suspicious of EV averaging and step-downs
Posted: Monday, 21st December 2015, 21:28
Hit-or-miss is determined, roughly speaking, by rolling EV twice, averaging the results, and comparing it to the to-hit roll. In practice, there is very little difference between doing this and simply comparing 1d(EV) vs 1d(to-hit)... unless EV is considerably higher than to-hit. Try it out on http://anydice.com. So Crawl incommensurately rewards EV considerably higher than monster to-hit. But monster to-hit is pretty high - it starts at +18 and goes up from there, using HD. For player characters evading monster attacks, this is hard to achieve. First off, you have to be at least in mid-game to get EV considerably higher than the to-hit of monsters that pose any threat. Second, the game makes it hard to get EV high enough for this to matter by implementing step-downs past 24 DEX and 30 EV. It's like the game creates a mechanic to make EV especially good, but only for really high EV, and it turns out to be too good, so the game creates step-downs to compensate.
Looks to me like the step-downs are a hack to keep EV roll averaging, an unnecessary mechanic, from becoming ridiculously effective. Why not get rid of both? I don't think much will change. Invisibility and repel/deflect missiles lower monster to-hit by a big proportion, and some other stuff like umbra also lower monster to-hit somewhat. These let you take advantage of EV roll averaging without actually having incredibly high EV. But I don't think that the mechanics of these special status effects are a good enough reason to keep step-downs and the mostly irrelevant EV roll averaging mechanic. Surely you can invent some other method of making invis/Rmsl/Dmsl especially good with great EV, if that is even desirable.
I presume the double-rolling EV also works for monsters, making high-EV monsters particularly hard to hit when your to-hit is lower. I doubt this is pertinent to many situations outside of bolt of inaccuracy, squashing early adders while wielding a GSC or wearing D:1 plate, and the ocasional monster with invis/DMsl.
Meanwhile, rather anecdotally, high AC is extremely effective. AC doesn't get any step-downs though. What AC gets instead is a nifty bonus in the form of GDR, and works on almost everything that can be dodged (doesn't do anything against some melee brands) and works on many things that can't be dodged. ???
Looks to me like the step-downs are a hack to keep EV roll averaging, an unnecessary mechanic, from becoming ridiculously effective. Why not get rid of both? I don't think much will change. Invisibility and repel/deflect missiles lower monster to-hit by a big proportion, and some other stuff like umbra also lower monster to-hit somewhat. These let you take advantage of EV roll averaging without actually having incredibly high EV. But I don't think that the mechanics of these special status effects are a good enough reason to keep step-downs and the mostly irrelevant EV roll averaging mechanic. Surely you can invent some other method of making invis/Rmsl/Dmsl especially good with great EV, if that is even desirable.
I presume the double-rolling EV also works for monsters, making high-EV monsters particularly hard to hit when your to-hit is lower. I doubt this is pertinent to many situations outside of bolt of inaccuracy, squashing early adders while wielding a GSC or wearing D:1 plate, and the ocasional monster with invis/DMsl.
Meanwhile, rather anecdotally, high AC is extremely effective. AC doesn't get any step-downs though. What AC gets instead is a nifty bonus in the form of GDR, and works on almost everything that can be dodged (doesn't do anything against some melee brands) and works on many things that can't be dodged. ???