Blackguards: 4.2.1 to 4.2.2 (and beyond?)

[Nick]

Let me make a few tweaks. I'll save the rest for the next version. End of this weekend a good deadline?

For you, yes - for me, I make no promises.

[DavidMedley]

Haha, yes, I was only deadlining myself

[DavidMedley]

How Many Turns of Stunning?

This is going to be a bit rambly as I'm vocalizing my inner dialogue. Also, I'm referencing the nightly not 4.2.1 stable.

I'm making some tweaks right now. One open question is: How many turns of stunning should Maim Foe give?

I introduced the spell with 1d5+5 turns, same as the wand. Nick introduced a really nice feature that I wanted all along, which is that it only stuns when the associated blow(s) hit. He also cut the turns of stun down to 3. The intention was it would be 3 turns per hit, but stun doesn't stack like that, so instead it's 3 turns if any blows hit.

I think 3 is way too low, but what is the right amount? I am currently experimenting with 6 (because I don't have to program anything if I just change the number, heh). But I think it's still too low. My premise is that casting the spell should be a little better than using the wand against an adjacent foe. Here's a calculation I just did, presuming you want to keep a foe stunned:

CL16 Human 13 INT 32% 1.0 blows ~90% chance to hit
wand: 1 8.6% fail->1.095 turns wanding 7 turns attacking = 0.79 blows/turn
spell: 32% fail + 10% miss->1.47 turns casting 5 turns attacking +1 from cast -- 0.80 blows/turn

Some things not included:
- Wand takes inventory
- Wand can be used from distance
- Wand charges cost small amounts of money
- Maim takes SP
- Maim gives small HP healing
- Turns when enemy is not stunned the player takes extra damage
- Bump attack blow grants chance for shield bash and 5% of max SP
- Shield bash may stun which can go to waste or eliminate need for wand/cast
- Monster (or player) will die, wasting any remaining stun

At level 16 not having to buy or pay to recharge a wand is a really big factor. Something I was thinking about way back when was that spells that don't activate if you miss your blow(s) could have lower casting difficulty, so that's probably part of the solution here. Also it's not unusual for a half-caster to not be able to get much use out of a spell that just became available. So at this level it probably *shouldn't* beat using a wand, but it should be a viable choice.

BG spells that only do something when blow(s) land:
- Whirlwind Attack
- Maim Foe
- Forceful Blow
- (partially) Leap into Battle

Any thoughts are welcome.

[DavidMedley]

CL16 Human with a heavy weapon and 1.0 blows is not the seminal test case, it's just where I'm at on my current play-through.

[malcontent]

Quick question I've been meaning to ask that is kind of related to Blackguards...

I apologize if it has already been answered, my searching did not find an answer.

Blackguards can taunt, which aggravates monsters and makes them less likely to use a ranged attack. My question is - is this true for all sorts of aggravation in Angband????? When equipment aggravates monsters, are they less likely to use a ranged attack?

[DavidMedley]

No, that's taunt only. And taunt doesn't aggravate (though that's something I've considered).

[DavidMedley]

Update on Maim deliberations: 6 turns seems pretty reasonable, actually. I'm not trying to tinker with anything that will require a lot of testing or introduce bugs. Just trying to get to "good enough for now."

Did find a pretty interesting bug, though, where Maim was actually guaranteeing X hits instead of giving X blows. I'll have that bugfix up sometime today.

[archolewa]

I dont think Taunt should aggravate. One thing I discovered wielding Doombringer as a Blackguard was just how situationally useful Aggravate us, especially for a Blackguard, which is probably the class thats best at dealing with waves of monsters, with the possible exception of Priest. Its especially good for luring monsters out of vaults.

So, I feel like having a temporart source of aggravation would be incredibly powerful and attaching it to a spell that is already incredibliy good is probably too much. If we wanted to attach Aggravate to something, Im inclined to say it should be attached to a spell that is already less powerful (maaybe Howl of the Damned, though I dont know how that interacts with fear).

[DavidMedley]

Another Maim Foe thought experiment:
Human BG CL:28 INT:12 1.6 blows
Wand 93% success->1.075 turns to stun, 7*1.6=11.2 blows / 8.075 turns = 1.39
Maim 88% success * 90% to hit->1.26 turns to stun, (5*1.6=8 blows + 1) / 6.26 turns = 1.44

So as the fail rate drops it eventually gets better than using a wand, with all the caveats above. And at CL30 it increases to 2 blows, around the time blows are climbing due to stat gain.

