Stat build for human fighter?

[haagon]

I only play human fighter because I like to roleplay a knight. I never seem to be able to get very far though so what am i doing wrong? I normally keep my skill training set to automatic to train maces, fighting, shields, and dodging as I use them and cancel things like stabbing so I dont train them. Should I be training a different way? What skills should I emphasize on and what skills should I completely ignore? My god is also either trog or owataru (or whatever his name is the god of battle) I normally go with maces because there the only rare ones i'm ever really able to find. any help is appreciated.

[palin]

I only play human fighter because I like to roleplay a knight. I never seem to be able to get very far though so what am i doing wrong? I normally keep my skill training set to automatic to train maces, fighting, shields, and dodging as I use them and cancel things like stabbing so I dont train them. Should I be training a different way? What skills should I emphasize on and what skills should I completely ignore? My god is also either trog or owataru (or whatever his name is the god of battle) I normally go with maces because there the only rare ones i'm ever really able to find. any help is appreciated.

Are you using armour? If you equipped amour heavier that leather, you should train armour otherwise you'll be so encumbered by it you're not going to hit anything.

As an armoured fighter, I think you should train fighting, armour, shields and you primary weapon first. Shut down dodging and upgrade you armour all the way to plate while leveling up. Turn off spellcasting, stealth and stabbing permanently and traps and door until you reach lair (then train up some 7-8, more if you reach zot)

Keep in mind that if you want to continue using shields, the best weapons are polearms (for the trident and, if you find it, the demon trident) or long blades.

Try this advice and see what happens.

[rebthor]

Drop/unequip your shield, train primary weapon skills to min delay. Then start training armour and upgrading your main weapon, always training weapon skill first to get back to min delay. After that, you can start thinking about fighting and shields.

Maces aren't bad for shields either if your goal is an eveningstar or demon whip and spiked flails - while not as good - are pretty common and better than scimitars. Anything that is 1.5 handed, you really need full shield skill for or you take a big hit to everything when using the weapon. That means don't use anything bigger than a buckler with 1.5 handed until you have the skill. Notable 1.5 handers are all polearms that are not 2 handers, i.e. common spears and tridents as well as demon trident and trishula.

Look at the following entries in the bot:

1.5-handed gets significant penalties if you have a shield (and if you don't, why don't you use 2-handed?) and insufficient shield skill. The penalty with 0 shield skill is 1..1/3/5 to to-hit, damage and speed for bucklers/normal/large shields, respectively.
1.5 handed penalty to accuracy, damage and speed is based on -EV_penalty - (shield_skill / (5 + size_factor)). Source is player.cc line 2285; and fight.cc lines 3763, 3799, 4043, 6292.
crawl-speak for "one-handed but we like to confuse people"

acc,dam,delay[hands]: falchion 2,8,13; long sword 1,10,14; scimitar -2,12,14; demon blade -1,13,13; double sword -1,15,15[1.5]; great sword -3,16,16[2]; triple sword -4,19,19[2]

acc,dam,delay[hands]: whip 2,6,11; club 3,5,13; hammer 3,7,13; mace 3,8,14; flail 2,9,15; ankus 2,9,14; morningstar -1,10,15; demon whip 1,12,11; holy scourge 0,13,11; s. flail -2,12,16; eveningstar -1,14,15; dire flail -3,13,13[2]; g. mace -4,18,17[2]; g. club -6,20,17[2.5]; g. s. club -7,22,18[2.5]

[hands](Dam,Acc,Delay): Spear[1.5] (6,4,11); Trident[1.5] (9,3,13); Demon trident[1.5] (12,1,13); Trishula[1.5] (13,0,13); Halberd[2] (13,-3,15); Scythe[2] (14,-4,20); Glaive[2] (15,-3,17); Bardiche[2] (18,-6,20)

[nordetsa]

Your weapon comes first. And as a fighter dropping shield is the best way for early game as it hampers with your attacks. I also think polearms are really good because they all have reaching abilities, meaning you can poke monsters from distance.

You should make sure stealth and stabbing are always turned off. They have a tendency to pop on in the early part of the game. (Can anyone please tell me how to shut down those skills at all by the way?)

For 3-rune I think weapon skills comes first, followed by armor, fighting and some dodging.

[crate]

I would not unequip your shield on turn 0 unless you're using a trident, and maybe not even then. In fact if I found a large shield on d:1 I would equip it on most fighters.

(The best onehanded weapons are long blades, because scimitars are dramatically better than any other common onehander.)

