Class/magic feature branch

[Nick]

How's this for an odd, difficult to reproduce bug, well two bugs actually. In an orb vault, @ paladin meets up with Huan and chooses to fight him in "Single Combat" to avoid fighting multiple monsters at once that were gathering behind. Defeating Huan, @ finds himself teleported out of the vault to the other side of the dungeon... right next to Carcaroth! Not to be dissuaded by this odd teleporting bug, @ chooses to fight Carcaroth in "Single Combat" as well, to negate his Hound summons. @ defeats Carcaroth as well, but this time @ is left stuck in the Single Combat arena. The monster is dead and @ is relegated to spend eternity in the vault, or until he dies from starvation.

OK, that's not ideal - even if it feels vaguely poetic. Maybe it has something to do with starting in a vault. I'll look into it.

[jevansau]

Played through a hobbit mage on build 206.
Obviously this is a very fragile stealth based character for most of the game, but the progression felt pretty good. I think I found books 4 and 5 at levels 40 and 59 which seemed about right.
I think I used all the spells at some point, but acid spray was rarely the best alternative, and explosion is just less useful then sound ball for twice the price.
Recharging now does seem to blow stuff up sometimes, which is OK.
To me, the spells now seem pretty good overall.

On other notes, traps actually seem a bit too sparse now.
And I didn't see any greater vaults after getting Banishment , although there seemed a reasonable amount earlier.

[mrfy]

Won with my blackguard character, ladder dump is here. Sauron was tough, didn't have enough banish scrolls with me so I just slugged it out with him. Morgoth wasn't too bad, fought him in a circular room with some annihilation wands and arrows. I used a lot of phase door, and mass banish scrolls.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Bug: When casting Rune of Protection or using scroll for same, many times if an item is underfoot, no rune is created. If cast again, then a rune is created. This is not the same as spell failure, there is no failure notice. It used to be that items underfoot were moved out of the way (or destroyed if there was no room to move them to) and the rune was created. What changed? Was this intentional? If intentional, then it seems to me there should be some kind of failure notice.

[Nick]

Bug: When casting Rune of Protection or using scroll for same, many times if an item is underfoot, no rune is created. If cast again, then a rune is created. This is not the same as spell failure, there is no failure notice. It used to be that items underfoot were moved out of the way (or destroyed if there was no room to move them to) and the rune was created. What changed? Was this intentional? If intentional, then it seems to me there should be some kind of failure notice.

Not intentional, sounds like a bug. A savefile would be handy if you can be bothered.

I haven't been able to track down your single combat bug yet.

[PowerWyrm]

Any reason to play a plain Warrior with this branch? I've played Blackguard and Paladin during the last comp and I don't seen any reason to play a Warrior again seeing how better these two classes are now.

[geoff_tewierik]

Any reason to play a plain Warrior with this branch? I've played Blackguard and Paladin during the last comp and I don't seen any reason to play a Warrior again seeing how better these two classes are now.

Give them the option to dual wield weapons? I recall this being a thing in the past in a variant?

[Nick]

Any reason to play a plain Warrior with this branch? I've played Blackguard and Paladin during the last comp and I don't seen any reason to play a Warrior again seeing how better these two classes are now.

I wouldn't regard this branch as finished yet.

[Derakon]

Give them the option to dual wield weapons? I recall this being a thing in the past in a variant?

I've always found dual-wielding to be pretty silly, so personally I would prefer some other means of differentiation. Plus, the game gets awfully easy once you're dealing more than a certain percentage of your enemies' HP in damage per turn, so boosting offense is something to be done with care.

[Pete Mack]

At the very least, bring back the extra attack (and reduce max blows to 5.) The 6th blow is currently a mirage for HT and Dwarf, and isn't easy to get with many endgame weapons for other races.

[Derakon]

At the very least, bring back the extra attack (and reduce max blows to 5.) The 6th blow is currently a mirage for HT and Dwarf, and isn't easy to get with many endgame weapons for other races.

To reiterate a suggestion I made awhile back: give everyone the same blows formula, but penalize mages and priests 1 blow (to a minimum of 1/round), and give warriors a flat +1 blow starting from level 20 or 25 or something. Thus the pure casters would need to work extra hard to get their second blow/round since they'd have to get to where the formula is outputting 3 blows; meanwhile, warriors get max blows as easily as everyone else does, their max is just better.

[Carnivean]

I've always found dual-wielding to be pretty silly, so personally I would prefer some other means of differentiation. Plus, the game gets awfully easy once you're dealing more than a certain percentage of your enemies' HP in damage per turn, so boosting offense is something to be done with care.

Does it work better when you have to choose between a second weapon and a shield? Especially if you start making AC more relevant.

[Huqhox]

To reiterate a suggestion I made awhile back: give everyone the same blows formula, but penalize mages and priests 1 blow (to a minimum of 1/round), and give warriors a flat +1 blow starting from level 20 or 25 or something. Thus the pure casters would need to work extra hard to get their second blow/round since they'd have to get to where the formula is outputting 3 blows; meanwhile, warriors get max blows as easily as everyone else does, their max is just better.

This sounds good to me

[Pete Mack]

If you cut blows by one,
1. what does it do to +blows weapons?
2. Multiplier may need adjusting, since full casters are already pretty strongly penalized here.

[Derakon]

Does it work better when you have to choose between a second weapon and a shield? Especially if you start making AC more relevant.

I have never seen a game where a shield was worth more than increasing your damage output by 50% or more. Plenty have tried, none have succeeded.

If you cut blows by one,
1. what does it do to +blows weapons?
2. Multiplier may need adjusting, since full casters are already pretty strongly penalized here.

1. I guess +blows would need to apply after the -1 blow from being a pure caster.
2. Multiplier would be the same for all characters, just where the formula outputs 3 a pure caster would get 2 and a warrior (once high-enough level) would get 4.