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

[damiac]

When I play a character, I usually am pushed quite early on to a decision on how I will primarily kill dangerous enemies. That decision typically falls between two options: 'Kill them with magic' or 'Kill them with a weapon'. Some backgrounds may mix these to some degree, but even those, like enchanter, are usually depending on one more than the other.

If a character will primarily kill things with magic, we can make a few assumptions. We can assume that character will be wearing armor light enough not to seriously hurt their spellcasting success chances. We can assume that character is going to want relatively high intellect. We can assume that character is going to prioritize training their magic skills over their weapon skills. We can assume this character will probably train much more dodging than armor. We can assume spell hunger is at least somewhat meaningful, and we can assume training a skill to get more MP is going to be important to this character.

Here I'm mainly talking about the various elementalists and conjurers. Necromancers can go this way, but they can also go the route of trying to be a fighter. Enchanters fall squarely into this category, as they rely on the spellpower of their hexes to render their enemies stabbable. The dagger isn't very useful if the hexes don't work.

If a character will primarily kill things with a weapon, we can assume this character is less concerned with intellect than dex. We can assume this character will prioritize training their weapon skills over magic skills. We can assume spell hunger isn't going to be very important. We can assume this character will not really need to focus on increasing MP. We really can't make many assumptions regarding armor size, or dodging vs armor skills, since a character who primarily uses weapons to kill things may still want to cast some spells to assist in killing enemies with a weapon.

This covers the straightforward fighters, like berserkers, gladiators, fighters, monks and assassins, since they don't even start will spells. This also covers the various zealots, and even the hybrids like skalds, warpers, and arcane marksman. Some necromancers will fall into this category.
Why does this matter?

There are certain blanket pieces of advice that will fit these two archetypes.
A character killing dangerous enemies with magic needs spellpower, needs MP, and needs to not hamper their spell casting success chances early on. These characters in the beginning of the game should focus on training their primary magic skills over everything else until their offense is sufficient to kill dangerous enemies without too much trouble. These characters need to keep in mind that at some point they should get a backup weapon for easier enemies and times they run out of MP. Most of these characters need some contingency plan for when their main attack doesn't work on a particular enemy. These characters will likely not be wearing anything heavier than ring mail until at least after lair.

A character killing dangerous enemies with a weapon doesn't care much about spellpower. These characters generally won't need to think about increasing the amount of MP they have. At the beginning of the game, these characters should prioritize training their primary weapon skill over everything else until their offense is sufficient to kill dangerous enemies without too much trouble. These characters need to keep in mind that at some point they should get some sort of ranged attack, although this is not always critical. These characters generally can assume their weapon of choice will work on all enemies, with the notable exception of hydras who need some consideration for long blade and axe users (and sometimes polearm users). These characters will likely be in ring mail or heavier armor before lair.


These differences are obviously more pronounced and important at the beginning of the game. Still, the mage will always be focused on spellpower and spell success, as there's no point in the game that a character who relies on spells to kill enemies can afford for those spells not to work, or for them to be weak. The fighters will want to have a good weapon, and enough skill to swing it at min-delay.

Obviously, these do not define a character, but they are two paths that a character will generally choose between, typically right at character creation. Nothing stops a fighter or gladiator from picking up the first spellbook they find and abandoning their weapon training, but that character is going to be worse off than one who stuck with the weapon, or one who started with the spellbook. A conjurer who stops training conjurations and switches to the first weapon he finds will be worse off than the character who stuck with conjurations, or started with the weapon.

An interesting thing to note is that typically, mages become more fighter-like as they progress, working on a weapon skill at some point, and probably moving toward heavier armor. On the other hand, fighters almost never become more mage-like, meaning it's pretty rare for a fighter to start slinging conjurations around halfway through the game.

Obviously this is in CYC, but I'm trying to have a serious discussion, so please try to stay somewhat on topic.
Disclaimer: This is all based on my experience and deductive skills(or lack thereof).

[damiac]

I'm not saying this to stir up controversy, but rather, because Berder's original topic got me thinking about the fact that it's true that at least early on, there are two very distinct training paths, and because of that, characters who start on one path or the other typically still end up fairly distinct. So it seems that there are general pieces of advice that almost always fit one of those two paths.

[Magipi]

What is the difference between this topic and the next one? https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=14765

Or is this some joke I don't get?

[and into]

Species, background, god choice, loot. Those are four major things that intersect in many, many ways, and can easily make you want to adapt your character in all sorts of ways that don't really track with those assumptions. "I mainly kill stuff with magic, so I guess I'd say this guy is a mage/caster" is fine as a description of where a character is at a certain point in time, but I don't think that twisting that descriptive term into some sort of "archetype" is ever going to group characters in even a remotely useful way in terms of how one should play and build a character.

This division also ignores the similarities that (IMO) do tend to occur; for instance, in most cases, I find that assassin and artificer play similarly. Berserkers are really different from fighters, because Trog is a very powerful presence/tool. Necromancers, wizards, and even fire elementalists are (IMO) less suited to be strict "blasters" that eschew melee, because your starting tools work so much better with melee. Taking a book background on a Centaur or Troll is not a bad move, but you usually play those characters way differently than you would a human or draconian or demonspawn of the same background. Finding a D2 altar to a god that helps a lot in the early game (like Okawaru, say) is hard to pass up no matter what background you chose, and I routinely change my plans based on such luck. Loot can have a similar impact—less often in the early game, but unlike gods, new loot options continue to be generated throughout the entire game. And so on, and so forth.

So again.... What is the point of analyzing Crawl on the basis of these "archetypes"? (As opposed to using these terms to describe what a specific character happens to be doing, in which case they may serve as useful shorthands?)

