Additive Multipliers

[PowerDiver]

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.

I am not talking about wading into a pit, but about e.g. digging an ASC and fighting one by one. That does not work. What does work is to fight with melee against wimps like hill giants, and then phase to shoot storm giants. Ranged combat is the key ingredient in allowing you to melee the others.

[Derakon]

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

So, rogues?

I agree that rogues and rangers seem fairly similar. Rangers get better damage spells and massively better ranged combat; rogues get slightly better melee combat and a few spells that aren't otherwise available (c.f. Detect Treasure). Also better stealth. If you were to remove the extra shots from the ranger, it might not be a bad idea to merge them with rogues entirely, or take them in an entirely different direction (replace with a druid that gets both sets of spellbooks, say).

As for inventory damage, it is definitely a massive pain for warriors. Almost all of the gear they rely on to keep up with spellcasting classes is vulnerable to destruction. And of course they have an even worse inventory squeeze problem than the casters do as casters get multiple abilities from each spellbook while warriors must devote a single slot to each ability. I'm not certain how to solve this without doing something hokey like adding the S-style blankets while giving warriors extra inventory slots.

[Timo Pietilä]

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.

In what way is buying ammo necessary? Use melee if there is no ammo in stores. There is no class that absolutely need missile weapons, at least not so much that you are required to have shop full off ammo each time you visit town. Even ranger is fine with more melee.

Lets remove ammo completely from shops and see if it still is "necessary". I agree that monsters that shoot ammo should drop ammo with greater probability than anything else, but not 50-99 always. Maybe 10 or so one time in three. That still would give you big stack of ammo just by killing bunch of black orcs or novice rangers.

I think you are too accustomed to use overpowered weapon because it makes diving easy, so that instead of making it less powerful by restricting its availability you want to continue using it but make it less powerful by weakening it. When bows reach level that they are no fun anymore with infinite ammo then they probably are "balanced".

That's like having mage manastorm with 1 mana, and complaining that it is too powerful and instead of making it cost more reduce its power to mm-level.

[PowerDiver]

In what way is buying ammo necessary?

You are combining different issues. What is necessary is warriors using ranged attacks to kill monsters that do too much melee damage to vital items in the pack that are not easily replaced in town.

You could set things up so that the shopkeepers sell arcane potions and scrolls and full plate armor that would take a craftsman a year to produce, but somehow simple arrows and pebbles are beyond their tech level. That is not necessarily bad from a game balance perspective, but it does not make any sense at all.

[AnonymousHero]

That is not necessarily bad from a game balance perspective, but it does not make any sense at all.

.. and THEREFORE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY, YOU MUST ACQUIT!

(Sorry. Really I am.)

[LostTemplar]

IMHO warriors should be the best with all weapons, melee or ranged to compensate for lack of spells.

[Timo Pietilä]

You are combining different issues. What is necessary is warriors using ranged attacks to kill monsters that do too much melee damage to vital items in the pack that are not easily replaced in town.

That has never been problem to me. Why is it to you? Because you dive?

[LostTemplar]

I have this problem playing FA ironman. Warrior cannot live without devices staves of speed, banish evil, etc, and recharging is limited, so meleeing charge drainers and fire or acid melee attackers is hard, but many monsters with good drop have such attacks, so you really want to use ranged attacks to kill them, not just avoid, even if your ranged damage is by far less then melee damage. It is possible to go all melee, but annoying.

[buzzkill]

I have this problem playing FA ironman...

Let's just leave ironman out of the discussion, OK.

[fizzix]

Ok, let's take a look at the rods/staves/wands that a warrior needs that *all* other classes cover with easily replaceable or undestructable spell books.

wands of TO
rods of TO
rods of recall
rods of dstairs
rods of dobjects
rods of dtraps
staves of detect evil
rods of detection (obsoletes the four previous)
staves of speed
staves of teleportation
?phase


you could make a case for wands of stone to mud. I left off _destruct because the other classes get it so late in the game.

The problem with meleeing is inventory destruction do to elemental melee attacks, inventory loss due to charge draining + recharge failure.

