Blackguards: 4.2.0 to 4.2.1

[DavidMedley]

Is it the weapons damage plus some bonus based on weight?

I think I anticipated this response with my edit above. Heavier weapons do more damage per blow. You can see this in the weapon's stats. BG spells do a fixed amount of blows without regard to weight. Therefore heavier weapons generally work better with BG spells.

[archolewa]

Ok. Well, my latest mage bit the dust, so I figured I'd try another High Elf Blackguard, this time (mostly) prioritizing weapon weight over damage per round, and dropping Dex down a few points and pumping int instead. I actually dropped Dex down as low as I could while still getting 1.3 blows with my starting Tulwar, and pumped Int up to 18. Maybe a bit excessive, but hey, figured why not.

So far at least, things have been going *much* more smoothly, and the character is playing *much* more like a brutal, hard-to-kill berserker. Survived an early Deep Descent quite handily, including killing Lagduf with the help of a wand of stinking cloud, and have been chewing through the orc uniques (including Azog when I accidentally summoned him with a Wand of Summon Monster) like I do with paladin and warrior.

So yeah, dropping Dex and pumping Int made a huge difference. Don't know that weapon weight has mattered all that much (though I did find some heavy weapons early, first a Battle Axe, and then a Lance both of which I used quite effectively), since by the time I hit level 20, I found Forsagil, but even with that I'm only swinging 1.1 times.

So after all of this run around, I think the takeaway is that we should tweak the default point buy for Blackguards when rolling up a character. Dex should be de-prioritized in favor of Int. Those extra points make a *huge* difference in spell failure rate, which seems to me to pretty very critical for Blackguard, since with unreliable spells, they're just a crappier fighter. But with reliable spells they're tougher than Treebeard.

[DavidMedley]

Glad it's going better. I like the suggestion to change the default buy. I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it a few pages ago. I don't know how to do that, but it's a good idea. Way more people than I would have thought use the default buy.

[DavidMedley]

A couple months ago I was watching someone play a half-troll BG with the default point buy so he had an INT of 6. He's like "I don't find the BG spells that useful!"

[Sphara]

Took this same character with the same horrible kit to CL20 and defeated Shagrat on the first try as well. I remembered to use =Open Wounds this time

Even though you had manipulated AC to be as high as 70, beating Shagrat with 1.3 attack +0+0 Tulwar, should tell people how goddamn strong spell Maim is.

If you REALLY want to have bad times with early orc uniques, try a Necromancer

[DavidMedley]

manipulated AC

??

I didn't try to manipulate anything. Is the body armor too good?

[Sphara]

??

I didn't try to manipulate anything. Is the body armor too good?

For your experiment, the character AC was crafted to be 70 by debug commands. I guess 'manipulated' was a wrong choice of word then, if it really sounded rude to you.

[DavidMedley]

I just wanted it to be fair. I conjured up all the XP and the villains as well. But I don't think many CL 15s will be jealous of the equipment.

[Cuboideb]

Thank you David for your tip about Maim Foe. I didn't realized that it was so useful for starting the game. I reached dlvl 20 quite fast with it (half-elf with focus in STR and INT).

[wobbly]

Glad it's going better. I like the suggestion to change the default buy. I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it a few pages ago. I don't know how to do that, but it's a good idea. Way more people than I would have thought use the default buy.

There's something fishy going on in the default pt buy. This is what it supposedly does:

* 0. buy base STR 17
 * 1. if possible buy adj DEX of 18/10
 * 2. spend up to half remaining points on each of spell-stat and con, 
 *    but only up to max base of 16 unless a pure class 
 *    [mage or priest or warrior]
 * 3. If there are any points left, spend as much as possible in order 
 *    on DEX and then the non-spell-stat.

What actually happens when I test in-game is every class gets 17 str & 18 dex except the pure casters.

[DavidMedley]

Is Necro a pure class?

[wobbly]

It's defining it as
> 5 blows = warrior
< 5 blows = caster

[Nick]

It seems like it might be a good idea to include the default starting stats in the datafile for classes, since blackguards have completely broken the (already fairly dodgy) algorithm for assigning them. This won't be completely straightforward, because race has an effect as well. Possibly the datafile should have priorities for the algorithm rather than straight points.

Thoughts?

[archolewa]

Ok, so just pulled off my first Blackguard win (character: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=23703).

I say pulled off, but the fight against Morgoth wasn't particularly long or close despite making a few mistakes
(forgot to bring scrolls of Phase Door). Here's my analysis of the class:

Overall, it was a very fun game that did a good job from beginning to end of capturing the hyper resilient berserker vibe.

Early game, the Blackguard's strength over the paladin or warrior is that they can heal a little while still attacking.
Being able to hit an enemy at full damage while effectively reducing your enemy's attack to scratch damage was huge. This is
also why focusing on Strength and Intelligence is so important. Blackguards are as dependent on reliable spells as mages.

Mid and endgame, the Blackguard's strength is that they always have full SP. Always. By dungeon level 50, I was at or
near full SP almost the entire time, and even if I wasn't, a few rounds with enemies got me up to full real fast. Being perpetually at full SP is huge. This made the Blackguard's midgame *much* stronger than the Warrior or Paladin's. This was also the first game I've ever used an item that aggravates enemies (the Chaos Blade Doombringer). Was a *lot* of fun before being slightly outshone by a Holy Avenger Mace of Disruption.