Every character can use a weapon (Fe only has one choice though). Every character gets MP. The only thing that makes casting of any kind a bad idea is choosing to worship a specific god, Trog. The best way for a character to develop depends, initially, a lot on your species/background choice, but then later on, depends on so many things in such varying proportions that it becomes difficult to generalize succinctly but meaningfully about how a specific species/background choice "should" develop.

[twelwe]

What is the difference between this topic and the next one? https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=14765

Or is this some joke I don't get?

the joke is that we`re supposed to have a serious discussion over such uninspired and uninteresting revelations like:

The fighters will want to have a good weapon, and enough skill to swing it at min-delay.

.....................serious replies only guys, with a little feedback this can be a great thread

[Lasty]

I disagree with the content or spirit of the following:

If a character will primarily kill things with magic, we can make a few assumptions. [...] We can assume that character is going to prioritize training their magic skills over their weapon skills. We can assume this character will probably train much more dodging than armor. We can assume spell hunger is at least somewhat meaningful, and we can assume training a skill to get more MP is going to be important to this character.

If a character will primarily kill things with a weapon, we can assume this character is less concerned with intellect than dex. We can assume this character will prioritize training their weapon skills over magic skills.

There are certain blanket pieces of advice that will fit these two archetypes.
A character killing dangerous enemies with magic needs spellpower, needs MP, and needs to not hamper their spell casting success chances early on. [...] These characters will likely not be wearing anything heavier than ring mail until at least after lair.

A character killing dangerous enemies with a weapon [...] At the beginning of the game, these characters should prioritize training their primary weapon skill over everything else until their offense is sufficient to kill dangerous enemies without too much trouble.

Still, the mage will always be focused on spellpower and spell success, as there's no point in the game that a character who relies on spells to kill enemies can afford for those spells not to work, or for them to be weak. The fighters will want to have a good weapon, and enough skill to swing it at min-delay.

Obviously, these do not define a character, but they are two paths that a character will generally choose between, typically right at character creation. Nothing stops a fighter or gladiator from picking up the first spellbook they find and abandoning their weapon training, but that character is going to be worse off than one who stuck with the weapon, or one who started with the spellbook. A conjurer who stops training conjurations and switches to the first weapon he finds will be worse off than the character who stuck with conjurations, or started with the weapon.

On the other hand, fighters almost never become more mage-like, meaning it's pretty rare for a fighter to start slinging conjurations around halfway through the game.

Characters that start the game killing things with magic 1) are actually in great shape to pick up a weapon and use it as their primary offense -- watch Walkerboh play, for example, and 2) even if they don't change their focus entirely to hand-to-hand fighting skills start out with only a little less skill in melee than the melee-oriented classes and also start with a very good piece of loot, a spellbook. No matter how the character chooses to skill, they have the option to choose to make use of those spells to some extent. Depending on what the player finds and how flexible they are, they may well end up in anything from light armour to heavy armour; depending on those choices, mp pool may or may not be a priority. Spell hunger is virtually never a real priority.

If a character starts with a weapon, it may well make sense to raise str or dex at first, since they definitionally do not have any spells yet, but if they find a spellbook or expect to go with a magic-gifting god, or the player wishes to push for a certain outcome, int is perfectly reasonable. Training weapon skills rather than magic is usually a good choice for these characters, but mostly as a consequence of low starting int and lack of early spellbooks making it hard to break into much magic in the first few levels of the dungeon. By Lair, it may well make sense to train some magic skills.

Characters that are killing with MP alone generally want enough skill to cast their bread-and-butter spells reliably. After that, branching out makes perfect sense; branching out may mean taking on heavier armour, and getting more magic skills for success; it may mean branching into a weapon skill; it may mean picking up evo or invo if the right equipment or god stumbles along. There's very little that's unreasonable to branch into at this point.

Whether I disagree with you about prioritizing weapon skill on a non-book background depends on how hyperbolically you mean "over everything else" and "until their offense is sufficient to kill dangerous enemies without too much trouble". The amount of trouble dangerous enemies pose isn't purely a function of your weapon skill, but rather a large number of factors. Sometimes investing xp in defenses or fighting will have a bigger impact on the character's ability to handle danger. Sometimes investing in invo, evo, or magic will. Dogmatically pursuing weapon skill is a mistake, though sometimes it can be the right choice after reasonable reflection.

A mage should not always be focused on spellpower and success unless that's the definition of a mage, in which case the sentence is tautological. It's neither hard nor a bad idea for a character to get a certain number of spells to a reasonable failure and power level and then transition to working on what you might call fighter skills. Eventually most characters swinging a weapon probably should get it to min delay, but even that isn't always true. It's all about determining how you can spend XP to overall increase the number of situations you can reasonably survive and decrease the amount of resources you spend surviving them.

The trajectory of a character is absolutely are not decided at character creation as far as the game is concerned, but a stubborn player can certainly choose to define it then. The general rule of "get good enough at killdudes, then get good enough at not-die, then diversify as needed, repeat" applies to all characters, but there's room within that to switch your approach when the right conditions are met.

Whether your described "fighters" generally get more "mage-like" or not is a claim about how people choose to play, and it is probably right, but that's not because it's the best or more effective way to play. Crawl is easy enough that once you master the basics it's possible to win without playing particularly well, and so self-imposed challenges like ignoring a large subset of your characters options don't necessarily prevent people from winning. Archetypes like "fighter" and "mage" are restrictive, but they're not bad enough to prevent victory. However, making good use of all your options is optimal. That doesn't mean every character will do everything, but rather as you play each character, you should keep in mind all the options your character has and determine how you can best leverage them.

There are opportunity costs to a lot of choices, and so you have to choose carefully. Working from an archetype means you don't have to do the hard work of choosing, but it also means you often pass over valuable opportunities.