Probably your real problem is that you are not fighting things properly. Automatic skill training does a good enough job (and it at least makes sure you don't go too far afield and train things that are completely useless!!) for you to win if you play well. If you are a character who kills things just in melee combat you need to know before you decide to fight whether you can win an engagement, and if you cannot you must not fight it ... either you flee the enemy entirely, or you flee and then try to come back with better positioning or with more resources or such. Additionally you should try to minimize the number of enemies who are aware of you at any time, so if you see a gnoll or an orc the worst thing you can do is charge at it and draw the attention of the whole pack. Instead make the gnoll or orc come to you, so most likely you can fight just one enemy instead of four or five.

If you die your thought should not be "what should I have done strategically (skill training etc.) to be stronger?" Probably you are better off thinking "how could I have better handled that encounter to not die?".

It is true that you can also improve strategic aspects like skill training and equipment and god choice but tactics are really what win or lose games of crawl.

[rebthor]

I would not unequip your shield on turn 0 unless you're using a trident, and maybe not even then. In fact if I found a large shield on d:1 I would equip it on most fighters.

Really? If I understand the formulas correctly (and it's entirely possible that I do not), having a large shield will occasionally increase your attack delay by up to .5 aut and on average by .25 aut. This is also not "fixable" by raising weapon skill. The only difference between 1.5 hander and 1 hander is that you get 2 "rolls" and take the better with a 1 hander, so you're more likely to not have the full penalty, i.e. 1 in 25 instead of 1 in 5 chance with a large shield.

IF all that is true, then it seems like a good way to get in trouble with the RNG, when an attack you thought was going to take .8 turns suddenly takes 1.3.

[crate]

I have used large shields at 0 skill before, they're fine. But then I'm comfortable with attacks that take a long time, perhaps many players are not.

[haagon]

wow i wasnt expecting such detailed information so quickly thanks to everyone this will be a huge help. I will see if i can make it past the lair now haha thanks again everyone

[tasonir]

Likewise I find large shields/heavy armor to be worth it right away assuming you're planning a narrow melee build. If you are not planning on doing anything but training your weapon skill up a reasonable amount (level 10ish) and then you can divert exp into armor/shield, you can remove a lot of the shield penalties before they become too dangerous. I also tend to play large races who need less shield skill, so using a large/regular shield is still fairly fast to train. Normal races might want to only throw on buckler/regular shields.

I actually suffer a *lot* of melee delays using unarmed and a shield. Worst case scenario:

Let's say you have around a 5.4 Unarmed skill. You got "lucky" and found a d1 plate, unfortunately your background has 0 armor skill. You also are super "lucky" and found a regular shield, and have 0 skill. I'll try to make this more general for a normal sized character and assume you aren't fortunate enough to be playing a naga.

Base delay: 9 aut. Add 50% chance for +1 aut for using a shield, regardless of shield skill. Then roll 1d3 twice, and the smaller one is added, so anywhere from +1 to +3 aut. Then because we're using unarmed and a plate armor, crawl decides it hates us with a burning passion and rolls 1d10 + 2d6 - 10. Note a naga in plate armor and a naga barding (this character is now SUPER lucky) would roll 2d8 there, as would anyone in crystal plate armor. While this will have a high variance, you could add as much as 12 aut to your attack (for the 2d6 calculation)! The average would only be around 2aut, and many attacks will have a delay of 0 from this step. This does not apply to any character using weapons.

Worst case: that 9 aut base attack now takes 25 aut, a full 2 and a half turns. And you aren't even slowed! Note this is more of a theoretical analysis than practical, as the vast majority of your attacks will never go over 15 aut...But bad rolls can be really bad. Additionally, even just a few levels in armor skill will rapidly decrease this penalty. It's the reason unarmed + armor users are an exception to the train weapon exclusively rule. They should still start with unarmed first, just throw in 3-5 levels of armor at a reasonably early point and then train unarmed or other skills (shields, invocations, etc) up as well.

Alright, I seem to have gotten carried away with myself <.< In short crawl hates unarmed characters who want any AC, and if you use a weapon you're fine. This is another reason why I tend to splat early only to be incredibly powerful post-lair.

[crate]

I am almost entirely positive that naga and centaur barding EV penalties don't affect things like UC delay. They definitely do not affect spellcasting success.

[tasonir]

You might be right about that - another reason I'm glad I did the calculation for just the more normal case of 2d6 for just plate armor. I'm not sure if it rolls 2d6 (no barding penalty), 2d8 (plate + barding in one roll) or 2d6 + 2d2 (barding/plate seperately). If anyone's sure let me know. Wiki says it does 2d6 + 2d2, actually - although no one would ever trust the wiki, right?

