Are 'uncompact' characters weaker than compact ones?

[Vajrapani]

By 'compact, I mean characters who's skills are concentrated heavily in a few areas, like

  Code:

   Skills:
 + Level 26.1 Fighting
 - Level 17.9(18.0) Axes
   Level 4.0(12.7) Maces & Flails
   Level 2.1 Bows
 + Level 22.5 Armour
 + Level 21.4 Dodging
 O Level 27 Shields
 - Level 1.3 Spellcasting
   Level 1.0 Transmutations
   Level 1.3 Air Magic
 - Level 20.6 Invocations


these tend to be very strong characters that barely struggle throughout the game, but then I see people claim hybrids are more versatile and stronger, which makes no real sense to me, because skills are spread everywhere and therefore makes the earlygame just shit to play.

Even after 13 wins, I don't see really see the power of diversifying your character. But really, I guess I'm just salty that I can't seem to play MfSu^Ash, what advantage would that or a Sk or IE have over a MfGl^Oka who just concentrated on polearms + defensive skills?

There's a ton of extra keypresses, and cognitive load, but in the end it doesn't seem to be any better than mindlessly tabbing through with some autopilot god like Oka/Trog.

[Reptisaurus]

I do better with casters than fighters or gladiators. For a fighter-type I feel like my character is VERY dependent of floor drops to get a decent stand-up-to-an-orc warrior-without-dying class weapon. Having a spellbook gives me a clear line of progression to tools that will at least clear orc without much problem.

[papilio]

That depends on race but IMO "compact" ones are better generally.

But, it doesn't mean that it is good to go like Fighting 0, Axe 27, Armour 27, Dodging 0.

[njvack]

As a general rule, training skills you aren't using is not great; stealth on a Qaz worshipper, say, is not very useful. Redundant skills are also not great -- training both conjurations and bows would be spreading too thin. You don't need two ways to deal ranged damage. Getting 15 long blades and 20 maces would mean wasting a bunch of XP.

That said, skills need exponential (or nearly so?) XP the higher they level, so training something all the way to 27 is basically never the best option. For the OP's character, there was something better to train than getting Shields* and Fighting where they are. Probably evo, probably throwing, maybe more armour and dodging, maybe more invo, maybe a little necro. Depends on the rest of the character, though.

* This is particularly true for Shields skill, which generally gives less damage reduction / XP than other defenses

[Sar]

The character you posted would be much stronger if some of that Shields XP was put into Evocations and if you hoarded those boxes and sacks.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Compact characters are stronger early game (10 weapon/fighting/armour is better than 5 weapon/fighting/armour/spellcasting/conjurations), uncompact characters are stronger late game (20 weapon/armour/fighting/spellcasting/conjurations is better than 27 weapon/fighting/armour).

[papilio]

Compact characters are stronger early game (10 weapon/fighting/armour is better than 5 weapon/fighting/armour/spellcasting/conjurations), uncompact characters are stronger late game (20 weapon/armour/fighting/spellcasting/conjurations is better than 27 weapon/fighting/armour).

I'd rather select Necromancy/Translocations/Charms/Summonings as "supportive" spell school for lategame warriors.
For me, Conjurations are out of selection for heavily armoured charcaters who build 20lv of armours.
We have Crossbow or Throwing as better alternatives (which don't suffer from armour casting penalty)

[VeryAngryFelid]

I agree, it was just an example.

[bel]

these tend to be very strong characters that barely struggle throughout the game, but then I see people claim hybrids are more versatile and stronger, which makes no real sense to me, because skills are spread everywhere and therefore makes the earlygame just shit to play.

Even after 13 wins, I don't see really see the power of diversifying your character. But really, I guess I'm just salty that I can't seem to play MfSu^Ash, what advantage would that or a Sk or IE have over a MfGl^Oka who just concentrated on polearms + defensive skills?

