Form damage changes

[Sar]

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=d40821f382ad88ce220cf71294a4421e84cef27d

  Code:

Simplify base UC damage for forms (minmay)

Blade hands, statue form and dragon form all had base unarmed damage
that scaled with strength (and dexterity, for blade hands). Remove this
scaling and replace it with flat damage.

Naive damage comparison, using the average stats of winning transmuters
at various XLs:
* XL10 (17str, 20dex)
* XL15 (22str, 24dex)
* XL20 (25str, 25dex)
* XL27 (28str, 28dex)

Blade Hands (10% more at XL10, 20% less at XL27):
* XL10: Old: 20, New: 22
* XL15: Old: 23, New: 22
* XL20: Old: 25, New: 22
* XL27: Old: 27, New: 22

Statue Form (same at XL10, 20% less at XL27):
* XL10: Old: 12, New: 12
* XL15: Old: 13, New: 12
* XL20: Old: 14, New: 12
* XL27: Old: 15, New: 12

Dragon Form (40% more at XL10, same at XL27):
* XL10: Old: 23, New: 32
* XL15: Old: 27, New: 32
* XL20: Old: 29, New: 32
* XL27: Old: 31, New: 32

Well, firstly, I don't get it. I understand that it removed that special stat-dependence forms had, but does Strength still influence their damage in the way it does for all melee attacks?

Secondly, does it mean that we can bury Tm^Chei meme now?

[chequers]

So melee weapon damage calculation is really complex, but for the purposes of this discussion you can consider it to be: (base damage) * (strength * constant)

For the three forms I changed, their (base damage) value depended on str (and dex). This had two issues:
* Alone of all weapons in the game, their base damage was not constant
* The way their base damage was not constant ended up double counting strength, and also weirdly counting dexterity for one of them (lorewise the less dextrous form too, ironically)

PS, dragon form base damage is actually higher than what's in the commit message, because dragon form comes with claws 3 which add 9 to your base damage.

[Implojin]

Well, firstly, I don't get it. I understand that it removed that special stat-dependence forms had, but does Strength still influence their damage in the way it does for all melee attacks?

Looking at the diff for the commit, you can see that the get_base_unarmed_damage() function was changed for those 3 forms to remove the you.strength and you.dex components, which were previously being added to the *base damage* of each of those forms.

grep on get_base_unarmed_damage shows that it's being called in attack.cc from calc_base_unarmed_damage() prior to the additional base damage modifier from weapon skill.

grep on calc_base_unarmed_damage shows that it is in turn being called on line 1289 of attack.cc, from attack::calc_damage(). Therein, *after* the base damage is determined by the above functions, the potential_damage is subsequently modified as follows:

  Code:

1288         potential_damage = using_weapon() || wpn_skill == SK_THROWING
1289             ? weapon_damage() : calc_base_unarmed_damage();
1290
1291         potential_damage = player_stat_modify_damage(potential_damage);
1292
1293         damage = random2(potential_damage+1);
1294
1295         damage = player_apply_weapon_skill(damage);
1296         damage = player_apply_fighting_skill(damage, false);
1297         damage = player_apply_misc_modifiers(damage);
1298         damage = player_apply_slaying_bonuses(damage, false);
1299         damage = player_stab(damage);
1300         // A failed stab may have awakened monsters, but that could have
1301         // caused the defender to cease to exist (spectral weapons with
1302         // missing summoners; or pacified monsters on a stair). FIXME:
1303         // The correct thing to do would be either to delay the call to
1304         // alert_nearby_monsters (currently in player_stab) until later
1305         // in the attack; or to avoid removing monsters in handle_behaviour.
1306         if (!defender->alive())
1307             return 0;
1308         damage = player_apply_final_multipliers(damage);
1309         damage = apply_defender_ac(damage);
1310
1311         damage = max(0, damage);
1312         set_attack_verb(damage);
1313
1314         return damage;


In other words, all subsequent damage modifiers* all still apply.

*(additive or multiplicative, depending on the modifier):

Spoiler: show

From currently-usable-claws, XL bonus to wisp/fungus/pig/not-Vp batform, unarmed skill, strength, fighting skill, might, berserk, starvation, equipment slaying, stabbing bonuses, cleaving, ieoh jian, statue form, shadow form, weakness, confusing touch, and defender AC.

