How do you play

[Angrist]

If you don't use it with warrior you are missing a lot of potential.

What is the frequency of critical hits when shooting skill is Legendary?

[Derakon]

Midgame, archery takes a side role for various reasons:
Space: I dont want to devote more than 1 slot to the quiver.
Ammo preservation: killing anything with arrows is bound to result in lost ammo.
Handling: it is very clumsy and time- and click-consuming to use archery compared to melee or spells.

I don't deny that archery is kind of inelegant compared to other methods of attack, but it is absolutely worth using in the midgame. One slot is 40 units of ammo, which should be enough to at minimum heavily injure your target, if not kill them outright, even if you're using "sub-optimal" ammo (because you're keeping the good stuff at home for the endgame). As for losing ammo, uh, what else were you planning to use it for?

Archery has fantastic damage and doesn't cost mana; it has to have downsides to compensate. Those downsides are basically that you can't use it for every fight due to ammo constraints, and that it takes up inventory space, but a) it's still plentiful enough to use on big, nasty targets, and b) there's plenty enough inventory space to devote a slot or two to hauling ammo around.

As for the difference between paladins and warriors when it comes to archery, I don't have two characters handy to compare, but let's say that the warrior's chance to hit is 75% and the paladin's is 70%. That means the warrior is doing, over the long run, 7% more damage per shot. And the difference in hit rate is almost certainly higher.

[Estie]

Im not complaining about archery or anything, wether it is worth using in various situations comes down to personal prefernece as usual.

What I dont buy is "warriors have better archery than paladins throughout the game, therefor they need to lose their melee damage bonus in the endgame."

I havent heard a single good reason yet why why warriors should lose their melee damage plus at the top.

[Derakon]

Uh, I never made that claim. And I'd be perfectly fine with warriors being able to hit 6 blows/round with the heaviest weapons. I was just arguing that warriors weren't merely "paladins with no spells" in the endgame.

Warriors also have a +d9 hit die compared to paladin +d6, for an extra (on average) 75 HP at level 50. Which isn't a huge deal but isn't nothing. They also have +2 STR and +3 DEX compared to paladins (paladins actually have -1 DEX; Warriors have +2), which simplifies their equipment balancing act.

Amusingly, warriors have +1 INT compared to paladins (-2 vs. -3).

[Estie]

Uh, I never made that claim. And I'd be perfectly fine with warriors being able to hit 6 blows/round with the heaviest weapons. I was just arguing that warriors weren't merely "paladins with no spells" in the endgame.

Warriors also have a +d9 hit die compared to paladin +d6, for an extra (on average) 75 HP at level 50. Which isn't a huge deal but isn't nothing. They also have +2 STR and +3 DEX compared to paladins (paladins actually have -1 DEX; Warriors have +2), which simplifies their equipment balancing act.

Amusingly, warriors have +1 INT compared to paladins (-2 vs. -3).

I dont want 6/blows with MoD for warriors; with ego purple weapons being common since Fizzix´s last patch, they dominate the endgame already (too much ?) compared to the top non-purple artifacts.

I want weapon weight not allowing to reach the last blow affect everyone, not just warriors. If warrior is 10% shy of his 6 blow max, then paladin should also be 10% shy of his 5 blow max (and of course all other classes as well).

I could also see warriors getting an additional shot at some level; THAT would be a significant bonus, still not making up for the awe-inspiring paladin spell arsenal but, like said before, thats ok as long as they get something noticable. A bit of melee stat, a bit of to hit and a fraction of a blow are not :/


+1 int over paladins is as it should be

[Timo Pietilä]

I want weapon weight not allowing to reach the last blow affect everyone, not just warriors. If warrior is 10% shy of his 6 blow max, then paladin should also be 10% shy of his 5 blow max (and of course all other classes as well).

I agree that blow calcs should treat different classes similar way, and needs an overhaul. It doesn't make much sense that mage starts with heaviest weapon it can get because it gets one blow with anything anyway while warrior uses teeny weeny dagger for the reason that it gives it more blows and that makes more damage than biggest weapon it can get.

Maybe fractional blows should go below one at the beginning of the game? Hobbit mage gets 0.01 blows with MoD and one with dagger?

Maybe melee skill (not counting accuracy bonuses) should determine the blows more than just weapon weight STR and DEX. That way warrior gets his sixth blow with clvl naturally by getting melee-skill which is just unobtainable for everyone else.

