Ettin

[bcadren]

After reading the "won't do" list. I thought about dual-wielding and dual-religions for a long time. And I'm proposing them as a race. I doubt this will get in (for sheer difficulty to implement more than actual race power; in fact, even with the gimmicks, the race will probably be fairly weak; due to horrible defenses). But it's a really cool though, from the player perspective.

Weirdness/Mutations:

• You are very large. [Size Factor -4; Dire Flails are one-handed to you.] (Same size as Hydrae.)
• Armour does not fit on your strangely shaped body. [No Armour skill; no body armour.]
• Your two heads have minds of their own. [You may worship two gods; you may wield two weapons. You lack the coordination to wield a 2H weapon.]
• Tough Skin III. (3 AC)

Armour Slots:

• Two Rings.
• Two Amulets
• Two Hats
• One weapon
• One Shield/Weapon slot

Stats:
STR 12; INT 8; DEX 6
Gains 1 STR/INT every 4 levels.

Aptitudes:

  Code:

Et: Fighting: -1, Short: -3, Long: -2, Axes: -1, Maces: -1, Polearms: -3, Staves: -2, Slings: -2, Bows: -3, Xbows: -1, Throw: -1, Armour: N/A, Dodge: -2, Stealth: -1, Shields: 1, UC: 0, Splcast: -1, Conj: -1, Hexes: -2, Charms: -1, Summ: -2, Nec: 1, Tloc: -3, Tmut: 0, Fire: -1, Ice: -1, Air: -3, Earth: 2, Poison: -1, Inv: -1*, Evo: -1, Exp: 0, HP: 4!, MP: -1

Dual Wielding:

• Both weapons must use same skill.
• You get two hits within the mindelay of the slower weapon.
• First weapon hits at 1/2 mindelay (randomly rounded).
• Second weapon hits at mindelay.

Dual Gods:

• Both piety gain and passive piety decay are scaled down (x0.75).
• Additionally many gods either reject one another or act slightly differently due to the influence of the other god.

Complete List of God Exceptions; first God (in Alphabetical Order) shows results of worshipping both. TSO is last in alpha order (1). Some text repeats; but I didn't repeat EVERYTHING twice.