Secondly, does it mean that we can bury Tm^Chei meme now?

It means that chei will no longer boost blade hands/statue form/dragon form's *BASE* damage. Chei's Strength boost will still boost the damage of those forms multiplicatively after the initial base damage is calculated. From the look of the code in this patch, statue form's base damage is being set to 12 (and it still gains the unarmed skill boost to base damage, *and* all damage dealt while in statue form is still randomly increased by a multiplier of 3/2 later on in the calculation), so you'll probably definitely still end up hitting pretty hard in statue form with chei strength. It will, however, be less damaging than before when you have reached max XL with full stat bonuses.


edits: Reworded the list order of damage bonuses above, to explicitly include the base damage contributions and try to match the order to how they occur ingame, so as not to contribute to anyone's confusion.

[papilio]

More than 70% of reason of worshipping Chei has been blown up.

[papilio]

Anyway, Chei + Statue Form + UC combo had needed some nerf, so I welcome this patch.
The damage output was ridiculously overpowered.
Comfortable 15 rune win was almost guaranteed once you got 12+lv UC, statue form with fail <10%, chei piety 5*.

[tabstorm]

Lol rip yet another thing that wasn't heavy armor melee

[chequers]

Honestly it's not really a big need to statueform. 20% is not going to kill Chei

[Magipi]

Naive damage comparison, using the average stats of winning transmuters
at various XLs:
* XL10 (17str, 20dex)
* XL15 (22str, 24dex)
* XL20 (25str, 25dex)
* XL27 (28str, 28dex)

28str, 28dex??? I suspect that there is a typo here. Or some weird mistake.

[duvessa]

Naive damage comparison, using the average stats of winning transmuters
at various XLs:
* XL10 (17str, 20dex)
* XL15 (22str, 24dex)
* XL20 (25str, 25dex)
* XL27 (28str, 28dex)

28str, 28dex??? I suspect that there is a typo here. Or some weird mistake.

People play Tm of chei a lot

[Siegurt]

Except player_apply_weapon_skill() doesn't actually apply any bonuses for unarmed damage:

  Code:

int attack::player_apply_weapon_skill(int damage)
{
    if (using_weapon())
    {
        damage *= 2500 + (random2(you.skill(wpn_skill, 100) + 1));
        damage /= 2500;
    }

    return damage;
}

It explicitly does not add any bonus skill damage from unarmed if you're not using a weapon (or the thing you are wielding is not a melee weapon)

The bonus base damage to unarmed was always *instead of* rather than *in addition to* the normal weapon skill bonus.

With this change, unarmed attacks get *no* bonus damage other than from fighting, this is a much larger nerf than it's made out to be.

[tasonir]

This is me glaring at you.

ಠ_ಠ

[duvessa]

Unarmed combat seems to attract a lot of people who don't exactly know what they're talking about.

Unarmed combat skill still increases your base damage exactly the same as before, and strength still multiplies your damage exactly the same as before. I'm not sure how you're getting "unarmed attacks get no bonus damage from unarmed or strength" from a commit that doesn't even touch the relevant files for that. This change only affects those three forms and literally nothing else.

For most characters, this is a buff to blade hands. I don't know about you but if I'm playing a transmuter, and it's not a demigod or Chei character, I probably don't have more than 42 str+dex until very late in the game if at all. Blade hands is strictly better than before if I have less than 42 str+dex.

Statue form is weaker than before for characters with more than 18 str, true, but not by a lot. For dragon form to be weaker than before, you need more than 30 str.

Finally, if these forms somehow turn out to be underpowered after the change it's not like we can't just go and increase these base damage values. If statue form had 30 extra base damage instead of 3+str/3 extra base damage, would you still say "rip yet another thing that isn't heavy armour melee"?

[tasonir]

Statue form does seem to be nerfed harder than the other two, particularly dragon form, for which this is practically a buff. So I haven't tested this, but let's look purely at the quoted numbers:

  Code:

Statue Form (same at XL10, 20% less at XL27):
* XL10: Old: 12, New: 12
* XL15: Old: 13, New: 12
* XL20: Old: 14, New: 12
* XL27: Old: 15, New: 12

Dragon Form (40% more at XL10, same at XL27):
* XL10: Old: 23, New: 32
* XL15: Old: 27, New: 32
* XL20: Old: 29, New: 32
* XL27: Old: 31, New: 32


Statue form gets the low end damage (level 10 damage) while dragon form gets a higher damage than even the level 27 damage? I doubt many transmuters are going to have dragon form going by level 10, but even by level 15-20 when they finally get it going it's going to stronger than before and never slows down. Statue form by level 10 is also very unlikely, although I have had it going by about level 13/14 on lucky games. Still, you're now capped at what that level 10 transmuter was able to pull off, stat-wise? Seems odd.