[Estie]

Well I played blackguard and it was not an enjoyable experience.

In the early game, he is a cripple; I was carrying 2 stacks of 40 !clw and recalled when they were used up. Instead of a simple pressing of the rest key, I must click the "drink clw" macro multiple times and keep an eye on satiation.

His spell set, when it eventually comes online, is worse than a warriors. A detect monster spell that cant be used before you fight something ? How is that going to be useful. I carried the book because I wanted to play "as intended", but on top I was also carrying a staff of detect evil, like a warrior, to have some reliable detection at the time I need it - that is _before_ I start exploring and looking for trouble. If I was forced to play again, I wouldnt bother with the book.

Similar for berserk rage. Instead of a reliable stack of potions that I can drink before the fight starts, with no fail chance, while confused, blind and oom, I am supposed to use the spell with the exact same effect but which comes with a long list of drawbacks ? What is the idea here ?

So I made it to the endgame, 40ish clvl, 140 int, all books studied and ready to kill some high end uniques. For that, I want to buff up, right ? That means I must make sure I fight something weak first to get mana, then cast buffs in the right order - Werewolf last otherwise I cant do anymore casting - and even though I never touched bloodlust (I only saw the -speed detriment, maybe there are more - the description is vague, but thats plenty to stop me from ever using that spell), the mana requirements combined with the fail chance is such that I would run oom often before finishing the buffing sequence. So I just fought without werewolf active, which is better anyway if I also want to debuff the unique.

All this is far too intricate and prone to failure a procedure to be an effective tool for advancing the purpose of winning the game. You can play that way, you might even enjoy it, but its like playing a bookless artifactless hobbit mage - purely an exercise, refusing to take advantage of the tools at hand.

So after going through the tedium of yet another buff round to engage Drauglin, my casting of werewolf form failed (again), I retried, accidentally clicked yes when prompted to confirm a casting attempt with not enough mana and watched while Drauglin mauled my paralyzed self. I am not sorry it ended there.

We got rid of the endless identification sessions with rune id, and I am grateful for that; I find playing blackuard in the lategame an ordeal of similar magnitude.

[Selkie]

Well I played blackguard and it was not an enjoyable experience.

In the early game, he is a cripple; I was carrying 2 stacks of 40 !clw and recalled when they were used up. Instead of a simple pressing of the rest key, I must click the "drink clw" macro multiple times and keep an eye on satiation.

His spell set, when it eventually comes online, is worse than a warriors. A detect monster spell that cant be used before you fight something ? How is that going to be useful. I carried the book because I wanted to play "as intended", but on top I was also carrying a staff of detect evil, like a warrior, to have some reliable detection at the time I need it - that is _before_ I start exploring and looking for trouble. If I was forced to play again, I wouldnt bother with the book.

Similar for berserk rage. Instead of a reliable stack of potions that I can drink before the fight starts, with no fail chance, while confused, blind and oom, I am supposed to use the spell with the exact same effect but which comes with a long list of drawbacks ? What is the idea here ?

So I made it to the endgame, 40ish clvl, 140 int, all books studied and ready to kill some high end uniques. For that, I want to buff up, right ? That means I must make sure I fight something weak first to get mana, then cast buffs in the right order - Werewolf last otherwise I cant do anymore casting - and even though I never touched bloodlust (I only saw the -speed detriment, maybe there are more - the description is vague, but thats plenty to stop me from ever using that spell), the mana requirements combined with the fail chance is such that I would run oom often before finishing the buffing sequence. So I just fought without werewolf active, which is better anyway if I also want to debuff the unique.

All this is far too intricate and prone to failure a procedure to be an effective tool for advancing the purpose of winning the game. You can play that way, you might even enjoy it, but its like playing a bookless artifactless hobbit mage - purely an exercise, refusing to take advantage of the tools at hand.

So after going through the tedium of yet another buff round to engage Drauglin, my casting of werewolf form failed (again), I retried, accidentally clicked yes when prompted to confirm a casting attempt with not enough mana and watched while Drauglin mauled my paralyzed self. I am not sorry it ended there.

We got rid of the endless identification sessions with rune id, and I am grateful for that; I find playing blackuard in the lategame an ordeal of similar magnitude.

Your experience is very different from mine.

You say you spammed CLW, and you also say you hardly bothered with spells in the first book. But casting spells in combat recovers HP really quickly. I was attacking using leap into battle on every attack I could.

Also you can charge your SP on pitiful beggars in the town before diving. This means you will always have enough mana for detect fear.

