Destroyed (again, and again, and again, and again)

[Derakon]

Not sure off hand, maybe +14 or +16?

EDIT: to-dam is +12.

No, the damage dice. The dice are the only thing that is affected by brands and slays; a 3x brand like a strong lightning brand will turn a 1d4 dagger into a 3d4 dagger (unless the target resists of course). Or it could turn a 3d4 bastard sword into a 9d4 bastard sword, which is rather more impressive.

[Grotug]

Oh, right, sorry. 2d5. and +1 attack speed.

[Grotug]

Okay, next question. I have 5 wands of TO with a total of 3 charges. I have one scroll of recharge. What's the best way for me to assure I have the greatest chance of success recharging? Seems to me I should drop all the wands save for one. If it has 0 charges, then recharge it. If it has 1 charge, then shuffle around until I have one wand with 0 charges and then recharge it. This seems better than recharging the stack of 5 with 3 charges. But maybe the bigger the stack, the less chance of backfire? Even if the chance is slightly better, if I recharge a wand with 0 charges and it backfires, I essentially lose nothing. I can't afford to risk losing any charges from 3. And as a HT Warrior, I probably have a decent chance for failure.

[Pete Mack]

Let it go to zero charges, yes. Fail rate is best when it's empty. The failure rate of backfiring is entirely determined by the scroll, not by the character.

[Grotug]

Let it go to zero charges, yes. Fail rate is best when it's empty. The failure rate of backfiring is entirely determined by the scroll, not by the character.

Good to know, thanks! The cloak of Recharge had a really good success rate. Was great having it on a recent previous character I killed in a greater vault.

Well, I found Amras but ditched Anguirel. :-/ Still, it opens up my resist options very nicely.

Well this is typical. Many games did I hoard scrolls of recharge in my home, taking up a valuable slot. So many games of doing this and barely ever using them, I finally stopped the habit. Several dungeons earlier I leave behind 5 scrolls of recharge because I didn't need them. Now in my pack are 5 wands of TO with 0 charges.

[fph]

Let it go to zero charges, yes. Fail rate is best when it's empty. The failure rate of backfiring is entirely determined by the scroll, not by the character.

It would be a good improvement, in my view, if the recharge failure rate were based on floor(#charges_in_stack / #wands_in_stack), so that one gets the optimal fail rate without having to drop wands and juggle around to reduce to get a truly empty wand. It would very much go in the "remove the tedious parts and gimmicky mechanics" direction that Angband is taking.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

It would be a good improvement, in my view, if the recharge failure rate were based on floor(#charges_in_stack / #wands_in_stack), so that one gets the optimal fail rate without having to drop wands and juggle around to reduce to get a truly empty wand. It would very much go in the "remove the tedious parts and gimmicky mechanics" direction that Angband is taking.

No juggling required. The fail rate is also better with a STACK of ZERO charge items. Dropping items on the floor to recharge is the very juggling to be avoided. So, use those wands and staves until they are zero and then recharge. Sure, if you are in the midst of battle, that will take a turn and it could be bad, but you pay your money... you take your chances....

[luneya]

Just having it consider the ratio of charges to wands isn't enough to avoid shuffling. Suppose I have a stack of 5 wands, all empty, and each successful recharge spell adds 3 charges (which is about average; I don't want to deal with the random factor now). With the drop-shuffle technique, I get 15 charges with minimal risk of exploding, all spells being cast on uncharged wands. But if I charge straight on, after 2 casts I have 1.2 charges/wand, and after 4 casts I'm up to 2.4 charges/wand for a significant increase in fail rate.

The proper way to end charge shuffling is to eliminate the current stacking code, and replace it with a variant of the code that is used to stack arrows in a quiver. Wands of the same type would still stack, but each would remain an individual object with its own charge count, and the user would be prompted which wand to use in any action involving the stack.

[Pete Mack]

Eddie's version of 3.0 does this kind of stacking. But the real benefit isn't recharging, so much as allowing you to pick up new _Teleport staffs and discard used up ones, without recharging or losing charges to the averaging effect. Recharging -TO without dropping wands on the floor is very much an edge case for this. Sure, I do that too. The downside to this model is if you get in too many fight with monsters that destroy things, you are more likely to lose all your charges, and get stuck with an exhausted item.

[luneya]

Well, it's still good strategy to keep charges roughly balanced among all of the identical wands/staves that you have, and to keep more than one copy of anything important that's fire-vulnerable. But players should have the ability to recharge fully without the dropping exploit, or to deliberately drain one wand ahead of others so that they can recharge it.

[EpicMan]

The most straightforward way to avoid juggling giving an advantage is to keep the item destruction chance the same regardless of the condition of the wands being charged. Check per wand in the stack and dropping/recharging one-by-one should give the same number of failures as casting recharge that many times on the wands as stacked.

You could have different recharging methods have a different explosion chance (since IIRC Mages have two recharging spells of differing power) or use the same chance and let different power levels affect how many charges it can add.

In either case the explosion chance should be listed in the spell/item description so it is obvious to players that the rules changed.

[Pete Mack]

@EpicMan--
It hardly matters, as even then, recharging more than once on a given wand is sub-optimal, as you will lose all existing charges on the wand when it does destroy. No matter which recharge model you pick, the optimal strategy is use it or lose it.

[EpicMan]

@Pete Mack:

That's true, but the fact that recharging a non-empty wand risks wasting the charges isn't necessarily bad. It's choosing between having more charges available without recharging in a fight verses possibly losing those charges via wand destruction. I am assuming that charging a full vs an empty wand being sub-optimal is OK, but that having to put in a bunch of extra keystrokes to have optimal reward-vs-risk is not. On that assumption we should make the simple action (recharge the stack) be just as good as recharging one at a time.

So to expand my previous idea, when you cast/read recharge on a wand or stack:
There is an % chance 1 wand will be destroyed
If not, add X charges to the wand/stack, unless it already has (Y*# of wands in stack), in which case add no charges or some suitably small amount. May wish to cap charges added to Y*# wands.

We would need to decide on X and Y (or maybe have X=Y be the same, you get a "full" charge when you recharge).

Thus the stack has the same bad results (-1 wand) and good result (+X charges if every wand in the stack is not charged up), so inventory juggling and fiddling is no more optimal than conveniently.