Balancing OP Axes

[Corinon]

If you are like me, unless you are running a mage, assassin or hunter background, the only real viable weapon for a fighter background is the Axe. And why? because it is the only weapon that has the capability to kill or damage 8 enemies in a circle around you.

The overpowered nature of the Axe makes it hard to play characters that don't train it well and also to choosing other weapons as your primary weapon. I have a list of some logical options to make using other characters and weapons for the fighter background no longer a near nonexistent option. I will go through all the weapon classes and a few suggestions.

SHORT BLADES
Short blades are an stealth weapon and for thrusting only, there is no need to change it as its purpose and function logically fits what it does now.

LONG BLADES
Katanas used to be rated by the number of slave bodies they could cleave, and then they would mark them accordingly; a 7 was good and so was a 5. The point being, long blades have a limited cleaving ability, but not like the Axe. It is logical that swinging a long blade can damage or kill the enemies adjacent to you and your main target (not a circle all the way around you). It is just as logical that a man can swing at an enemy and cut through the arm of the enemy next to him as it is an axe can cut in a circle through 8 enemies. I propose we make the cleaving ability for long swords to possibly damage at a 75% rate the two enemies adjacent to the primary target that are also adjacent to the player. I haven't run a long blade wielder for a long time now because the axe is so OP.

MACES AND FLAILS
I would not change maces and flails at all, many times I start with a flail with an eye to later changing to a cross trained axe. This is good when you character has a good m&F skill aptitude or a bad Axe Aptitude.

POLEARMS
If you spear an enemy it is logical you may very well spear the enemy behind them. Make every attack with a thrusting polearm weapon also attack the person behind them. If there is no enemy in an adjacent square, you must still evoke your polearm to reach them if they are one square away. you could also switch the limited cleaving ability like that proposed for long blades with a polearm with a blade, which also uses a swinging/cleaving action.

STAVES
I would make staves crosstrain with AXES so that it is a viable option for later weapon switching as it uses the same swinging motion to attack. Also the Lajatang could have the same limited cleaving as the long blade limited to only the primary enemy attacked and the two adjacent to the enemy and the player.

Thanx and hope to see what you all think.

[Sharkman1231]

Axes are the worst weapon type. Lower base damages than other catagories, much longer delay, cleaving isn't good.

Cleaving isn't good because you never want to be in a situation where it's used.

Axes are more underpowered than overpowered.

DCSS is also a video game, don't pay too much attention to realism. Triple swords, demon weapons, executioner axes. No one would ever try to fight someone with an executioner's axe.

[johlstei]

Yeah I don't think axes are overpowered, and I don't think there's much reason to fight while surrounded either. Overall I'd rather have a polearm, and even better is another weapon type that I don't need 26 skill for mindelay on.

I'm a fan of maces even if they were nerfed - low skill requirement, (relatively) common great maces, rHydra, they're pretty nice.

[duvessa]

Katanas used to be rated by the number of slave bodies they could cleave, and then they would mark them accordingly; a 7 was good and so was a 5. The point being, long blades have a limited cleaving ability, but not like the Axe. It is logical that swinging a long blade can damage or kill the enemies adjacent to you and your main target (not a circle all the way around you).

*sound of historians committing suicide*

[Sar]

you mean committing sudoku

you know, with katanas

[Berder]

Cleaving isn't good because you never want to be in a situation where it's used.

Like it or not, there are many many situations where you cannot have only a single enemy attacking you at a time. Deep troll packs, to name just one example, make it extremely difficult to establish a chokepoint due to their digging. Then you have swamp, shoals, orc, and other open levels throughout the game where chokepoints simply are not available most of the time. Even in Vaults, 2 melee enemies attacking you at once is normal because doors are not perfect chokepoints.

[Sandman25]

Slime Creatures are fun in corridors too.

I like OP ideas of making weapons more unique but yes, I agree, OP probably should not have mentioned Axes as OP as it does nothing but derails the thread.

[tedric]

except these ideas would make weapons more similar

[Berder]

As far as realism goes, weapons don't cleave or stab through multiple enemies. In real life if a melee weapon hit an enemy it would usually stop or bounce back

[Zooty]

I wish devteam would admit they only put double and triple swords back because of a sponsor deal with Gillette.