I never used the rest action. All it would do is drain all my mana. Instead I was really proactive in seeking fights, this was always the best way of keeping my HP and SP topped up. Any of the C packs of monsters are always essential for a blackguard, ants are also handy.

I really liked the spell set and especially liked how they combined together to make a character powerful and a monster weak.

I agree with you that a blackguard is weaker than a warrior in the early game, but is that a bad thing? I certainly wouldn't agree a blackguard is a cripple. I found a blackguard easier in the early game than a mage, and much stronger than a mage at level 33 (when werewolf kicks in).

I suppose it's a case that some races you enjoy more than others. I've never enjoyed playing a priest or paladin for example.

[DavidMedley]

Well I played blackguard and it was not an enjoyable experience.

It's interesting to get different perspectives. Thanks for sharing. A lot of the reviews lately have made me concerned that the BG class is overpowered. This competition seems to show they are competitive, at least judged on a turncount basis:

http://angband.oook.cz/competition.php?showcompo=234

- A detect monster spell that cant be used before you fight something ?
- I must make sure I fight something weak first to get mana

One of the key skills for playing BG as they are currently constructed is to end most battles with a decent supply of SP. I don't love this; it doesn't feel berserky enough to me. I'd like it if you were encouraged to burn all SP and most HP to win every battle.

But other concerns won out over that, mainly wanting to reward players for aggressive, conflict seeking play and reduce the incentive to rest to full HP at every opportunity. I did some comparison shopping with Rage Mage in Frog and found the class did not do those 2 things above, which is why BG SP last much longer and BGs have no "hurt myself for SP" option. So maybe we can imagine that a BG needs to stay in an adrenaline-fueled state to be sharp for the next fight.

Also, when you get into the mid-and-late game, !Resore Mana is a big help. I often pop one in town if my SP are low, and thus save an inventory slot vs a class that needs to carry them into fights. Unlike other classes, it shouldn't be hard to keep your SP up once you're in a fight.

berserk rage...What is the idea here ?

Trying to encourage melee-centric play, and that's hard to do if you're scared. +to-hit or +melee-skill isn't that great because it's so easy to hit anyway, and the increased crit chance isn't big enough. But hitting is still important, and more so with the changes that make Maim and Forceful Blow only activate with a successful hit. That said, pFear seems like the main benefit.

[Estie]

Yes I have "charged up" on townspeople before recalling. Thats ok and fun in the early game, but eventually its feels unnecessarily tedious a procedure to have to go through every time just to be able to do something you can do anyway if you just carry a device.

That you give berserk to a melee based character is understood; my question was why you give them an inferior version to the one that doesnt have the spell.

I did not spam spells for the healing effect because it takes less effort and is safer to spam clw.

The spellset does not "combine" at all; it feels jarring to end up with failed attempts at doing combos all the time, which is why I wouldnt recommend using the spells.

Maybe consider setting the BG spell fail chance to 0 (posssibly subject to a managable int requirement depending on spell level, but achievable in the early game; not int > 18). Since so much hinges on cast sequences succeeding, that would remove the worst offender of tedium.

[archolewa]

Honestly, I find that blackguards only have problems with Mana in the early game. Right around when I get Werewolf Form, my SP remains pretty much perpetually topped up, though that might be because Im pretty much always in Werewolf Form except when getting ready to fight a powerful opponent.

That being said, I do remember struggling with many of the problems Estie describes before the class clicked.

And I agree 100% that giving the Blackguard 0% spell failure would go a long way to making them less frustrating. Yes, they are ostensibly half-casters, except in my experience (havent played the new Ranger), half-casters dont generally rely on their spells in battle as much as a Blackguard does. Other half-casters have spells that are mostly pre-combat, and utility with the occasional spell you cast occasionally in combat. Blackguards rely on their spells in combat to the same degree full casters do, so I think it makes sense to let them get 0% spell failure.

Even if they only get 0% failure while Berserk Strength is active, sort of like how many of Rage Mages spells are stronger if cast while berserk in Frogcomposband. It would also give the berserker more incentive to berserk.

[wobbly]

My experience is also very different. For me if bloodlust is running it never ends. Move, kill, move, kill, move, kill... I pretty much have to deliberately stop and sit in a corner for it to ever end. The buffs are near permanent in the endgame. Move, kill, move, kill... your SPs will overflow if you don't cast something and casting heals, so I cast before they end and stack up the duration.

Also if you aren't werewolfing you are missing out. It has fast move. Failing this once is losing less turns then moving at normal speed is.