Angband. y u no give numerical damage output?

[fizzix]

In fact, it would be great if there was a skills page in the knowledge menu or somewhere showing what stats you need to boost to get an increase, e.g. "With +1 WIS you would get a saving throw of X". Everything I understand about skills I've picked up from reading this forum, since the in-game help says nothing about how they're calculated or what actions they influence.

I haven't had too much time to look at it (or even to hack on Angband much at all lately). I imagine though that there's a difficulty with wands and rods in that some of them do no damage at all. In fact, this is probably why everything was hard coded in the first place.

However, things have changed for the better with the list_spell_effects.h or whatever it's called. The proper course of action is to rip out the hardcoded stuff and put in context appropriate messages. So you get the message for damage causing items and other ones give something like, "this weapon causes no damage to monsters"

[buzzkill]

I'm not sure it'd ever be canonical, but I think it's something that's useful to have, and I think it helps players who don't want to read spoilers, ask for advice on oook, or source dive, but who want to get a better feel for e.g. damage calculation.

That's me you're talking about. I'd like to see the damage numbers (as well as my % chance to hit a given monster. Is that in V yet?). I've no idea what the multiplier for a critical hit is, and like so many things, if you told me I'd forget it in a couple of days.

I'm just curious. I'd like to see numbers in addition to the text descriptions. I don't see any (real) advantage to having this information. Right now all I know is the average damage from the Inspect screen, and that words like "smite" and "hack" are good, but much like level feelings, I've no idea how good. Sure, I look at the asterisks, but that scale changes with each monster... then I have to Inspect said monsters HP's, and then try to recall how many *'s he had previous to that hit. What's more disturbing is that I frequently fail to notice when monsters put up particularly large damage numbers against me. Maybe the player health needs to be represented by *'s too. It makes just as much sense as monster *'s. Being the occupant of your own body doesn't endow you with the knowledge of the exact second that the poison you drank a while back is going to kill you. You just have a general sense of how healthy you are.

I find it kind of ironic that no one really objects to source diving or spoiler use or the player knowing all the formulas to (pretty much) calculate these numbers, but objects to the game, having already calculated them, showing them to you.

Just make it an option (even a cheat option if you must).

EDIT: having re-read my post, here's another unacceptable idea. Ditch the wordy level feeling and just give me a number from 1 to 10.
"On a scale of 1 to 10, you feel this level is a 6." This, I can remember.

[fizzix]

Buzzkill: Most of the stuff you allude to is in V, excepting the precise amount of damage you do per hit.

You see the probability you have to hit when looking at a monster.

I believe the average damage takes into account critical hits (possible because of the way its calculated, although this might change.)

There already is an easy way to see how much damage you are taking in combat, by either looking at your HP, or setting the option to have the color of @ change with HP level (very useful, IMO). Do you really think that putting the numbers for each blow will help significantly in this?

[buzzkill]

Buzzkill: Most of the stuff you allude to is in V, excepting the precise amount of damage you do per hit.

Precise damage numbers, as if I were rolling a die and calculating it myself, this is what I want. This probably stems from my extensive D&D (and board game) background.

You see the probability you have to hit when looking at a monster.

Glad to hear it, I vaguely remember it being discussed. I don't play much V. Will, Nick, please nab this. I don't know what an "armour rating of 35" really means.

I believe the average damage takes into account critical hits (possible because of the way its calculated, although this might change.)

Yeah, which means that with most hits I'm putting out lower than average damage, which I'm occasionally compensated for by a nice critical hit. Wouldn't this (avg dam) be dependent upon your opponents AC (more or less criticals)? Why can't we just see the numbers?

There already is an easy way to see how much damage you are taking in combat, by either looking at your HP, or setting the option to have the color of @ change with HP level (very useful, IMO). Do you really think that putting the numbers for each blow will help significantly in this?

I play with tiles, so I don't get the @ or his various colors. I have to look from the 'action' to the status area to see my HP. Something I tend to overlook when I'm in a fairly casual battle, or more afraid of status effects than HP damage (which then goes unnoticed). I also dislike the low-hit point emergency stop as I could never find a threshold that worked well for me.

I get that this problem is just my inattention and really, this is the least of my concerns. *'s for player health probably wouldn't help much. I do read the messages though, and I'd like to think that I'd notice those big numbers scrolling across the top of the screen.

As I said previously, I don't see what advantage showing the numbers bestows upon the player, so why not do it? Is it just a matter of flavor? Are we enforcing flavor? Make it an optin.

[d_m]

There already is an easy way to see how much damage you are taking in combat, by either looking at your HP, or setting the option to have the color of @ change with HP level (very useful, IMO). Do you really think that putting the numbers for each blow will help significantly in this?

I think it would make a huge difference. In fact, I think if I had seen numbers (instead of having vague recollections about before/after HP) I would have learned much faster how variable the damage reduction from nether resist is.

