Merge Short and Long Blades?

[Matanui3]

It seems to me that short and long blades could easily be covered in one skill. Long blades' damage values seem to pick up about where short blades stops, so merging them would create a fuller spectrum of weapons, such that most other weapon skills have (except staves; they only have 3 weapons - one-hand magical staves, quarterstaves, and lajatangs - but that's another topic). Also, very few races are actually GOOD at long blades (the best being High Elves at +2, and nobody else above +1), so I feel they need more love.

As far as stabbing goes, Long blades are already marginally better than other weapons, IIRC (and a bit worse than current short blades), but daggers are already hardcoded to be better than their compatriots, so a stabbing spectrum wouldn't be too hard to do, I wouldn't think (and this would consolidate all of the stabbing bonus weapons into one skill).

[Igxfl]

One interesting game choice, especially now that Stabbing = .5 * (Weapon + Stealth) in Trunk, is whether to use daggers, which are lame in normal combat but can potentially one-shot virtually anything, or a normal weapon, which just does decent damage every round. Short Blades are probably the most well-defined weapon class for that reason. I'd be worried that merging Short and Long Blades would damage this distinction, especially at a time when the devs are trying hard to differentiate the weapon types more.

[sardonica]

Long blades are interesting because they are the least interesting.

EDIT: That is to say, not having a gimmick, in a game where every weapon has a gimmick, is a gimmick in itself.

[Amnesiac]

You know, I like this idea. All axes use the same skill, why not make blades this way too? For once stabbers will be better at killing what they were not able to stab. Well, we at least have crosstraining, but it's a bit sad to invest exp into them even at half price. What I mean is that stabbing bonuses would stay the same, but all blades would use one skill, so a stabber might carry a long blade as a backup and a character who uses long blades could carry a dagger as a sidearm for lucky opportunities to stab something.

[dpeg]

Stabbing builds just got one less skill to train [the Stabbing skill is no more, and every dedicated stabber would have trained Stealth anyway] -- what more do you want?

Fun fact: In the really olden times, there was a third sword skill, Great Swords.

[Amnesiac]

why not, fighters can do well with one weapon skill, while stabbers are usually quite bad at melee if they are not lucky to find some good brand on a dagger. while fighters need only one weapon skill apart from defensive skills, a stabber also needs stealth and a few well trained magic skills to be able to do stabs if he fails to sneak up to his target. There are scarce needles, too, which need a lot of training and enchantment, too and there is the luckiest item for a stabber a ring of invisibility, but it's rare and needs some exp investment, too, much less, though.

[dck]

Stabbers already instakill everything and if they fail their stealth checks have plenty of ways to put the target back in instakilling mode.
Besides short blades kill people just fine even if they're aware of your presence.

[mikee]

I think a 'stabber' is like a 'caster'. (protip: crawl is not a MMORPG. You are not on a team where someone is like, OK I'll tank so I'll build full defense. We need some dps, so why don't you just fully spec through the assassination tree. Charlie will heal us. Charlie, just max your heals and don't worry about anything else. Stay in the back, man.)

[Amnesiac]

Stabbers already instakill everything and if they fail their stealth checks have plenty of ways to put the target back in instakilling mode.
Besides short blades kill people just fine even if they're aware of your presence.

What do you mean just fine... How something with a base damage of 4-7 be fine. Slaying and brands like electrocution don't count because you need to be lucky to find them and even a DEWz with 0 weapon skill can kill stuff in melee with them.

I think a 'stabber' is like a 'caster'

A fighter can kill things if he just trains armour and weapon skill, a mage can probably even kill things if he trains just conjurations, but what would happen to an assassin if he trains just SB and, say, dodging? It probably won't go so well... Hmm, I'm starting to want to try this out.

[dck]

Sabres kill people just fine no matter their brand, quickblades do too. Recent changes to ?vorp let you even work on those brands further as you get deeper and your main way of killing dudes is still that +0 dagger you found on the ground in D: 2 so you can enchant the weapon you're using to kill aware opponents without restriction. Besides, you can use your multiple ways of making people go back to bed to just stab them again if you fucked up when you were approaching them. Or you can confuse/invis stab them, but that's pretty annoying.
There are plenty of options already for a guy whose main way of killing people is to walk into them when they're asleep to deal four hundred damage that they don't need the extra ability to just grab a demon blade and start swinging it with no extra skill investment around the depth when stabbing is starting to become more tricky. Hell, even netstabbing is stupid because all you do is portal projecting the net on top of the alich and then it dies when you walk into it as well.

[Amnesiac]

Thanks for the idea with portal projectile, but 7 base damage can't be "fine" if you can do much more with a long blade. and you hit midelay at 14... it's just not worth it, you would do better to train 10 SB and then spend the rest on LB.

[dck]

Have you tried it?

[DracheReborn]

Thanks for the idea with portal projectile, but 7 base damage can't be "fine" if you can do much more with a long blade. and you hit midelay at 14... it's just not worth it, you would do better to train 10 SB and then spend the rest on LB.

As things currently stand, it's not a huge XP investment to train SB to 14 then crosstrain LB to 14 (for that demonblade, etc). OP's proposal to remove even this small penalty would play havoc with Stabbing, I think.

