Demonspawn - fighter vs gladiator

[Gakhan]

I've won 15 rune games (like twice lol) with minotaur and I have wasted a few gargoyles that should have been 15 runs wins by zigging to hard/stupidly lol.

Im going for a demonspawn run- will likely just run them until I pull the 15 rune win- took me over a year with the minotaur but it felt like an accomplishment. And now i know how to play mainly xD hoping it doesn't take a year.

Whats the consensus on which is better to start if I'm going to pick one and run another thousands game with it every time- between fighter and gladiator? Thinking I'll run spear as my starting weapon too- but im open to other suggestions on that as well. But putting no exp in it until I make sure i dont roll claws and dont find a great starting weapon somewhere.

[b0rsuk]

Why not a... Monk? Demonspawns have +3 Invocations aptitude, you also get decent combat skills plus stealth, which many Demonspawn evolve towards unless they get hooves. Fighters get Armour skill which is not going to be useful if you lose a couple of item slots.

If you're after consensus instead of experimentation and fun, use a fast weapon like short blades, demon whip or staves. The reason is that auxiliary attacks (horns, talons, hooves) get a chance to trigger every time you attack, with a chance (Dex+Str)/50. Reaching with a polearm won't trigger them. Unarmed Combat doesn't increase damage of these, but Fighting does, and especially slaying bonuses.

[mopl]

Crawl design make it widely flexible. Don't plan you late gameplay based on the background you chose.

Fighter grants you better AC, a potion of might and a shield.
Gladiator comes with better weapon and nets, they can start with a staff.
Monk provides extra piety but has poor defenses.

IMHO, Fighter is the best of those background and allows you to make it to Temple quite easily.
Get a Gladiator if you want to use Staves !

I would not start with Polearms, but rather with M&F. I think you're mistaking when you say you don't want to train a weapon skill until you find a good weapon or know which aux mut you get. You should train and get your starting weapon to mindelay asap and then work on defenses.

@b0rsuk : sure Ds lose at east one item slot and benefit less from Armour skill, but that's really marginal. One aux slot is 1 less AC, so every point in Armour skill is 1/22 less AC than other characters... Still worth training it for any melee dude !

[petercordia]

I'd always go fighter because I'm addicted to shields. With Demonspawn you can go to one of the invo-intensive gods, like Nemelex and Qazlal, which is extra reason to want a shield. (tbh those 2 aren't too good for extended. Qaz can do a zig though, if that's your thing.)
Also Strength is better in the end-game than Dex, which is yet more reason to go fighter.

Spears can be good, but so can the other weapons. I'd just pick a weapon you didn't use with the Minotaurs & gargoyles. You can get to the temple without training weapon skill, but it's going to be a bit harder.

[b0rsuk]

Monks get some stealth which also helps in early game, and when you DO get to temple or early altar you can get going faster. If you use maces, I think non-fighters get a better deal because a flail is +0 accuracy 10 damage, versus +3 accuracy 8 damage. Early characters tend to struggle with hitting things more than dealing enough damage.
Overall I think monk is a more adaptable background, and demonspawn are way less predictable than draconians. When I play a fighter, especially with maces, I tend to take off my shield or scale mail immediately because that's going to cost me a lot when I run into a snake, ant, or orc priest. The penalties are significant before Temple, and as you've said you should focus on getting your weapon to at least 1.0 mindelay first.

Quarterstaff is a good argument to start as a Gladiator, as is Throwing. Unarmed is also a solid choice on any DS, and indirectly helps with aux attacks in that you're going to get very low mindelay eventually.

[Gakhan]

Thanks for the advice. I've never played a DS monk before. Maybe I will try a faster weapon for the extra aux attacks. And idk. I read somewhere for the DS to hold off on training weapons but yeah might not be the best advice lol

[Sprucery]

When I play a fighter, especially with maces, I tend to take off my shield or scale mail immediately because that's going to cost me a lot when I run into a snake, ant, or orc priest.

I would never do that, personally.

[duvessa]

That was bad advice when mikee gave it and it's bad advice now. Don't take off your shield until you find a two-handed weapon or spells. Shield penalties to attack delay are not nearly that bad. And body armour penalties to weapons are completely meaningless (don't bring up how often you get "Your armour prevents you from hitting the X", that message is literally a lie).

You're all talking about starting equipment, but the OP indicates complete disinterest in early game, not even training starting weapon skill. I'd suggest that the starting equipment and skills are not as important to them as you'd like. They specifically talk about getting 15 runes, even gladiator's throwing nets aren't likely to stick around that long.
There's exactly one thing about backgrounds that has an effect later in the game: starting stats. Here's a little chart.