I agree that much of the information is derivable, but doing the derivation yourself is error-prone, time consuming, annoying, and sometimes less obvious.

There is one camp that thinks that the internal rules of games should be opaque (and then players will usually try to reverse engineer them) and another school that says players should be told the rules up front. I can respect the former view which is why I'd make this an option, but if you believe the latter then I think providing numbers for things like damage (or how likely you are/were to make a save, or whatever) is useful, as opposed to showing people a search score with no basis for understanding what it means.

[BlueFish]

I have no idea why anybody would be against seeing specific damage numbers. I'd love to see it, personally.

[Derakon]

I remember reading about one of the D&D groups run by the Penny Arcade guys, where they decided to have the DM track player health instead of the players. When a character got hit, instead of being told how much damage they took and how much health they had left, they were given textual descriptions like "It's just a scratch" or "That really hurt, you're barely still on your feet". This greatly improved the roleplaying by removing one source of metagaming -- the "Okay, I know he can't hit for more than 20 damage, and I still have 22 hitpoints, so I can stand in melee with him one more round" type of thing. Introducing more uncertainty into the decision-making process increased tension and therefor fun.

So there is some plausibility behind hiding damage numbers from the player -- it can increase immersion by hiding the game mechanics. But if you're going to do that, you can't show the player's health either, since otherwise basic arithmetic will tell you how much damage you've taken in a round (though not necessarily how much damage each individual strike dealt since the HP display doesn't update continuously).

Obviously this is of little value to those who aren't in the game for immersion; it's the whole roleplaying vs. rollplaying problem all over again.

[UglySquirrell]

I know that any game with the option for numerical damage I've turned it on, liked seeing the big red damage numbers. That being said I think not knowing exact numbers in angband is pretty fun. How many people have taken the chance of trying for one more hit on a really dangerous creature, hoping to finish him off but knowing they might fail. Had Morgoth down to one star, didn't have any healing potions left but took one more swing. If you knew the numbers this wouldn't happen as much. For better or worse. I play with auto clear more prompts so I wouldn't see the numbers anyway, would like to see criticals affect status instead of damage. Monsters seem to have this already. If a yeek hits you for a critical it stuns you. How about different effects for different weapons? Blunt have a chance to stun or confuse, daggers have a chance to cause a mortal wound damage over time, whips to blind, sword of frost to freeze, of flame to set on fire, artifacts could have some cool ones, this way you could see by the health bars state you had landed a critical.

[buzzkill]

It's not at all a metegaming thing for me. It's strictly a curiosity. If there's a significant advantage to be had here, I've yet to recognize it. I'd go so far as to say that it's something that I might actually find annoying after a while, but I'll never know for sure if I don't get to try it.

[fph]

I'd definitely want to know
1) which one does the most damage (on average)
2) which one has the lowest fail rate
between my wand of lightning bolts, my enchanted arrows, my OoD spell, and my mace of slay orc.

Now I am daydreaming, but it would be great to have the possibility of displaying a graph displaying the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_density_function]probability distribution[url] for the damage of every single item --- I realize this is challenging to make in an ASCII art setting though.
This would somehow turn Angband into not only a fun game, but also an occasion to get some feeling for probabilities in real life.
Well, it already taught me "don't do 100 times one action with 1% catastrophic fail probability". (is it among the shopkeepers rumour messages? well, if not it should)

[Magnate]

I'd definitely want to know
1) which one does the most damage (on average)
2) which one has the lowest fail rate
between my wand of lightning bolts, my enchanted arrows, my OoD spell, and my mace of slay orc.

Well, with the exception of the skill bonus to the wand's damage, all that info is already provided. And we're happy to provide the multiplier for the skill bonus.

Actually there's another exception: monster recall tells you your chance to hit the monster with your current melee weapon, but not with any missile weapon. I guess we could add the chance to hit with the ammo in quiver slot 0.

There's an increasing divergence between people who want more information (transparent mechanics - this is a tactical game) and people who want less (bring back the mystery of F-K - this is a role-playing game). I just hope everybody bears in mind that it's not possible to please both camps.

[BlueFish]

Angband is decidedly not a role-playing game. It's a game of tactical combat, discovery of items, and inventory management. Those things are all served by seeing specific damage numbers. There is no good reason not to include them.

[d_m]

Dive fast, die young, leave a high-CHA corpse.

Great sig btw

[Jungle_Boy]

Angband is decidedly not a role-playing game. It's a game of tactical combat, discovery of items, and inventory management. Those things are all served by seeing specific damage numbers. There is no good reason not to include them.

This is a matter of opinion, I think Angband is a role-playing game, not that I'm necessarily opposed to damage numbers but I kinda like the way it is now with the exact hitpoints and exact damage done unknown. I sometimes find myself hitting my keys harder to do more damage or more deliberately to make sure I don't miss.

[Nick]

Angband is many things to many people, which is what makes it so challenging to maintain.