Monster list tweaking

[fizzix]

In a brief occurrence of internet, I've sent a pull request for the first attempt at monster rebalancing. Changes can be found at github.com/fizzix/v4 on the monsterlist branch.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Raise the damage dice of middle weapons to balance out the lack of blows, in example a longsword 3d4 instead of 2d5, longswords are about 3 times bigger than a dagger aftr all. Bastard swords 3d5 they are just a little bit bigger affter all, then you go back on track with the two-handed sword 3d6, which is again just a little bit bigger, and it is already 3d6 so you can in affect stay in balance with damage dice with the bigger weapons as they are.

This would perhaps encourage getting bigger weapons at game start instead of staying with daggers and whips until stat gain.

[Derakon]

Heavier weapons do give access to better-quality crits (in Vanilla). So for example, you'll never see a "*GREAT*" hit from a dagger. I think those are restricted to weapons that weigh at least 20 pounds, though you shouldn't quote me on that. The average damage display when 'I'nspecting weapons incorporates damage from criticals.

[LostTemplar]

Correct me if i'm wrong but i think O combat gives you a higher critical percent chance for heavier weapons.

No, chance is the same, and power of critical is proportional to die sides e.g. d12 weapon benefit more from crits then d4. Heavy weapons generaly have many small dice e.g. 4d5 for great axe, they benefit less from crits, however Sangband have this changed, e.g. it have something like 1d21 for high end weapons resulting in sensitive crits.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Correct me if i'm wrong but i think O combat gives you a higher critical percent chance for heavier weapons.

[Derakon]

As far as blows are concerned, I suspect there's a window where they give you the same number of blows as light weapons do but heavy ones still give fewer, but honestly by the time your STR and DEX are that high, you're deep enough that the number of blows is not always the deciding factor behind a given weapon choice. Thus, midweight weapons are often the right choice when they're simply the best weapons you've found so far.

[Magnate]

IMHO if any problem exists, it is in individual base objects, e.g. long swords (and most moderately hevy weapons) are simply too weak or too heavy, they are never best choice, only very light or very heavy weapons are ever usefull. Revisiting object.txt and tuning values is the only solution here, problem cannot be fixed magically by changing combat algorithm or something.

Ummm. I guess this is in line with your earlier "O combat gives no real difference". I'll just say I'm on the other side of the fence on this one. I think there's an awful lot that can be done to improve combat without tweaking objects. (I say this as a compulsive tweaker of objects.)

[LostTemplar]

IMHO if any problem exists, it is in individual base objects, e.g. long swords (and most moderately hevy weapons) are simply too weak or too heavy, they are never best choice, only very light or very heavy weapons are ever usefull. Revisiting object.txt and tuning values is the only solution here, problem cannot be fixed magically by changing combat algorithm or something.

[d_m]

That said, I've been failing to understand what's exactly wrong with that [light weapons > heavy weapons early on] (with the sole exception of it not being obvious to novice players - but seriously, there are easier ways to solve that than overhauling the combat system).

On some level a lot of these things are mostly subjective. But without getting too philosophical...

Part of game design is trying to do the most with the least (make the decision space for the player interesting given the existing items). Many of us feel that the current decision of what weapon to use isn't thematically interesting OR tactically interesting, and doesn't make good use of the "class/stat/weapon space."

For starters, class tends not to make much (if any) difference. We'd all like to imagine warriors, rogues and mages choosing to use different weapons but currently class has very little impact. And where it does, it's reversed... due to max blows. Given the same STR/DEX a warrior will always prefer lighter weapons than a mage, which seems backwards.

The bigger problem though is that even ability scores have a very weird effect. If you were to graph STR + DEX on the X axis and optimal weapon weight on the Y axis, you'd see a sort of U, where at very low STR+DEX you want the heaviest weapon possible (due to the 1 blow guarantee), as soon as you start getting multiple dagger blows it drops hard down towards zero, where it slowly climbs, spiking up sharply at the end (when you hit the max blows wall).

This isn't great because at any given time there aren't many useful base objects for weapons. Early on you only really care about drops that are daggers, main gauche, short sword, whip, etc. Late game you only care about heavy drops. The range of weapon bases you're interested in is usually pretty narrow. Obviously if you rely on magic or ranged damage then this isn't as big a deal and you may find yourself using a Defender battle axe while a warrior would still be using a Dagger +9,+9.

Anyway, whether or not you consider this a problem is pretty subjective, but I (and a lot of others including many variant authors) think it can be improved (in many different, not always compatible ways). I won't go into my preferred solution, I was just trying to quickly illustrate why many people refer to this as a problem.

[Narvius]

That said, I've been failing to understand what's exactly wrong with that [light weapons > heavy weapons early on] (with the sole exception of it not being obvious to novice players - but seriously, there are easier ways to solve that than overhauling the combat system). Light weapons are easier to use for beginners, and @ is a beginner at the beginning, no?

[LostTemplar]

O combat gives no real difference, still at the begining light weapons are preferable to heavy. Heavy weapons only become better after stat gain.

[Magnate]

Many "good and new" vanilla ideas seems to be in O style variants for ages.

But without moving to O-combat (see threads passim ad nauseam) there are a number that we can't use.

However, we will be including monster mana in v4 shortly, and subject to what the other devs think I'd be very keen to separate monster casting power from monster level too.

[LostTemplar]

Like in O/FA, you mean

Many "good and new" vanilla ideas seems to be in O style variants for ages.
Btw new proposed monster depth list seems to be pretty close to FA monsters natural depths.

[Nick]

LOL, you always say that. :-)

Yeah - when in doubt, stick to the truth

[EpicMan]

Like in O/FA, you mean

LOL, you always say that. :-)