[johlstei]

Monsters with smite targetted effects are the biggest reason to use cleaving in my eyes because retreating to a corridor sometimes makes them worse, not better.

[Sandman25]

except these ideas would make weapons more similar

Long blades/staves/M&F are too similar and share a single attack pattern. I wouldn't mind if long blades could attack 3 adjacent monsters (Sprites in Homm5), polearms had "breath attack" (different dragons in Homm5) and M&F had a chance to make monster lose energy (upgraded elven archers or just lightning with corresponding skill in HoMM 5). Who knows, maybe it would lead to swapping to different weapon categories during battles sometimes, it does not happen often now.

[lessens]

Axes are the worst weapon type. Lower base damages than other catagories, much longer delay, cleaving isn't good.

Cleaving isn't good because you never want to be in a situation where it's used.

Axes are more underpowered than overpowered.

This is nonsense because you don't always fight everything under ideal circumstances. Crawl isn't the same thing as ||||||||||| sprint.

[Sar]

Crawl combat minigame pretty much amounts to minimizing the amount of enemies that can hit you at once. As such, the more you need cleave, the worse you are at playing that minigame!

[lessens]

Crawl combat minigame pretty much amounts to minimizing the amount of enemies that can hit you at once.

Imagine what a shit game Crawl would be if this were true.

[Sandman25]

Crawl combat minigame pretty much amounts to minimizing the amount of enemies that can hit you at once. As such, the more you need cleave, the worse you are at playing that minigame!

Correct, top players are never surrounded after entering a new level.

[Sandman25]

Crawl combat minigame pretty much amounts to minimizing the amount of enemies that can hit you at once.

Imagine what a shit game Crawl would be if this were true.

Well, it is true, just imagine if you had to lure every monster to survive.

[tasonir]

You should reduce dangerous fights to as few monsters as possible, but there are plenty of not dangerous fights where you can just take on 5 or 8 monsters at once. You don't need a cleaving weapon for that though, because it's not a dangerous fight. But that said there's tons of fights where I'm fighting 5 monsters at once because I can and I hardly took any damage at the end of it...

As for the proposed changes, even if cleave was overpowered, the solution isn't to give cleave to more weapons.

I may be one of the few people who think axes with cleave is a net gain for crawl overall - it's slightly on the weak side but not terribly so and it's an interesting choice that a lot of people like, even if it isn't quite ideal.

[Arrhythmia]

Crawl combat minigame pretty much amounts to minimizing the amount of enemies that can hit you at once.

Imagine what a shit game Crawl would be if this were true.

crawl is pretty shitty you're right

[tabstorm]

Crawl combat minigame pretty much amounts to minimizing the amount of enemies that can hit you at once.

Imagine what a shit game Crawl would be if this were true.

I think a lot of the most frequent posters on here think Crawl is a bad game if you try to play "correctly" anyway...

[Sar]

Correct, top players are never surrounded after entering a new level.

I can't speak for top players but if I were to go downstairs and find myself surrounded by non-trivial enemies, my first thought would probably not be "oh boy I wish I had an axe" but "how do I get unsurrounded".

[bananaken]

Aren't axes the best weapons for speedrunning (and to a certain degree, score runs)? That has to mean they're quite strong for those particular uses at least. If the goal is to streak then there are probably better melee options.

[Sar]

Yeah, they allow you to hit all the dudes which speeds up the game significantly.

[Berder]

Crawl combat minigame pretty much amounts to minimizing the amount of enemies that can hit you at once. As such, the more you need cleave, the worse you are at playing that minigame!

Maybe so, but don't imagine that you can get so good at that minigame that you never find yourself in melee with several at once. That's not possible. Even if you're as good as me, you're going to repeatedly be attacked by several enemies at once through the course of a game, because levels beyond the early game lack perfect chokepoints and contain fast enemies.

[Sar]

While I wouldn't even dream of being as good as you, in my experience the "multiple enemies" fights can be divided at those where most of these enemies are trivial (Orcish Mines), where axes only save turns, and the ones where you have several dangerous enemies nearby - in which case you might want to look into repositioning anyway. And well, axes are just not amazing stats-wise. Though I kinda like battleaxes, I guess. They're common and good enough, slower to mindelay than great swords though, not even speaking about lajatangs.

