Issues on current master

[wobbly]

Open door on move doesn't work if you have unbarring ways cast

[Sky]

same if you get a brand or slay off-weapon.

[PowerWyrm]

Yeah, I noticed that too. Isn't the second one supposed to be demons?

Nope, it's a bug due to mace of disruption having "slay" undead and Deathwreaker itself having "*slay*" undead. The description says: "Slays undead (powerfully), undead...", so the same problem happens there too.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Deathwreaker does "980.4 vs. undead, 668 vs. undead".

Yeah, I noticed that too. Isn't the second one supposed to be demons?

[PowerWyrm]

Deathwreaker does "980.4 vs. undead, 668 vs. undead".

[wobbly]

If you destroy an item on the ground with remove curse it doesn't update properly till you move

[Estie]

Happens with scrolls of remove curse too, and doesn't consume the scroll.

Ah no, the scroll is identified after the attempt while the staff isnt untill you actually use it on a cursed item.

[Gwarl]

Using a flavored staff in an attempt to id-by-use. Get the message, "you have no curses to remove", but, the staff remains unidentified. Obviously, a staff of remove curse.

Happens with scrolls of remove curse too, and doesn't consume the scroll.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Using a flavored staff in an attempt to id-by-use. Get the message, "you have no curses to remove", but, the staff remains unidentified. Obviously, a staff of remove curse.

[Derakon]

If you put -90 on the AFRAID flag, you'll get a base power for rings of escaping of -2, which will reject the choice of rings of escaping for 99.999% of randarts except a few heavily cursed ones, since the choice of tval will depend on that base power. So you'll never get (+10,+10) or +2 attacks on any of them.

That doesn't change Estie's (accurate) point that it doesn't matter how good the combat bonuses are on a randart if it also has a flag that completely prevents you from participating in combat. The AFRAID flag should just outright prevent addition of to-hit, to-dam, blows, off-weapon brands, etc. to the item.

In principle I wouldn't mind seeing the occasional Ring of Escaping-based randart; they could potentially be great gear for a mage, ranger, or priest if they had good benefits to compensate for the AFRAID flag.

[PowerWyrm]

The problem with the ring of escaping is that it defies the rules for artifacts. A ring with "no melee" property gets assigned power -90 (or whatever), but if you add (+10,+10), (+2 attacks) to it, the power is still -90 and decreasing that value doesnt fix the issue. It´s not a matter of flawed statistical assumptions.

If you put -90 on the AFRAID flag, you'll get a base power for rings of escaping of -2, which will reject the choice of rings of escaping for 99.999% of randarts except a few heavily cursed ones, since the choice of tval will depend on that base power. So you'll never get (+10,+10) or +2 attacks on any of them.

[t4nk]

Assertion failed!

Program: ...
File: obj-pile.c
Line: 73

Expression: obj -> prev == prev

Would be great if someone were able to tell how to reproduce that... I looked into angband's pile management (insert, excise, etc) and was unable to find any bugs.
Nick, maybe pile_check_integrity() should dump all information about pile (op and all objects involved) to a file on error? Someone then will encounter this bug, post the file and that should give at least some rough idea about the bug.

[Gwarl]

I like that idea an awful lot. You could get *Enchant Weapon* to occasionally add a random +1 damage brand as well as the flat damage.

Additive bonuses aside, I think applying brands to a weapon using a scroll is a great idea, and I think I saw some unused functions related to this in the code already?

Another idea:
Instead of having off weapon brands at all, make an effect/activation which applies the brand to all the player's attacks for the duration.

[Gwarl]

I actually think flat additive bonuses to damage are the wrong approach - which is why gameplay-focused variants like Oangband and Sil remove them completely. I find brands/slays as they are now a more interesting property. I think Vanilla should retain flat additive bonuses, perhaps with some adjustment, simply for tradition's sake, but I don't think we should be introducing any more.

The area of combat which needs the most attention IMO is blows per round calculations. Once the calculations are well understood and perhaps rewritten (I might volunteer to do this if nobody beats me to it) a considered approach to reworking damage calculations could be possible.

I feel like much of angband's traditional combat mechanics could be salvaged by carefully recalculating the BPR table.

[Huqhox]

Hell, we could make Cambeleg be "+8 damage vs. evil" and the Paur* gauntlets be "+12 fire/frost/etc. damage". There's lots of room to play with different approaches.

I like that idea an awful lot. You could get *Enchant Weapon* to occasionally add a random +1 damage brand as well as the flat damage. The plain multipliers have always seemed very unsubtle and in some ways are opaque to new players (ie.e that different brands/slays have different multipliers and how they fit together)

Would the monster list need rebalancing for this though? Surely flat damage is going to result in utlimately less damage output for the player, certainly in late game. Although that might stop every class essentially turning into buffed warriors at end game and meleeing everything