[Announce] Poschengband 5.0.3 Released

[EpicMan]

This has become my favorite variant, Chris!

Feature Request: Please ID average weapons/armor/ammo/lights on pseudo-ID, since their bonuses are fixed and well-known by anyone playing more than a few games. This is a situation where the player knows something but the character doesn't unless you spend gold to ID stuff.

[Derakon]

Those are extremely rare and still get destroyed or drop on the ground. Ranged shouldn't be any more of a chore than melee, it doesn't do any more damage and you are still limited by good ammo (for any class that isn't Archer). Lots of things get phased out later in the game, plain ammo from town shops should be too.

I agree that archery shouldn't be a chore to use, but on the flipside it has the notable advantage over melee that you aren't in melee range, and thus monsters sometimes spend their turns moving towards you rather than doing something damaging.

Ideally archery would deal less damage than melee, but not have the inventory management hassle. However, Vanilla's still trying to work out how to handle that without making archery overpowered, so it's not really surprising that PosCheng doesn't have a good solution.

[wobbly]

I agree that archery shouldn't be a chore to use, but on the flipside it has the notable advantage over melee that you aren't in melee range, and thus monsters sometimes spend their turns moving towards you rather than doing something damaging.

Not sure this is 100% true for poschengband. Monsters are more likely to use their ranged attacks when you do.

[Derakon]

Not sure this is 100% true for poschengband. Monsters are more likely to use their ranged attacks when you do.

More likely, sure, but presumably they don't use them 100% of the time; some turns are still dedicated to movement (or attacking in melee). A character standing in melee range will thus still take more damage than a character at range unless the monster's ranged attacks are so much more dangerous than their melee that the increased ranged attack rate more than makes up for the decreased melee damage received. I guess there's probably some monsters in PosCheng where that's true. On the other hand, there's surely plenty of monsters that are incredibly dangerous in melee and not so much at range; an archer can deal with those with relative impunity.

[clouded]

I agree that archery shouldn't be a chore to use, but on the flipside it has the notable advantage over melee that you aren't in melee range, and thus monsters sometimes spend their turns moving towards you rather than doing something damaging.

Ideally archery would deal less damage than melee, but not have the inventory management hassle. However, Vanilla's still trying to work out how to handle that without making archery overpowered, so it's not really surprising that PosCheng doesn't have a good solution.

But this isn't about fighting dangerous monsters, this is about clearing all of the weak and non-dangerous things which is a large part of what you do. Similar to magic ammo, mages get eat magic which provides essentially infinite (slow) mana.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Someday, Chris should incorporate a form of CMovie into PosChengband. ToME 2.3.x has such a known in-game recording feature.

[GenericPseudonym]

The happiest day of an Archer's life is when he finds an OOD staff of dispel life and he can suddenly kill orc packs without spending 15 minutes picking up arrows afterwards.

There should be an upgraded version of the rod of telekinesis that just grabs everything in sight and puts it under your feet. Maybe give ranged classes a power that does a similar thing but only for ammo.

[wobbly]

Or replace ammo with quivers that have charges like a device. Then either use 'R'est to recharge it or a ranger spell or a device(fletchery kit) that recharges, or something else...

[HugoVirtuoso]

Or maybe there should be certain quivers that last longer than others...like a "wooden quiver" would last maybe 5,000 turns and then it "falls apart". A "mitril quiver" would last the entire game...

[HugoVirtuoso]

Another feature?

When character undergoes wraithform (via Wraithform mutation, for instance), the character now reflects bolts?? However, if going onto World Map (via '<') in Wraithform and navigating elsewhere, there's no message saying the Wraithform wore out by timer??

[Cold_Heart]

Reflection from wraithform is not new.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Reflection from wraithform is not new.

Just double-checking. Despite being playing PosChengband for ages, this was the first time I noticed that Wraithform gave Reflection.

[MITZE]

Bug

Just started an Artemis-parentage bowmaster, which itself started with not one but two short bows; one equipped and one in the inventory.

EDIT: Also started with no melee weapon. Probably should at least get a dagger or something.

[MITZE]

Bug

The damage bonus to spells as such supplied by =Wizardry doesn't seem to apply to the damaging chants of the 'Hex' realm of magic.

I haven't checked to see if it's already the case, but it would be nice if the bonus also worked so that it applied to not only damaging magic spells, but also to healing spells and various teleportation spells--possibly to other spell varieties that I'm forgetting, too.

[MITZE]

Bug?

Giant-pact warlocks start with a short sword, instead of a preferred weapon (the weakest non-digger preferred weapon is the claymore, incidentally).