Nazghul's How-Not-To-Die-Like-Me Guide

[Nazghul]

Avoiding melee isn't always easy, and Dex does still help with ranged combat. Strength is less useful, except for the obvious "being able to lug more stuff" factor, which actually IS a good point for prioritizing Str over Dex.

[Nazghul]

Of course, if one wants to take the ridiculous time with the roller required to get broken starting stats across the board, the whole debate becomes somewhat moot, LOL.

[Monkey Face]

Of course, if one wants to take the ridiculous time with the roller required to get broken starting stats across the board, the whole debate becomes somewhat moot, LOL.

Instead of using the auto roller, you can choose points based and get to spread "points" across the stats. The first 6 points for a stat are one to one. The 7th point costs 2 "points" and the 8th cost 4 "points" (for a total of 12). In 3.4 you get 20 "points" to spread while in older versions 24 "points". That will let you focus on specific stats.

[Narvius]

I usually roll Human Mages, with 18/30 Int, so 2 mana and terrible success rate. I play no-sell, and my starting loadout is usually Book 1, Book 2, 5 Flasks of Oil, 5 Rations, 4 Scrolls of Phase Door and 2 Scrolls of WoR, as well as 5 Torches.

Usually get to DLvl 50-60, sometimes down to 99.

Never use physical ranged combat - unless(!) I find an awesome launcher. I prefer to rely on magic devices. A single wand of Drain Life usually carries me through several of the first tough uniques (aka Nar and higher), thanks to recharging.

If you play as a mage, your entire livelihood, early on, depends on the ability to avoid melee. Which is why detection is paramount, as can not be stated enough. Oh, and escapes, of course.

[Edit]
Oh, there it is! http://angband.oook.cz/fun/mages.php
Read that. You'll play several times better than before. :P

[Nazghul]

I normally use the point buy, myself. But the roller has one advantage if you are both patent, and a raging munchkin: it is possible to get any combination of starting stats, up to and including natural 18 (plus race/class mods) in EVERY stat. While a perfect roll is tremendously unlikely, getting characters with a couple natural 18s, one or two seventeens, and a single 16 to start are not hard to achieve.

[Nazghul]

The Mage discussion is also a sideline, since the guide is general, not based on Mages. Mages actually have several special considerations to deal with early game. They are feeble in every possible sense, and have to rest so frequently that food and light can actually become an issue for them (which it has NEVER been for any other character I have ever played), and they are FIERCELY dependent on drops of good wands, staves, and rods if they want any juice at all in the early levels.

[Timo Pietilä]

DEX is worthless if you are not engaging in melee.

Let me repeat that. DEX is worthless for non-melee characters.

Not quite worthless, it affects your chance to get robbed blind and other that kind of stuff, but it is pretty much next to CHR for non-melee.

[Derakon]

You didn't read the rest of my post. I did mention that robbing thing -- any non-melee character should be staying out of melee as much as possible, rendering the threat of theft mostly moot.

Anyway, Nazghul: as you yourself said, STR helps you carry more gear. A -1 to speed due to being overloaded is very easy to achieve for mages in the early game, and is a potentially crippling problem. Compare that to being ever-so-slightly better with missile weapons (which, let's face it, you aren't exactly fantastic with to begin with) and it's really no contest. In the early game, before you have any STR boosts (to be able to carry a launcher and ammo) your best ranged damage comes from wands. Maybe in your first dungeon dive a shortbow and some arrows will come in handy, but that's about it until post-stat gain.

The 8 STR/8 INT/4 CON build is certainly reasonable; CON is eventually very important, so saving 4 potions' worth towards maxing your HP is a worthwhile endeavour, compared to getting a single point more in STR or INT.

As for the autoroller, at least back in the day it would throw out characters that were too good. I don't think natural 18s across the board is actually possible.

[Nazghul]

Unless I tripped a bug, it is now. I have a few macro programs I used to test this sort of thing. Once a second, auto-presses my r key, then snaps a screenshot and saves it to a folder on my hard drive. I set it to run, went to work, came home, and went through the results. It only happened once. But then again, I wasn't here to actually try to ACCEPT the character, so the game may deny you at that point. Have no way to test that without sitting in front of my keyboard for however long it takes to randomly get a full boat again, and frankly, I don't care that much; it was just a point of curiosity. My current rolled charrie though (my new warrior... RIP Kael) DID have three 18s (Str, Dex, Cha), two 16s (Int, Wis), and one 17 (Con) on the natural rolls. As far as I am concerned, that would still be considered broken for a starting character, especially with the racial and class bonuses stacked on it. I may not even play him all the way through.

I thought about your other points, Derakon, and after careful consideration, I would have to agree. I never seemed to get overburdened myself, but then again, I travel light. One thing I WILL say though is that it depends... if, like me, you are continuously playing punching bag for the Random Number God, you can't depend on even FINDING an offensively or defensively useful magic item early on. Having another backup plan is still a good idea.

[Narvius]

Incidentally... as far as I know, most stats have exponentially growing returns as they grow, most prominently Con, which I think was already highlighted somewhere in this thread.

What I'm trying to say - 18 across the board is decidedly not overpowered. Munchkinish, sure, but it just looks nice and is way too much time wasted to be worth it.

[MattB]

What I'm trying to say - 18 across the board is decidedly not overpowered. Munchkinish, sure, but it just looks nice and is way too much time wasted to be worth it.

Forgive my ignorance, but what does 'munchkin' refer to?
Thanks.

[Narvius]

Originally, a type of Dungeons & Dragons / other Pen & Paper RPG player who makes the most of the rules, to the point of abusing them, in order to maximise his or her own character stats. Usually not very fun to play with.

Unless it's Old Man Henderson.

[MattB]

Originally, a type of Dungeons & Dragons / other Pen & Paper RPG player who makes the most of the rules, to the point of abusing them, in order to maximise his or her own character stats. Usually not very fun to play with.

Unless it's Old Man Henderson.

Ah, thanks. Met a few of them in Warhammer, amongst others.

And that link's a good read!

[OOD Town drunk]

I apologize if this has been mentioned, sometimes there are far too many posts to browse, but I am unaware of any reason to not just completely forget about every form of food (save mushrooms) and just pack around a few scrolls of satisfy hunger. They fill you up completely without any chance of over stuffing yourself. The green glutton ghost will not be any bother either. Granted, scrolls burn, but I find them all around more useful.

[jrodman]

Just read through get_stats() in birth.c, which is the roller in v 3.4.1 but doubtless this code hasn't changed in donkey's years.

The game fills an 18-slot table with 6 sets of 1d3 1d4 and 1d5 values in triples. Each set of 3 is going to become one stat, after 5 is added to that set.

So say the first 3 entries are (maybe strength, not sure) 1, 4, and 5. This will make a contribution of 10 towards the stat. To this the game adds 5, making it 15. Obviously you get an 18 by rolling 3, 4, and 5 for that selection.

However the total of all entries in the table is max-bounded at 54. Thus, the maximum you can get for your 6 stats is 54 base plus the 5 point bonus per stat, ie 30 more. Since an 18 in each category requires 108 stat points, or 78 points before the flat bonus, this result will not and cannot occur.

In addition, the claimed result 18, 18, 18, 17, 16, 16 would require 72 points, so also did not occur.