Mage equipment

[fizzix]

Why are we trying to discourage mage melee even more, anyway? What's so wrong about having a cliché-busting spellcaster that isn't completely worthless in a fight? I've done the glass-cannon don't-look-at-him-too-hard-or-he'll-break spellcaster in millions of games. Playing the fantasy equivalent of a pencil-necked geek gets old after awhile, so I quite like that the Angband mage is different. Anyway, as I noted above, melee is not typically the mage's primary damage source, so are further nerfs to it really accomplishing anything? I invite you all to go play a mage or two before making any changes, since I honestly don't think they're needed here.

I share most of this opinion. That being said, I think additions to weapons, specialized to mages is a good idea. Orbs seem like a good option. These would be wielded as weapons and generally do weak melee.

Then you can imagine orbs having the following effects:
raise int (you could also imagine a holy orb that raises Wis) (early game)
raise SP by a fixed amount (early game)
raise SP by a percentage (mid/late game)
raise spell damage by a percentage. (entire game)
make combat use INT instead of STR (or WIS instead of STR) (mid game)

The last orb would have to do damage also, maybe make these elemental orbs. You could also bring back the palantir as a unique orb.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Maybe the other spells in Raal's could use some tweaking (after all, how many variants of "big ball attack spell" do you really need?), but that's about it.

One way to kill several birds with one stone...

Another thread discusses the notion of adding some flavor of critical hits to spellcasting, and I suggested that only single-target or beam spells get this treatment. (Rift might need reworking or excluding because it *is* a beam, and it's already got massive damage.) I agree that several of the Raal's spells are not terribly useful, so 1 or 2 good single-target spells, that give nice damage at reasonable cost, would give at least an alternative to archery.

[Nomad]

I share most of this opinion. That being said, I think additions to weapons, specialized to mages is a good idea. Orbs seem like a good option. These would be wielded as weapons and generally do weak melee.

Then you can imagine orbs having the following effects:
raise int (you could also imagine a holy orb that raises Wis) (early game)
raise SP by a fixed amount (early game)
raise SP by a percentage (mid/late game)
raise spell damage by a percentage. (entire game)
make combat use INT instead of STR (or WIS instead of STR) (mid game)

The last orb would have to do damage also, maybe make these elemental orbs. You could also bring back the palantir as a unique orb.

How about changing the attack rods into orbs/sceptres? Make them a weapon for non-melee characters that you have to be wielding constantly for the activation to recharge. Restoring SP could be another activation, and maybe there could be ego versions with INT/WIS bonuses. It would certainly reduce the overpowered nature of the palantir's clairvoyance if you had to be wielding it in your melee weapon slot for the full length of the recharge time.

Incidently, how about adding INT and WIS to the egos available for robes, and maybe things like regen, stealth and speed? It would be nice to find a few more ways to make robes a tempting option for spellcasters to wear, because with equivalent egos available on much better body armour they're pretty much junk unless you find a Permanence or a really useful Elvenkind.

[Max Stats]

I'd be fine with that. :-) You could go back to the old D&D restriction that mages may not wear metal armor, perhaps, and are limited to a maximum of one (maybe two) blows/round. That should discourage melee a bit...

The problem with making the mage too much like the D&D version is that the D&D version was expected to be part of an adventuring party, so you could have a tank with armor in front of you, a healer to keep you upright, etc. Angband (and similar roguelike) characters need to be able to be a "jack-of-all-trades" to some extent, with melee as at least a fallback option for the typical player, and let the crazy... er, I mean, challenge-seeker play with the "spells-only" type.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Xazyx: generally, the impression I get is that mages are supposed to have an easy endgame, to make up for their more difficult early game. Priests are somewhat similar though not as extreme (having a slightly easier early game and a slightly harder late game).

If your early game was easy, then that should be fixed, but domination in the late game is pretty much a given -- Angband is in large part about picking your battles, and the mage has the greatest power to do this out of any class.

Why are we trying to discourage mage melee even more, anyway? What's so wrong about having a cliché-busting spellcaster that isn't completely worthless in a fight? I've done the glass-cannon don't-look-at-him-too-hard-or-he'll-break spellcaster in millions of games. Playing the fantasy equivalent of a pencil-necked geek gets old after awhile, so I quite like that the Angband mage is different. Anyway, as I noted above, melee is not typically the mage's primary damage source, so are further nerfs to it really accomplishing anything? I invite you all to go play a mage or two before making any changes, since I honestly don't think they're needed here.