There's a ton of extra keypresses, and cognitive load, but in the end it doesn't seem to be any better than mindlessly tabbing through with some autopilot god like Oka/Trog.

"Compact" characters are not really well-defined in your comment. Not sure why you talk about earlygame of hybrids. Hybrids typically start by specializing in something and then branching out from there, not train all things at once.

Hybridization is useful for the same reason diversifying a portfolio is useful: you don't put everything in one basket. The advantage of more "compact" characters in crawl is that you can often focus on the core skills and let your god take care of the rest (see: enchanters of Kiku). Crawl has enough "slack" (lots of XP) that it's feasible to play in many different ways. Tabbing is good interface-wise, therefore it's a popular choice. Whether it's the strongest way to play is much more debatable.

Also, it's not really useful to compare other gods to Trog, because Trog is very strong and is a bit of special case. Okawaru is strong, but there are plenty of other gods who match its power. I would count Yred, Fedhas and Kiku as at least equal to Okawaru.

It's also not productive to compare backgrounds directly. Backgrounds are not meant to be balanced against each other, especially for a fixed race. Incidentally, if you are having trouble with MfSu^Ash, you can try MfSu^Sif for a more "compact" style. You'll still have plenty of XP to train polearms.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I would count Yred, Fedhas and Kiku as at least equal to Okawaru.

Those 3 gods rely on allies. Many players (myself included) don't like playing with allies most of the time. Trog and Okawaru become very powerful very fast, this separates them from Ru, Ashenzari or Makhleb.

[Sar]

Trog relies on allies as well, just not permanent ones.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Trog relies on allies as well, just not permanent ones.

Difference is huge.

[Steve]

The real answer is that there is a lot of XP in the mid game, and you don't need to put all your XP into "x" for "x" to be effective. So if you find something good on the floor that can help you win more than putting more XP into something that's already effective, train it.

For Trog this can be launchers, throwing, evo.

For others, this can be spells like summon butterflies, blink, regeneration, etc. or weapon skill.

Also, species/background/gods are difficulty modifiers. If you pick the strongest shit (MiBe^Trog ie. very easy difficulty) no wonder it's easier than other stuff. If you don't care about variety or challenge, by all means play the same thing every game. A lot of people only like melee not even because it's stronger but because it's quicker and has less key presses and menus. But if you do this I wouldn't come here and talk about effectiveness or a MiBe compared to a MfSk. There's simply no point of a comparison.

[njvack]

Trog relies on allies as well, just not permanent ones.

Difference is huge.

Kiku, then? Now that derived undead don't hang around, they're pretty okay as allies. Death Channel + Simulacrum is a pretty quick way to kill dudes.

[tabstorm]

Generally yes because investing in, for example, a wide variety of magic schools, isn't really going to make your character better at killing enemies. Let's put it this way: if you've been training only weapon, armor, fighting, and dodging, is training Fire Magic going to help you kill any monsters you can't kill? No, and not only because there is no such thing as an unkillable monster after Lair.

On the other hand we have the reverse situation: Will training weapon skill help you kill monsters you can't kill as a mage? Possibly, but it will help you if you run out of MP. It won't be good enough against the most dangerous enemies, or rather, if this becomes the case, further investment in magic becomes sort of pointless.

[tasonir]

Hybrids (what you call uncompact) are generally somewhat weaker early on, but have a more powerful end game. The best way to start one is to try to be as compact as possible early on, and add in more skills as you get far enough to have the exp to spare. That makes skilling one properly more complicated, which is why a lot of hybrid backgrounds have low win rates (transmuter being the go to example). I still really like hybrids, but a compact character like TrBe or MiBe are definitely much easier to recommend to a new player trying to get a first win.

In theory an uncompact character would be much stronger in the late late game, but it's not like you can take your 15 rune OpTm and challenge your friend's TrBe to a duel, so that might be kind of pointless

[VeryAngryFelid]

Kiku, then? Now that derived undead don't hang around, they're pretty okay as allies. Death Channel + Simulacrum is a pretty quick way to kill dudes.

