Dith shadow mimic

[kroki]

How good is shadow mimic passive on uc character?

Can someone give me numbers?

[4Hooves2Appendages]

As far as I understand it, it would give a decent damage boost. At 200 piety you have a 50% chance for the mimic to attack. Normally this ignores brands, enchantment level (and maybe slaying?), but that shouldn't matter much to you! So, assuming it works I expect you should get 10-50% extra damage out of it, depending on piety and potential overkill.

That seems quite a lot. I wonder if there's a special case about unarmed.

[MainiacJoe]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11963

Shadow mimic: ***.../****..ish

-Your shadow mimic acts with 0% chance at ***... piety, 10% chance at ****.. piety, 50% chance at 200 piety (in a linearly scaling fashion).

-Your shadow has a HD of weapon skill*1/2 + fighting skill*1/2 (min 1 max 27). Most importantly of all, it is a monster - so it does monster melee, monster ranged attacks and monster spellcasting (instead of the player version thereof). Nothing about the shadow monster is varied based on what species you are or anything like that.

1) Shadow melee: Your shadow holds a shadow clone of your weapon (the same base and sub type, so unenchanted, unbranded and no artifact properties). This can distract enemies (for the purposes of stabbing).
2) Shadow throw: Your shadow throws/fires a shadow clone of the thing you threw/fired (again, no enchantment/brands/artifact properties). This is monster ranged, so I bet it's really powerful. Maybe it can distract as well, I haven't tried it yet.
3) Shadow magic: If it targets yourself or has no target, it is not mimiced. If it's an enchantment that has no monster version, it is not mimiced. Instead of using the default shadow HD, the HD is set to the smaller of 3 * spell level and xl/2 (minimum 1). If it was an enchantment, the shadow casts the monster version. If it was a beam, the shadow casts shadow bolt. If it was not a beam, the shadow casts shadow shard.

-Both spells work the same except one beams and the other doesn't:

[severen]

As far as I understand it, it would give a decent damage boost. At 200 piety you have a 50% chance for the mimic to attack. Normally this ignores brands, enchantment level (and maybe slaying?), but that shouldn't matter much to you! So, assuming it works I expect you should get 10-50% extra damage out of it, depending on piety and potential overkill.

That seems quite a lot. I wonder if there's a special case about unarmed.

Shadow Mimic uses monster combat not player combat so the ranged is very good but unarmed is pretty bad. UC is nowhere near the theoretical 50% in damage of an exact clone. Ranged can be pretty close to that though. So in other words Okawaru is like easily double or triple as effective as Dith with UC. Finesse is doubling your speed and Heroism ads 5 skill to UC and fight which is a large damage increase andeven more speed. Dith might give you like 10% more damage if that in total.

Bottom line never choose Dith over Oka for UC because of Shadow Mimic do it for the other stuff if at all.

[tasonir]

To be fair though, an okawaru fighter isn't going to have finesse active 100% of the time.

Seems like monster combat having UC be strictly worse than any weapon including a dagger is contrary to player expectations/an oversight? Could the dummy be given a hidden weapon which is your UC skill level in base damage?

In other news, I might have to play a dith hunter now...

[duvessa]

Seems like monster combat having UC be strictly worse than any weapon including a dagger is contrary to player expectations/an oversight?

Monster UC isn't strictly worse than any weapon. There is no +0 weapon that is strictly better than unarmed for a monster (although quick blades are better in all practical circumstances). Even daggers are worse than unarmed for monsters in certain cases (low player defenses).

Sounds like you expected monster UC to be worse than monster weapons, though. When I was unspoiled, I expected that too! I think monster weapon damage and delay should probably change so that it's always better than UC (except for negative base accuracy and enchantment).

