strikes me as fitting into the infinitely available choice.

The current gameplay with ammo adding a multiplier in the neighborhood of half of the launcher multiplier is pretty good. I liked it with +x3 brand on x5 launcher. It seemed a bit much for x3 brand on +x4 launcher with +1 shots, but I guess it might still be reasonable. It is akin to a char carrying one weapon for undead, another for demons, and something else for default attacks. I'd guess another aspect of the changes I suggested would be to make the ego "of wounding" significantly more competetive with brands.

I think that to make archery suitable for a warrior's requirements, it will be too strong for other classes. Just IMO of course, but that's all I've got. So my suggestions in total were along the line of weakening archery, but then giving warriors a boost back over other classes. Better archery should be the bonus that makes up for no spellcasting -- an extra blow by itself is not enough. Then the ammo dice change is needed to make an unenchanted sling or shortbow useful to a starting char. I also just like the idea of dice being more important relative to plusses.

Anyway, these are radical untested suggestions. I do not mean to say that we should do them right away. I would like people to have these ideas in the back of their minds while playing, to see if they agree in whole or in part and/or have better ideas.

[fyonn]

I think that to make archery suitable for a warrior's requirements, it will be too strong for other classes.

to paraphrase a post above, what makes warriors underpowered? I don't see warriors being superb archers, that's the rangers arena. I think warriors are supposed to be masters of melee. They should be able to do significantly more damage in melee than mages and priests and a fair bit more than rangers and paladins.

I don't think they should be relying on archery, I think they should be wading into hand to hand battle. They need to use some magic devices for utility, but it's not their forte.

Perhaps something like upping their max blows by a couple and perhaps +1 attacks on all the sums so they always have at least one more attack than any other class with the same stats. somehow making them more likely to get crits with heavy weapons (some better sliding scale to improve the crit chances with weight maybe) and making them more proof against magic attacks?

of course, I can see this goes against the mantra of making things harder...

david

[PowerDiver]

[QUOTE=fyonn;37155]I don't think they should be relying on archery, I think they should be wading into hand to hand battle. They need to use some magic devices for utility, but it's not their forte.QUOTE]

There are many things every class needs to do. Others do them with spells. Warriors do them with devices. That makes melee *less* feasible for warriors. It does not matter how you buff their melee attacks, unless you increase them to kill in 1 round. That's just how it is. Spellcasters can replace half their spellbooks trivially in town and the nonreplaceable are invulnerable. A warrior that loses -dTraps or -telOther[wand] cannot replace it in town.

If you change the rules to make warriors' packs invulnerable, that would do it. Anything less and correct warrior strategy will be to use archery or run away from many monsters that I would happily melee playing a ranger.

[fizzix]

There are many things every class needs to do. Others do them with spells. Warriors do them with devices. That makes melee *less* feasible for warriors. It does not matter how you buff their melee attacks, unless you increase them to kill in 1 round. That's just how it is. Spellcasters can replace half their spellbooks trivially in town and the nonreplaceable are invulnerable. A warrior that loses -dTraps or -telOther[wand] cannot replace it in town.

If you change the rules to make warriors' packs invulnerable, that would do it. Anything less and correct warrior strategy will be to use archery or run away from many monsters that I would happily melee playing a ranger.

This is a very good point. If you want to make warriors masters of melee, I think the following changes would be useful:

1) Add pack resistance. Warriors get automatic resistance bonus due to the difficulty of attaining double resist. Something like single resist gives and extra 33% saving throw, double resist a 66% saving throw. Warriors get 33% standard, 66% single resist and 100% double resist for inventory. This extra saving throw need not apply to the quiver, altho not doing that would make gameplay more annoying.

2) change charge draining so that the number of drained charges is equivalent to the number of charge on a recharge attempt (greater recharging if you want). I don't know if greater recharging and lesser recharging have the same rates of backfiring, but the scroll should have the same backfire rates as greater recharging even if it adds charges the same as lesser recharging.

3) Give warriors sustained strength and con at various levels. Maybe sustain str at dlevel 20, rfear at dlevel 30 and sustain con at dlevel 40.

I'm really not worried about overpowering warriors right now.

[Magnate]

OT: another radical idea would be to fix this. Give warriors some extra saving throw on inventory damage? Maybe some constant (0.33)? Maybe some constant times current saving throw (0.5*ST)?

Or just borrow Blankets of Elemental Protection from Sang, to give the rest of your pack immunity. Warriors would then prize these highly, where other classes wouldn't so much. I'd totally give up an inv slot to protect the rest, especially as a warrior.

That's not to say that archery shouldn't be further nerfed - but the real problem here is warriors not doing melee, which is what they ought to be doing.