[Sandman25]

Correct, top players are never surrounded after entering a new level.

I can't speak for top players but if I were to go downstairs and find myself surrounded by non-trivial enemies, my first thought would probably not be "oh boy I wish I had an axe" but "how do I get unsurrounded".

And of course only top players think about it and always find a way to achieve it?
Seriously I don't think we can find a single game where player would not melee things while having more than 1 of them adjacent. It's impossible even as Sp.

[Sar]

@Sandman: see my thoughts on that above.

[Wahaha]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0afo6Tnf0c

[Berder]

While I wouldn't even dream of being as good as you, in my experience the "multiple enemies" fights can be divided at those where most of these enemies are trivial (Orcish Mines), where axes only save turns, and the ones where you have several dangerous enemies nearby - in which case you might want to look into repositioning anyway.

There are many fights where:

1. The enemies are not trivial,
2. There is no way to avoid fighting several of them at once, without doing dangerous or costly things such as walking long distances across the map, teleporting, or using valuable consumables, and
3. The enemies are not so tough that such measures are worth the risk or expense.

Here are some examples of moderately dangerous enemies that I often engage multiple at once.

In lair: wolves, blink frogs, elephants (because they trample me out of chokepoints)
In swamp: vampire mosquitos, spriggan riders, various other mid level threats
In spider: wolf spiders, trapdoor spiders, jumping spiders, tarantellas, redbacks
In snake: black mamba packs, naga packs that aren't too dangerous, salamander packs
In shoals: merfolk, harpies, fauns
In vaults: vault guards, yaktaurs, deep troll packs

[Sar]

Okay, I am wrong, I give up, axes are amazing.

[all before]

I don't really get the argument that axes are good for when you're surrounded by non-trivial enemies, but not enemies that are so non-trivial that you should do something about it.

[Berder]

I don't really get the argument that axes are good for when you're surrounded by non-trivial enemies, but not enemies that are so non-trivial that you should do something about it.

You really only have to look at your own experience playing the game to understand it. I'm sure the last time you won a melee character (axes or not), there were many times when you were being hit by several enemies, and this was not an ideal situation, but it was okay, because you'd still win by tabbing.

[Sandman25]

Okay, I am wrong, I give up, axes are amazing.

It wasn't about axes.

[Sar]

Okay, then I'm wrong about that other thing that it was about too!

[lessens]

The issue is obviously not that axes are OP it's that cleaving isn't bad "because you never want to be in a situation where it's used". Whether you want it or not, you are forced into many, many situations during a regular game where fighting everything in a chokepoint is either impossible or suboptimal (whether or not you actually have an axe) and in those situations axes get an advantage that the other weapons don't have.

[Siegurt]

So I *suspect* that Axes are neither useless, nor overpowered, but rather, somewhere in that "not useless, but also not always 100% better than all non axes in all circumstances" range for most players.

I would also argue that the more conservative a player you are, the less advantage you get from cleaving.

Obviously there's no-one who is *never ever ever* has more than one creature in melee range, and just as obviously, its undesirable as an outcome.

I would argue that *most* of the time it's possible to restrict yourself to one creature in melee (Like in somewhere between 50% and 99% of all combats) restricted by how much patience you have for things like luring creatures halfway across the level.

Whether it's worth having cleaving available for the minority of cases in exchange for the lower damage given per XP invested is an exercise I think best left to the individual player, as it will vary with your play style.

Regarding the rest of the proposal, I think this isn't the first time something like this has been proposed, and there's good and bad points in this iteration, which I think would be more effective if were broken up into individual proposals to discuss.

[Siegurt]

The issue is obviously not that axes are OP it's that cleaving isn't bad "because you never want to be in a situation where it's used". Whether you want it or not, you are forced into many, many situations during a regular game where fighting everything in a chokepoint is either impossible or suboptimal (whether or not you actually have an axe) and in those situations axes get an advantage that the other weapons don't have.

Impossible I get. When would it be suboptimal to fight in a choke point when it's possible to do so? (Other than slime creatures who are a special case)

[lessens]

The issue is obviously not that axes are OP it's that cleaving isn't bad "because you never want to be in a situation where it's used". Whether you want it or not, you are forced into many, many situations during a regular game where fighting everything in a chokepoint is either impossible or suboptimal (whether or not you actually have an axe) and in those situations axes get an advantage that the other weapons don't have.