[McGeekster]

This whole topic seems like a ranting festival to me. Why are we all arguing whether or not MOST characters fall on one side of the proverbial iron curtain? I say give it a rest and stop writing incredulously long posts about your personal opinions on what makes a character either a fighter or a mage. Or am I just missing something?

[and into]

Deleted some posts that were unnecessary and disruptive. Sorry Greyr, I deleted your post by accident in the process.

What is the difference between this topic and the next one? https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=14765

Or is this some joke I don't get?

the joke is that we`re supposed to have a serious discussion over such uninspired and uninteresting revelations like:

The fighters will want to have a good weapon, and enough skill to swing it at min-delay.

.....................serious replies only guys, with a little feedback this can be a great thread

Okay, you made your point well in this reply. Let's not turn this into another shit-storm.

This whole topic seems like a ranting festival to me. Why are we all arguing whether or not MOST characters fall on one side of the proverbial iron curtain? I say give it a rest and stop writing incredulously long posts about your personal opinions on what makes a character either a fighter or a mage. Or am I just missing something?

The point of this forum is to discuss Crawl. Sometimes the posts will be long, but a long post is not necessarily a rant.

[damiac]

1. The difference between this topic and the other one is that this topic isn't locked (yet). Plus the OP in this topic is attempting to keep a more civil tone.
2. I thought I had explained the reason I think this is useful in the OP. Mainly, it provides easy blanket advice, similar to other well accepted easy blanket advice like "Always draw enemies away from crowds" If there's one thing that's somewhat tough to find as a beginner, it's this kind of overall advice.
3. If you find this topic boring/useless/stupid/not enough pizza feel free to ignore it and post in one of the other topics. You can even create your own, if you can't find anyone talking about anything interesting to you.

So yes, a fighter following fedhas and a berserker are going to play much differently. But, at the beginning of the game, both will want to train their weapon up to or near min-delay. Neither should be spending XP to get more MP, or reduce spell hunger. Both should at least consider switching into heavier armor they find.

An ice elementalist, conjurer, and fire elementalist will play quite differently. But, at the beginning of the game, they will all want to train their primary spell skill. They will all want to spend some XP to get more MP. It will be worthwhile to them to decrease spell hunger throughout the game (Although this will likely happen as they increase their MP). They should not spent a ton of XP early on to get a weapon to min-delay. They should not wear heavy armor that makes their spells too hard to cast.

The use of this is that one can give some sort of general advice, rather than the more common 'Well it depends on your specific character'. There are general trends one can notice, and these are the trends I've noticed seem to give better success.

So this is sort of breaking down the super general advice of "get good enough at killdudes, then get good enough at not-die, then diversify as needed, repeat" into two rather distinct versions, which in my opinion, do fit the early to mid game the majority of the time. When I was a new player, I would have liked something a bit more specific than that, but something general enough I could apply it to most of my characters, not just the one I was playing at the time.

This whole topic seems like a ranting festival to me. Why are we all arguing whether or not MOST characters fall on one side of the proverbial iron curtain? I say give it a rest and stop writing incredulously long posts about your personal opinions on what makes a character either a fighter or a mage. Or am I just missing something?

OK, I say if you don't see the point of my long post about my personal opinions, which I've stated multiple times in this very thread, you're free to not participate in the thread. Why not discuss what you see wrong with it, rather than disagreeing with the very notion that I would want to discuss it?

[Sandman25]

For me Fighter-mage is a character who simultaneously trains both magic and non-magic skills because it either needs both or deals roughly equal amount of damage with magic and non-magic.
Enchanter is the only background who is a fighter-mage starting from turn 1(I simultaneously train Short Blades, Stealth and Hexes from turn 1), other backgrounds can become fighter-mage around Lair (IE, FE, EE, AE, Ne). Non-book backgrounds can become fighter-mage only much later, even if they find a good book on D1.

[Sandman25]

Whether your described "fighters" generally get more "mage-like" or not is a claim about how people choose to play, and it is probably right, but that's not because it's the best or more effective way to play. Crawl is easy enough that once you master the basics it's possible to win without playing particularly well, and so self-imposed challenges like ignoring a large subset of your characters options don't necessarily prevent people from winning. Archetypes like "fighter" and "mage" are restrictive, but they're not bad enough to prevent victory.

I have contrary impression. If crawl would be harder, people who started as Wz and decided to ignore magic from turn 1 would not be able to win. Fighters who decided to branch into a different weapon category around Temple or learn magic in Lair would die too because they are weaker than "normal" fighters who got heavier weapon to min delay and had higher AC/EV/HP. People would have to play according to starting background/archetype if they wanted to win.

[and into]

I don't see how this division helps with giving advice, though. Like, literally, based on my time at the Tavern, I have to say I don't see a lot of people starting the game by focusing all their skill training on spell casting or stealth on their Minotaur Fighters or Troll Berserkers or whatever. I do see lots of instances in which people neglect excellent weapons, like don't even *think* about picking them up, because "they are a mage." I also see lots of instances in which a non-berserker in the late game neglects to train spells that are available, helpful, and not prohibitively expensive to get online under the circumstances, because "this guy is a fighter."

"Choose MiBe, choose any weapon but short swords, train your weapon to min-delay, wear whatever armor gives you the highest AC" is very simple advice for absolute beginners and it works reasonably well given how succinct it is, but that is bad advice if you generalize it to "every background/species combo that does not start with a book," which is (essentially) how you are using "fighter." For the background that is called "fighter" it isn't terrible advice, especially for a species like a minotaur. So why wouldn't you just say the quoted sentence at the beginning of this paragraph to someone who is really new to the game?