Chei statues have always had absurd damage, but I always thought that was intentional, because well, you're a chei statue. Seems like this change specifically nerfed statue form and the other two are intact, but that's just a first impression.

[Siegurt]

Except player_apply_weapon_skill() doesn't actually apply any bonuses for unarmed damage:

  Code:

int attack::player_apply_weapon_skill(int damage)
{
    if (using_weapon())
    {
        damage *= 2500 + (random2(you.skill(wpn_skill, 100) + 1));
        damage /= 2500;
    }

    return damage;
}

It explicitly does not add any bonus skill damage from unarmed if you're not using a weapon (or the thing you are wielding is not a melee weapon)

The bonus base damage to unarmed was always *instead of* rather than *in addition to* the normal weapon skill bonus.

With this change, unarmed attacks get *no* bonus damage other than from fighting, this is a much larger nerf than it's made out to be.

Sorry, that's misleading on my part, the code's been changed since last I looked several years ago, the bit that this patch changes is just the "base form+stat bonus", it used to be that the UC damage was added in the same function, but the chunk that adds on UC skill and claws was moved elsewhere.

UC skill is still added just the way it used to be, which makes this a much *smaller* change than the percentages outlined at the top would imply (Since the 20% reduction of base damage at level 27 for statue form is only for the portion that used to be a function of your stats, the UC portion remains the same.

It's slightly confusing to call this a change to "base damage" or even "base form damage" since what pops out of "calc_base_unarmed_damage()" is the form damage, plus the UC skill, plus claws mutation bonus.

It does (as was intended) mean that Forms now get no special advantage from high stats.

[chequers]

Statue form gets the low end damage (level 10 damage) while dragon form gets a higher damage than even the level 27 damage? I doubt many transmuters are going to have dragon form going by level 10, but even by level 15-20 when they finally get it going it's going to stronger than before and never slows down. Statue form by level 10 is also very unlikely, although I have had it going by about level 13/14 on lucky games. Still, you're now capped at what that level 10 transmuter was able to pull off, stat-wise? Seems odd.

Chei statues have always had absurd damage, but I always thought that was intentional, because well, you're a chei statue. Seems like this change specifically nerfed statue form and the other two are intact, but that's just a first impression.

When I made this change, I had to fix the base damage for each form type at a level that corresponded to a single point of what used to be a continuum. So yes, judgement was involved. Here's my rationales:

I feel blade hands damage is about right, so tried to hit the middle of the range. Easy.

Dragon form is underused, so I went for the top end. Easy.

Statue form is considered a great spell by many people who take into account only the defensive bonuses and action malus. And then the damage boost starts at "better than troll UC" and gets better! So, I figured I would aim for the lower end of the damage range. This was a harder decision, and yes this is a nerf for chei tms.

PS, one other thing. Winning tms are currently about 40% Chei worshippers. The stats I used in the commit message reflect this by being ridiculously high. For any non-chei tm, all three changes are a clear buff. If this commit makes other sorts of transmuters more popular, I'd consider it a bonus good thing (it wasn't my original intent, I've only considered it post-merge). The chei statue form tweak seems like a reasonable price to pay.

[duvessa]

Statue form is considered a great spell by many people who take into account only the defensive bonuses and action malus.

Yeah but those people are bonkers

[tasonir]

In defense of those people: In a game with permanent death (felids excluded) it makes sense to think about characters in terms of how to not die. If you succeed in not dying for long enough, winning happens.

If you think about how to win (getting offensive abilities), you might overlook some way in which you might die, and then you're dead.

While it's of course impossible to be completely indestructible, trying to plan to have a defense against everything is usually a good way to build characters. Statue form + 30 dex (from chei) giving you high EV, and a shield, and you have rTorment (if you go extended) tends to be a reasonably complete way to defend against everything, assuming you can find your usual resistances.