(Not to sound like DOS350, mind you...)

I am currently playing a mage of level 30 at the moment, I don't think it is really vital to weaken their melee capabilities, it is quite poor anyway for most of the game, I think to please all sides, to create mage specific non-melee type items and artifacts, to allow a person to play a mage the way he wants to, wether it's ,melee based or pure caster based.

[Jungle_Boy]

I have never made a mage that got past level 25 or so despite trying numerous times. That said I like the idea of adding more caster-specific artifacts and items, I think it would add more flavor and I'm (almost) always inf avor of adding artifacts since I love finding them even if they turn out to be useless. I especially like the ones with stories on them, ie some standarts.

[Chud]

I currently have a CL29 mage who needs to learn to run away more... she recently had as close a brush with death as you can and survive (0 HP and poisoned - whatever you do, do it now! ). Other than a good bow as a backup, she essentially never melees anyway, though if she survives through stat gain to have a decent strength that could change.

I think more artifacts are always good, just because artifacts are cool.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Started playing a little FAangband, the game incorporates a nice mage staff, for mages- Activates for restore 10 SP, and provides permanent light, useful to a mage, but the staff only does about 2 damage, so isn't much of a melee weapon. warrior type characters would not find much use for this, and is a useful alternative for pure spell character type mages.

[Antoine]

If we add items that benefit mages, then all else being equal the game gets easier

A.

[Malak Darkhunter]

If we add items that benefit mages, then all else being equal the game gets easier

A.

I don't see how it makes it easier, you either equip body armor and wield a sword, which I think is cheating for a caster, or you can go the other route and wear artifact robes, staffs, that are useful but at the cost of reduced AC and melee damage, if anything that would make it more difficult to engage enemies head on, and would add more flavour to the game, for those who don't want to play a mage as a warrior.

[Derakon]

Antoine is right. Any addition of useful equipment makes the game easier (barring in that they may make other more useful stuff more rare, like the Craftsmanship ego). That's because you now have the option of an item that more closely matches your ideal equipment loadout.

Before: you want an item that does X, Y, and Z. That item does not exist. Your equipment is not as good as it "could" be, ergo the game is harder.

After: you want an item that does X, Y, and Z. That item exists (and you find it). Your equipment is better than it used to be, ergo the game is easier.

This is not to say that making new useful equipment is universally a bad thing, but it does make the game easier. To make a concrete example, when Magnate made a bunch of old "junk" artifacts better so they could "compete" with the artifacts everyone always ended up using, the game became easier because you don't always find those standard endgame artifacts, and when you don't, now the boosted "junk" artifacts are there to pick up the slack. It's still nice to have less disappointment when you find Gondricam or whatever, but that ease in difficulty should be compensated for elsewhere.

[Malak Darkhunter]

[QUOTE=Derakon;60490]Antoine is right. Any addition of useful equipment makes the game easier (barring in that they may make other more useful stuff more rare, like the Craftsmanship ego). That's because you now have the option of an item that more closely matches your ideal equipment loadout.

Before: you want an item that does X, Y, and Z. That item does not exist. Your equipment is not as good as it "could" be, ergo the game is harder.

After: you want an item that does X, Y, and Z. That item exists (and you find it). Your equipment is better than it used to be, ergo the game is easier.

This is not to say that making new useful equipment is universally a bad thing, but it does make the game easier. To make a concrete example, when Magnate made a bunch of old "junk" artifacts better so they could "compete" with the artifacts everyone always ended up using, the game became easier because you don't always find those standard endgame artifacts, and when you don't, now the boosted "junk" artifacts are there to pick up the slack. It's still nice to have less disappointment when you find Gondricam or whatever, but that ease in difficulty should be compensated for elsewhere.[/QUOTE




Not really because it is only useful to 2 character types, priests and mages, and to use those items they are going to suffer Armor Class, and suffer at melee more, so in actuality it is balanced out.
I don't see how any robe could be better than any decent warrior type armor.
And also say a 1d6 mage staff with a few extra abilities is hardly the melee damager as a katana 3d5 branded.
Seems to me it actualy makes the game harder.I don't see how it could make the game decrease in difficulty because you add a couple more itmes for floavour purposes. What you say would only be true if they were all artifacts, and thats not the case, it's only a couple new items for flavour purposes.
To say that a mage staff 1d6 with obviously less blows potentialy per round than a sword, makes the game easier dosen't make logical sense.