For me Fighter-mage is a character who simultaneously trains both magic and non-magic skills because it either needs both or deals roughly equal amount of damage with magic and non-magic.
Enchanter is the only background who is a fighter-mage starting from turn 1(I simultaneously train Short Blades, Stealth and Hexes from turn 1), other backgrounds can become fighter-mage around Lair (IE, FE, EE, AE, Ne). Non-book backgrounds can become fighter-mage only much later, even if they find a good book on D1.

In most cases all the backgrounds under "warrior-mage" will train magic and weapon in tandem, in some proportion, even early on. Getting magic on a non-book background is rarely even an option early on, due to availability of spells. "Non-book backgrounds can become fighter-mage only much later, even if they find a good book on D1" is simply untrue, unless by "only much later" you mean, I dunno, by D6 or something. (There are, again, lots of non-book backgrounds that aren't Troll Monks or Minotaurs or Ghouls or w/e.) I will very frequently have some weapon skill on IE, FE, EE, AE, and NE by the equivalent of D10 (e.g., Lair 2 if Lair generated on D8 and I did not go to D9). I might delay getting weapon skill on, like, a DE of Veh/Sif, specifically, but then that's because, if I chose to play a DE^Sif/Veh, then I had a particular play style and a particular kind of game that I wanted to play in mind, because otherwise why the heck would I choose deep elf?

I have contrary impression. If crawl would be harder, people who started as Wz and decided to ignore magic from turn 1 would not be able to win. Fighters who decided to branch into a different weapon category around Temple or learn magic in Lair would die too because they are weaker than "normal" fighters who got heavier weapon to min delay and had higher AC/EV/HP.

Until now, no one was talking about a Wz that ignores magic from turn 1. No one is talking about a fighter that "branches out" in order to train short blades and maces and flails and staves all at the same time. If by "fighter" you mean "MiFi wearing plate" yes of course you won't be training magic super early, that has nothing to do with some magical divide between two types of characters; such a character would be very unlikely to want to train magic for exactly the same reasons it wouldn't want to train stealth, or to train shields if all it has is a buckler and its best weapon is a two-hander: Because, under the circumstances, it would be a very bad use of experience. But if we expand "fighter" to include stuff like abyssal knights and merfolk gladiators and spriggan artificers and god-knows-what-else then it is no longer true to say, "It is a bad use of experience to train magic by Lair." It would depend. What are your stats? Your apts? What spells are we talking about? What is your gear (do you have wizardry?), what is your god? etc. etc. etc.

People would have to play according to starting background/archetype if they wanted to win.

Not unless a lot of other things also changed in addition to Crawl getting harder. In particular, and at minimum, for this to be the case, how the experience cost of one more skill level increases as the level gets higher would have to change.

[Lasty]

So this is sort of breaking down the super general advice of "get good enough at killdudes, then get good enough at not-die, then diversify as needed, repeat" into two rather distinct versions, which in my opinion, do fit the early to mid game the majority of the time. When I was a new player, I would have liked something a bit more specific than that, but something general enough I could apply it to most of my characters, not just the one I was playing at the time.

I appreciate you posting this, since now I better understand what your goal is here. I do think that this sort of advice is sufficiently adequate and unchallenging that it can help newer players who are still stunned by the immense complexity of Crawl. However, I think that in the long run it's bad and counterproductive advice that prompts players to peak early and ignore lots of options, sort of like how some board games have a "beginner's mode" that removes a bunch of complexity in order to avoid overwhelming newer players who can't assimilate new info that quickly. I didn't see my winrate become substantial until I learned to get past just doing whatever my background suggested I should do, and when I did it was a revelation.

I have contrary impression. If crawl would be harder, people who started as Wz and decided to ignore magic from turn 1 would not be able to win. Fighters who decided to branch into a different weapon category around Temple or learn magic in Lair would die too because they are weaker than "normal" fighters who got heavier weapon to min delay and had higher AC/EV/HP. People would have to play according to starting background/archetype if they wanted to win.

I'm not advocating that wizards never train magic or fighters should all train the first book they find -- I tried to make that clear by advocating for the general skill progression formula. A character's starting package is a resource, and throwing it away is not usually smart. But neither is it smart to ignore the electric whip or rod of lightning or useful spellbook or nice body armour you find early on. There are an immense number of things that change from game to game, and sometimes they will point you to double down on your starting package and sometimes they will prompt you to branch out. Sometimes you'll think a character should go one direction and then something will happen to make you reconsider. All I'm advocating is that players remember to consider all their options, and not rule one out because "I'm playing a mage." There are a ton of options in the game, and you don't necessarily get a good sense of which are which until you've tried them -- or get guidance from more experienced players. If that guidance is always, "stay the course," those experienced players are doing you a disservice.

[damiac]

I think you're mistaking my 'mage' and 'fighter' as 'book start' and 'non-book start'

I described what I meant, and what I think newcomers generally mean. Mage means kill the most dangerous stuff using damaging spells of some sort, necessitating starting with a book with spells that do damage to stuff directly. Fighter means start with a weapon (including bare hands) and kill the most dangerous stuff with a weapon of that type.

There is no such thing as a playthrough tutorial to win at crawl. So obviously no generic advice will ever cover a real game of crawl completely. However, a default trajectory is helpful to have starting off. Then, getting good at crawl means knowing why that trajectory works and knowing when it's worthwhile to alter that trajectory based on what's happened so far in the dungeon.

You can't write a guide on being good at crawl, because it's very specifically situational, and not really easy to describe ahead of time.

You can try to define the basics, and as people understand those basics, I think they are able to then get into the game more. Then they can better understand what they even are getting in their default character archetype.

[gammafunk]

I think you're mistaking my 'mage' and 'fighter' as 'book start' and 'non-book start'

alright...