[Siegurt]

Well, for a rough comparison, blade hands is now a triple sword, statue form is a Morningstar and shield, and dragon form is a hexasword (two triple swords glued together)

[duvessa]

Well, for a rough comparison, blade hands is now a triple sword, statue form is a Morningstar and shield, and dragon form is a hexasword (two triple swords glued together)

if your unarmed and long blades skills are 0 and you ignore attack delay, yes

[bel]

When I made this change, I had to fix the base damage for each form type at a level that corresponded to a single point of what used to be a continuum. So yes, judgement was involved. Here's my rationales:

I feel blade hands damage is about right, so tried to hit the middle of the range. Easy.

Dragon form is underused, so I went for the top end. Easy.

Statue form is considered a great spell by many people who take into account only the defensive bonuses and action malus. And then the damage boost starts at "better than troll UC" and gets better! So, I figured I would aim for the lower end of the damage range. This was a harder decision, and yes this is a nerf for chei tms.

PS, one other thing. Winning tms are currently about 40% Chei worshippers. The stats I used in the commit message reflect this by being ridiculously high. For any non-chei tm, all three changes are a clear buff. If this commit makes other sorts of transmuters more popular, I'd consider it a bonus good thing (it wasn't my original intent, I've only considered it post-merge). The chei statue form tweak seems like a reasonable price to pay.

To my mind, this rationale is weird. The aim of the commit was to simplify damage formulae; I am not sure why the fact that people consider Statue Form or Dragon Form powerful or not is relevant to this objective. If you want to balance different forms, do that; if you want to simplify damage formulae, do that. There's a saying in economics: you should have as many instruments as your objectives. If you try to achieve multiple objectives with a single instrument, you'll get into grief. Unfortunately, the way many things are done in the real world (as in crawl - see the inedible chunk change), is to piggyback things onto something not directly relevant.

To my mind, the best way would have been to simply aim for the the middle for all forms. A slightly more sophisticated way would have been to adjust the lower end to whenever different forms are typically learnt (statue form is not typically learnt at XL 10) and aim for the middle of that interval.

That said, I am not sure that there is that much of a nerf to statue form. I haven't played with the new change, so one can't be sure how it would play out.

[chequers]

The aim of the commit was to simplify damage formulae; I am not sure why the fact that people consider Statue Form or Dragon Form powerful or not is relevant to this objective.

I authored this commit, and you're wrong. The commit had two aims: primarily to standardise the base damage calculations of three forms, but secondarily to change the power level of three forms.

[bel]

The aim of the commit was to simplify damage formulae; I am not sure why the fact that people consider Statue Form or Dragon Form powerful or not is relevant to this objective.

I authored this commit, and you're wrong. The commit had two aims: primarily to standardise the base damage calculations of three forms, but secondarily to change the power level of three forms.

I know you authored the commit. But the commit message says nothing about changing the power level of the three forms. This is why people are wondering in this thread as to what's up with the different criteria for various forms. It's fine that you clarified that part here.

It's unclear to me that there was anything wrong with the older power level for various forms. I have given my views on Statue Form / Dragon Form in an old thread here.

I find that Statue Form is mostly psychologically good because it allows you to tab through a large part of the game: many monsters can't get through the huge AC and high GDR. It doesn't matter if you get hit more if the hits do 0 damage. With stoneskin + SF, I tabbed through almost all of Depths and Zot on an OpTm.

However, in many situations Dragon Form is often better because of huge damage, huge HP (the best defensive stat) and normal speed.

There is some fsim analysis deeper down in the thread. I may do it again because things like stoneskin and phase shift no longer exist. The qualitative conclusions shouldn't really change much.

[duvessa]

you know how internet nazis put triple parentheses around things to indicate that they're jews? like (((mel brooks))). the dev team does the same thing in commit messages, except they use single parentheses and it doesnt mean the person is jewish, it just means they are extremely attractive

[ONIchinchin]

Huh, no matter how I look at this the nerf is way too merciful and it even buffed early game Blade Hands wth

Are you sure you should be using transmuter wins which are apparently heavily based from Chei users as a reference? Since this seems like a patch made out of spite against a specific group of players instead of a patch to fix broken features.