Here are some easy solutions.

give ignore_elec to rods and wands of TO. (rods of detection,recall already have them). Give ignore_fire and ignore_acid to staves of speed. (_teleport can be gotten in town). Make rods of detection native to dlevel 50 or 60 and very common as opposed to 40 and rare. These suggestions will not have a huge impact on any class but warriors, but they will make things a lot easier for warriors.

Charge drainers are more annoying. It's not a common attack and the charge draining monsters can be avoided for the most part. Although, I really prefer that it just eliminates one recharge worth as I've suggested many times (to generally favorable reception...). Not being able to melee elemental attack monsters without immunity is a big problem with warriors.

This will have an impact on every class in the vein of making the game easier. So will giving a saving throw based on resistance. Since we recently had a 100 post thread on making the game harder, I think we should think twice about changes that make the game easier at this point.

[Timo Pietilä]

Charge drainers (liches, very few others) are easy to avoid, elemental damage only electricity is really nasty because it destroys your TO wands and detection rods which you do want to keep with you. Fire is not as much problem (basic scrolls are plentiful), but you might want to avoid fire-based attacks anyway because of that valuable staff of speed or banishment you have managed to find. Or toss those away until you have killed or othervise destroyed your enemy.

[Derakon]

There's also:

?Teleport
?TeleportLevel
?Identify
!Heroism
!Speed

Granted that I generally end up carrying some of these with my other classes too at least for a little while (nonperfect casters carry ?TeleportLevel always, priest-types carry !Speed in the early and late game but use _Speed for the midgame, much like warriors do).

Charge drainers can be avoided, assuming you keep up on the monster memory. Fighting charge drainers in melee basically guarantees that you will lose charges on your stuff unless the fight is short and you're lucky. Avoiding elemental attacks is not nearly so feasible given how widespread they are, and fire attacks will toast the _speed and _destruction that are so valuable to warriors. And very casually too. "The Giant Salamander breathes fire. -more- Everything you ever cared about in your inventory burned up."

Remember, inventory damage rate is 1% per-item if you take less than 30HP of damage, 2% if you take less than 60%, and 3% otherwise. And this is before the player's resistances are taken into account.

[nobody]

Although throwing a rock is possible, unless you're Nolan Ryan or Rogrog Clemens, it's hardly going to be effective against well, even a novice mage.

but if you're Randy Johnson, think of what you could do to a bird....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ase1cFwdp4c

[PowerDiver]

That has never been problem to me. Why is it to you? Because you dive?

Go back and read my original post. I didn't say it was a problem. I said it was necessary even though it still felt overpowered. It still seems too overpowered for the other classes for whom it is not nearly as necessary. Then the discussion wandered to people saying that warriors should hack instead of shooting.

[edit] The problem is overpowered missiles. That has long been apparent. The question is whether this change to additive multipliers had solved the problem. I believe that it has not. Then I suggested more changes. That is the essence of this discussion.

[Timo Pietilä]

Go back and read my original post. I didn't say it was a problem. I said it was necessary even though it still felt overpowered.

If it is necessary then it is a problem to you. Why? I also suggested changes that were different to your suggestions and you defended you point of view by saying that using missiles is necessary (in a degree that shops should have infinite ammo supply and every monster that shoots arrows should drop more than you can fit in your quiver amount of missiles).

I think limiting access to infinite supply of missiles forces people to consider more carefully what to shoot and what not. It definitely is not necessary to shoot everything in a degree that shops should have infinite supply of ammunition. With warrior you can melee 90% of monsters easily (actually I think it is closer to 100% barring some things that you just don't want to fight). For that 10% you can use your bow. It looks like your ratio is other way around, and that is why you want to have infinite ammunition. Otherwise you would not be complaining about that. Not with warrior. With ranger you might want to have infinite ammo, but rangers using their bow against everything always is overpowered anyway, so that is another case against infinite ammo.

For your playing style avoiding monsters that burn or electrify for melee should be easy. Consider it as one additional challenge in your way to play. IMO your playing style is not what Angband should be.