• Ashenzari - No Exceptions.
• Cheibriados
  • Piety Decay for other god is slowed.
  • Cheibriados forbids following Okawaru, because of his hurry (Finesse).
  • Cheibriados forbids following Trog, because of his hurry (Berserk).
• Dithmenos
  • Makhleb will repress fiery effects in the presence of Dithmenos. (Random effects will remove fire-effects and fire/hellfire summons).
  • Nemelex Xobeh will repress fiery effects in the presence of Dithmenos. (Random summons from Pentagram card, etc. reroll if the result is fiery/hellfiery).
  • Qazlal will repress fiery effects in the presence of Dithmenos. (Fire clouds are excluded from your aura. Upheaval/Disaster Area will not use the fiery effect type.)
  • Sif Muna and Vehumet will not gift spells that offend Dithmenos (no Fire spells).
  • Xom acts as normal; but Dithmenos forgives you of Immolations, etc. which are Xom's fault.
  • Dithmenos takes exception to TSO's light. (No TSO/Dithmenos combo).
• Elyvilon
  • Elyvilon rejects the worship of evil gods (Kikubaaqudha, Lugonu, Makhleb, Yredelemnul).
  • Nemelex Xobeh will repress evil card effects. (If you draw a Pentagram, you cantrip; sorry).
  • Sif Muna and Vehumet will not gift spells that offend Elyvilon (no Necromancy spells).
  • Xom summons natural creatures, instead of demons. Seems mildly annoyed that he has to.
  • The Good Gods prefer to keep their affairs separate. (You may not worship TSO or Zin with Elyvilon).
• Fedhas Madash
  • Fedhas Madash rejects the worship of Gozag; as changing bodies to gold is unnatural.
  • Fedhas Madash rejects the worship of Necromantic gods (Kikubaaqudha and Yredelemnul).
  • Fedhas Madash will protect your plants from the Invoked effects of Makhleb and Qazlal.
  • Qazlal will protect your plants from any passive clouds you create.
  • Sif Muna will not gift spells that offend Fedhas Madash (no corpse-bothering spells).
• Gozag
  • Kikubaaqudha mostly works normally, but:
    • deliver corpses is your only source of corpses
    • Second RandBook is guaranteed to have Death Channel as it's the only slave spell that works with gold-dropping.
  • Yredelemnul doesn't offer animate remains, as there's nothing for it to affect. Other Invos and gifts work normally.
• Jiyva
  • Qazlal will protect jellies from any passive clouds you create (but not active Invos).
  • Zin takes offense to chaotic gods. (No worshiping Zin with Xom or Jiyva).
• Kikubaaqudha
  • Trog disapproves of magical gods. (No worshipping Trog with Kikubaaqudha.)
  • The Good Gods disapprove of the Evil ones. (No worshiping TSO, Zin or Ely with Kikubaaqudha).
• Lugonu
  • The Good Gods disapprove of the Evil ones. (No worshiping TSO, Zin or Ely with Lugonu).
• Nemelex Xobeh
  • Evoking a non-stacked deck of destruction or war with allies around will give warnings about possibly harming allies, but ultimately be allowed. (Okawaru/Good Gods).
  • With any good god, Nemelex Xobeh will repress evil card effects. (If you draw a Pentagram, you cantrip; sorry).
• Okawaru - No additional exceptions.
• Qazlal
  • Zin will repress Qazlal's storm clouds during sanctuary.
  • Qazlal protects your angels from your clouds. (TSO).
  • Note: Though not expressly forbidden Qazlal + Yredelemnul or using BiA with Qazlal are very bad ideas. (No storm cloud protection). This will be warned about.
• Ru - No Exceptions.
• Sif Muna
  • Trog disapproves of magical gods. (No worshipping Trog with Sif Muna).
  • Sif Muna will not gift spells that offend the Good Gods (Ely, TSO, Zin) (no Necromancy spells).
• Trog
  • Trog disapproves of magical gods. (No worshipping Trog with Kiku, Sif or Vehu).
• Vehumet
  • Vehumet will not gift Bolt of Draining if you are with a Good God (Ely, TSO, Zin).
• Xom
  • Zin disapproves of Xom.
  • Xom summons natural creatures, instead of demons, when with Ely or TSO. Seems mildly annoyed that he has to.
• Yredelemnul
  • The Good Gods disapprove of the Evil ones. (No worshiping TSO, Zin or Ely with Yred).
• Zin
  • The Good Gods prefer to keep their affairs separate. (You may not worship TSO or Elyvilon with Zin).

[mps]

If there were interest in trying some form of dual wielding, the natural place to start would be with formicids, imo.

[Lasty]

This really isn't going to happen.

[asdu]

I think the Complete List of God Exceptions™ clearly shows why dual worship won't happen.

[bcadren]

This really isn't going to happen.

I know. Dual wielding could. It would be work, but not HORRIBLY much. The biggest issue is interface (making you able to wield multiple things instead of (w)ield assuming you mean to swap weapons).

Dual religions. The work to even try it is pretty extreme.

From a front-end perspective: (^) screen needs two pages; (a)bility screen needs an exception to list the second god's abilities. the warning message "This would result in penance." needs to be edited to 'result in penance with {god}...tons of crap.

Back end perspective; on top of all the mentioned exceptions (which actually aren't that much, just a few 'if' checks); it would need new data-handling channels to hold you.god.1 and you.god.2 instead o just you.god. Every single time your religion is checked; it'd have to check both. It'd completely fuck with how wrath works. It'd be a more complicated thing to try than any existing god; including some of the really complicated ones, like Xom. Take a lot of work to debug, despite balance. It's a white whale to even think about trying. I'm sure a lot of players would enjoy it and it would be fun if it could work, it'd just be really hard to make it do so.

[Sprucery]

I'd be happy with Ettin even if the only specialities would be wearing two hats and amulets :)

[bcadren]

If there were interest in trying some form of dual wielding, the natural place to start would be with formicids, imo.

I'd start somewhere other than Fo, dual-wielding 2H weapons is the wrong place to start. As I said; there are two ways it could work. I'm not sure which would work better; but neither is that hard.