[minmay]

idk what exactly chequers had in mind, but I suggested this change because I don't think the effect of strength should change depending on the player's form. It
1. is spoilery
2. makes damage harder to balance (you are basically adding a whole additional equation)
3. is just stupid honestly

the immediate balance of these three forms was not the main concern, and more importantly, it had nothing to do with chei. chei was bad on transmuters before and is marginally worse on transmuters now. we shouldn't let challenge combos screw with the main game's design decisions - surely you don't want xom's 100 different effects to interfere with balancing the actual game, or worry about what each change means for MuFEs that take Trog. Tms that take Chei are the same way.

i do think the new base damage for blade hands is a little too high, but that's an unimportant nitpick. among non-challenge characters, statue form was only noticeably nerfed for trolls, which is fine.

[tasonir]

you know how internet nazis put triple parentheses around things to indicate that they're jews? like (((mel brooks))). the dev team does the same thing in commit messages, except they use single parentheses and it doesnt mean the person is jewish, it just means they are extremely attractive

I too find "and dexterity, for blade hands" to be an extremely attractive person.

With regards to the big picture here, it seems very odd that non-chei transmuters now get what's basically 40% of chei's bonus damage output added as a free, secondary god slot, and can pick their primary god freely. What if winning transmuters happened to be 90% Chei characters? Would statue form get 15 base damage instead of 12, based on average stats?

As an aside, constantly expressing how weak chei is, or is for challenge characters only, comes off as condescending. Clearly, a lot of people enjoy and prefer chei - for whatever reason - and declaring their choices as wrong, and then taking away a part of what makes that god unique seems like rubbing salt in the wound. Additionally, while I could agree chei might be weaker for streaking, it clearly is a very strong choice for speedrunning, and has the data to back that up. Which you consider to be abuse of the score formula apparently, from the thread on aut scoring...

In short, chei's synergy with transmutations should be considered a feature, not a bug. Vehumet synergizes with conjurations in a similar way, Trog with melee, Kiku with necromancy, etc. You don't have to go heavily into necromancy with Kiku - you could play melee with a pain weapon - but you probably want to do necromancy. Chei doesn't force transmutations, but it is a powerful option if you are going to go melee.

[duvessa]

With regards to the big picture here, it seems very odd that non-chei transmuters now get what's basically 40% of chei's bonus damage output added as a free, secondary god slot, and can pick their primary god freely.

maybe you'd find this str nerf less bothersome if you stopped ignoring every other effect of str. or do you think +37% to your str damage multiplier can't possibly make a difference?

[tasonir]

With regards to the big picture here, it seems very odd that non-chei transmuters now get what's basically 40% of chei's bonus damage output added as a free, secondary god slot, and can pick their primary god freely.

maybe you'd find this str nerf less bothersome if you stopped ignoring every other effect of str. or do you think +37% to your str damage multiplier can't possibly make a difference?

I haven't actually said it was a bad change, I don't think? I mean, the look of disapproval implies it, but that's mostly a joke. I'm well aware that adding +15 strength will still increase your damage significantly, but I don't think that needs to be said - it did before it, still does, it isn't a change. The discussion centers on what actually changed, which seems to be that statue form's base damage was lowered while dragon form and blade hands seem to have been given higher values, relatively speaking.

I also defended looking at the overall game of crawl with regards to a character's defenses rather than offenses, but that's somewhat tangential to the thread. I mentioned it was strange that non-chei transmuters are getting higher base damage based on the proportion of transmuters who have selected chei in the past. I haven't said this was a bad change - and I don't know if I really can until I play several transmuters with and without chei, which with my schedule lately, will probably take months, so...

But if I had to go ahead and venture a guess without actually playtesting it, I'd say the change probably doesn't matter very much because statue + chei damage was so absurd, that if you take 20% off of it, it is still very high. Sure, I won't be able to 3-4 shot pan lords anymore, but killing them in 4-5 hits should be fine. It's a nerf certainly, but the build is very strong and will probably survive just fine.

I do find the justification for it a bit odd, trying to simplify the formula. If your goal is to simplify formulas which the player doesn't really need to know about, you should probably work on spell success chance first! Saying you want to simplify the formula and then having the new formula not produce values similar to before seems like you're sneaking a nerf in without calling it a nerf, but then in this thread you're willing to call it a nerf, so maybe it just didn't make it into the commit message.

Do you consider the pre-commit statue form to be overpowered?

[chequers]

The discussion centers on what actually changed, which seems to be that statue form's base damage was lowered while dragon form and blade hands seem to have been given higher values, relatively speaking.