Mage means kill the most dangerous stuff using damaging spells of some sort, necessitating starting with a book with spells that do damage to stuff directly. Fighter means start with a weapon (including bare hands) and kill the most dangerous stuff with a weapon of that type.

but you said.......ok.

[Berder]

One use of making the proper division is that it helps for talking about how the game is balanced for fighters vs non-fighters. For instance, heavy armor is bad for mages. And you can also talk about which gods favor fighters vs. non-fighters.


After looking at the recent games, I think a simplified division could be made: on the one side you have fighters who may use non-spellpower-dependent support magic (primarily charms, translocations, transmutations, animate dead/skeleton, and sometimes cloud spells), but don't deal any direct damage with conjurations or elemental magic. If you look at recent won games, this side makes up the majority of characters. It's good with heavy armor (race permitting), doesn't need much int, and generally has a very similar melee playstyle of luring enemies to corridors/corners and tabbing them. Their armor and stats also work fine with a ranged weapon.

On the other side you have everybody else - everybody who deals direct magic damage or casts high-level summonings or hexes that overcome MR. That is, you can lump lump mages and fighter-mages together, because apparently there's so much argument over how much melee you have to do to consider yourself a fighter-mage. This side requires high int. Melee is a secondary or backup option, with the best damage being dealt by spells. This side does not wear heavy armour because it impedes spellcasting.

[basil]

Heavy armour mages are alright.

[Berder]

Heavy armour mages are alright.

There may be a very few heavy armor mages, but can you give an example?

[basil]

Here's one of mine.
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Basil/morgu ... 201037.txt

[Berder]

Here's one of mine.
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Basil/morgu ... 201037.txt

Alright, legit. An unusual case.

I have to ask why you got poison arrow and venom bolt. Why not just get throwing? Throwing would leverage your str and dex instead of your int, and it would be a lower skill investment (1 skill instead of 2-3).

[basil]

There are a number of reasons why I didn't get throwing instead. Main one is that ranged is both annoying and boring.

Also, it seems like you're fishing for a way to "disqualify" that morgue. That is pretty lame.

[Kramin42]

A very wise random person on some forum once said:

"There are two kinds of people: those on whom nuance is lost, and those who disagree with this statement."

[Siegurt]

So I recently played a pair of DrIE back to back.

The first played out like this:
I started by training fighting to 3, then started training dodging and spellcasting.
I found a +2 electric whip on D:2, this being better than freeze at the time, I started using it.
I used the +2 electric whip almost exclusively as offense, while training ice magic, dodging and fighting, using OA primarily, throwing in freeze on things that have lots of dodging like killer bees,
Stopped training dodging (9), started working on M&F, got it to 6. (using a breath weapon as ranged attacks when available)
Got to the lair, the electric whip was still the best M&F I had found (A +2 flail of protection and a +0 flail of flaming were the second best)
By that point the ice magic I'd been training was to the point where throw icicle was reliable, so I started using that as ranged attacks, and whacking things when they got too close.
By the end of the lair, throw icicle was the primary damage doer along with ice beasts, and the whip was used exclusively as cleanup and popcorn killers.
Did orc, by the end of orc, I still didn't have any spellbooks, but I did have a +0 great mace of flaming, So I went back to M&F Did that for a while, got a good ice spellbook in vaults and finished the game with bolt of cold and freezing cloud being primary offense (But still using the great mace for things like the OOF and cold-resistant stuff) Eventually getting it to min delay.

The second was almost the *exact* opposite at the beginning particularly, I didn't find a decent weapon early, and stuck with freeze/throw icicle all the way to lair, got a conjuration book, which let me do non-ice damage and have battlesphere,
TI+battlesphere goes a long way, but eventually i ended up with a vampiric lajatang, and finished the game up mostly melee with OA and Ice beasts for backup.


Now, if you say this pair of games is unusual, and falls in the 10% rather than the 90% of games, I'm not sure that's true, but *even if it is true* giving advice that works 90% of the time and is totally wrong the other 10% of the time is *bad* if you choose wrong 10% of the time in crawl, you'll die, probably sometime in the first 6-10 levels of the game.

That's the problem with generalization, it's helpful to abstract to gain an overall understanding in an academic statistic sort of way, but *in any particular game* you should always base your decisions *on that game* not on a generalization. Even the best *general* advice isn't true 100% of the time "Pull things away from the pack" is great advice *most of the time*, except for the rare times that the only way to do so compromises you tactically and leaves you no way to retreat or escape, or means moving into dangerous areas. So telling someone they should "always do something" just leaves them without the skills to actually evaluate the situation and make the correct choice (Even when it's not "usually" the correct choice)

[Berder]

So telling someone they should "always do something" just leaves them without the skills to actually evaluate the situation and make the correct choice (Even when it's not "usually" the correct choice)

Then it's a good thing nobody told anybody to always do something!

I'll say what your character was not: it was not a pure fighter with no spells, and it was not a fighter who only casts buffs and low level support magic. That distinguishes it from the majority of wins.

[and into]

on the one side you have fighters who may use non-spellpower-dependent support magic (primarily charms, translocations, transmutations, animate dead/skeleton, and sometimes cloud spells), but don't deal any direct damage with conjurations or elemental magic. If you look at recent won games, this side makes up the majority of characters. It's good with heavy armor (race permitting), doesn't need much int, and generally has a very similar melee playstyle of luring enemies to corridors/corners and tabbing them. Their armor and stats also work fine with a ranged weapon.

I'll keep this in mind the next time I play a fighter that uses "support" spells such as freezing cloud. You know, spells that aren't conjurations and somehow do not deal direct damage to the things hit by them.

That distinguishes it from the majority of wins.

