Must short blades stab to be worthwhile?

[MainiacJoe]

I'm trying to come up with situations where going with Short Blades is worthwhile, if you aren't going to commit to Stealth and Hexes/Throwing to become a stabber. I had a phase where I tended to use and train the early dungeon short blades because it was quick to get them to min-delay. But eventually I realized that the low base damage of the weapons was really a problem, and now I avoid short blades assiduously. I'm wondering whether that might be swinging the pendulum too far to the other extreme.

I know about the special case of VS bite; I'm thinking of the other species, especially the ones with good SBl apts.

[seren]

From hearsay, quickblade of pain is useful for a high Necromancy user.

Since the mindelay is very short, and most of the damage will come from the pain.

[Lacuenta]

I often use shortblades with good brands on a longblades users who haven't found a good longblade yet because they will often get close to mindelay quickly due to crosstraining, while training longblades.
Also its nice to find a good branded shortblade too wield skillless (they are quite common earlygame) when you're not sure yet which weapon to use. Due to low mindelay and high acc, especially if you can't miss the xp yet, like on most casters early.

Once finished lair with a meleedude wielding a +2 dagger of elec skill less. Because I couldn't decide for which weapon type to go.

[Siegurt]

If you have a gigantic amount of slaying, quick blade can be better than a larger two handed weapon, the odds of having both in a 3 rune game are astronomically tiny however.

Brands that add a flat amount of damage per hit (pain, elec, distortion, half of drain) don't have their damage reduced by using a weapon with low damage, so having one of those can help mitigate some of the damage you would otherwise lose.

Short blades have very very low training requirements, so if you are using a build that is using a melee weapon for popcorn, and some other killing skill for primary offense in challenging fights, using short blades can save you a chunk of xp that you can use elsewhere.

Finally !might and berserk surprisingly work especially will with quick blades, they both add a flat damage bonus to every strike which cooperates well with fast weapons, and berserk's short duration means that more strokes in a short time gives you more benefit from each attempt.

Additionally, getting some stabs is easier than you'd think. I find that, for example, a summoner with short blades, gets distraction stabs often enough to make short blades not a bad choice, to point out one of the weaker-but-viable options.

None of that means that sort blades are more generally useful than bigger more powerful weapons, but they can certainly win you the game if you play to their strengths, and avoid their pitfalls.

[Jeremiah]

What about for a VS? - As a fast weapon means you get to use your bite attack more. (Though a whip/demon whip is as fast as a non-quickblade short blade.)

[Airwolf]

What Lacuenta said. Branded short blades are common early and then cross-train to long blades later. So, on a background without a weapon, a race that has high apt for LB but low for M&F etc would be great to start with a short blade, e.g. HEIE.

Also, I believe daggers are special-cased to have a high likelihood of venom, which is fantastic early.

As another point, lots of gods set you up for stabs: Dith of course; Ru and Gozag by confusion; Yred, Kiku, and Mahkleb allies; Zin's recite; Xom I guess; and I've probably forgotten some.

I just started a SpGl on comborobin with M&F, playing committed to M&F. (I wanted to try Spriggan with a demon whip.) Grinding through the early & mid game convinced me that this was a huge mistake. Granted, Spriggan and maybe Vampire are the races for which early not-SB is most terrible. (Amazingly, amalloy went on to get the SpGl high score with that character I started. He ended the game with a randart rapier.)

[MainiacJoe]

I actually feel like crosstraining is overrated. If badwiki numbers are correct, the 12 skill say to get your short sword to min delay is 4200 skill points. You get 40% of these in Long Blades: 1680. This is about skill 7.5 or so, not bad! But actually, you'll be switching to a heavy long blade or you wouldn't bother, and those 1680 skill points are worth less than halfway from 17 to 18 to get that great sword to mindelay. So I guess crosstraining is nice, but like hunger I'm learning (correctly or not as the case might be) to not make decisions based on it.

[advil]

Not by any design but I've won a whole bunch of short-blades focused hybrids that have done a lot of meleeing with quickblades. It's been a bit variable what exactly makes it viable, and luck is needed, but basically all of them have had the capacity to melee endgame stuff if necessary (though usually there's a better strategy that involves melee + something else). Things that have made them viable: pain, elec, lots of slaying, gyre and gimble (that one apparently had a +10 holy randart qb as well), and of course combining melee as necessary with powerful spells or with stabbing. In some of these chars I've also used something like an elec rapier, which is really strong for most of the game, just not all the way.

