couple questions about 0.15

[daggaz]

Playing a KoAs of Oka, have 2.3 or something like that in throwing and a 12 or so in shortblades. Oka gifted me tomahawks three or four times in a row... is that like a new thing he does, in order to be even less useful, or was I just phenomenally unlucky with a clustering illusion on top of it?

Second question. Whats the point of +rP? I had two pips for what its worth, (had an extra ring of poison resistance and nothing else to wear at the time), and it seemed that with the exception of adders, pretty much anything with a poison attack had no problem loading me to the gills with poison. I died on lair1 when a mamba got me into red in the matter of a few turns.

[Wahaha]

Yes, now Oka gifts thrown weapons at least 30% of the time, could easily be 50%, even if you have 0 throwing and never used thrown weapons. It's great.

rPois was fixed even though it wasn't broken.

[crate]

rpois actually got buffed since it prevents more venom bolt/parrow impact damage now

[damiac]

rpois got changed, buffed in regard to straight poison damage, nerfed in regard to preventing poison status. So basically, it's less good early game, but better later on, at least that's how it seems to me.

[CommanderC]

rPois was not buffed vs. venom bolt:

In 0.14, venom b. did 50% damage 90% of the times, and 100% damage 10% of the times: 0.5*0.9+1*0.1=0.55 avg. damage

In 0.15, venom b. does 33% damage 66% of the times, and 100% damage 33% of the times: 0.33*0.66+1*0.33=0.5478 avg. damage

[damiac]

Oh... so it was sort of an overall nerf to rPois, but occasionally you'll take less damage from direct poison damage than you otherwise would have. That's a weird change, why was it done like that?

[and into]

Well, 0.5478 is less than 0.55 I guess, so... buff?

But more to the point, with these changes you are more likely to get full damage, however you get better damage mitigation the rest of the time. I think that's probably a good change, in that you get better protection for the most part, but you still got a 1 in 3 chance that your rPois basically won't apply for any given attack, so you can't rely on it so much as your only line of defense.

The mamba killed you because mambas are extremely dangerous even without poison. The poison might have finished you off, but it is the brute physical strength + speed of the mamba that did the heavy lifting. If you don't have solid physical defenses, mambas are scary, even if you are poison immune (e.g. ghoul, mummy).

[crate]

wait the "rpois only works sometimes" thing applies to impact damage of poison spells?

what the fuck why does rpois even exist

[Bloax]

Well yes, I imagine it would be really great if orbs of fire had a 33% chance to ignore your rF+(++) and do their full >= 64 damage they do 50% of the time, and yes - that's a 8.25% chance to do over 78 damage in one fireball!

[Lasty]

After looking into this, it appears that CommanderC is half right. Against poison damage from poison arrow (as opposed to poison status), the new formula is a straight buff -- 100% chance to apply 66% protection from the poison component of poison arrow in place of 100% to apply 50% protection from the poison component of poison arrow. There's also a 66% chance to 100% prevent the poison status from poison arrow, down from 90% chance to prevent 100%.

Against other poisonous attacks including venom bolt, sting, and poison spit, and the poison status, including the poison status from venom bolt and poison arrow and from things like adders, there's a 66% chance to apply 100% protection instead of a 90% chance to apply 100% protection.

I'm discussing this with other devs right now, because I don't believe that having only a 66% chance to apply 66% protection against venom bolt's damage was intended.

Edit:
Aaand fixed: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commitdiff;h=f7792b8842e3. Thanks, CommanderC!

Edit: correction, CommanderC never addressed poison arrow.

[sanka]

Actually CommanderC only talked about venom bolt, not poison arrow.

Thanks for the fix!