[MattB]

It doesn't make much sense that mage starts with heaviest weapon it can get because it gets one blow with anything anyway while warrior uses teeny weeny dagger for the reason that it gives it more blows and that makes more damage than biggest weapon it can get.

Put like that, it is nonsense, isn't it?

[AnonymousHero]

I agree that blow calcs should treat different classes similar way, and needs an overhaul. It doesn't make much sense that mage starts with heaviest weapon it can get because it gets one blow with anything anyway while warrior uses teeny weeny dagger for the reason that it gives it more blows and that makes more damage than biggest weapon it can get.

Maybe fractional blows should go below one at the beginning of the game? Hobbit mage gets 0.01 blows with MoD and one with dagger?

Maybe melee skill (not counting accuracy bonuses) should determine the blows more than just weapon weight STR and DEX. That way warrior gets his sixth blow with clvl naturally by getting melee-skill which is just unobtainable for everyone else.

Just out of curiousity... have you tried any variant with O-style combat? (That would probably be either OAngband or FAAngband.)

I found it to be much more sensible generally... though it's quite not as predictable/transparent in terms of the effects of switching weapons. This is helped a lot by damage displays, but it sometimes makes it hard to decide which weapons to keep in your house for later (which you have a lot more STR/DEX, etc.)

[Derakon]

While we're mentioning combat systems, v4/Pyrel-style deserves a mention. I tried to set up a system that was reasonably transparent and did a better job of differentiating weapons and combat styles than Vanilla does, without requiring completely redoing monster HP/defenses (like Sil and O-style require). The v4 system assigns each weapon ratings for "balance" and "heft", and gives the player two combat skills: "finesse" and "prowess". The player gets (1 + balance * finesse) blows per round, and each blow does (damage dice * prowess * heft) damage.

A warhammer would have heft of, say, .8 and balance of .2, so you'd get a small number of hard-hitting blows with it, while something like a rapier could have a balance of .9 and a heft of .1, for lots of light blows. Then the class stat growths are tweaked, so warriors get lots of prowess and finesse, paladins mostly just get lots of prowess, rogues mostly just get lots of finesse, etc.

v4's main problem, combat-wise, was that I didn't rebalance the damage dice on weapons, so prowess ended up superior because it had all the really big damage dice. And then the secondary problem was that I made the pluses way too big, so you were finding weapons with +200 to finesse or whatever in the late game which really should have just been +20.

[AnonymousHero]

While we're mentioning combat systems, v4/Pyrel-style deserves a mention. I tried to set up a system that was reasonably transparent and did a better job of differentiating weapons and combat styles than Vanilla does, without requiring completely redoing monster HP/defenses (like Sil and O-style require). The v4 system assigns each weapon ratings for "balance" and "heft", and gives the player two combat skills: "finesse" and "prowess". The player gets (1 + balance * finesse) blows per round, and each blow does (damage dice * prowess * heft) damage.

A warhammer would have heft of, say, .8 and balance of .2, so you'd get a small number of hard-hitting blows with it, while something like a rapier could have a balance of .9 and a heft of .1, for lots of light blows. Then the class stat growths are tweaked, so warriors get lots of prowess and finesse, paladins mostly just get lots of prowess, rogues mostly just get lots of finesse, etc.

It sounds like a very interesting idea, but given that there's only one character, I think there's a danger of all weapons becoming essentially identical in the mean (but slightly different in terms of standard deviation). If that happens you might as well just have a single type of "base" weapon and then just change the name of it based on what class the player is.

[Derakon]

It sounds like a very interesting idea, but given that there's only one character, I think there's a danger of all weapons becoming essentially identical in the mean (but slightly different in terms of standard deviation). If that happens you might as well just have a single type of "base" weapon and then just change the name of it based on what class the player is.

Well, functionally in Vanilla right now you have lightweight, medium-weight, and heavyweight sharp and blunt weapons. There are no other differentiations made, and only priests care about sharp vs. blunt, so effectively there are 3 categories of weapon. The v4 approach allows weapons with similar weights and damage dice to nonetheless vary in how balanced/hefty they are, such that a 5-pound club and a 3-pound dagger will be appealing to different character types even if they both deal 1d4 damage.

I'm not certain what you're saying about the character, though?

[Nick]

Just out of curiousity... have you tried any variant with O-style combat? (That would probably be either OAngband or FAAngband.)

Or Vanilla