Make aptitudes influenced by backgrounds

[papilio]

I gave up 0.19 tournament after getting 3th banners of Sif Muna, TSO, Ru.. because it was not fun for me.

Current tournament system is intended to courage players to do many wins with different race+background combination.
Simple math indicates that it's best to do 'weird' combinations to get high score, like DDAE, HEAr, HOWz, etc.

But, think, the job affect little after the very first part of the game.
For example; when people play MiFE, they manage the game like just Minotaur Warrior with no starting equip and less STR.
Hence, from entering the Lair, backgrounds become almost meaningless, and incongruent background just make early game more tedious.

So, how about make aptitudes influenced by the backgrounds selected?
Then final aptitude will be "Race aptitude" + "Background aptitude".

Example:
Fire Elementalist Apt: Fighting -1, All weapons -1, Armour -1, Shield -1, Spellcasting +1, Fire Magic +2
-> MiFE Apt: Fighting +1, Many melee wpns +1, Throwing -1, Ranged wpns 0, Arm/Dod/Shi +1, Spellcast -3, Fire -1

[cerebovssquire]

How does it make the early game tedious? Backgrounds are currently good at differentiating games until maybe about Lair stage, with some obvious exceptions (Tr and d:2 trog come to mind). To take your example, there is a difference between a Mi with a good weapon and !might and a Mi with no weapon or weapon skill which could get sticky flame if it wanted, and a significant stat difference. The game being more challenging because of sub-par items can hardly be called tedium.

[nago]

Plus background is called background and not class because it is intended to influence only early game (up first rune, depending on background, loot, race etc).
What you are asking for is totally contrary to this style design, in dcss only races (and Gods) conceptually influence game in all the stages

[kuniqs]

Or: let's make the apts even more constraining.

[tabstorm]

Due to the way tournament points are assigned I think it's best to win very easy combos like MiBe, GrGl, HOFi, DDFi, etc. first because their point value will quickly decrease over time since newbies can win them semi-easily, and also basically everyone does MiBe for their first run.

Another option is to play MiBe, then play Warrior-Mages or Adventurers with the uber races (GrSk/Wr, DDSk/Wr, CeAM, SpEn, MfTm/Sk, HOSk, VSTm/Ar/Wn etc.) to maximize your win chances since those backgrounds can easily break a streak on even a mid-tier race. Then, play Warrior backgrounds with mid tier races like OgHu, HaAs, DsFi/Gl, FoFi/Gl, GhMo, and so on, since, in my opinion you're less likely to break a streak with a warrior background of a mid-tier race than a mage of the same race. Then, play mage backgrounds with frail/magic races and Demigods (VpNe, DEWz, DgFE, OpIE, DrEE, etc.) since book backgrounds outside of FE are not typically popular in a tournament and are worth a lot of points without any hurry to win them. As far as I can tell, there is no stepdown function on streak length in tournament scoring, so in theory I think you want to get as many points for streaking as possible by playing easy combos.

I think this strategy can easily set you up with a 7+ game streak, for example you can play:

MiBe, DDWr, GrFi, HOSk, CeAM, SpEn, VSAr, MfTm, OgHu, GhMo, HaAs, DsGl, FoFi

and reasonably expect to win all those without dying: Only the last 2 are really somewhat risky. Of course, I proceeded to not follow my own advice by falling for the "Nemelex choice IE is good" meme.

[Rast]

You can reasonably expect to complete a 13-game win streak without dying