To me the change to blade hands and statue form was almost identical. Their damage in extended was reduced an equal amount (20%). The fact SF didn't get a small damage boost at the start like BH is pretty much completely attributable to the fact it also counted dexterity. The percentage change to BH & SF through all points of the game is within 10 points, which to me is well within the margin of error for considering the changes "the same".

[tasonir]

The discussion centers on what actually changed, which seems to be that statue form's base damage was lowered while dragon form and blade hands seem to have been given higher values, relatively speaking.

To me the change to blade hands and statue form was almost identical. Their damage in extended was reduced an equal amount (20%). The fact SF didn't get a small damage boost at the start like BH is pretty much completely attributable to the fact it also counted dexterity. The percentage change to BH & SF through all points of the game is within 10 points, which to me is well within the margin of error for considering the changes "the same".

The same to what, or whom? I'm not sure there's any way for that to actually be true. You're comparing it to the "average" transmuter, which as you said, is 40% chei users. So 60% of transmuters got a significant boost, let's estimate about +25% damage, and 40% of transmuters (who worship chei) lost about 25% damage. There isn't any way that a new, flat damage can possibly be the same as the old damage for both a character with 20/20 (non-chei) and for a character with 35/35 (chei) stats. It can be similar to 20 stats, or similar to 35 stats, but not both. What we have now, if I understand the commit, is you made it roughly equal to 27 stats, to equal an "average" which may not actually reflect the characters (who are likely to either be low or high, but rarely in the middle).

Again, I'm not saying this is unbalanced or a bad change, I'm just not sure it's actually accomplishing what you think it is.

[NhorianScum]

So, because this is a game, when does fun get added back to the design philosophy?

[duvessa]

But if I had to go ahead and venture a guess without actually playtesting it, I'd say the change probably doesn't matter very much because statue + chei damage was so absurd, that if you take 20% off of it, it is still very high.

old statue form's base damage is unarmed+str/3+6, or (unarmed*3+str+18)/3
the base damage lost by this change is str/3-6, or (str-18)/3
without slaying or AC, final damage is linear with base damage
so, without slaying or AC, the portion of your damage that your character lost from this change is: ((str-18)/3)/((unarmed*3+str+18)/3) which is trivially simplified to (str-18)/(unarmed*3+str+18)
if we require (str-18)/(unarmed*3+str+18)=0.2 (i.e. 20%), that means your unarmed skill and strength must satisfy this equation: unarmed*3 - strength*4 + 108 = 0
separated:
strength=unarmed*3/4+27
or unarmed=strength*4/3-36
which leads to the following examples of situations where you lose at least 20% of your damage:
unarmed skill = 0 and strength >= 27
unarmed skill <= 4 and strength >= 30
unarmed skill <= 8 and strength >= 33
unarmed skill <= 12 and strength >= 36
etc. etc.
unarmed skill = 27 and strength >= 47.25
even with chei, do these combinations sound realistic to you

with slaying or auxes the portion becomes a little smaller - and while i know you like shields, it's usually better for transmuters not to use one, so we should probably assume an offhand punch more often than not
with AC the portion becomes a little larger

Do you consider the pre-commit statue form to be overpowered?

no

Saying you want to simplify the formula and then having the new formula not produce values similar to before seems like you're sneaking a nerf in without calling it a nerf

the new formula produces values similar to before

I do find the justification for it a bit odd, trying to simplify the formula. If your goal is to simplify formulas which the player doesn't really need to know about, you should probably work on spell success chance first!

"everyone must exclusively work on the most important thing and nothing else" is a nice theoretical ideal, but it turns out it doesn't work very well in practice and it's pretty much impossible when you have more than one person, let alone more than 50 like DCSS does

[bcadren]

Yay a buff to felids! (who would be using forms at like 3-6 STR).

[papilio]

so, without slaying or AC, the portion of your damage that

OK, the whole rest argument is pointless

[pedritolo]

so, without slaying or AC, the portion of your damage that

OK, the whole rest argument is pointless

Come on, those were valid considerations regardless.

