Class penalties/restrictions that make sense

[Whelk]

One of more interesting flavour mechanics from Halls of Mist is templars paying a tithe though there you have limited dungeon levels.

The more tithes have been paid, the fewer townies spawn. Presumably the tithes are going toward helping the people, and more taken-care-of people means fewer ending up as thugs on the street (veterans, mercenaries, rogues, urchins) or having their ailments go untended and out of control (wretches, idiots). ... and toward finding homes or shelters for critters (mutts, cats).

I'd say let priests do this as well. But I don't know that this falls into this thread's purpose, since it's not really a restriction.

Taking all these factors into account, it just doesn't make sense to change the priest penalty to any other basis besides sharp weaponry.

This still doesn't cover the why of it, though. Why is sharp weapons a good thing to attach priest penalties to, other than "because that's how it's been before"? Is there a convincing thematic/lore reason for it? I realize Angband isn't a story-heavy game by any stretch of the word, but I still think things like this should have some sort of reasoning behind them.

[Moving Pictures]

Iron is the answer

Why not approach this from another angle?

Priest magic comes from the gods, not from warping the fabric of the universe, and myth has long held that iron interferes with magic - it's quite pervasive, in fact. All you need to implement this concept into Angband is have any standard iron/steel item interfere with the mana, *and* increase spell failure - possibly to a very significant degree. Using the idea that reconnecting with the Beyond takes time, one could place a delay on when failure and mana point penalties cease to curb the "I will unwield the Sword of Smite Enemies to regain low spell failure" tactic, at least somewhat. Thus, anything that is iron/steel will carry built-in penalties. Basically, the priest magic is diminished if there's a heavy presence of iron/steel, because the iron/steel interferes with the delivery of power from Beyond.

Working from that premise, it's easy to argue why swords (typically iron/metal) would be problematic. And the code tweaks for that would be just a few changes to text. The steel-affects-power-from-God angle would further give a logical explanation as to why priests would use blunt weapons, since most of those are wooden-handled things. There would need to be some changes, however, for consistency. Some "pointy" weapons would now be viable and not penalized. Example being spears - which are mostly wood - and likewise, axes. Launchers would still be viable, but those worried about game play could easily make the priest just plain-ass useless with launchers, fwiw.

But wait, there's more.

It also means - guess what? No iron/metal shields, no iron armor. No metal helms of telepathy (at least, not without severe penalties to mana points and spell failure.) So now priests are going to hunt for wicker shields, maces, leather caps and the like. Gauntlets are OK, caestus (caesti?) are not. Since, generally, the better AC comes from iron/metal items, priests will tend - at least in the early and middle game - to have less AC, thus more likely to be whacked. That somewhat counters for the fact they can heal whenever they blasted well want to.The exceptions in the heavy armor category would be the dragon armors and the mithril items as well. Now, mithril shields become a prize item for priests, no?

Now, let's give the coders a headache.
To improve on this idea, iron/steel items could carry a certain "mana penalty," which would be cumulative for the priest. Thus, the more iron/steel a priest carries, the worse their mana and spell failure will be. However, "blessed" items would stand to counter any such penalties, so a blessed mace (you have them) might have sufficient connect-with-God power as to counter that iron helm, or whatever. This would now mean that "blessed" would logically expand to armor: a "blessed" helm has been magicked such that it doesn't interfere as much (or at all) with the Power from Beyond.

This idea can also expend to Paladins, too. They would still be better fighters, natch, but have problems channeling the Great Beyond if armoured like tanks. I think Paladin spell points are just too .. well, there's too many of 'em, to be honest.

[Voovus]

Another suggestion, to avoid brutal class distinction (and which I don't claim to be better, just something to think about): make #attacks/round formula depend on the weapon type. For instance,

1. "Blunt" weapons rely mostly on Str,
2. "Pointy" weapons rely mostly on Dex,
3. Whatever else (axes, scythes...) use a balance of Str and Dex.

Then trolls and priests (give the latter a big Dex penalty) will typically want big blunt things. Mages, rogues, hobbits will want pointy things. Oh, and tweak the stats for dwarves so that they fall in love with their axes...