Kiku, Fedhas and Yred give you lots of allies and you use them all the time, giving commands, trying to keep them alive, rushing forward with Kiku.
With Trog you use brothers as expensive panic button and normally you are too wounded/slow to have them be useful in more than one fight, it's functionally similar to Apocalypse or Disaster Area.

[edgefigaro]

Crawl isn't about becoming strong, it is about becoming kitted. Does this character have everything it need to defeat every threat in this zone? The next zone? Zot? Will you be able to use the xp in the current zone to be ready for the next zone?

Sometimes you have really bad characters with bad equipment and bad spell options. These characters frequently skill not for becoming strong, rather to take advantage of minor advantages in equipment (e.g. a pair of hex wands) or odd spells. You do this because this is the best use of XP at this individual moment for the current threats.

It is a luxury to have a compact character. Non compact characters win games that trying to be compact will not. They do that by finding efficient small uses of xp for the current zone.

[stoneychips]

I still really like hybrids, but a compact character like TrBe or MiBe are definitely much easier to recommend to a new player trying to get a first win.

I suppose it's all kind of relative, but I've always felt mixed about this. While most of my wins are still in the melee realm, I've always 1) enjoyed picking up different skills for more options, and 2) felt that tactically you often get a large benefit from them (Blink, Repel Missiles and Evocations are probably the obvious ones but item brand/ego drops or the immediate trainability of spells come into play a lot too).

It's certainly possible to overdo it, but I feel like much of the game is just learning how much less or more of various things you can get away with. In other words, the problem is also learning how much of a given skill is enough to be satisfied under various conditions. The "tracks" will sometimes get people by if nothing particularly challenging happens in a shorter game, but how often is that true for new players either?

It's really partly up to player style and interest, though. I'm a pretty hopeless packrat, so I like to experiment with using more of the odd stuff lying around rather often. "Sure I could just sit in the ambush hole another three turns and wait for that centaur some more, but I wanna toss this javelin and see if I can hit already dog-gone it!" It's not really always that sub-optimal, but that's the general idea.

I also suspect I would have taken up conjurers more seriously earlier if I didn't keep constantly hearing how much more "simple" or "easy" melee was. While it's probably safer, I'm not sure it's really that much tactically "simpler" of late. If you can run an archer, at least, you can probably figure out a basic conjurer with a bit more patience. Perhaps I'm just blind because now I've seen most of the monsters before and I know about what to expect from them and which ones will rush (usually!)... But early on I couldn't seem to figure out which spells to trust when and I find running a Deep Elf (enough times) starts to shrug that problem off. Maybe melee is somewhat simpler to learn training Skills generally, but I think I also spent a lot of time learning how to maneuver in combat and which weapons I was more comfortable with - and about just when to train those in bursts and when to worry about armor/defense, too.

[Sphara]

Compact one-trick ponies are quicker to win than hybrids.

I dunno about the difficulty. Very hard to compare these because the difficulty is based on 1) starting combo 2) early encounters 3) early loot 4) later loot.

I'm personally more fond of hybrids and very rarely seek for a gold dragon armor or antimagic weapon for the endgame. The concept of a compact/uncompact character is a thin red line for most chars. For some its crystal clear. Like starting a berserker, spells are outta question. Going with Qaz, stealth is not an issue. With Chei, no haste (Chei chars tend to be uncompact). And so on.

The short answer for OPs question: it is not binary

edit: there is not tab key to buff or make a ranged attack/hex accordingly. For me the game being easy is not about how quick you can destroy the opponents,its about having lots of options.

[ONIchinchin]

Uncompact characters are inevitably stronger than compact characters because of spells. More spells and MP are better than weapons, wands, HP, AC, EV and SH combined.

[prozacelf]

Hybridization is useful for the same reason diversifying a portfolio is useful: you don't put everything in one basket.

Protect yo neck--diversify yo bonds!