Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?


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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 13:13

Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

Maybe it's just me, but isn't there a lot of overlap between throwing and evocation wands? Maybe one could remove throwing and leave evo. It would also free some inventory room. In general, I find evo more interesting, because of the variety of effects it has. Curare is the only part of throwing which I find really makes a difference, and could survive as an ammo brand for all lanchers superseding the launcher ego. All other needle effects could be put into evocables with XP recharging and mass effect.
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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 14:29

Re: Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

Shtopit wrote:Curare is the only part of throwing which I find really makes a difference, and could survive as an ammo brand for all lanchers superseding the launcher ego.
or in any number of other ways, when you think about it. You could just turn them into darts a la Hellcrawl and use substitute another skill for Throwing to determine their accuracy and damage (such as it is), or maybe just base it on Dex or whatever rather than any skill at all. Or you could replace the needles with (limited-use) vials of curare, which players could evoke to coat their weapons with.

edit: more generally, I think this is a great proposal. I'm pessimistic that there's a way for throwing to be both (a) non-OP and (b) meaningfully different from other ranged options, so cutting it entirely strikes me as a good first step to the promised land of Ranged Reform.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 14:58

Re: Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

I really enjoy throwing tactics, but dislike the inventory management hell i find myself in when i focus on and try to make full use of the skill. So much so that i find myself strategically choosing races that hold on to less gear when i want to make a throwing focused character.

I'd like to see a trim of the uninteresting brands from the main cast while leaving in the ones you use differently then normal ammo like tomahawk's dispersal, and exploding, and javelin's penetration.

And a side thought about the blowgun, i feel like the primary game play function of the blowgun was removed with the patch that modified low skill needle effectiveness, since it no longer seems very important to gate d1 poison needles behind a launcher anymore. Turning them into normally throwable darts would cut yet another item out of the inventory as well as help with the throwing skill identity of not having to swap when you want to (f)ire.

If it's decided that wands and throwing must not share the same effects, it would probably make more sense to remove the hex wands and let the throwing skill have them. Since evocations have so much loaded omniutility anyway.

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Post Sunday, 17th September 2017, 07:06

Re: Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

I would rather remove Evo. Heavy armour is supposed to make it impossible or at least very hard to cast spells like fireball, lightning, invisibility, summons or confuse yet you can use them all while training just a single skill instead of many.
Edit. And if you object that they are not spammable unlike spelks, I can tell you that they are MORE spammable than spells, you don't run out of MP. Make evocations give a new status "evo-exhausted" to stop spamming
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Post Monday, 18th September 2017, 13:41

Re: Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

Just make all wands MP-powered, with or without the mutation's spellpower boost. Evo builds MP, doesn't it? So heavy-armor characters still have a way to build MP. But reduce the overlap between wands and spells: get rid of lightning and extend acid's range; get rid of flame; etc.
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Post Tuesday, 19th September 2017, 06:14

Re: Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

MainiacJoe wrote:Just make all wands MP-powered, with or without the mutation's spellpower boost. Evo builds MP, doesn't it? So heavy-armor characters still have a way to build MP. But reduce the overlap between wands and spells: get rid of lightning and extend acid's range; get rid of flame; etc.

On the surface, that seems good.

In reality, it would just screw over spellcasters even harder.

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Post Tuesday, 19th September 2017, 06:26

Re: Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

I think it won't be accepted as it makes Evo too similar to spellcasting (both are limited by MP). Though currently Evo is too close to ranged weapons (unlimited in a fight, somewhat limited in a long run). Oops, I am saying it in a thread which suggests to remove throwing as too similar to Evo so obviously I am not the only one who noticed that :)

Edit. Yes, making Evo trigger some new status which is cleared with XP would be good IMHO. It already works this way for fan and lamp, why not make something similar apply to wands/sack of spider etc. Just evoked wand of paralysis? Now earn some XP before you are able to evoke any wand again :twisted:
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Post Tuesday, 19th September 2017, 07:42

Re: Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

Or just remove scrolls of recharging.
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Post Sunday, 24th September 2017, 19:11

Re: Remove Throwing, Leave Evo?

Throwing makes melee classes smooth from the perspective that you don't lose time switching weapons. Is it entirely fair or balanced? I'm not really sure. But I can see playing the already nerfed Ogre as being very difficult without throwing. I've tried training crossbows on an ogre before and it was a pretty risky proposition in mid-game, even with a very nice item to boost the odds. There are lots of things that can hammer melee characters at range if they don't have some semi-reliable ranged ability that doesn't lose too much time or xp.

I do find it hard to use needles these days, but maybe I'm just not doing it right. On a few characters I've managed to debilitate things around Lair, Spider and lower dungeons but it takes a weird coincidence of drops as well as moderately high early throwing skill to get it going consistently (which apart from ogres who need all the preemption they can get, I'd usually only train above 4-5 on more armored characters by then cause I found a pack of extra nice javelins sitting around really early). And then if it does get going, I tend to run out of the ammo kinds I care for pretty quick.

I'm not at all sold on the claims about Evoc -- Not every game drops that many class and branch-appropriate wands before late game (it's pretty random what you get), and they take up inventory space to keep a variety at least as well as throwing if not much worse. A good stash of javelins can be really powerful with moderately high throwing, but you need a whole lot of wands or recharge scrolls to be reliably getting past many monster resistances. It also doesn't convince me much to push in a direction suggesting also that no one should have an easier single fight even here or there before they run out of charges. In any event, Oka and Trog won't give you more wands or wand charges.

I'd be interested to know if there's some chatter about however the devs imagine redoing ranged (if they're getting to that), as I think ranged can be and should somehow remain a lot of fun. (Those who think every minute of the game should be more of a horror movie for everyone, will probably disagree.) That said, I think the ultimate impact of simply removing Throwing or Evoc would be more people playing Makhleb, TSO, Beogh etc. just for the ranged abilities. Which is only a partial reduction in the same old Evocations situation, and makes melee that much slower for everyone because gifts would be lost in the process.
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