DCSS is unrealistic

[b0rsuk]

In this thread we complain about unrealistic mechanics in DCSS. Unrealistic compared to common sense, historically inaccurate and so on. That doesn't mean we should only post stupid stuff that can't possibly make it into the game one day. In this thread, we simply don't care about playablity. Bonus points if the complaint is funny or thought-provoking.
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1. Barachi is a stupid race: it moves slowly, yet it has a bonus to Dodging. This is not how footwork works! Footwork and positioning is very important in a melee fight.

2. Rapier is not a Short Blade. You take the same amount of steel and shape it in a longer, thinner blade specialized for thrusting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efZLw-tlIOs (6 min 41s)

[vt]

3. Executioners deal several light blows in quick succession. Yet one would expect them to deal one heavy blow that does considerable damage.

[petercordia]

4. humans can only wear 2 rings. But in real life some humans can wear a ring on each digit. And on their toes, if they really want to.

[Nordlicht]

They are like engagement rings, they only work on a certain finger.

[Shtopit]

Only one amulet at a time. You never drink water.

[chequers]

5. Assuming each turn lasts several seconds (5 for convenience), the average 3-rune winning game of 70k turns would take the character around four days to complete. In this time they do not sleep and eat around fifty rations.

[Sorcerous]

6. Corroded equipment and bodies with severe acid burns return to normal with time.
"Yeah, that engine is rusted to death. Just let it rest for a bit, it'll be as good as new next week."

7. Falling down a shaft onto (presumably) hard stone does no damage to the PC.

8. The dungeon is explicitly stated to be underground. Many creatures can be blinded with flashes of light, even though real subterranean species evolve their other senses - often to the point of devolving sight entirely.

[Siegurt]

5. Assuming each turn lasts several seconds (5 for convenience), the average 3-rune winning game of 70k turns would take the character around four days to complete. In this time they do not sleep and eat around fifty rations.

Or, If you go the other way around and assume you eat roughly 3 rations per day, at 70K turns per 50 rations, 70K = around 17 days, or about 3 minutes per turn, so each square takes you 3 minutes to traverse (at an average human walking pace, that's 84 meters square (making each DCSS level roughly the size of a mid-sized city) *OR* the normal walking pace of a dungeon explorer is *really* slow, at 1 meter squares, you'd be moving slower than an average snail.)

Also since you can't fit two of even the smallest creatures in the same space (unless your a spriggan riding a giant insect) it's reasonable to assume that the squares are fairly small, so it would take you a solid couple minutes to poke that goblin with your dagger (and he in turn takes several minutes to try to bash you with that club he's carrying)

Or perhaps dungeon exploring is like, super energy expending and all DCSS characters have somehow evolved hummingbird-like metabolisms and must eat once every hour or two or die (that might explain why they never sleep)

[rigrig]

the normal walking pace of a dungeon explorer is *really* slow

You're crawling, not walking!

[MrDizzy]

9. It's underground. There's no sunlight, but there are green plants, and even fully-grown trees.

10. Only monsters standing right next to you follow you up/down stairs. The monsters standing 2 tiles away presumably didn't notice you and all the monsters next to you going up the stairs and think you've just suddenly disappeared, and even the intelligent ones are unable to link your disappearance to the staircase that's right in front of them.

[TheMeInTeam]

11. Shoals has some amazing physics, even more so than other branches. Water can even cover the upstairs specifically!
12. "Teleportation vs causality"
13. Critical existence failure trope - any value above 0hp, you can fight and cast spells at full capability.
14. Healing of all types is incredibly fast for all creatures
15. Absent magical help, you always move at the same speed. Doesn't matter if you're casually strolling by yourself or under imminent threat of death being chased by a pack of trolls and caustic shrikes. This means you're either always running, or you never run.
16. Alligators are more dangerous than crocodiles, for some reason.
17. Frogs and snakes are incredibly fast, while giants cover ground at identical speed to the player.
18. Plate is far and away heavier than other metal armors.
19. Spriggans can wear the same dragon scales as ogres, but felids can't wear scarves.
20. Items can only be apported out of water if your species can swim for them, despite what apportation does.

[Siegurt]

15. Absent magical help, you always move at the same speed. Doesn't matter if you're casually strolling by yourself or under imminent threat of death being chased by a pack of trolls and caustic shrikes. This means you're either always running, or you never run..

I think rigrig established above, that you're always crawling (I presume all creatures crawl all the time, not just the player, perhaps the ceiling is just really really low, that might explain why flying creatures can't avoid your melee weapons by flying out of range, for example)

[Fingolfin]

You do run, when you have the right boots !

