Revamping combat

[Djabanete]

While I'm ambivalent about the whole 2h/dual wield thing (I see it as nice flavour but far from important)

Two-handed wielding adds some depth to early/mid game weapon selection and rewards heavier weapons, so it's definitely not just flavor.

Dual wielding IMO doesn't belong in Angband, not in V anyway, because it rewards bizarre behaviors like wizards dual-wielding for the stat boosts and resists.

[Derakon]

Dual-wielding as implemented in the vast majority of RPGs is a silly and stupid concept. Having a sword in each hand doesn't make you any more effective offensively than having a sword in one hand; it just gives you a different form of defense than having a shield in the off-hand.

(Well okay, the off-hand weapon could be used for stabbing when your opponent's weapon was brought out of line by your main weapon, but if anything that'd be more like getting a bonus critical hit. Certainly not free blows.)

[andrewdoull]

With hindsight, how much would you say that you set out right at the start of developing Un, and how much occurred incrementally as you went along (change one thing, realise that something else would be better slightly different, etc.)? Is there a particular blog post (or three) that sets out your vision for melee combat? And if so, how close to that vision did you end up?

Pretty much every change to Unangband has been an incremental one with no design intentions before hand.

My melee combat fixes pretty much amount to:

a) Limit weapon damage bonus to (sides * dice) + 5 (not strictly correct, but the object power evaluation uses this metric).
b) Reduce to-hit chances of classes starting out so that early monster AC has a meaningful impact.
c) Give some monsters resistance or immunity to edged weapons, some resistance or immunity to blunt and make some evasive or huge (hard to hit in interesting ways).

And by extension:

d) Make throwing / archery / magic / wands interesting and viable alternatives at even low level.
e) Make monsters more interesting.
f) Make attributes (str, int etc.) have more in-game effects.

There's other stuff (charging, applying potions to weapons etc.) but the above is the main mechanical changes.

[Magnate]

Thank you - that's most enlightening. Really good to know that you can do it the incremental way and still end up with a good game. Definitely time to give Un another outing and see how it plays. Last time was a long time ago, and I couldn't get past my OCD which required me to open and inspect every empty cupboard - am I imagining this or did you add a "check all cupboards in the room" command at some point?