[tasonir]

It's my understanding that weapons add their base damage to the monster's innate damage, and then the delay is the average between the monster's attack speed and the weapon's. A dagger is speed 10, and let's assume a speed 10 monster, so with a dagger it's a simple +4 damage over unarmed, no change in speed. Depending on how much base damage the monster has, adding a large heavy weapon will add a lot of damage, but could also slow down the monster's attacks, resulting in less damage per time. This is why that 'beogh expert' from a few versions back would give all his warlords spears - they get the reaching effect and spears were the fastest polearms; warlords do enough damage they don't need added base damage.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I am wrong about/missing something here. But it's my understanding that monster UC is weaker than weapons in most practical cases, unless the monster has very high base damage and you slow down their attacks with a slow weapon. So the line "There is no +0 weapon that is strictly better than unarmed for a monster" doesn't make sense to me.

Since I assume you know better than most, how effective would you say shadow mimic UC is, compared to other melee weapons or ranged weapons?

[duvessa]

It's my understanding that weapons add their base damage to the monster's innate damage

Your understanding is wrong. The monster's "innate" damage is rolled separately from the weapon damage and both are added together. The weapon damage roll is random2([weapon base damage]) +/- random2([weapon enchantment+slaying]) - 1d3. So for a +0 dagger they get random2(4)-1d3 added, or 1d4-1d3-1, which has a mean of -0.5. So unless the base accuracy offsets this and/or player AC makes the long tail advantageous, the dagger is reducing, not increasing, their average damage output. This is also why monsters with weapons can end up rolling 0 for their final damage, but unarmed monsters cannot.

Since I assume you know better than most, how effective would you say shadow mimic UC is, compared to other melee weapons or ranged weapons?

It's absolute shit.

[bel]

Monster UC isn't strictly worse than any weapon. There is no +0 weapon that is strictly better than unarmed for a monster (although quick blades are better in all practical circumstances). Even daggers are worse than unarmed for monsters in certain cases (low player defenses).

I don't understand this paragraph. Are you saying that an unarmed ogre hits harder than an ogre with a giant club?

[duvessa]

No, but I am saying an ogre with a giant club is not necessarily more powerful than an unarmed ogre. The club ogre has slower attacks and lower accuracy.

[bel]

Yes, but it will still do more damage than an unarmed ogre (in expectation). Would it ever make sense to, say, not cast Tukima's Dance on an ogre (assuming one can spare the turn and MP etc., and ignoring the dancing weapon)?

[Sprucery]

Would it ever make sense to, say, not cast Tukima's Dance on an ogre (assuming one can spare the turn and MP etc.)?

Independent of the ogre's accuracy etc., no, because you get the weapon to fight for you. A better question would be: can Captain's cutlass disarming be bad against an ogre?

[bel]

This is why that 'beogh expert' from a few versions back would give all his warlords spears - they get the reaching effect and spears were the fastest polearms; warlords do enough damage they don't need added base damage.

Is this true? I tried fsim with an orc warlord, giving him a spear and a bardiche. I tried various enchantments (+0, +5), various AC (zero, 15, 25). The bardiche won every time on AvEffDam. Wasn't even close.

Something's wonky with the fsim though: it shows "defending" speed as 1.00 irrespective of weapon.

[duvessa]

For some reason weapons have no effect on monster attack delay in fsim. It's not just a display issue; notice the AvDam and AvEffDam are the same. You'll have to divide it by the delay yourself. For an orc warlord specifically, the difference between spear and bardiche is small but, assuming non-negative enchantment, favours the spear against low AC opponents. The spear becomes better with enchantment/additive brand and worse with increasing AC, obviously.

[njvack]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh

[tasonir]

FR: simplify monster combat for clarity. I have no idea how this would work

Odd to hear fsim doesn't handle it correctly though, I thought it called the same attack functions the game uses? maybe I'm wrong about how fsim works.

[Siegurt]

FR: simplify monster combat for clarity. I have no idea how this would work

Odd to hear fsim doesn't handle it correctly though, I thought it called the same attack functions the game uses? maybe I'm wrong about how fsim works.

Fsim does one "round" of combat then resets (some but not all) things, and repeats that over and over again.

It can easily check how much time the simulated player action takes, but it would take additional code to figure out how many monster actions would happen and average that all out.

If i remember right, it just takes the total damage done to the player for the entire test and divides that out by the total time taken for the entire test, which is probably a correct average number, but doesn't give you any accuracy on the other numbers.