Impossible I get. When would it be suboptimal to fight in a choke point when it's possible to do so? (Other than slime creatures who are a special case)

For example when you meet several fast enemies in the middle of an open map and getting to a chokepoint (or even somewhere where you can dig a murderhole) means getting hit repeatedly. This happens fairly frequently in branches like Lair, Shoals and Spider.

[Berder]

When would it be suboptimal to fight in a choke point when it's possible to do so? (Other than slime creatures who are a special case)

• When the choke point is too far away, you have to walk through potentially dangerous territory to get there.
• When enemies are faster than you or ranged, you would take damage getting to the chokepoint.
• When there are enemies that can smite/airstrike/pproj/flay/summon/corrode/etc from behind other enemies, using a chokepoint that doesn't cut LOS means the guys in back get to do their thing. This also applies to deep troll shamans. In this situation, especially if you have an axe, it may be better to charge forward out of the chokepoint. If you don't have an axe you may need to try other things.
• The preceding also applies to enemies with polearms, a common situation. The polearm wielder(s) will hit you from the second row while you stand in the chokepoint hitting the front guy. If you have an axe it's often better to charge forward, so that you're adjacent to everybody and can hit them back as they hit you.

[Sphara]

Ofc there are situations, where cleaving is nice to have. That ability is there to offset lower base damage and higher skill cost for minimizing attack delay.

Hitting 8 adjacent monster certainly doesn't make axes overpowered.
If you feel it is overpowered, you might wanna clear Zot:5 tabbing 8 monsters simultaneously with it and see how it goes.

[Siegurt]

When would it be suboptimal to fight in a choke point when it's possible to do so? (Other than slime creatures who are a special case)

• When the choke point is too far away, you have to walk through potentially dangerous territory to get there.
• When enemies are faster than you or ranged, you would take damage getting to the chokepoint.
• When there are enemies that can smite/airstrike/pproj/flay/summon/corrode/etc from behind other enemies, using a chokepoint that doesn't cut LOS means the guys in back get to do their thing. This also applies to deep troll shamans. In this situation, especially if you have an axe, it may be better to charge forward out of the chokepoint. If you don't have an axe you may need to try other things.
• The preceding also applies to enemies with polearms, a common situation. The polearm wielder(s) will hit you from the second row while you stand in the chokepoint hitting the front guy. If you have an axe it's often better to charge forward, so that you're adjacent to everybody and can hit them back as they hit you.

I guess I included situations where you can't actually get into a choke point (or your choke point will stop being one) as "impossible" rather than "suboptimal", I guess I lumped "you are obviously going to take a ton of damage to get to a choke point" into "impossible" although I those are technically possible.

Polearm using critters I usually draw upstairs one at a time (Which is sort of a choke point) and ranged critters similarly (if I don't have a way to quickly dispatch at range) I get out of LOS ASAP (If you explore manually you shouldn't ever be in a situation where backing up will either put you into dangerous territory and if the creature isn't faster than you *and* ranged it's still typically a good idea to back up around a corner and into some sort of place where you're limiting the number of creatures attacking you at a time.)

I would never charge out of my chokepoint to fight even a pair of polearm users with an axe. Things that can hit you from behind a pack I just plain old would back up drawning the whole pack around a corner or something so they can't hit me, again I would charge headlong into a pack only as a measure of last resort, where backing up is impossible or implausible.

[Sandman25]

Chokepoints are suboptimal when (all happened to me):
1) you are EV-based character and there are enemies with LRD
2) you are attacked by 2+ Orbs of Fire
3) you have Tornado and TSO/Makhleb
4) there are monsters with Torment/smiting Hellfire/Ironbrand Convokers/Vault Sentinels/Giant Eyeballs/different summoners etc. (especially when you have antimagic)
5) you don't want to fight, you want to get to timed portal.
Kill hole is much better.

[Berder]

I would never charge out of my chokepoint to fight even a pair of polearm users with an axe.

Perhaps you should start. You would take less damage than staying in the choke and letting them hit you, provided you know the polearm users aren't going to kill you by themselves. Like most things in crawl it requires a refined sense of what could kill you and what couldn't.