My fight against Morgoth was also very dynamic. I avoided using Werewolf against him at first, because I didn't want to spend two turns healing (drink potion, cast werewolf). Especially since the endgame was very stingy with healing potions. The last thing I wanted was tobe locked in a cycle of Werewolf-heal-Werewolf-heal. I cast Berserk a bunch of times before Morgoth got to me for the extra accuracy (every little bit helps, and an endgame Blackguard's spells are basically free). The first half of the fight was me whaling on Morgoth while periodically stunning him with Maiming Blow, while he danced around my Rune of Protection. Once I was out of runes, I would send Morgoth flying with Forceful Blow, pepper him with arrows of Holy Might while Taunting him, and then do it again when he got close. Once I ran out of arrows, I went full werewolf and swung him down (used all my Healing and better potions too! Not that I had many). I even used Howl of the Damned once to scatter some of his summons.

Now that I think about it though, I probably should have gone werewolf from the beginning. When I needed to heal, I should have shifted back, healed, sent Morgoth flying with Forceful Blow, and then gone back to Werewolf when he was one move away.

All in all, I was impressed by the number of spells I ended up using against Morgoth.

Some thoughts on some of the more noteworthy spells:

Leap into Battle - Used a lot in the early game, less by the time I got Werewolf. Was used mostly for the extra healing, and to hunt down a fleeing foe. Closing on a hostile enemy is just rarely a good idea, when they're perfectly happy to walk up to you themselves.

Whirlwind - Great against packs of Dreads, and for chewing through popcorn quickly. Nothing quite so satisfying as having four Dreads surround you in a corridor, and watching all four G's vanish with a single spell. Mostly niche though. Getting surrounded is usually a bad idea even if you can hit them all at once.

Shatter Stone - Not sure if this, or Werewolf is my MVP. Once I hit floor 50 and had basically infinite SP, I used this all the time. I used it to close on enemies, bypass enemies, carve out anti-summoning corridors for facing enemies. I used it to keep the space around me clear while fighting Morgoth so that I could dodge the ceiling.

Maim Foe - Another great spell. Used it every opportunity I could get, and made most stunnable Uniques utter chumps (Sauron and Morgoth still put up good fights though).

Venom - Great when it was useful, but so many enemies resist poison that it was fairly niche. Still, I briefly had the Glaive of Pain, and being able to do 1000 damage to enemies who aren't resistant to poison was awesome. Even with my MoD, I was doing north of 700. Made greater titans actually worth killing.

Howl of the Damned - Didn't use very often. I can see its merit in crowd control, but I generally prefer to avoid crowds that I need to control (as opposed to slaughter mercilessly).

Relentless Taunting - Situational, but the situations came up frequently. Used this a lot against Hounds, and against a couple of uniques comboed with Forceful Blow. Also, does Relentless Taunting do anything when an enemy is in melee range? Does it increase the chances that an enemy will melee you rather than breathing or casting spells?

Werewolf Form - Awesome spell. Loved the flavor of how transforming inflicted fear on enemies. My standard pattern against uniques was to stun them, shift to werewolf form, and go to town. Usually I was able to kill them before the stun went down.

Bloodlust - Eh. I could see how some people might like this spell, but I found the drawbacks way too severe. There were just too many ways that hallucination, being slowed, or randomly attacking an opponent whether I wanted to or not could go wrong. Only times I used this was against uniques that I wasn't too worried about that I wanted to swing down a bit faster to hopefully cut down on consumable use/destruction.

Forceful Blow - At first, this spell looked like a dud to me. The damage wasn't *that* impressive. Not when you're swinging a MoD (Holy Avenger) 5 times every attack. Plus, why would you *want* your enemy to leave melee range? Blackguards are at their best in melee! However, then I realized that Makar the Warrior only has melee attacks. So against him I proceeded to knock him across the room, pepper him with arrows, and then knock him across the room again. Don't think he attacked me once. I also used this plus Relentless Taunting against Morgoth and Gothmog to great effect.

Quake - This felt like a dud to me. The types of situations where it might be useful were situations I avoided entirely (i.e. closing on an enemy across an empty room). Plus, the LOS blocking really didn't seem to be that good. For one thing, it was too random. Too good a chance that that really nasty Wyrm of Annihilation you don't want to see you would still be able to do so after casting it. Certainly it wasn't anywhere near as good as Destruction. I tried using this against Maeglin to see if it could help me keep his summons under control, but an anti-summoning corridor was still better, despite his tendency to punch holes in it.

All in all, I think the class is very powerful and a lot of fun. Definitely one of the more fun and interesting berserker style classes I've seen in roguelikes.

[archolewa]

It seems like it might be a good idea to include the default starting stats in the datafile for classes, since blackguards have completely broken the (already fairly dodgy) algorithm for assigning them. This won't be completely straightforward, because race has an effect as well. Possibly the datafile should have priorities for the algorithm rather than straight points.

Thoughts?

Any reason you couldn't just manually assign default starting stats for humans in the data file, and then programmatically apply the modifiers that the other races provide?