New Unrandart: Scimitar of the Gladiator

[MisterPersonMan]

The +10 Scimitar of the Gladiator {-2 AC}
Enchantment changes by -1 for every 2 points of AC the user has.

[TheMeInTeam]

It's an interesting concept, but I don't think this particular iteration of it would see much use as simply wearing decently enchanted helmet/gloves/boots/cloak would drag it down to the order of a random weapon lying around pre-lair...which doesn't lower your AC. Still, trading something valuable for an actually good weapon could be interesting.

[MisterPersonMan]

It's an interesting concept, but I don't think this particular iteration of it would see much use as simply wearing decently enchanted helmet/gloves/boots/cloak would drag it down to the order of a random weapon lying around pre-lair...which doesn't lower your AC. Still, trading something valuable for an actually good weapon could be interesting.

Yeah, this was my thought as well. This version almost definitely wouldn't work well, but I found the idea pretty interesting and wanted to throw something together anyway. Perhaps simply lowering AC would be better, since it would be a simple sacrifice of AC for a good weapon, but that would take away the aspect of choosing between your armor or higher damage.

Looking at it now, it is pretty weak. A good brand or a couple more enchantment levels would help, but I also thought that it might get a bit powerful in the hands of a character with low AC.

If this idea is worth exploring, there'd have to be a bit more balancing and experimenting than I've done here. I'll probably be exploring it more.

[ebering]

Over the past several versions we've been working on a [comprehensive review of unrands](https://github.com/crawl/crawl/wiki/Unrand-Review).

One thing that we already have are two swords with a variable plus. Variable plusses aren't a particularly impactful mechanic if you start at 10 and go down. The sword of power goes *up* to +27, and Maxwell's Thermic engine can get up pretty high too. The space is crowded, and since we want unrands to be unique a new twist on variable plus sword is aiming for crowded design space.

I also personally don't like variable plusses because it means special casing for monster-wielding of the weapon and spectral weapon. We try to avoid these special cases when we can, especially for new content.

[tasonir]

Ebering makes a good point, so it probably won't be done, but if we wanted to approximately balance this unrand as it is, you'd have to start by asking how much ac does your model character have. If we want the weapon to be "endgame" quality, then "endgame" characters typically have at least 20 ac, and if they're in heavy armor, maybe up to 40. It's fine if we want this weapon to be "bad" for heavy armor characters to force a more light armor EV melee style, but it needs to at least be good up to around 20 ac, which means it'll have -10 from the armor penalty. I think 2 ac per -1 is fine, by the way.

A scimitar is a bad base weapon, so we probably want around +15 to compensate for it, maybe even more. But that puts us at around +25 base, which is only 2 away from the magic number of 27, so I'd say we go with:

The +27 Scimitar of the Gladiator {-2 AC}

If you wanted to make it somewhat more interesting I'd recommend making it buff your EV and maybe provide some other benefits, although this is a matter of taste:

The +27 Scimitar of the Gladiator {-2 AC +3 EV MR+}

The idea here being it helps boost an EV build somewhat more directly, and MR is a generally useful resistance to have. I'd be good for light armor melee and pretty bad for heavy armor melee characters.

[Magipi]

The +27 Scimitar of the Gladiator {-2 AC +3 EV MR+}

The idea here being it helps boost an EV build somewhat more directly, and MR is a generally useful resistance to have. I'd be good for light armor melee and pretty bad for heavy armor melee characters.

Even light armor melee characters have 20 or more AC - which means that this is an awful weapon. The only exception I can think of is an octopode.

I have no idea how the opening poster came up with that original +10 enchantment - that version is extremely bad even for an octopode.

[duvessa]

scimitar of the early game