[onomastikon]

21. The dungeon is just stuffed full of hostile creatures who all get along well with each other, each with apparently nothing to do but wait around indefinately for a bumbling idiot to show up -- indefinately, without any form of infrastructure or even food, all apparently for the purpose of guarding a rune without any clear inherent value.
22. People can throw lightning bolts and fireballs from their hands.
23. Scrolls of random uselessness.
24. Hydras.
25. Everything.

[b0rsuk]

26. Tridents deal more damage than spears. This makes no sense, because with a trident you have almost the same weight. So when you hit someone with a trident, almost the same momentum is distributed across 3x as big an area. A trident would also be 3x less likely to penetrate armor.

Tridents were used for spearfishing. Not to deal more damage, but to increase the chance of hitting a fish in a river. Fish are small and very agile. It's like a melee shotgun in that sense. Retiarius, a type of Roman gladiator, used a net and a trident as a parody of spearfishing, and to make it more obvious his opponent, murmillo, had a short sword and a helmet with a fish on it. Ancient Greeks gave tridents to Poseidon (a.k.a. Neptune) because it was the only weapon associated with water. The Grim Reaper uses a farming scythe, but that doesn't mean it's a good weapon either. Perhaps the point was to show how insignificant we are to these supernatural beings - they don't need weapons to kill us, they use fishing and farming tools.

[VeryAngryFelid]

26. Tridents deal more damage than spears. This makes no sense, because with a trident you have almost the same weight. So when you hit someone with a trident, almost the same momentum is distributed across 3x as big an area. A trident would also be 3x less likely to penetrate armor.

We have a funny verse in Russian, something like

  Code:

Don't be afraid of a knife,
But be afraid of a fork:
One hit,
Four holes.


[b0rsuk]

We have a funny verse in Russian, something like

  Code:

Don't be afraid of a knife,
But be afraid of a fork:
One hit,
Four holes.


It's a bit funny, but what is it supposed to mean?

Pitchforks were commonly used in peasant uprisings, and you can absolutely kill someone with a pitchfork. But it would be even easier if it had a single, lighter blade.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It's a bit funny, but what is it supposed to mean?

Pitchforks were commonly used in peasant uprisings, and you can absolutely kill someone with a pitchfork. But it would be even easier if it had a single, lighter blade.

Fork/trident creates several (4 and 3 correspondingly) small wounds, knife/spear creates a single much larger and much more dangerous wound.
The joke is related to stupid "just number of wounds is important" advice.

Edit. The fork here is a table fork, similar in size to spoon. It is easier to kill a person with knife than with such fork.

[Lacuenta]

26: The Dungeon is the ultimate refrigerator for vegans, food never perishes, yet corpses do.

27: Somehow the inhabitants found it a good idea to distribute weapons and magical equipment around so they can be killed with them.

[svendre]

28. Residents of the dungeon will utilize items scattered about, but if an invading adventurer so much as looks at it first, it'll be left alone to aid the adventurer.
29. You can carry 52 suits of plate mail armour, but you can't hold 53 daggers.
30. You can carry 9 billion rations, or 400,000 large boulders, but you can't carry 53 different types of items.
31. You can deftly stab an enemy in Shadow Dragon armour, but you can't just as easily cast a spell in it.
32. It takes longer to take off your hat than it does to inscribe a large tome filled with spells into your spell book.
33. Armour gets so much better at reducing damage the more skilled you are at "wearing it".
34. The plutonium sword only emits dangerous radiation when it is swung.
35. Dungeon residents spend a lot of time building vaults every time an adventurer dies to encase the ghosts, but no tools are found anywhere.
36. Vault doors can only be opened by dungeon residents if an invading adventurer opens them first.
37. Adventurers can always see in a dark, underground dungeon, with no light source - or even swimming (if we assume they had a torch)
38. You never receive a message like "You need to take a crap RIGHT NOW", or "You pee your pants", despite never taking a leak.

[Rogo]

2. Rapier is not a Short Blade. You take the same amount of steel and shape it in a longer, thinner blade specialized for thrusting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efZLw-tlIOs (6 min 41s)

And it's quite easy to change it to "Thrusting Blades" like I did in my fork: https://github.com/danielrogowski/evilcrawl

[MrDizzy]

39. You can't wear a scarf and a cloak at the same time
40. Merfolk can swim in full plate armour, but humans can't swim at all, even completely naked.
41. Pythagoras has no power here.

[omnirizon]

my explanation for stairs is that they are wormholes between dungeon floors. The reason monsters can only follow you when adjacent is because only then are they close enough to be entangled with you, and follow you through the wormhole. Unentangled monsters would visit the dungeon floor in their realized reality, only by becoming entangled can monster's realized dungeon floors collapse to those observed by the player.

Not sure how uniques then occasionally switch floors, but I'm sure there's a good explanation

[bjourne]

You don't have to say "Beam me up, Scotty" when using a transporter. Very unrealistic.

[aaron]

how and why would one go about throwing, say, a large rock at oneself? (y/n)?