Throwing?!

[StMicah]

What's the point of throwing things?

In the early game, I throw oil flasks and missiles that I'm not capable of shooting. So, if I'm playing a ranger, I might throw ego-pebbles for their branded damage.

Outside of these instances, is there any benefit to throwing stuff? I hope I haven't been missing out on some cool game mechanic.

[Derakon]

It's not very useful. The other potential uses I've occasionally put it to are waking up monsters, and getting potentially-destroyable items I'm standing on away from a monster whose breath attacks could hit them. Mind, the latter has the dangerous caveat that any item you throw has a chance of being destroyed anyway...

[Zikke]

Nobody's made a character with the specific limitation of only using thrown items for damage?

[Nick]

There are variants where throwing is useful. So theoretically, if the maintainer of one of those variants became Angband maintainer, they might think of implementing useful throwing. You never know.

[Timo Pietilä]

There are variants where throwing is useful.

There used to be potions of detonation in angband which made IIRC 100d100 damage when thrown (and 1000 points damage to you if drank).

You can also throw any weapon for damage in angband for dice*slay + weapon todam damage to monster. Ringil makes quite a damage when thrown, but it isn't really good way to use weapons.

Maybe we could add throwing knives/darts/spears/stars in the game.

[PowerWyrm]

There are variants where throwing is useful. So theoretically, if the maintainer of one of those variants became Angband maintainer, they might think of implementing useful throwing. You never know.

In PWMAngband, rogues can create potions of poison from any potions and throw them at monsters for damage + temporary poisoning effect.

And you can throw large trouts at other players...

[Derakon]

There are variants where throwing is useful. So theoretically, if the maintainer of one of those variants became Angband maintainer, they might think of implementing useful throwing. You never know.

You're trying to dial down your smugness. It won't work.

[mushroom patch]

There used to be potions of detonation in angband which made IIRC 100d100 damage when thrown (and 1000 points damage to you if drank).

You can also throw any weapon for damage in angband for dice*slay + weapon todam damage to monster. Ringil makes quite a damage when thrown, but it isn't really good way to use weapons.

Maybe we could add throwing knives/darts/spears/stars in the game.

100d100? The speedrunning possibilities are astounding. So you just have to land 4 potions on Morgoth and he's toast? I remember the potions, but I did not realize the damage was so high. What version was this?

[Therem Harth]

That was ToME 2. And it was 25d25 plus a shard explosion, not 100d100, thankfully.

Still very effective as a ranged weapon...

[Derakon]

I think that the original Vanilla potions were more like 10d100 or something. Still worth using as a throwing weapon, but not potentially able to do 10000 damage in a single shot. Detonations got removed at the same time that Potions of Death got the axe, I'm pretty sure, which would be around the same time that the devs were trying to encourage people to ID items by using them instead of by scrolls/spells/staves of Identify.

(Morgoth has 20000 HP, so you'd need two potions plus a source of scratch damage (due to regeneration) if you were able to manipulate perfect rolls with a 100d100 damage source)

[StMicah]

I noticed that some of the advanced healing/life potions can be thrown for damage...what are the damage die on those?

Also, in previous versions, could the confusion and poison potions be thrown to cause those effects in monsters?

[Magnate]

You're trying to dial down your smugness. It won't work.

Credit where it's due - I had thought that the number of ways of saying "FA already has this" had been exhausted. But like Status Quo, he keeps finding new permutations on the formula ;-)

[Derakon]

I noticed that some of the advanced healing/life potions can be thrown for damage...what are the damage die on those?

Also, in previous versions, could the confusion and poison potions be thrown to cause those effects in monsters?

It's 1d1; the fact that that message is attached to those item descriptions is a bug.

I don't know if Vanilla had the ability to throw status ailment potions; it might have. I know that was/is a popular thing to have in variants, though.

[mushroom patch]

I think that the original Vanilla potions were more like 10d100 or something. Still worth using as a throwing weapon, but not potentially able to do 10000 damage in a single shot. Detonations got removed at the same time that Potions of Death got the axe, I'm pretty sure, which would be around the same time that the devs were trying to encourage people to ID items by using them instead of by scrolls/spells/staves of Identify.

(Morgoth has 20000 HP, so you'd need two potions plus a source of scratch damage (due to regeneration) if you were able to manipulate perfect rolls with a 100d100 damage source)

Average roll of 100d100 is 5050 with a very high probability (85% or so) of rolling higher than 5000. Hence the four potion number -- Morgoth would die to four of them almost every time. (The actual number there is that he survives .8% of encounters in which he is hit with four super detonation potions.)

[Timo Pietilä]

That was ToME 2. And it was 25d25 plus a shard explosion, not 100d100, thankfully.

Still very effective as a ranged weapon...

Angband 2.9.3 still had those. Just 25d25 though, not 100d100.

We need holy hand grenade of antioch.