A fighter can kill things if he just trains armour and weapon skill, a mage can probably even kill things if he trains just conjurations, but what would happen to an assassin if he trains just SB and, say, dodging? It probably won't go so well... Hmm, I'm starting to want to try this out.

Well, an assassin could train Hexes and Throwing (for blowguns), both of which synergize with stabbing a lot more than LB.

[MoogleDan]

My kobold win had me cut down all four pan lords and all four lords of hell with a holy wrath quick blade and modest slaying bonus. If a quick blade can go toe-to-toe with Cerebov and win, I think that demonstrates that the weapon type is perfectly capable. It might not kill things quite as quickly as a long blade, but the Stabbing possibility it offers makes up for that in spades. Kill most things in 1 action and a few in 20 fast ones, or kill everything in 8. They average out pretty well, honestly.

Besides, thanks to crosstraining, the game already makes it fairly easy to have decent skill in both weapons. They're not giving you access to everything for free, but it's a perfectly viable option once you hit the end-game's giant lump of XP.

[XuaXua]

If it is an actual problem resolve it by making Long Blades more attractive by giving all species except felids an additional +1.

[Volteccer_Jack]

A fighter can kill things if he just trains armour and weapon skill, a mage can probably even kill things if he trains just conjurations,

doesn't mean it's a good idea

a fuller spectrum of weapons, such that most other weapon skills have

There are currently 5 axes, 8 long blades, and 8 polearms. And that's counting scythes, which are worthless.

[DracheReborn]

There are currently 5 axes, 8 long blades, and 8 polearms. And that's counting scythes, which are worthless.

Technically, each Blessed Blade is a distinct weapon (different base damage and delay), so there are a lot more long blades.

Anyway, what I took away from your post is that the game definitely needs more Axe types

[MoogleDan]

I still think scythes should be moved to Axes and given cleave, but that'd just be silly >_>

[Amnesiac]

My kobold win had me cut down all four pan lords and all four lords of hell with a holy wrath quick blade and modest slaying bonus. If a quick blade can go toe-to-toe with Cerebov and win, I think that demonstrates that the weapon type is perfectly capable. It might not kill things quite as quickly as a long blade, but the Stabbing possibility it offers makes up for that in spades. Kill most things in 1 action and a few in 20 fast ones, or kill everything in 8. They average out pretty well, honestly.

Besides, thanks to crosstraining, the game already makes it fairly easy to have decent skill in both weapons. They're not giving you access to everything for free, but it's a perfectly viable option once you hit the end-game's giant lump of XP.

yeah, a quickblade of holy wrath is a very common weapon.

Well, I killed tiamat with a qb of pain(with 27 necromancy), it still took some time though. Btw having a qb of pain and 27 necro is very common, too, as well as having so much EV, that tiamat won't be able to kill you in three years.

[MoogleDan]

Sure, if you go Trog then TSO as I did. There are just about guaranteed methods of picking one up.

[Amnesiac]

I once went oka->tso->kiku and had both hw and pain QBs, are you saying everybody should do this?

[MoogleDan]

*shrug* You can if you want? I didn't have a pain weapon and still butchered my way through Zot. And you can +0 dagger slay any of the Hell bosses if you want, or just ninja the runes. I'm just presenting a case where I did not take advantage of Short Blades' best feature (stabbing), used a brand anyone (who isn't evil) can easily acquire with minimal effort and cost (TSO wrath is pretty negligible), and still slaughtered the worst baddies in the game.

[XuaXua]

DEMON AXES

[MoogleDan]

I think it is fair to expect all players to want to get things that are good

[MoogleDan]

DEMON AXES

Wieldable Ignacio FTW.

[rebthor]

Executioner Axe?

[Siegurt]

Actually a demon axe, which was a one-handed axe that has a lower attack delay and probably lower damage than a broad axe (Something like 12 damage 130% attack speed) would be a welcome addition and fit in with all the other demon weapons pretty nicely. I always thought it was kind of odd that demons don't use axes.

Also a demon dagger would be nice, (Maybe 6 damage 110% speed, gets stabbing bonus like a standard dagger?)

Of course then we would have to put up with stabbing and cleaving demons, not sure how I feel about that...

[Amnesiac]

Also: demon bow, demon crossbow, demon dart, demon staff, demon sling

[khalil]

I'd like that. One demon weapon and one blessed weapon for every weapon type.

[Siegurt]

Also: demon bow, demon crossbow, demon dart, demon staff, demon sling

Let's keep our PG rating here, no demon staffs.

[dpeg]

Siegurt: But we would sell more units with an honest-to-god XXX rating!

[rebthor]

Anyhow, we already have knobby rods.

[1010011010]

demon every weapon type is really boring, uncreative thinking, next you'll be adding demon armour, demon arrows and stones, demon bread rations.

It's like a normal bread ration but one handed and faster than average minimum eating delay.

[Amnesiac]

haha, if you are talking about my post, I was just joking

ps: demon bread ration sound awesome

[Confidence Interval]

Chokos already have a whiff of sulphur about them.

[Grimm]

unholy scone

[Confidence Interval]

ancient lychee

[prozacelf]

Hammers are gone. Perfect time to add demon hammers while we're at it!

And yes I'm aware that'd give M&F two demon weapons

[XuaXua]

Hammers are gone? What will Crazy Yiuf do?

[Grimm]

The same thing he does every night Pinky.