[Pete Mack]

@MP--
I thought paladins in particular should have a benefit of fighting with swords. Paladins are armed with (long) sword and lance in pretty much all fantasy (and in myth--certainly St George always was so armed in tapestries and the like.) This benefit can perhaps apply to anything with SLAY_UNDEAD, which is very much a priestly type brand.

[Derakon]

Another suggestion, to avoid brutal class distinction (and which I don't claim to be better, just something to think about): make #attacks/round formula depend on the weapon type. For instance,

1. "Blunt" weapons rely mostly on Str,
2. "Pointy" weapons rely mostly on Dex,
3. Whatever else (axes, scythes...) use a balance of Str and Dex.

Then trolls and priests (give the latter a big Dex penalty) will typically want big blunt things. Mages, rogues, hobbits will want pointy things. Oh, and tweak the stats for dwarves so that they fall in love with their axes...

We tried something along these lines in the old, misleadingly-named "v4" variant, which was a trial ground for a bunch of ideas that the dev team of the time was playing with. Weapons would get a damage multiplier based on your "prowess" (a primarily STR-based skill), which multiplier depended on the weapon and was bigger for mauls, hammers, axes, etc. And the number of blows you got was based on your "finesse" (a primarily DEX-based skill) which multiplier also depended on the weapon and was higher for lightweight weapons like daggers and rapiers.

The basic concept worked OK and could probably have been fleshed out into something that worked well. There were a number of confounding factors that made test results hard to interpret, due to a couple of bad choices I made when implementing (numbers were 10x larger and 10% as meaningful) and the fact that the changed melee system was cohabiting with a radical redesign of ego items.

But there were two concerns that I don't think ever really got adequately addressed. First, right now anyone that wants to melee needs both STR and DEX. Allowing one stat to become a dump stat makes character builds too easy. Second, every weapon that does not benefit from your chosen stat now becomes junk.

[bunnies]

Apologies in advance for being a negative nancy, but I dislike some suggestions in this thread. IMO they come from a thematic POV, rather than a design POV.

Class penalties, and class buffs, should be used in line with how classes are designed to be played, and they should play a role in encouraging the player to adopt this playstyle. To this effect, we should start with the class design first and foremost, before jumping into thematic class restrictions. I'll give some existing good and bad examples (IMO).

Mage
Mages are designed to be squishy casters, with all the control and utility in the world and an array of damage spells, but piss poor at melee and range.
To this end, they are only given max 4.0 blows per round and poor fight/bow skill.
In addition, we also want them to have relatively low AC during the early mid game (in line with the bad-at-melee design). Thus, they're given a massive STR penalty. This discourages heavy armour and carrying too much utlity, which overencumbers our PC. Also, heavy armour reduces max SP. This strongly encourages the player to adopt a shoot and scoot playstyle (at least in the early game).

However, I'm not a fan of the glove penalty for mages, which feels more like a thematic penalty than a design penalty. To the player, it means skipping gloves and losing the AC bonus from them in the early game, which is really insignificant. What might make more sense though (from a design standpoint), is to give all gloves a small to-hit and to-damage bonus, in return for reducing max SP. This tells the spellcaster that gloves are meant for fighting, although later caster type (currently FA/Dex) gloves are introduced.

Priest
Priests are currently designed to be average fighters with massive buffs against evil and undead. They have the best sustain in the game (heals/restoration), and good detection (enlightment). Since they're kitted specifically against evil/undead, we want them to actively hunt them out. We want them to jump into undead pits and 'Dispel Undead'. We want them to 'ProtEvil', 'Prayer', 'Glyph', and go toe to toe against evil monsters, healing and restoring themselves as required. (At least, this is what I got from their kit. I'm still not sure whether they're supposed to be OOD spellcasters or weak fighters with buffs against evil)

In order to encourage this gameplay style, we have the Blessed flag. Blessed weapons almost all have WIS bonuses / SLAY_EVIL / SLAY_UNDEAD. In addition Priests receive no penalty from Blessed weapons. My only gripe is that this isn't always consistent, and it might be better to merge Blessed with SlayEvil/Undead i.e. priests receive no penalty OR receive a bonus for using weapons with SlayEvil/Undead.