A lot of wins involved worshiping Trog, and the vast majority of characters who worship Trog at any point are not going to use magic ever, and thus fit into one of your categories, but for an obvious reason that has nothing to do with what you've been talking about.

[Berder]

(oops, double posted)

[Berder]

on the one side you have fighters who may use non-spellpower-dependent support magic (primarily charms, translocations, transmutations, animate dead/skeleton, and sometimes cloud spells), but don't deal any direct damage with conjurations or elemental magic. If you look at recent won games, this side makes up the majority of characters. It's good with heavy armor (race permitting), doesn't need much int, and generally has a very similar melee playstyle of luring enemies to corridors/corners and tabbing them. Their armor and stats also work fine with a ranged weapon.

I'll keep this in mind the next time I play a fighter that uses "support" spells such as freezing cloud. You know, spells that aren't conjurations and somehow do not deal direct damage to the things hit by them.

If it's something you can cast with decent results, with 8 int in plate... it's a "support" spell.

A lot of wins involved worshiping Trog, and the vast majority of characters who worship Trog at any point are not going to use magic ever, and thus fit into one of your categories, but for an obvious reason that has nothing to do with what you've been talking about.

Trog constitutes a minority of fighter wins. Most fighter wins - and most wins - seem to fall into the fighter-with-support-spells category.

[tasonir]

Heavy armour mages are alright.

There may be a very few heavy armor mages, but can you give an example?

How about all three- Fighter, Archer, Mage? http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 072752.txt

min delay on great sword, longbow, and cast singularity. Granted, it was only fire dragon armor, but I'd say that certainly isn't light, most people call it medium armor. Most magic was more support themed, but without singularity I don't think I'd have survived the royal jelly at all (I was still down to 8 health cleaning up his minions after most of them were sucked into the singularity), and zot:5 would have been much more dangerous.

I'm also not really sure how you'd rate a fighter who casts high level support spells. Getting things like controlled blink, deflect missiles online, but not damage spells? They're just a smarter fighter with support magic? What if my statue form character ends up throwing in iron shot and shatter? Does it count against me if I only cast them in the end game after I finally got the experience to dump into earth? Example: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 105635.txt

I guess my point is that I play fighters, BUT that I also tend to train a high degree of magic on them. I'm not limiting myself to spells in the level 1-4 range. I prefer to think of them as hybrids, even if my damage comes from punching things.

[Berder]

I'm also not really sure how you'd rate a fighter who casts high level support spells. Getting things like controlled blink, deflect missiles online, but not damage spells? They're just a smarter fighter with support magic? What if my statue form character ends up throwing in iron shot and shatter? Does it count against me if I only cast them in the end game after I finally got the experience to dump into earth? Example: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 105635.txt

I guess my point is that I play fighters, BUT that I also tend to train a high degree of magic on them. I'm not limiting myself to spells in the level 1-4 range. I prefer to think of them as hybrids, even if my damage comes from punching things.

High level support spells like cblink, dmsl are still support spells in the sense that you can cast them adequately using wiz at low int, and their purpose is to help you deliver melee damage rather than dealing damage by themselves. If you have crappy int, then iron shot just isn't going to be worth it because the spellpower will be too low. So if you do pick up iron shot and find it powerful enough to use regularly, that does make you a fighter mage. Yes, it counts. You can say you were a fighter mage in the endgame and a fighter prior to that.

[damiac]

I guess the simplest division is this:

Would you be happy to get the wild magic mutation? If yes, you're a mage, if no, you're a fighter.

Or, similarly, would you rather get an item with Wiz or Archmage?

Pretty much everyone uses weapons, and pretty much everyone uses spells, so they're worthless to the discussion. There's no confusion on whether a trog follower is a fighter or mage.

[duvessa]

Would you be happy to get the wild magic mutation? If yes, you're a mage, if no, you're a fighter.

TIL literally all my characters are mages

[twelwe]

if you were happy with the horns mutation, you might be a redneck!

[damiac]

If I want to cast haste, regen, cblink, blink, controlled teleport, phase shift, and other similar spells for a minimal investment, on a character who mainly kills enemies with physical attacks of some sort, I do NOT want wild magic. These are characters I'd call 'fighters'

If I'm casting attack spells, or Ozo's armor, I do want wild magic. These are characters I'd call 'mages'

If you're telling me you want to get wild magic on a MiFi who only wants to cast support spells, then I'd love to see your explanation. I can't imagine why I'd want to have to spend a bunch of extra XP when the end result is going to be pretty much the same. Blink works just as well with very low spellpower as it does with max spellpower.

[and into]

Apportation, spectral weapon, summon butterflies, vampiric draining, etc. etc. are spells that are often good for ~~~fighters~~~ and benefit from having good spell power. Would I get these spells on a MiFi? Perhaps, perhaps not. MiFi in plate is not the only "fighter" character, though, and MiFi doesn't even need to wear plate to be strong anyway, in the first place. This is also ignoring religious choice which has a large impact on what you can do with your character. Having access to those spells, getting a wild magic mutation, and having a good armor that is lighter than plate available might make me rethink how I develop even a MiFi. If I'm just in the mood to do melee only for whatever reason, obviously not, but then that's a (quite possibly "bad" in the sense of maximizing win chance) decision that I've made.

I'm pretty tired of this discussion. If "MiFi in plate" is your only template for a character that does a lot of melee, or if a species that has to get all of its AC (save for one) from mutations, rings, and a hat is your template for a "good hybrid," then we simply aren't going to have a basis for reasonable discussion of what many characters in Crawl are actually capable of doing. But hey, at least we have some dogmatic and unhelpful applications of the terms "fighter," "mage," and "support spells," so there is that.

[Berder]

Apportation, spectral weapon, summon butterflies, vampiric draining, etc. etc. are spells that are often good for ~~~fighters~~~ and benefit from having good spell power.