The knowledge bot formula seems to agree with it though:

max(10, 1d10+2dAEVP) - UC/5.4.

It's written differently but that should be the same calculation, and AEVP would count bardings, no? I'm not sure, but in either case, get that armor skill quickly to reduce your delay.

Ah well, it's a niche case. Most people probably won't even be using unarmed, especially on a naga/centaur, it's just my favorite love affair. I really need to do a GSC ogre build in statue form one of these days

[crate]

AEVP doesn't count bardings, bardings don't affect UC. Easy to check in wizmode.

[SchwaWarrior]

I only play human fighter because I like to roleplay a knight.

That's cool. What's his name? Does he have a detailed backstory? I'd love to hear it! I roleplay too, but mine's with a female High Elf spellcaster.

Anyway as for stat building, I personally never use Autotrain. Once per dungeon level I press "m" to check all my Skills and see if I want to change my training rates or leave them as-is. I like to have absolute control over my character and not leave anything up to the machine that I could do myself. I also try to get a couple levels in every possible skill, even the useless ones, so by the Lair I might have Robes and 10 or 12 levels in Dodging (with a +1 aptitude) and like 2 or 3 levels in Armor (with a -1 aptitude), even though the Armor hardly makes a difference, it's better than nothing while not being too excessive at the cost of my other Skill levels that are more important. 3 levels in Stabbing can make a difference even if I'm not playing a Stabber; there will always be various chances throughout the game to attack a distracted foe, whether it's through confusion, or he's attacking my summoned allies, or I've gone Invisible, etc. etc. and Traps & Doors, most people like to raise that to 10 eventually, as it helps spot some of the most dangerous traps in the game, the dreaded "Zot Traps", which start appearing way later and can do things like summon terrible demons, blast you with giga-huge explosions of fire or lightning, instantly banish you to the Abyss, drain your stats, or worse. You don't have to be super worried about T&D until the Lair, but I've seen it does make a difference early game to have 2 or 3 levels in it as opposed to none. 3 levels in Throwing and a handful of Rocks will let you kill Jellies a ton more effectively than usual, without wasting Wand charges on them. 3 or 4 levels in Fighting as opposed to 0 makes my attacks hit a tiny bit more often, and my max HP be up like 6 to 12 points. So yes, I enjoy all the little things added together, with super specialty in 1 or 2 areas.

For my weapons, it all depends. High Elves can only be really good with Short or Long Blades, not Flails or whatever... Sometimes early-game I'll find a really amazing Dagger, so I'll put like 6 levels in Short Blades, leave it like that forever, train up my skills in Dodging and in Conjuration and Air Magic (for my Mephitic Cloud spell to be more powerful-- it's a confusion-gas attack that disables enemies from fighting me so I can pick them off in the chaos), then when I find a good Long Blade later on, such as Erica's Fire Scimitar, I'll switch to that and start raising Long Blades to 20 levels gradually throughout the next major segment of the game, which will be sped up a little bit thanks to Short Blades's Crosstraining giving me a temporary bonus +4 affinity to Long Blades. That's my preferred strategy, and it can actually work with any Short Blade, since all of them require only a very low skill level to become extremely efficient with. But it all depends on what I find. If I find a great spellbook early on I have to decide whether or not it's worth it to take the time in raising the expensive spell school early on; High Elves get -2 affinity to Necromancy and Summoning, but then again Summon Scorpions is simply wonderful and if I get a book of Callings or Envenomations I might feel compelled to invest as early as I can, which means if I find the +0+0 Elven Long Blade on D:3, I may opt not to bother with Long Blades until later since I'm raising a different skill (and I do like to raise only 1 or 2 skills at a time instead of all of them at once) and I can find a better one anyway, such as Erica's Fire Scimitar.

I kinda went on a(nother) rant there, but the long story short is that specializing is typically best, but also it depends on what you find. It's okay to spread out a little bit, I do so more than a lot of players here, but even I would recommend not to spread out too much. You probably don't need 10 Evocations unless you're using Nemelex or find an incredible Rod (the +6 Rod of Destruction in the Labyrinth I got recently was pretty spiffy), so if you only raise it to 4, that's 6 levels you can put to things that matter more. That sort of thing.

Also, welcome to the Crawl Tavern! We're pretty nice here, yeah. Sit down and enjoy some coffee with us any time life's getting you down or you want to talk about what a deep and amazing game this is that we all play.

