Making Single Slay weapons worthwhile / interesting

[Mark]

Currently it feels that the vast majority of times a single slay weapon drops, it simply contributes to the Too Much Junk issue. Previous forum discussions seem to show very, very rarely are these weapons used.

I noticed recently that weapons of *slay troll* gives Regeneration. I liked this and used the weapon for a few clevels (about the only time I have used a single slay).

I started thinking how weapons for slay orc, troll, giant, demon, undead, dragon could be made more attractive, while keeping the 'single slay' theme.

Here's what I came up with

Drop all *slay* weapons, and just make "slay" x5 damage by default.

Otherwise

Orc

• 5 x Damage against Orcs
• Resist Darkness (because Orcs have this, but probably useless due to the depths Orcs are vs depths of Darkness attacks)
• Telepathy of Orcs (vaguely akin to sting glowing blue near orcs)
• 5% chance on hit to scare orcs (somewhat akin to Glamring and Orchrist terrifying orcs)
• +1 STR

Giant

• 5 x Damage against Giants
• +5 STR
• -5 Stealth

Troll

• 5 x Damage against Trolls
• +3 CON
• Grants Regeneration

Demon

• 5 x Damage against Demons
• Resist Fire
• Can activate to resist Fire
• pConf

Slay Undead

• 5 x Damage against Undead
• Resistance to cold
• Can activate to resist cold
• See Invisible
• pFear

Dragon

• 5 x Damage against Dragons
• Grants 1 - 2 random resists, including high resists
• Activate for Detect Treasure

[debo]

This is sort of similar to how poschengband (probably its ancestors also) deal with this. Sil took the approach of melding slays together, so that you never find a single slay on a weapon. (Nargothrond = demon and dragon, Gondolin = orc and troll, Doriath = spider and wolf.)

[Therem Harth]

I like this! Especially the flavor aspect, where wielding e.g. a Troll Slayer weapon makes you just a little more like a Troll. Kind of harkens back to tropes about vampire hunters, etc. 5x damage does seem a bit high for dealing with Orcs and Trolls though.

However, from what I've seen part of the TMJ issue is that even Slay Troll items and whatnot are pretty rare even to start with, until well past the point where they'd be most useful.

Actually I have some other ideas on this, which I won't pollute your thread with...

[Carnivean]

I'd take the complete opposite direction and make it similar to randarts. Every weapon gets a power rating on generation and rolls attributes up to that power.

[Derakon]

I'd take the complete opposite direction and make it similar to randarts. Every weapon gets a power rating on generation and rolls attributes up to that power.

Have you played v4? It does exactly that.

[Carnivean]

Have you played v4? It does exactly that.

No. Did the idea get much feedback?

[Derakon]

It seemed to generally go over well, though it's clear that such a feature needs an ID revamp before it will really work -- you basically need to ID every magical item you find to see if it's worth using, because you don't have a name to filter it by. I had a paladin who ended up using a magical item that just stacked lots of damage boosts as his endgame weapon, for example, but for every one of those you find there will be dozens of weapons that just have +1 light radius and other similarly unhelpful abilities.

[bio_hazard]

Great topic.

I like the idea of increased light radius when the orc/troll/spider whatever are near. Even though light and darkness are not nearly as tactically interesting in V as in Sil, it would be worth it from a flavor perspective to have the game environment be a little more interactive.

How about + speed (+3? +5?) when the slay monster is in sight? This could indirectly make the weapon more useful against other types of enemies in certain situations.

I also like the specific telepathy that ToME 2 includes.

I don't think all of these necessarily at once, but just some ideas.

Another possibility would be to make good items worse in order to make low egos a little better in comparison. Cap good items at lower max bonuses than egos.

Finally, maybe make egos more durable. In the current V, this could be a slight resistance to acid/fire/disenchant for the item only- not extending to the player or other gear, but at least something that might hold up a little better to a monster that could damage a weapon.

This is probably pretty far out in variant territory, but it seems really natural to me for Angband to have item degredation like Diablo (at least II, that's the only one I've played). All that junk suddenly becomes more useful when you need to swap out your gear every so often, and it gives another axis of quality to help make some items more attractive.

I also think many egos wouldn't be missed if they were removed from the game, but I like them for the flavor if nothing else, and with a better squelch system it would be easier to ignore them once they are irrelevant.

[Carnivean]

How about + speed (+3? +5?) when the slay monster is in sight?

That's awesome.

[bio_hazard]

You could also tie the bonuses to actual killing too. Imagine speed +1 for 5-10 turns for each orc killed. Mow through an orc pit then race around to kill the harder monsters before the speed runs out.