With the exception of vampiric draining, the bar for adequate spell power is extremely low for those spells. Spectral weapon can even be made worse by too much spell power since the weapon has more hit points and shares damage with you.

[duvessa]

The success penalty is HALF of a negative wizardry ring per level, in exchange for a full enhancer. That is a very good trade for any spell that cares about power at all. I have never had a character that had cblink and/or shadow creatures but no other spells in the game, and I hopefully never will because that is an unbelievably stupid way to build a character.

[damiac]

I'd rather have castable haste and cblink than extra powerful apportation (seriously?) and a spectral weapon with better defense (with a much higher investment in charms or hexes than I'd normally want to make). Or, alternatively, I'd rather have more HP, AC, and EV than a longer duration haste, and more butterflies.

Vampiric draining might be situationally useful, but I'd rather just kill the enemy, and since I have better defenses I won't have lost as many HPs anyway.

I'm sorry you're getting tired of this discussion. You're free to bow out at any time, but don't try to put words in my mouth. I personally find this to be an interesting discussion, and I'd never even considered that a character who wants to cast support spells might be willing to spend the extra XP wild magic requires to get the seemingly limited returns from spellpower.

As far as 'dogmatic and unhelpful' goes, I find the attitude that says we have to ignore obvious truths because they go against what we want the game to be, to be quite 'dogmatic and unhelpful'. Most people in this thread aren't arguing against the substance of any argument, but rather against the idea that the discussion should even happen.

On a 'fighter', for a typical desired spellset I have: Haste(spellpower not important), repel missiles(I'll have enough spellpower anyway if I'm getting haste castable), regen(same story as repel missiles), blink(success matters, not power), cblink(same), phase shift(spellpower not important), apportation(enough translocations for low fail blink is enough spellpower for apport), animate skeleton(success only), maybe some cloud spells (success is enough, although spellpower serves a use here)

Obviously we're talking about 3 rune games, in a 15 rune game you can be whatever you want, since there's infinite XP available.

[Sandman25]

Sorry, I am lost here, what is this discussion about? One side insists that fighter/mage division is useful and should be used for training new players, another side claims it's meaningless and even bad for new players since loot is random etc. I believe both sides are right, what is useful for one can be useless or even harmful for another (just look at "display more numbers" threads)

[and into]

On a 'fighter', for a typical desired spellset I have: Haste(spellpower not important), repel missiles(I'll have enough spellpower anyway if I'm getting haste castable), regen(same story as repel missiles), blink(success matters, not power), cblink(same), phase shift(spellpower not important), apportation(enough translocations for low fail blink is enough spellpower for apport), animate skeleton(success only), maybe some cloud spells (success is enough, although spellpower serves a use here)

Those are strong spells for nearly all characters. Again, I'm unsure how saying "these are good spells for 'fighters'" clarifies or helps, at all. Those are good spells for nearly any character; whether or not they are worth actually training for and getting on any specific character will, of course, depend.

As far as 'dogmatic and unhelpful' goes, I find the attitude that says we have to ignore obvious truths because they go against what we want the game to be, to be quite 'dogmatic and unhelpful'. Most people in this thread aren't arguing against the substance of any argument, but rather against the idea that the discussion should even happen.

Literally the "upshot" of these "mage/fighter" threads, as far as I can tell, is this staggeringly banal conclusion:

"Characters that (for whatever reason) aren't able to get good success rates or (when it matters) spell power for specific spells should not use those spells."

This was (one of?) Berder's definition(s) for a support spell:

  Code:

If it's something you can cast with decent results, with 8 int in plate... it's a "support" spell.

Using this definition of support spells and then saying, "Characters with 8 intelligence in plate should only cast support spells" is a tautology. It doesn't get you to a deeper understanding of the game, nor does it help one to generalize usefully about what different characters can (let alone should) do.

I used the term "dogmatic" because very wide (and hasty) generalizations are being drawn about "fighters," which was earlier defined as "mostly killing stuff with melee," which (needless to say) covers a lot of territory. (But then again there's been so much post hoc goalpost-moving that I'm not even sure wtf anymore.)

Reflecting upon the thread, as a whole, I'd have to say that people seem to have very different things in mind when they use terms like "fighter" and "caster," and the things they have in mind are (consciously or not) actually different from the definitions they try to use in discussion. This is what I (and perhaps others) find frustrating.

Thus, even though people claim to use the term "fighter" to mean "mostly kills stuff with melee" they actually have in mind, clearly (and respond to all arguments using the example of) a minotaur fighter with 7 or 8 intelligence. This, despite the fact that "mostly kills stuff with melee" applies just as well to transmuters and assassins and artificers and trolls of any background and ghouls of most backgrounds and perhaps even draconian venom mages who happen to find a really good early weapon, and so on and so forth.

Sorry, I am lost here, what is this discussion about? One side insists that fighter/mage division is useful and should be used for training new players, another side claims it's meaningless and even bad for new players since loot is random etc. I believe both sides are right, what is useful for one can be useless or even harmful for another (just look at "display more numbers" threads)

"Side"? Lots of people are saying, "when it comes to what kinds of characters use what kinds of magic, it depends." Certainly that is what I've said repeatedly.

If we're talking about giving new players advice, specifically, then my piece of advice to most beginners would be, "try to learn about Crawl and the fundamentals of good tactics on a strong character that doesn't start with a book." Some new Crawl players "get" casters first, certainly, and you can see this from reading "back issues" of YASD/YAVP, but that is less common than people first having a "breakthrough" with a high HP character that hits dudes, throws things at dudes, evokes things at dudes, and invokes god abilities around dudes.

In any event, I would also recommend that new players entirely avoid reading threads like this one (this thread is not the only one).