[Psieye]

Probably your real problem is that you are not fighting things properly. Automatic skill training does a good enough job (and it at least makes sure you don't go too far afield and train things that are completely useless!!) for you to win if you play well. If you are a character who kills things just in melee combat you need to know before you decide to fight whether you can win an engagement, and if you cannot you must not fight it ... either you flee the enemy entirely, or you flee and then try to come back with better positioning or with more resources or such. Additionally you should try to minimize the number of enemies who are aware of you at any time, so if you see a gnoll or an orc the worst thing you can do is charge at it and draw the attention of the whole pack. Instead make the gnoll or orc come to you, so most likely you can fight just one enemy instead of four or five.

This. One of the key aspects of melee tactics is understanding pack psychology. When you drag one orc away from the pack, he will shout for attention and his squadmates will join the pursuit. The really important detail is: he never shouts again. So as you go around a maze of corners, that one orc can pursue you as he has visual contact of you. He DOESN'T tell his squadmates what he sees so the rest of the pack quickly lose track of you as they never got a visual lead on you. They could track you down if you make a lot of noise, but earlygame you simply cannot do that unless you voluntarily shout or happen to read a scroll of noise. Lategame, huge weapons landing big hits will make noise, as will high level spells but by then you should have appropriate defences and tools at your disposal to cope with the heat.

I have used large shields at 0 skill before, they're fine. But then I'm comfortable with attacks that take a long time, perhaps many players are not.

Agreed, they're fine so long as you exercise good tactics and you are willing to take it off (after going up stairs) for certain situations (e.g. one lone orc priest). Mid-late game large shields with 0 skill is another topic, but earlygame large shields is viable.

[palin]

Please stop advising beginners to unequip shields on starting fighters, it's bad advice anyway, the shield will still block most of attacks at skill 0... and being shieldless would mean more deaths for them. If they want to play shieldless, let them choose another background.

[rebthor]

Please stop advising beginners to unequip shields on starting fighters, it's bad advice anyway, the shield will still block most of attacks at skill 0... and being shieldless would mean more deaths for them. If they want to play shieldless, let them choose another background.

I advise removing them at low skill not because of blocking attacks but because of the random effect on attack speed. Starting with a handaxe or spear will cause unpredictable delay in attacks that could easily push a player from .9 aut to 1.2 aut, letting them get hit twice and killing them.

[Psieye]

Please stop advising beginners to unequip shields on starting fighters, it's bad advice anyway, the shield will still block most of attacks at skill 0... and being shieldless would mean more deaths for them. If they want to play shieldless, let them choose another background.

I advise removing them at low skill not because of blocking attacks but because of the random effect on attack speed. Starting with a handaxe or spear will cause unpredictable delay in attacks that could easily push a player from .9 aut to 1.2 aut, letting them get hit twice and killing them.

It puts a different learning curve, certainly. A 0 skill shield user who knows to always fight in corridors, knows to take off the shield if that's not possible and that certain attacks cannot be blocked with a shield (orc wizards and priests in the earlygame) won't really care about the potential for being hit twice: the shield will likely stop one if not both attacks.

[KoboldLord]

I advise removing them at low skill not because of blocking attacks but because of the random effect on attack speed. Starting with a handaxe or spear will cause unpredictable delay in attacks that could easily push a player from .9 aut to 1.2 aut, letting them get hit twice and killing them.

If you are going to die if your opponent gets a double turn on you, then you should run away instead of fighting because that means you will also die if you miss.

[palin]

It puts a different learning curve, certainly. A 0 skill shield user who knows to always fight in corridors, knows to take off the shield if that's not possible and that certain attacks cannot be blocked with a shield (orc wizards and priests in the earlygame) won't really care about the potential for being hit twice: the shield will likely stop one if not both attacks.

Not only that, but a spear or trident user would start attacking the enemy from one square apart and that is a huge advantage even if the 0-skill fighter is going to have a 1.2 delay in the next turn. Note even that such thing as a 0-SH fighter does not exist since they start at SH3.

[BlackSheep]

*HuFi starts with Shields at level 3. Species with a better aptitude start higher (MiFi = 3.6) and species with worse aptitudes start lower (CeFi = 2.1).

[crate]

If you are going to wear a shield larger than a buckler you should just keep it equipped ... it takes too long to unequip a regular shield or larger for it to ever be useful while an enemy is chasing you. I would not take off my shield, I would just only fight things that I can beat while wearing my shield. If you don't have a two-handed weapon and you don't cast spells this is more enemies than you can beat without a shield.