[fizzix]

This is not to say that making new useful equipment is universally a bad thing, but it does make the game easier. To make a concrete example, when Magnate made a bunch of old "junk" artifacts better so they could "compete" with the artifacts everyone always ended up using, the game became easier because you don't always find those standard endgame artifacts, and when you don't, now the boosted "junk" artifacts are there to pick up the slack. It's still nice to have less disappointment when you find Gondricam or whatever, but that ease in difficulty should be compensated for elsewhere.

Specifically by increasing rarity. This is a long term work in progress. Rarity is tough to calibrate, but we're getting much better tools to figure out what's going on.

[Jungle_Boy]

I believe what Antoine and Derakon are trying to say is that by providing more items, specifically more end game items we are providing more routes to victory thus making the game easier.

If you want to think of it mathematically, think of the number of useful endgame items as a number 'x', the number of total items is 'y'. Therefore your chance of finding a useful endgame item is x/y. Say you add, useful endgame items (even if they are only useful for one class), call it 'n'. Your new chance of finding a useful end-game item is now (x+n)/(y+n). This is obviously a greater chance than previously which means the game will be easier by some slight margin.

[Derakon]

Not really because it is only useful to 2 character types, priests and mages, and to use those items they are going to suffer Armor Class, and suffer at melee more, so in actuality it is balanced out.
I don't see how any robe could be better than any decent warrior type armor.
And also say a 1d6 mage staff with a few extra abilities is hardly the melee damager as a katana 3d5 branded.
Seems to me it actualy makes the game harder.I don't see how it could make the game decrease in difficulty because you add a couple more itmes for floavour purposes. What you say would only be true if they were all artifacts, and thats not the case, it's only a couple new items for flavour purposes.
To say that a mage staff 1d6 with obviously less blows potentialy per round than a sword, makes the game easier dosen't make logical sense.

If I'm playing as a caster-only mage, why should I care how much damage my stick can deal in melee? I don't care about melee damage; I'm never in melee. I'm casting spells at things. Having a staff that makes my spellcasting better makes the game easier than having a sword that hits things harder, because I'm not hitting things anyway.

Let's put it another way. There are, let's say, 100 different attributes that you want to tweak when deciding on your equipment. That includes things like STR/INT/CON/etc, resistances, armor class, damage, weight, free action, telepathy, and so on. Each character is going to value each of those 100 different attributes slightly differently.

For example, a warrior cares very little how much his armor weighs, because he has massive bulging muscles to carry it all. He cares a great deal about how much damage his weapons deal and how much AC his armor provides, because he's in melee a lot. A mage cares a lot about how heavy his armor is, because he's trained all his life to turn pages, not to lift weights. Because he's so weak, he also tries to avoid melee, so the amount of protection his armor gives, and the amount of damage his weapon deals, are not pressing concerns.

Now, we have a selection of items that are currently findable in the game. They provide different quantities of those 100 different attributes. Each character is going to look at those items and value them differently. The warrior sees a Giganto-Sword of Dismembering and Defenestration, and thinks "Sure, it doesn't have anything else going for it, but man does it do a lot of damage!" The mage sees the same weapon and thinks "I can't even lift that, let alone throw someone out the window with it." So the mage has to make do with what's actually findable in the game -- not all that much, as it turns out. Most weapons currently in the game aren't really optimized for mages beyond maybe giving a few points of INT.

Next we introduce new items geared towards the mage. The warrior looks at the Polished Knobbly Rod of Spell Penetration and thinks "Man, at best I'll severely irritate anyone I poke with this thing. Better stick to my sword." The mage sees it and thinks "At last! A weapon for the rest of us!" He equips it, his spells get stronger, he has more mana, he's a new man! And the game's not as hard as it used to be for our struggling young spellslinger.

There are precisely two ways you can make the game harder by introducing new equipment:
1) The new equipment isn't useful, but it still gets generated, thus making the actually useful stuff more rare. This is what the Craftsmanship ego does to Dragon Scale Mail.
2) The new equipment looks useful, but that's because your valuations for those 100 different abilities are wrong (e.g. you're overvaluing DEX as a non-melee mage). So you end up using it instead of the actually useful gear, inadvertently penalizing yourself.

You can't say that "This new equipment isn't as good as the old stuff because it has worse <stats that I don't care about> even though it gives benefits to <stats I do care about>." That's not making the game harder.