  Code:

Background   Str   Int   Dex

AK, CK        4     4     4
AM            2     5     5
Ar            4     3     5
As            3     3     6
Be            9    -1     4
En            0     7     5
Fi            8     0     4
Gl            6     0     6
Hu            4     3     5
Mo            3     2     7
Sk            3     5     4
Tm            2     5     5
Wr            3     5     4
Wz           -1    10     3
Other Mage    0     7     5

However, even this isn't likely to matter much: strength's effect on armour penalties has diminishing returns, and its effect on damage is awfully small, so once you have your spells at good success rates, more strength doesn't do much. Spell power has a brutal stepdown on it, effectively giving intelligence diminishing returns. Dexterity's effect on EV also has diminishing returns after 24, and its effect on stealth is small enough that it only matters earlier in the game (and only on stabbers).

So, mopl hinted at this already, but the answer is that for what you want to do, your background choice doesn't matter. If you really want you could pick Wz as insurance in case you find no +intelligence items. Between the two backgrounds you actually asked about, Fi and Gl, there really isn't a significant difference in early game power or in stats; both backgrounds even start with consumables! If really pressed I'd say Fi is currently better just because of better armour, but it's not a big difference.
Both backgrounds are a ton stronger than monk, though - monk has a worse weapon, worse armour, worse skills, no consumables, and the piety bonus does literally nothing until you actually find your altar. Really monk is one of the weakest backgrounds, only chaos knight is worse. Irrelevant later in the game, of course, but you will find it a lot harder to not die in early dungeon, particularly with Ds already being one of the worst early game species.

[stormdragon]

That was bad advice when mikee gave it and it's bad advice now. Don't take off your shield until you find a two-handed weapon or spells. Shield penalties to attack delay are not nearly that bad.

You are correct that this is bad advice overall. However it is true that wearing a shield really is a net negative to your ability to fight an orc priest, or an orc wizard for that matter - if I dragged one of them to a staircase, and knew it was alone, I would take the shield off from the other side of the stairs in order to fight it, then put the shield back on afterwards. The reason the advice is bad is because the defensive benefit of a shield is pretty large and is a net positive against most enemies, including the most dangerous enemy (centaur), as well as adders and worker ants (that claim within the advice was just false).

strength's...effect on damage is awfully small

This depends greatly on the weapon and on Fighting + Weapon Skill level. For one-handed weapons like demon whips and double swords, or early game at low levels, it's more or less true. However as you mentioned, OP seems only interested in extended late game performance. For big weapons at close to max skill, strength is roughly as good as slaying, and actually better for unarmed and throwing (because the base damages involved there are massive).

[tealizard]

lol where do you guys come up with this stuff?

[b0rsuk]

Taking off shield or armour initially is bad advice if you take it out of context, like you did. The point of my post was don't overdo defenses before Temple, or before you get weapon skill to 6-8. It's the same principle as focusing on offense rather than defense first. The two items Fighters start with are good overall, but:
a) Armour cancels your stealth, and that may be a difference between a pack of orc or an ogre chasing you or not chasing you
b) Shield makes the fight last longer, which is pretty bad when wizard/priest is involved, and also against worker ant and adder. Against the orc casters my tactic is to often kill them fast then retreat into a corridor. If you spend longer next to a wizard/priest, other orcs or monsters will have more time to attack you as you're trying to kill the biggest threat. Against ant/adder a shield makes it last longer, and that's disadvantageous because poison has more time to do its work. It's generally wasteful to waste an early !curing to cure poison mid-fight - you're likely to be re-poisoned. So if you plan to cure yourself after the fight and you spend more time poisoned, you'll be left more damaged, or dead. A leather armor only has half the AC bonus of a scale mail, but 4 encumbrance rather than 10, so stealth is a lot better. I would like early bucklers much more than early shield. A buckler is going to be obsolete past early game and it's so easy to train. You will find a shield soon afterward, but a buckler you find later isn't much good anymore.

Ultimately it's a matter of what you're more concerned about. If you've found some poisoned darts, you have little to fear from a worker ant. If you've found a wand, you can zap those gnolls so stealth is not an issue. Potions of lignification are also common early, and if you have it you won't need a shield unless you're already fighting yaks.

As for centaur, a centaur is not THAT much faster than you. It's usually still better to retreat than to charge head-on. You may get shot one or twice that way, but not 5 times if you charged him. Then you can wait around a corner and jump him when he shows up.

With a gladiator I wouldn't bother because I have Throwing as backup. A fighter only has one potion of might.

[duvessa]

Not wearing your armour or shield is bad against all of those monsters. Everything those monsters do checks AC except for smite and pain (which are not the only things an orc priest will do), everything those monsters do can be blocked except for smite, pain, and magic dart (which is not the only thing an orc wizard will do). You are drastically overestimating the magnitude of armour and shield penalties.