[damiac]

The discussion is mainly about whether it's true that most characters could easily be described as a 'fighter' or 'mage' and what those labels actually mean in the context of crawl.
At least, that was my intention.

As usual, it's also become a discussion about whether such labels are useful. And if so, to whom?

I'm more concerned with the primary discussion of whether those labels are generally applicable, which has generated varied responses from 'Obviously that's true, everyone knows that, so this discussion is worthless' to 'All characters are completely unique, no label fits any character, everyone knows that, so this discussion is worthless'.

I personally find that such labels typically apply to my characters, so either I'm playing poorly and winning anyway (entirely possible), or I'm missing something and could be playing better (also entirely possible).

The discussion on whether the discussion is useful is not useful.
The discussion on whether the topic title is true or not has already yielded some discussion which I find both useful and applicable to my future play: I'd never considered using vamp draining on a 'fighter' for example.

[and into]

I probably have used vampiric draining with a MiGl or MiFi at some point or another, but it wouldn't be a normal thing that I would do. I have used vampiric draining much more often with demonspawn and deep dwarf and other characters that did almost all of their killing in melee range, by whacking enemies with big weapons. The spell is somewhat rare if you don't start as a necromancer, but Kiku is a really strong god and many "necromancers" (either started that way, found the book early-ish, and/or worshiped kiku) that I play end up killing the vast majority of their enemies with melee, anyway. So it once again comes down to whether or not one is begging the question with the label "fighter" to begin with.

Most characters can be classified as "mostly kills stuff in melee, mostly kills stuff at range," and the latter can be further divided into "uses mostly spells for the ranged killing" or "uses mostly ranged combat to kill from a distance."

Just because these categories are descriptively valid (they generally are) doesn't make it any easier to say what, exactly, is the best way to train and play characters in each category. There are some general tactics that apply to varying degrees across all three categories ("beware moving toward enemies," "don't get surrounded," "LOS is reciprocal so get good at understanding how it works in different combat situations," etc.). Anything more specific than that is bedeviled by numerous exceptions, because the categories are so broad. The wiki hosts a compendium of character guides that are really bad and unhelpful and full of untrue or non-useful generalizations, despite the fact that (most of) those were written about specific species-background combos, which is a much narrower category than "mostly kills in melee."

[damiac]

A character who relies on spellpower to do their damage to most threatening foes is wise to spend their XP and equipment slots on ways to increase their spellpower.

One who relies on their weapon to do their damage to most threatening foes is foolish to spend their XP and equipment slots to increase their spellpower.

After the very early game, pretty much everyone uses magic, and pretty much everyone uses weapons.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that the chief distinction is spellpower vs defensive skills. A mage spends stat points and XP on things that increase spellpower, where the fighter spends those stat points and XP on increasing defense.

Of course, mages still train defensive skills, but they don't have as much XP to spend on it.

Trying to frame it as 'weapons vs magic' doesn't work in crawl. I know that's a mistake many newcomers make, but that's not what I'm talking about here. Pretty much every character not following trog should get some magic, and every character should use weapons. As you've said before, not using weapons, or not using magic, are like not using wands, or not wearing jewelry.

[Sandman25]

The more I think about it, the more it seems that the chief distinction is spellpower vs defensive skills. A mage spends stat points and XP on things that increase spellpower, where the fighter spends those stat points and XP on increasing defense.

The more experienced I become the less often I do it (unless it is my goal from the very beginning like when I want to try Singularity). Only Vehumet provides a reliable way to get MP during a fight so it's often better to train defense/melee and kill wounded monsters with weapon if they survived your conjurations instead of potentially dangerous retreating and waiting for MP to restore. Similarly it's often better to get a ranged attack (launcher/throwing/rod/summons or even conjurations) instead of increasing AC from 32 to 33 or EV from 23 to 24.

[Sar]

TIL any character casting Ozo or Stoneskin is a mage because they care about spellpower.

(Btw low-pow Regen sucks.)

[Berder]

TIL any character casting Ozo or Stoneskin is a mage because they care about spellpower.

(Btw low-pow Regen sucks.)

Ozo and stoneskin are tricky cases. On the one hand they're clearly support spells because of the role they play (improving AC instead of dealing damage). But on the other hand they are spellpower dependent, therefore high-int characters can get more use out of them. You'd have to look at the rest of the spells the player has, and what they use to kill things.

Regen is less spellpower dependent. It sucks at crappy spellpower but at moderate spellpower it's fine and getting more is not a priority. Having regen is not an indication of being a mage.

[damiac]

Regen's duration sucks at really bad spellpower, that's true. But it doesn't regen more HPs per second with more spellpower, at least, everything I've read states it's a flat increase to regen rate.

Stoneskin is barely worth casting regardless of spellpower, except for statue form. Ozo's is great, if your armor supports it. It's pretty rare that someone would wear light armor just to be able to cast ozo's, but of course draconians, octopodes, and felids exist.

post post mod edit edit: Cooler heads have prevailed

[Sar]

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.

[nago]

Similarly, now that ozo depends on spell power, with many of my hybrids (or BATTLEMAGE) I strictly prefer it over medium armor, provided at least decent robe/leather is available.
At high spell power (and look it's charms so it will have high spell power) it's 9-11 ac, which compete/is superior to any well enchanted medium armor (as you'll have higher ev). Plus,easier time to cast any spell (especially now that armor with er<7 have rebalanced penalties) and no need to raise str

[Sar]

Tbh while magic numbers are the devil I think the way Ozo and probably Stoneskin used to scale makes more sense balance-wise.

[duvessa]

Spells' power being determined by things other than spell power was possibly better from a balance standpoint, but it was unambiguously terrible from a making sense standpoint.