[Derakon]

Personally, I don't buy that rangers should be the best archers in the game. Rangers are the jack-of-all-trades class: they can do everything decently. Decent spells, decent melee, decent missiles. Except that right now they have the best missiles in the game, instead of being merely decent at them. Warriors have second-best missiles but don't get extra shots, and they have best melee by about 20% (compare rangers at 200% with missiles), but this comes at the cost of losing spells, which is a huge blow.

I posit that rangers would be balanced without extra shots, since they can do everything else competently. Whereas it's generally accepted that warriors are the hardest class to win with, which I suppose makes up for their near-trivial early game.

[fyonn]

I like the idea of changing charge draining to only pull a number of charges, rather than all of them. I don't suppose one of the resists could cut that down a bit could it? maybe hold life or res_chaos? not to make you immune, but to cut down on the charges drained?

I also like the idea of warriors being able to get lots of crits with lots of blows with heavy weapons... that's why they're warriors.

[PowerDiver]

Warriors typically do not get double resist, and anything less than 100% is probably useless in terms of changing the dynamic. You cannot think about meleeing a giant pit if every elec attack has a 1% chance of destroying an item. Nor can you melee Smaug if you have anything burnable you care about that is not for sale in town, much less a clump of demons. Perhaps 0.1% would be OK, but I'm not even sure about that.

So long as recharge scrolls have a significant chance to explode things on recharge, it is generally a mistake to melee drainers.

Seriously, why stick to the D&D notion that trackers are better at ranged combat than warriors? From a play balance perspective, the class that deserves archery bonuses is the class without spells.

[Hariolor]

Personally, I don't buy that rangers should be the best archers in the game. Rangers are the jack-of-all-trades class: they can do everything decently. Decent spells, decent melee, decent missiles. Except that right now they have the best missiles in the game, instead of being merely decent at them. Warriors have second-best missiles but don't get extra shots, and they have best melee by about 20% (compare rangers at 200% with missiles), but this comes at the cost of losing spells, which is a huge blow.

I posit that rangers would be balanced without extra shots, since they can do everything else competently. Whereas it's generally accepted that warriors are the hardest class to win with, which I suppose makes up for their near-trivial early game.

I always felt rogues were a better jack-of-all trades than rangers.

Then again, the two classes play very similarly for much of the game. So much so that I feel radical adjustments could be made to one or both. People have talked about dramatically reducing spell lists, or making rangers have a clerical subset with no direct-damage spells. But that's getting off-topic a bit.

As for rangers getting better ranged attacks - it does fit thematically with the idea of a stealthy stalker.

I think warriors can do pretty well in melee against almost anything by mid-game. My experience has been that inventory damage is by far the biggest risk, particularly keeping a supply of WoR (early) and TO (later). I have a warrior right now lurking around DL 98 that has only relied on archery for a handful of foes (mostly disenchanters and a few others). It's a thematic choice, as my bow easily matches my melee damage, but it hasn't felt like much of a handicap.

[buzzkill]

Warriors typically do not get double resist, and anything less than 100% is probably useless in terms of changing the dynamic. You cannot think about meleeing a giant pit if every elec attack has a 1% chance of destroying an item. Nor can you melee Smaug if you have anything burnable you care about that is not for sale in town, much less a clump of demons. Perhaps 0.1% would be OK, but I'm not even sure about that.

Despite a warrior's adeptness at hand-to-hand fighting I don't know that warriors should be wading into a pit, or taking on a clump of demons in the open. This sounds like the job of mages and priests. Warriors should seek out powerful enemies to engage in one-on-one combat, not one-on-one hundred. Taking on a pit of elec breathers, a clump of demons, or even Smaug one-one-one should come with some risk of inventory damage.

[AnonymousHero]

Seriously, why stick to the D&D notion that trackers are better at ranged combat than warriors? From a play balance perspective, the class that deserves archery bonuses is the class without spells.

Completely agreed. Angband is definitely NOT D&D and there's no reason to "balance" its classes according to D&D lore.

Actually, I kind of like the FA/O rule that Warriors are better with heavy shooters (aka crossbows) and that Rangers are better with lighter shooters (aka. bows). I think the logic there may actually be inverted since x-bows don't require as much strength as bows, but it tends to work out as x-bows have higher multipliers than bows. (Disclaimer: I'm not sure *exactly* how the "betterness" manifests, other than #shots per round. It feels right, though.)

EDIT: Regarding inventory damage: I like the ToME approach: Double resistance reduces the chances greatly, and immunity to element X completely prevents inventory damage from element X. It's simple to understand and it kind of makes sense if you think of immunity as a sort of "force field" type thing. Of course "immunity to X" is a lot rarer in Vanilla than in ToME, but I think that the mechanic might still be okay.