The Tavern

Remove short blades as equippable main hand weapon. Make them be equipped on the shield hand instead, along a main weapon on your weapon hand.
They should then give a modest SH bonus. They also get a weak off-hand attack.
More importantly, if you have a SB equipped, and you attack a monster eligible for being stabbed, your main attack is made with the SB, with current stab damage/probability.

Why I suggest this:
- SB are now only situationally useful because of their low base damage and high stab damage. This makes them less swappy.
- SH option without EV & stealth penalty, very good for hexers & stabbers.
- An alternative to shields for formicids, who have good stabber apts & antennae.

What do you think about it?

Would rather just make stabbing work w/ other weapon types (maybe change the name to ambush or something, idk) and remove SB altogether.

1. Short blades are really only bad outside the early game, pre-lair a short blade is as good as any other type of weapon. They are even viable (if not as good) all the way up to depths.

2. An easy to use common low xp investment weapon is not out of place, even if you ditch it later 8 points in short blades has no measurable reduction in your end game power.

3. Short blade stabs are *extremely* powerful, and provide an interesting alternative to the standard melee tactics, the fact that short blades are so weak in reguler melee is a reasonable compromise in their overalll power level.

4. Stabs *can* be done with non short blades, they aren't very impressive, and it is unlikely that you would want to make it a regular tactic, as the investment needed is not worth the results.

5. One handed weapons are outmatched by two handed ones in the part of the game where short blade melee is ineffective, wouldn't the desire to use a two handed weapon effectively remove the advantage of not wanting to swap weapons for stabs?

short blades aren't really situational... you just focus on abilities that let you stab more (allies, hexes, stealth), all of which improve your deadliness and survivability on their own terms as well. you effectively get the skill for free if you train long blades, and a dagger or quick blade of elec/pain/disto is good for regular melee.

won't do

1. So kinda like Poison Magic? I don't think it's good that there's a kind of weapon you can't use to win.
2. Why to start training it at all? I'm not an optimal player, but I avoid SB because, when they get ineffective, if I have 8 SB, I am various skill levels behind with the weapon that could save my life, and I could have been using reliably from the start.
3.It's not reasonable, because it's too unreliable, as stabbing generally is. You need an alternative to fall back on, or you are toast.
4. I think that's an answer to the previous poster.
5. (disclaimer: I am not sure I understood what you wrote here). You are forgetting shields, which outmatch two-handed in a few decisive situations, since there are attacks that ignore EV but not SH (Spider is the most evident case), and always are at least as effective as a choice as two-handed. What I mean is that two handed already isn't the be-all-and-end-all of weapon choice. There also is the fact that, while moar AC is always better in theory, you have to limit your AC to be a caster, or a stabber. What I mean is that you already are giving something up to be a stabber. My proposal is to make it less swap-heavy.

An addition is that the bonus attack would make enemy shields a bit less powerful.



The fact that you are going to get the skill through cross training does mean that you have to rely on another weapon, though. You then have random stealth failures and magic-immune enemies that force you to train another weapon school, although allies always function, I guess.

To explain my pov: I think that SB right now already are ancillary weapons. They just are coded like main weapons. Sure, dual wielding is taboo, but this isn't much like dual wielding, more like shields.

I use shortblades or M&F on almost every non-mele start because floorgod. They're just so disgustingly exp efficent, come with strong brands and while you do want alternate killdudes later with Sblades that's a given for every weapon type. I only bother upgrading sblades to lblades in less than 20% of my total wins with sblades trained though, tabbing popcorn is all you really "need" mele for.

There is no reason to limit character survivability because you are playing "caster" or "stabber".

2 hand weapons only strictly outmatch 1 hand weapons if the 2 hander is an xbow.

What's so bad with poison magic? You basically get a free 3-rune game with the starter book.