Orc priests are really not an enemy I'm scared of dying to, except in rare circumstances. They're easy to avoid, they even give you the space you need to use stairs by smiting you instead of moving. Orc wizards are far scarier.

[rebthor]

I advise removing them at low skill not because of blocking attacks but because of the random effect on attack speed. Starting with a handaxe or spear will cause unpredictable delay in attacks that could easily push a player from .9 aut to 1.2 aut, letting them get hit twice and killing them.

If you are going to die if your opponent gets a double turn on you, then you should run away instead of fighting because that means you will also die if you miss.

I agree with you. I don't think that I've made my position clear at all in this. My main concern is the random aspect to the delay on the shield. Bucklers don't really have this issue. They are either going to add .1 or 0 aut. However, large shields can have a huge difference. I don't think many would recommend attacking with a weapon at 1.5 turns delay, so I'm not sure why to take the risk of that 1.5 turn attack coming at exactly the wrong time.

[palin]

I don't think many would recommend attacking with a weapon at 1.5 turns delay, so I'm not sure why to take the risk of that 1.5 turn attack coming at exactly the wrong time.

May would not recommend attacking with a 1.5 constant weapon delay. But here we're gambling weapon delay with an attack blocked. A single attack blocked for a monster who has a single attack, it's a turn gained, so it really means we are gambling a 1.5 turn attack delay chance against a two consecutive attacks by the character. If you see things in this light, they aren't so bad, are they?

[rebthor]

It puts a different learning curve, certainly. A 0 skill shield user who knows to always fight in corridors, knows to take off the shield if that's not possible and that certain attacks cannot be blocked with a shield (orc wizards and priests in the earlygame) won't really care about the potential for being hit twice: the shield will likely stop one if not both attacks.

Not only that, but a spear or trident user would start attacking the enemy from one square apart and that is a huge advantage even if the 0-skill fighter is going to have a 1.2 delay in the next turn. Note even that such thing as a 0-SH fighter does not exist since they start at SH3.

I have to go based on the wiki because I'm at work and I don't know the starting fighter equipment and stats off the top of my head, but let's assume the wiki is correct.
Starting equipment:
+0 weapon of choice (hand axe, long sword, trident, short sword or mace)
+0 scale mail
+0 shield
Bread ration
20 gold

Starting skills
Fighting: 3
Chosen Weapon's Skill: 2
Armour: 3
Shields: 2

Trident delay is 13, reduced to 12 by weapon skill. Shield skill of 2 gives an adjusted penalty of 3 - (2 / 5), so either 2 or 3 depending on RNG. That means that each attack with that trident is going to take 1.4 to 1.5 turns. Yes, you will one shot a lot of things due to reaching and you will block other things. But with delay at 1.2 you will still one shot a lot of things with reaching so that's moot.

Now it's most likely that the wiki is off, since above you say that HuFi starts with 3 shield instead of 2. I'll try to remember to update this later with the real numbers.

The only question is how much survivability you get from that shield at 0 skill compared to the extra attack a monster is going to get on you every other turn. I feel that it's not enough. KoboldLord and crate feel that it is and I can understand why - they are experts. They are not going to take that extra poke at the Ogre and hope that it dies, they're going to run until they can kite it better.

[crate]

I also regularly use lajatangs and great swords at skill 0, so I'm used to attack delays of 1.4 to 1.6.

[Psieye]

If you are going to wear a shield larger than a buckler you should just keep it equipped ... it takes too long to unequip a regular shield or larger for it to ever be useful while an enemy is chasing you. I would not take off my shield, I would just only fight things that I can beat while wearing my shield. If you don't have a two-handed weapon and you don't cast spells this is more enemies than you can beat without a shield.

Oh I'd never take it off while the enemy is chasing me. I'd go up stairs, take it off, then come back down again.

Back before the skill system revamp, i used to take off plate mail to grind my EXP pool into a magic skill, then put the armour back on again. A shield is so much faster in comparison.

[palin]

They are not going to take that extra poke at the Ogre and hope that it dies, they're going to run until they can kite it better.

Making an example with an unordinary monster to prove a point is a flaw in you reasoning. You don't take chances against an Ogre, shield or no shield unless you're sure you can withstand at least two hits. But if you think about the earl worm or cockroach, yes, you can flee... but can you flee everyone of them? With a Fighter you'll better wait for them to come to you and attack while trying to block, rather then attacking without the shield to improve weapon delay.