Things that can hit you from behind a pack I just plain old would back up drawning the whole pack around a corner or something so they can't hit me, again I would charge headlong into a pack only as a measure of last resort, where backing up is impossible or implausible.

Well, yes, it's usually a good idea to break LOS with such things if possible. However, don't neglect the charge forward option either, because there are situations where it is the best choice. Suppose you open a door to a room with 4 boggarts in it. Let's even suppose you're stealthy enough that they haven't noticed you. Run away? I don't think so! Just rush forward and kill them before they get the summons going.

Or alternatively suppose the room has some deep trolls with a shaman and they all notice you. If you run away or try to break LOS, the shaman will haste some of his buddies and they'll chase you down. Provided you know you can kill a mostly unbuffed deep troll pack, and you have an axe, a better solution may be to walk forward and kill the shaman.

[lessens]

If you want to see a game that is truly 100% about standing in a chokepoint, take a look at Sil.

[Siegurt]

Chokepoints are suboptimal when (all happened to me):
1) you are EV-based character and there are enemies with LRD
2) you are attacked by 2+ Orbs of Fire
3) you have Tornado and TSO/Makhleb
4) there are monsters with Torment/smiting Hellfire/Ironbrand Convokers/Vault Sentinels/Giant Eyeballs/different summoners etc. (especially when you have antimagic)
5) you don't want to fight, you want to get to timed portal.
Kill hole is much better.

A kill hole is just a manufactured choke point.

And I'm not saying "It's always the best choice to take a bunch of damage navigating to a choke point" I'm saying "If you can fight in a choke point without any risk getting to it, it's typically optimal to do so"

EV based chars facing LRD casters are a good reason to stay away from walls (And I know this it just comes up so infrequently that I'd pretty much forgotten about it)

If I'm attacked by 2+ Orbs of fire, and I have a choice about being in a choke point or in the open, I'll take the choke point, ideally I'll take a choke point around a corner, ideally in a kill hole sort of situation so I can only be fireballed by one at a time, hopefully while hasted and wielding a highly damaging weapon of antimagic.

Tornado (Or for that matter Shatter or to a lesser degree Glaciate) is better while standing in the open than it is in a choke point, but that's backwards, having Tornado doesn't make choke points worse, it makes being in the open not as bad (Which is what Axes do too for that matter) I'm not sure what you mean about TSO (I guess you could mean "You can spend your piety more efficiently for divine wrath when using it to kill lots of stuff" although I would argue that it's better to be safe and only have one thing attacking you, then it is to have a little extra piety). obviously Makhleb's summons aren't effected much by whether you're standing in a choke point, so I assume you mean "You can hit more stuff if you fire into a big open area" (the piety shaving argument again) However standing in a choke point doesn't prevent you from shooting into a big open area, unless there's a critter standing in your face, of course if there's a critter standing in melee range, firing around it at other stuff is not often the best plan, and if you're going to cause explosions, you don't want to do that in your face whether you're in a choke point or not..

Yes, not-fighting is not better in a choke point than not-fighting is in the open, (Although I think the question I was asking was "when is it not optimal to fight in a choke point" so it's perhaps a bit off topic.)

[Siegurt]

I would never charge out of my chokepoint to fight even a pair of polearm users with an axe.

Perhaps you should start. You would take less damage than staying in the choke and letting them hit you, provided you know the polearm users aren't going to kill you by themselves. Like most things in crawl it requires a refined sense of what could kill you and what couldn't.

Actually I always know what can kill me and what can't (I've been playing this game for a very very very long time), I don't stand in a choke point and get beat on, I take the least possible damage by not letting the second polearm user attack me at all. It's probably true that standing there and getting beat on is worse than charging forward, but not standing there and getting beat on, and drawing the critters back to a location where you can kill the lead one and take no damage at all from the polearm user is even less damage than that.

Things that can hit you from behind a pack I just plain old would back up drawning the whole pack around a corner or something so they can't hit me, again I would charge headlong into a pack only as a measure of last resort, where backing up is impossible or implausible.