Probably the most striking one in my memory is a Mf using polearms who was gifted in lair "the +10 quick blade of Qekigung {elec, +Blink rF+ rC+}", which iirc was doing more damage untrained than any polearm I had access to or expected to find any time soon. So, I switched and trained short blades up to 8 for mindelay from 0, which is trivial with the amount of xp in three runes, and used that for much of the game (I did go back to polearms and started using a trishula at some point after 3 runes).

[DrKe]

Quickblade with an additive brand is very good but not easy to get, and rapier/short sword are serviceable but you probably want to switch to a demon/double.

[edgefigaro]

Short Blades are rarely a good choice for heavy armor melee killdude characters. On nearly all other characters, especially with a bit of stealth, shortblades can be a viable weapon that [1] kills popcorn [2] provides occasional stabbing utility, and [3] eventually leads to a magical staff + buckler setup.

It is not uncommon for me to pick up ~10 in shortblades and carry a dagger around for stabbing purposes, even if I'm not playing a dedicated stabber. Killing lom lobon with a dagger and scroll of blink is worth the investment.

[MainiacJoe]

Popcorn has been mentioned a couples times here and I discover I'm a bit fuzzy on the concept. I gather it's something that you can kill easily enough with melee that you aren't going to spend MP or wand charges or ammo on. Yet perhaps the whole point of this OP is, don't you eventually run out of popcorn for SBl? Is a vault guard or an ugly thing ever popcorn in a 3-rune game? More pertinently, are they ever popcorn that can be tackled straight up, no stabbing, with a short blade?

[crate]

I'm going to ignore quickblades for a moment.

The best shortblade is 7/5 dam/delay at min delay (at 14 skill, so you don't get to save xp here compared to long blades or polearms). Using this number as a proxy for weapon strength is actually a reasonably good approximation outside of elec and pain brand (well and disto, but most people don't use disto). So rapiers are 1.4.
The best common 1h long blade is 12/7, or 1.71.
Maces gives you 13/7, albeit at a slightly larger xp investment. 1.86.
Axes gives you 13/7 at an even larger xp cost, but with cleaving.
Staves don't have 1h weapons.
Even polearms gives you 9/6 (1.5), which still beats shortblades. And you get reaching.

And all of these weapon types have 2h weapons which are even better (great sword is 2.29, for example) or rare 1h weapons that are also very good (demon blade is 2.17).

Shortblades are bad ... unless you stab, of course.

Quick blades are also bad (5/3 = 1.67, but since they're rare you should compare to the rare 1h weapons instead of the common ones) unless you have some special circumstance that lets you really use the fact you get more attacks. Since they cannot generate with a brand outside of artefacts or a few cheaty situations, elec is extraordinarily rare and pain pretty much only comes from kiku or excruciating wounds. VS bite is really good also. But unless you have one of those things don't use shortblades unless you want to stab.

[Hurkyl]

You'll usually be using enchanted short blades. In fact, I think +0 quick blades are rarer than +6 or better quick blades.

[crate]

You'll usually be using enchanted short blades. In fact, I think +0 quick blades are rarer than +6 or better quick blades.

You enchant any weapon you're using, and it mostly works to cancel out enemy AC (this is why ignoring both enchantment and AC is ok). Yes, my numbers above have some things ignored that might benefit short blades ... but the differences are really big, so you need to come up with some really big things I'm ignoring to make them look favorable to short blades.

[kuniqs]

Must Poison Magic have acid spells to be worthwhile?

[daggaz]

Last time I had a +9 QB of elec, I died on an elec-themed zig level. =/

[edgefigaro]

I think the chart, while helpful, undersells what may prompt a character to train short blades as a melee weapon. A +2 short sword of draining may be a perfectly viable weapon into lair, acquired on d2. Any caster start can love that weapon, and having a functional low XP required weapon really early can be very nice.

Sometimes a short blade ends up being the first functional weapon that shows up for your character, and can simply do the job you need it to do. It doesn't have to take you into depths, just get you to lair.

[Hurkyl]

In fact, I did some limited testing that suggested if you want to do melee with zero skill with a mundane weapon, rapiers and tridents are the best two options of what you can reasonably expect to find in the early dungeon. Naturally it works better with enchantment and brands.