Method One:

• There is a class of 'weapon' which are always equipped to the 'shield hand'.
• This weapon enhances existing 'offhand punch' making it hit more frequently and do more damage.
  • Current Offhand Punch hits if (STR+DEX) > d50; d3 == 1; UC*10 > d100.
  • For 5 + UC/2 damage.
    • Max 1/3 times for 18/19 (coinflip) damage with high STR/DEX and 27 UC skill.
  • New Offhand knife would be something like (STR+DEX+([Short Blades Skill]/3)) > d50; coinflip; Short Blades * 20 > d100
  • For Actual base damage (say 7, like a rapier); with potential for brands and enchantment.
• This weapon may also provide minimal (buckler level) SH and impede spell-casting until Short Blades is at a decent level.

Method Two:

• You may dual-wield any 1H weapon.
• Two weapons must be of the same skill category.
  • This is both to make so higher skill levels are necessary to use dual-wield at mindelay.
  • And to stop the confusion that would be caused by one weapon having cleaving and one not.
• Base delay for the stacked weapons is scaled so that 1.5x (normal skill for min-delay) [rounded down] is needed for min-delay.
• Min delay remains the same.
• Each weapon hits separately (separate to-hit and to-dam checks).
• Both hits get a -4 to-hit; reduced by skill normally.
• First weapon hits at 1/2 delay (randomly rounded).
• Second weapon hits at delay.
• Both hits affect hydra heads separately.

For example:

• Two Broad Axes (-2/13/1.6/0.7). 18 skill for mindelay.
• While dual wielded (-6/13 x 2/2.0/0.7). 26 skill for mindelay.

Method Two, Alternative:

• If 1.5x is too powerful; it can be scaled all the way to 2x, instead.
• This leads to higher-skill one-handers having a slower min-delay, however.

Alternative Example:

• Two Broad Axes (-2/13/1.6/0.7). 18 skill for mindelay.
• While dual wielded (-6/13 x 2/2.5/1.2). 26 skill for mindelay. (original mindelay would take an impossible 32 skill).

Note: I used Broad Axe for the example, because it's the highest skill one-hander; rapiers, demon whips and demon tridents all have more reasonable totals.

[Blobbo]

New Ru sacrifice: Sacrifice head (mega sacrifice). You lose control over half your body. Equivalent to sacrifice hand, plus: loss of extra hat and amulet slot. -4 Int modifiers since two heads are better than one. Movement rate is halved as you hobble along on one foot with the other paralysed. All physical skills get -4 aptitude modification.

[tedric]

• Your two heads have minds of their own. [You may worship two gods; you may wield two weapons. You lack the coordination to wield a 2H weapon.]

clearly it also needs "You lack the coordination to walk in a coherent fashion (all movement takes place as if confused)"

[tasonir]

• First weapon hits at 1/2 mindelay (randomly rounded).
• Second weapon hits at mindelay.

I think the time system of crawl is something that is generally poorly understood, and at the risk of getting something wrong myself, I will try to correct this.

What you proposed here has zero effect, or is actively against the player's interests, depending on how it's interpreted. Let's assume some nice even numbers - you have two scimtars with 12 skill, giving you a nice even 8 delay. The first scimitar would hit after 4 auts, the second after 8. What normally happens in crawl with a single weapon is the player acts, then monsters gain energy based on how long that action took, and then if they have enough energy to act, they attack you as many times as possible until they run out of energy. So if your action took 10 aut, aka 1 turn, a speed 15 monster gains 15 energy, and then takes actions itself (which cost 10 energy, but with energy randomization).

So assuming that dual wielding is still one action, having the first one hit halfway through in terms of auts and the second one hitting at the end doesn't make any difference - no monsters will act until your action is complete. You might as well say they both happen instantly at the start of the action, or both happen at the end, because it doesn't make any difference.

The other interpretation is you really want these to be staggered, so they are now two actions - after 4 auts, monsters gain their speed * .4 energy, get to take actions, and then you hit with the second weapon, they gain speed * .4 energy again, and take more actions. You can now possibly be killed in between two your two strikes. You'd increase your turn count by 2 for the purposes of scoring, making dual wielding speed runs a terrible idea. Of course, that could be made an exception and you could hardcode it as 1 turn, but it would be another exception.

I assume the first one is what you intended, and it's the better option, but in that case there's no point to mentioning the timing of the two strikes, because there is no timing.

If I have made any mistakes in the above please correct me - I'm mostly sure of this but I could easily have been mislead/mistaken about something.