Class/magic feature branch

[wobbly]

Oangband-style combat makes the bonuses be a multiplier of the dice, but it's also famously opaque so it's hard to figure out how a given number changes your actual damage done. But no, I don't think anyone has tried capping enchantment based on dice.

Yep it's got stuff that makes you bash more or less with the shield if your weapons weak too. Got a rogue that's gotten decent at the hitting part that hasn't had an impressive weapon all game. Still not sure I'm not just shield-bashing everything to death.

[Derakon]

Has any experimental variant tried rebasing the enchantment range to be a function of weapon dice rather than 'about 10'?

So you would be looking at 1d4+4 vs 3d4+12?

Wouldnt stop you leaving home with a dagger, but at least the better weapons would bias heavier...

Oangband-style combat makes the bonuses be a multiplier of the dice, but it's also famously opaque so it's hard to figure out how a given number changes your actual damage done. But no, I don't think anyone has tried capping enchantment based on dice.

[wobbly]

Specifically? Not sure. Crawl has bigger bonuses on big weapons & T4 has %stat instead of dice

[kaypy]

Has any experimental variant tried rebasing the enchantment range to be a function of weapon dice rather than 'about 10'?

So you would be looking at 1d4+4 vs 3d4+12?

Wouldnt stop you leaving home with a dagger, but at least the better weapons would bias heavier...

[Sky]

Ye ye whatever. Ive been DM since 1984 (age:12) and we've banged our heads countless times on people casually carrying around a 10ft pole, you sure dont need to tell me about encumberance.

Despite this, dnd gives multiple attacks to high level players, whereas STR only affects tohit/dmg calculations. But the way Angband works ..

Look. Ideally, we would have this: a scale where weapon weight and damage increase equally, with a slight skewer in favour of damage, at the exchange of possibly missing a blow.

This is because its very easy to find magical weapons. And hitting is also easy. In dnd, a +4 magic bonus is MASSIVE and likely to only result in hits on the level-appropriate monsters you face (for warriors, that is).

In Angband, you can easily find a 1d4 +10 dagger that you get 3 attacks with, but the equivalent heavy weapon is 3d4 +10, NOT 3d4 +30. In fact magic bonuses are more relevant than slays or brands until past midgame when big hitters come into play and the bonuses curve levels off at around +18.

From a practical standpoint - once you have rBase from elvenkind, and have all your starting gear ready - there is a number of weapon artifacts you always discard, like the orc slayers, because you simply do far more damage with a dagger of fire brand.

And by the time you are capped at 5 or 6 blows, you are already in Aglarang/Anduril territory. You would have to be VERY unlucky to be using Til-y-arc for damage once you are 18/100 in STR and DEX.

However, if you wizard a CL50 char with 18/*** and look at the artifact list, you will see that Elvagil and Aeglin ARE in fact stronger that the daggers, its just that, for practical reasons, this doesnt happen to the player, because stat increase does not develop in the same way that rarity drop does.

[luneya]

Its not that the thancs are great but rather that by the silly way blows work, you find better weapons when you cannot use them, and by the time you *can* use them, you have found even better stuff.

A real life katana is around 2.5 pounds.

None of the object weights are realistic when considered as actual weights--not just weapons, but every single object in the game. They're derived from the old D&D encumbrance tables, and are intended as a measure of how inconvenient an object is to carry. Think of an object's game weight as being something like a sum of its actual weight and its volume. Things that are small and dense are easier to carry around than bulky objects of equivalent mass, and the displayed weight reflects this.

This encumbrance system actually works pretty well as a model of how much stuff a character can carry in his backpack before it slows him down, since in the real world that certainly does depend on both weight and volume. For weapons that are actually being wielded rather than merely carried, it's totally unrealistic, but it still serves a useful gameplay function in making it so that there are meaningful distinctions between different types of weapon.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Its not that the thancs are great but rather that by the silly way blows work, you find better weapons when you cannot use them, and by the time you *can* use them, you have found even better stuff.

A real life katana is around 2.5 pounds.

+1 Yes! Totally agree.

[Sky]

Its not that the thancs are great but rather that by the silly way blows work, you find better weapons when you cannot use them, and by the time you *can* use them, you have found even better stuff.

A real life katana is around 2.5 pounds.

[kaypy]

I also think that for most of the dual element spells, it ought to inflict all damage before handling monster death.

The exceptions are where the spell explicitly calls for sequential attacks, most notably Meteor Swarm. However, Lightning Strike is also described as sequential, so now might not have been the best time to raise the issue 8-)

Oh, and also on LS, its odd that it does more sound damage than lightning...

[Nick]

The druid lightning strike spell has a weird effect where if the initial strike kills the target, then the sound burst lands at the player instead.

Hmm, maybe that needs some work.

On the necromancer side of things, it seems odd that Morgoth has no spirit.

That's definitely an omission.

[kaypy]

The druid lightning strike spell has a weird effect where if the initial strike kills the target, then the sound burst lands at the player instead.

On the necromancer side of things, it seems odd that Morgoth has no spirit.

[Derakon]

As I recall, Oangband also uses the dice as the basis for all damage, so going to 1d5 is about a 20% damage boost compared to 1d4 assuming enchantment level is held constant. But yeah, making their dice slightly better would help them stand out more.

[Philip]

Oangband actually had a very simple and elegant fix for *thancs not seeming special enough. In O they are dice-boosted to 1d5. Not really a game-changer, even with the way damage works in O, but it does make them stand out a bit, at least to newer players (more experienced players know that an activation for 6-8d8 damage or so, which you can use at least once per fight, is impressive enough).

[Derakon]

Well, my memory is superior in one respect, then. Or maybe I've just been around longer.

But seriously, an artifact you can semi-reliably find very early on that does 3d4+6 damage per blow against most targets, and has an activation for a reasonably powerful ranged attack, is bonkers good for the first 20 levels. Doubling its damage (3d4+6 -> 6d4+12) makes it viable through level 40 and strips out pretty much any opportunity for the player to find intermediary upgrades that aren't artifacts.

I assume the upgrades happened because people kept complaining about finding *thancs and feeling like they weren't special enough (since they're basically just branded daggers with an activation). Of course they aren't special, they're level-1 artifacts!

[Nick]

Minor note: thancs had been 2d4 (+4,+6) for as long as i can remember, until the bonuses were doubled, but enchantment scrolls were removed from the stores. (+6,+8) or so would be about the right compromise to make up for eliminating easy enchantment.

Version 3.0.4 improved them from 1d4 (+4,+6) to 2d4 (+4,+6).