However, I don't like the blunt weapon restriction, which feel like a tacky thematic add-on. It's consistent from a D&D POV, but I have no idea how to reconcile it from a gameplay design POV. Whats the difference from a gameplay perspective if a Priest is forced to use a 2d4 Mace instead of a 2d5 Broadsword besides slightly different damage dice?

TLDR
Start with a description of how the class is meant to be played, then design restriction or buffs based off that.

[edit] I realise some similar points have been made in previous posts, sorry just skimmed through without fully reading through

[Derakon]

No worries, thanks for the well-thought-out post that does a good job of reminding us all that we should be concerned with how the classes play over how well they hew to some supposed theme. Not that theme is irrelevant, but good gameplay is (usually) more important.

[EpicMan]

The big gameplay effect of the blunt restriction is that priests can only use a subset (25%? 30%?) of the weapons in the game. For every other class the blunt/sword/polearm distinction is purely cosmetic.

[bunnies]

The big gameplay effect of the blunt restriction is that priests can only use a subset (25%? 30%?) of the weapons in the game. For every other class the blunt/sword/polearm distinction is purely cosmetic.

Yes, I fully acknowledge that thats the effect, but what's the cause? How does it tie back to the design of priests being 'evil slayers'? It feels like a by-product of it's D&D influences when it was first conceived in the 90's. Given that it's nearly thirty years later, and a big class rework is coming up, should we relook it's design?

[edit] I'm not saying priest/bladed weapons restriction should be redesigned or removed entirely, given how long this design has been around and ingrained in players. Just that moving forward, we should give a little more thought into making these decisions

[Sky]

I would be very much worried if in the future we had a mage that has half the spells it used to have, is capped at 250dps using daggers only, capped at 120 AC using robe only, and still getting SP penalties.

Thing is, in Angband, all classes are similar.
Every class can heal, every class can phase. Every class can TS and TO. Every class uses ranged, ESP, banish, destroy, every class can map, identify, detect. Everyone uses stealth and everyone can melee.

Some classes do some things better, cheaper, sooner. But there is no class specific thing that another can't replicate. You won't leasurely be MBanishing undead pits as a rogue, but you can still burn a scroll if you really need to.

The game depends on it. If you stray too far, you will wind up with several different games, instead of one game with different approaches.

[EpicMan]

Yes, I fully acknowledge that thats the effect, but what's the cause? How does it tie back to the design of priests being 'evil slayers'? It feels like a by-product of it's D&D influences when it was first conceived in the 90's. Given that it's nearly thirty years later, and a big class rework is coming up, should we relook it's design?

[edit] I'm not saying priest/bladed weapons restriction should be redesigned or removed entirely, given how long this design has been around and ingrained in players. Just that moving forward, we should give a little more thought into making these decisions

The cause is nothing more than Moria copying D&D, and maybe a desire to weaken priest melee? I think in Moria it also applied to Paladins as well.

It would probably be more consistent to just weaken priest melee ability (to mage level?) and remove the restriction.

[Voovus]

The cause is nothing more than Moria copying D&D, and maybe a desire to weaken priest melee? I think in Moria it also applied to Paladins as well.

I'm pretty sure Moria didn't have edged weapon penalties for priests - it was one of the surprises for me when I took up Angband a few years ago. I find it doesn't make much difference, though this rule feels to me more like "clutter" than "atmosphere".

[EpicMan]

Looking at some old Moria sites (https://beej.us/moria/ etc) since I don't have the game at the moment I see this line in the Priest description: "Priests have good saving throws, and make decent fighters, preferring blunt weapons over edged ones."

But I can't find any mention of an actual penalty for using any weapons, nor for mages wearing gloves, or even heavy armor penalties to SP (the to-hit penalties are there). Are all of these Angband additions?

[SethaWetha]

But I can't find any mention of an actual penalty for using any weapons, nor for mages wearing gloves, or even heavy armor penalties to SP (the to-hit penalties are there). Are all of these Angband additions?

I've played a lot of Moria and the glove casting penalty and heavy armor SP penalty are Angband additions. I don't believe priest has a edged weapon penalty in Moria but I only played priest once.

[Sphara]

I've played a lot of Moria and the glove casting penalty and heavy armor SP penalty are Angband additions. I don't believe priest has a edged weapon penalty in Moria but I only played priest once.

Tried Moria online and wielding a stiletto as a priest didn't make any game play effect.