[tasonir]

the base damage lost by this change is str/3-6, or (str-18)/3

So chances are the biggest difference will be after you have gained full piety with chei, while your unarmed is still fairly low, which is probably sometime around early to mid lair, depending on when you found an altar. A medium strength race will probably have around 30 strength at this point, with ~10-14 unarmed, and have lost about 4 base damage, so they have 22-26 instead of 26-30. That is of course assuming they actually have statue form this early - I've had it castable in lair on felids/octopodes/VS speedruns, but that's more of an exception than the average, which usually gets it going around end of dungeon, after lair and orc, assuming it was found. When you get it online later and you have 15-20 unarmed, the 4 lost is a smaller percentage. Your strength may have gone up somewhat but probably not significantly, for non-trolls, I usually don't pick strength on transmuters.

While 4 base damage is a fairly significant amount, I think transmutations have always done such high damage that it will probably be insignificant. What weapon user gets to lair and can deal ~32 base damage (assuming blade hands and 10 UC)?

unarmed skill = 27 and strength >= 47.25

Not even my chei trolls break 47 strength, they end up around low to mid 40's

I guess the thing that bothers me is you're taking a bimodal graph and using the average for it, and then saying it's not a change. It's buffing the lower end, and nerfing the higher end, but seems like transmutation damage is so high that it'll probably work out in the end. Bcadren is right that it's a buff for felids, though

[shping]

I think casters should want Intelligence, to keep the game somewhat less confusing for novices.

Double dipping strength and using dex for damage+evasion is a little bit of a weird thing for a group of spellcasters to have. If anything, I'd rather see int boosting the damage and EV of forms.

[Siegurt]

I think casters should want Intelligence, to keep the game somewhat less confusing for novices.

Double dipping strength and using dex for damage+evasion is a little bit of a weird thing for a group of spellcasters to have. If anything, I'd rather see int boosting the damage and EV of forms.

Yeah, I personally feel like the damage you get from a transformation spell should be proportional to spell power, but that does make forms even more complicated and hard to balance than they already are.

[tasonir]

Hydra form is already that way (heads are based on spellpower, damage is based on heads), which is probably why it wasn't in this change, since it doesn't use str/dex to begin with. I'd be fine with statue/blade hands damage varying based on spellpower, but I don't think it would really change much. As we've already shown apparently taking a pretty solid 4 base damage away from chei-transmuters doesn't really impact them terribly much. The AC value of statue form does already depend on spellpower, and I have in fact trained additional transmutations/earth until I hit the next AC breakpoint for it, in the same way that most characters would train armor skill until they get the next point of AC.

[pratamawirya]

I just got an OgTm^Chei to extended in trunk and statue form and blade hands still kicked so much arse.

[bel]

For an atheist character, I ran some fsim against a stone giant. I had hutm, lvl 22, 21 UC, fighting/dodging 15, transmutations 18, earth 10, str 15, dex 24. +3 acid dragon scales, +1 rest of aux armour (boots, cloak, gloves, helmet)

I tried statue form and compared it to ozo + dragon form and blade hands.

  Code:

You turn into a living statue of rough stone.
 Your +1 pair of gloves melds into your body.
 Your +1 pair of boots melds into your body.
_Your +3 acid dragon scales melds into your body.
            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     30.6 |    106 |      95% |  29.3 |    92  |  1.09 |     31.8
 Defending:      7.7 |     29 |      39% |   3.0 |   100  |  1.00 |      3.0

 You turn into a fearsome dragon! Your +1 cloak melds into your body.
 Your +2 helmet melds into your body.
 Your +1 pair of gloves melds into your body.
 Your +1 pair of boots melds into your body.
_Your +3 acid dragon scales melds into your body.
_A film of ice covers your body!
            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     51.6 |    166 |      94% |  48.9 |    61  |  1.64 |     80.1
 Defending:     11.0 |     34 |      62% |   6.8 |   100  |  1.00 |      6.8

 Your hands turn into razor-sharp scythe blades.
_Your +1 pair of gloves melds into your body.
            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     26.0 |     89 |      96% |  25.1 |    61  |  1.64 |     41.1
 Defending:     14.2 |     37 |      40% |   5.8 |   100  |  1.00 |      5.8


Dragon form AvEffDam for both attack and defence was 2.5 times that of statue form. Compared to blade hands, statue form has 25% less attack but defence is about twice as better.

Using the old version, I found basically the same numbers, except for about 5% or so less damage than the new version for dragon form + ozo.

For non-chei Tms, very little has changed from before.