Well, yes, it's usually a good idea to break LOS with such things if possible. However, don't neglect the charge forward option either, because there are situations where it is the best choice. Suppose you open a door to a room with 4 boggarts in it. Let's even suppose you're stealthy enough that they haven't noticed you. Run away? I don't think so! Just rush forward and kill them before they get the summons going. Giving up a door is not to your advantage

If I open a door with 4 boggarts in it, I close the door, then walk around a corner, or better yet, I kill them with a ranged attack before they can move, and if they summon something I close the door and walk around a corner, It doesn't take any additional time for a boggart to "get summons going" every turn they *could* summon something you don't want to fight, if they do you just leave. If you have some need to kill them, you can completely neutralize their summons by using a staircase.

Or alternatively suppose the room has some deep trolls with a shaman and they all notice you. If you run away or try to break LOS, the shaman will haste some of his buddies and they'll chase you down. Provided you know you can kill a mostly unbuffed deep troll pack, and you have an axe, a better solution may be to walk forward and kill the shaman.

So being surrounded by unbuffed or possibly slighty buffed trolls is better than forcing them to come at you in a line where you can kill them one at a time? Do you think a single buffed troll does more damage than 3 or 4 unbuffed ones? (And if you are paying attention you can usually still kill the shaman first even while retreating to a choke point)

There are definitely exceptions to every rule, and "fight mostly in choke points" is a rule that is and should be broken, sometimes, in certain situations, but those situations are the minority.

[Sandman25]

2 Orbs of fire attack you in a chokepoint the same way as in the open, they have only Bolt of Fire and Fireball which hurts you all the time and does not hurt them. It's better to have an axe in the situation.
Tornado does not work great in corridors. TSO/Makhleb means that you are healing on kills so it's better to fight many dangerous monsters at once in the open, you are dealing more damage with less MP and will lose less HP than if you'd kill one after another in kill hole. I was attacking 3 Orbs of Fire with Tornado once, quite fun.
I meant that it is a bad idea to be in corridor when you need to move forward.

[mps]

Every time I see someone make this argument that any time there's a choke point available, you should always go to it and fight there, I wonder if they've ever played the game before.

This makes threads about axes kind of disorienting in that it starts to look like no one actually plays crawl.

[Siegurt]

2 Orbs of fire attack you in a chokepoint the same way as in the open, they have only Bolt of Fire and Fireball which hurts you all the time and does not hurt them. It's better to have an axe in the situation.
Tornado does not work great in corridors. TSO/Makhleb means that you are healing on kills so it's better to fight many dangerous monsters at once in the open, you are dealing more damage with less MP and will lose less HP than if you'd kill one after another in kill hole. I was attacking 3 Orb of Fire with Tornado once, quite fun.
I meant that it is a bad idea to be in corridor when you need to move forward.

Perhaps we have a different definition of "choke point" when I say "choke point" I mean "A place that limits the number of creatures that can attack you at a time, preferably to 1" Obviously when talking about an orb of fire, a choke point isn't a simple corridor, a simple corridor, as you say, does nothing against ranged critters that can fire through their fellows with impunity.

And I understand now what you meant regarding tornado, you mean "If you've got tornado, and are worshipping TSO or Makhleb, killing multiple things at a time more quickly and with a more efficient use of MP is worth it, because you will gain enough Hps-on-kills to offset the damage you take per turn, since you can optimize the amount of damage you deal per turn"

Which might be true, Although if you can kill a line of things (i.e. in a choke point, with a bolt spell that can hit all of them) you're even better off than you are if you can be hit by all of the things you can hit in return, so except for the cases where you're surrounded by things that can hit you at range, or in weird cases where you've managed to attract an overly-large crowd and can therefore hit more things per turn than you could with a bolt spell (Possibly more profitable, since you can hit a lot of stuff at once, but also IMHO more risky, since if things *don't* die, you suffer a lot of attacks, which may be enough to kill you in one turn)

[Sandman25]

There are definitely exceptions to every rule, and "fight mostly in choke points" is a rule that is and should be broken, sometimes, in certain situations, but those situations are the minority.

Are you trolling here? Did anyone say that those situations are majority? You always have a clear path to stairs from a pack of gnolls, you are never blocked in corridor, you always have a wand of digging or playing Fo and Deep Trolls Earth Mages never destroy your chokepoints, boggarts never blink in your game and don't turn invisible, ok.