Most characters fall on one side of 'Fighter/Mage'

[Sar]

that is pretty much what I said yes

[damiac]

Stoneskin is what, 4-6 additional AC now that you don't have to get a specific number in Earth? Ring of protection +4 is good enough item to wear during most of the game, ring of protection +6 is possible endgame material.

When I had an ogre(with decent int) in the endgame, I pumped transmutation and earth up to about 18. That got me +4 AC

I suppose if I made a macro to keep it up automatically outside combat one could say it was worth it, since my investment was basically free, given that I was in extended and already had haste, cblink, and what not. It was not worth a turn in combat to cast.

That said, I would have been sorely disappointed to get wild magic, even if it did bump my stoneskin from +4 to +6 AC, because it would have made cblink and haste uncastable.

I certainly didn't have enough XP in a 3 rune game for all that, and the difference of 2 ac isn't worth the loss of either haste or cblink, or the extra XP required to get them castable under wild magic. I did have enough XP for haste & cblink though.

Nago makes an interesting point about Ozo's armor as an alternative to medium armor on 'hybrids', but I suspect what he's calling hybrids are the characters I've been calling mages.

I guess that's worth discussing as well: What defines a hybrid? To me, it's not a great descriptor because everyone casts spells (except troggies) and uses weapons. But maybe it's just that I have a mistaken impression of what people mean by 'hybrid'.

[Sar]

Was that after the change? That is pretty mediocre, yeah.

[duvessa]

Stoneskin with 18 Earth skill before the change would have been...5 AC.

[njvack]

Quick mod note: Yes, CYC is for silliness, but trolling a thread where people are having a discussion in good faith doesn't help things. Even if you think it's a dumb thread.

[nago]

Nago makes an interesting point about Ozo's armor as an alternative to medium armor on 'hybrids', but I suspect what he's calling hybrids are the characters I've been calling mages.

These are my last char who used ozo's armor, dunno how you would call them:

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/nago/morgue ... 230840.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/nago/morgue ... 125957.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/nago/morgue ... 164912.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/nago/morgue ... 175523.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/nago/morgue ... 143123.txt
http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/na ... 212840.txt

But also with these char I would had been very happy to use the spell, had I found it (I've just listed three for example, there are others too)

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/nago/morgue ... 140540.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/nago/morgue ... 195748.txt
http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/na ... 100932.txt

[damiac]

I'd call all the ones on the top list mages, they appear to be built with spellpower in mind. They have varying degrees of skill with various weapons, but it looks like damaging spells were what they were mainly built for.

The second list looked like what I'd call fighters, although it's true Ozo's would have been good for them. I saw one had sticky flame, but those guys looked to mainly use non-spellpower based ways to kill enemies.

Do you think it would have been worth it to get wild magic on any of the bottom three characters(assuming they had access to Ozo's)? I suspect the amount of extra XP you would have had to spend on your non-spellpower spells like haste, blink, phase shift, etc.. would have been more of a loss than the gain of AC from Ozo's.

I mean, I guess one could classify that whole list as 'hybrids', but to me it looked like the top was a bunch of mages who developed some weapon skill as the game went on, and the bottom were fighters in somewhat light armor. That VpWn is a tough call though, how did you play that character?

I think 'hybrid' is really not a useful descriptor, because pretty much any well built non-trog follower is going to use both weapons and spells, so pretty much all characters should be 'hybrids'.

The distinction is clearly more pronounced early in the game, but it does seem to usually have a lasting effect. You can always get more XP for skills, but you only get so many stat points. STR and DEX both affect your defenses, in that STR lets you wear heavier armor, and DEX increases your EV. A mage has to sacrifice some of those stats for their INT.

[nago]

It's true the chars in the first lists can described with "it looks like damaging spells were what they were mainly built for." - probably it's the best definition I've read among all the crappy tries to schematize hybrids char recently.
However, most of them had extremely good defences/fighting for most part of the game, and happily tabbed from xl1 to xl27. Actually, many of them used tab more time than z, despite having lots of extremely good spells at extremely high spellpower (because I prefer tab magic). The biggest difference with a plain fighter was they hadn't good methods to buff their melee (not considering haste because my melee guy has it in some forms usually) and lower ac than an average melee guy.

And the DsFE, a fighter, actually burned the shit out from anything until l:8 and d:14 with sticky flames and conjure flames using the mighty claws only to speed up things. Only after I stopped to use conjuration spells so intensively.
Similarly, the DsSu, kicked a lot of ass till Lair:8 and D:14 with ice beasts, and later was a festival of agony and multiple ways to desecrate corpses. He was obliviously also extremely skilled in the art of slashing things and he exercised that a lot too.
I don't remember how I played that Vp honestly. With Wn, I usually use anything good is available early on more than other chars. Judging from the skills training, I've played it like some sort of stabber (using call imps early on as source of low-tier stab) and worshipping kiku to get some different ways of killdudes Not idea why I didn't train any hexes considered vp's apts - maybe just because I didn't want to use them, or very unlikely no good hexes spell spawned in all the game.

I would have been quite happy to get wild magic with the last trio of char, and probably I would have skilled/develop the char a little differently.
With the DsFE I would have used at least Fireball: I didn't learn it because it quite sucks at low spellpower, and I had already claws and lot of killpower, so I had no compelling reason to train (a lot) more fire and conjuration to get decent spellpower. With wild magic I would have just to train little more to make fireball very good though, and maybe I would have also add bolt of fire into the repertoire. With the DsSu would have been also good - many of summoning spells enjoy spellpower - no idea why I didn't learn high level spells of the school except haunt (maybe they didn't spawn) but even the low levels one would have be better.
No idea WpWn - had I learnt hexes spells then wild magic would have been the best thing I could get in the game (hexes are the school skill most benefits from it). For how it was it would have been neither good nor bad

Finally, while it's true a mage has to sacrifice a bit of str and dex to get high spellpower, that isn't *so* critical - you can still get very good ac/ev without min-maxing those two stats - at least with species with decent stat points.