Simple overhaul: double AC versus player UC

[Pollen_Golem]

At high skill levels UC is effective at overcoming AC because of its high base damage. While it makes some sense that you can knock a fiend's head off with your fist, it makes less sense that you can do the same with a hell sentinel. Armor should be difficult to deal with when inflicting blows with your body - your body has to absorb the impact, rather than the stick you'd be otherwise swinging - so I propose applying monster AC more than once against UC player attacks, somewhat like Sandblast. Other than making more sense, this would also make late-game UC, where it really shines, more balanced with other melee choices. It would allow an overall UC buff, making UC more viable at lower skill levels, and thus more similar to weapons in terms of the rate at which effective damage improved throughout the game.

[Hurkyl]

In terms of making sense, your expectations are calibrated wrong. We're playing a game where players wield triple swords, can magically create tornados, and fight dragons. Your mental picture of a master of unarmed combat should not be the black belt at the local dojo: fantasy martial artists can punch so hard that the resulting air pressure alone is enough to knock down trees and blow holes in walls. When they make actual contact, they can shatter boulders.

[KoboldLord]

Unarmed combat is already the most xp-intensive melee combat skill, and in raw power it is substantially behind every other weapon skill during the parts of the game that are most difficult. Does it need a pretty major nerf on top of that to accommodate your sense of realism?

[Pollen_Golem]

Unarmed combat is already the most xp-intensive melee combat skill, and in raw power it is substantially behind every other weapon skill during the parts of the game that are most difficult. Does it need a pretty major nerf on top of that to accommodate your sense of realism?

But I say at the end that this will allow an overall BUFF to UC, so that unarmed will not be so behind weapon skills during those early, most difficult parts. Nerfing late UC and buffing early UC is the main point, and better realism is a good side-effect. And of course, the threats to UC characters would be somewhat different, with high-AC monsters becoming more threatening and low-AC monsters less threatening, which shakes up the game a bit.

[duvessa]

why do you want to nerf late UC? late UC is already bad compared to weapons

[Arrhythmia]

How in the world is this a buff to early UC?

[Pollen_Golem]

How in the world is this a buff to early UC?

This is a direct NERF to UC in general but especially later in the game when more monsters have considerable AC. But, it opens the gate for something else, like an overall buff to UC - for example, simply increasing base UC damage by a few points. And that would be good for early game, even with doubled monster AC, because the biggest early threats have little to no AC.

UC can't be buffed directly, for a better early game, because that would make UC better in the late game, which is a no-no.

UC mechanics have reached an elegant system where UC skill is simply added to your base UC damage, and unarmed attack delay ranges from 1.0 to 0.5 scaling linearly with UC skill. No step-downs or anything silly like that. This is good and something to preserve. Increasing base UC damage does not change the aforementioned elegant system.

It would be okay to buff UC in general if there was something to nerf it again late-game, such as doubled monster AC versus player AC. In OP I point out why doubled AC should be reasonable and unsurprising.

[bel]

why do you want to nerf late UC? late UC is already bad compared to weapons

If early UC is bad and late UC is bad, why does it exist.

[Sprucery]

If early UC is bad and late UC is bad, why does it exist.

It is not bad, just possibly worse than some other options.

My VpMo (of Dith, 5 runes) put 50% of exp into UC until UC was at 27. It is not wise, but doable.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

So basically you want UC to become just another weapon skill without any differentiation from other weapon schools.

[Pollen_Golem]

Yes, I want unarmed to be unusable unless you find and wield weapons belonging to the unarmed school, with every 2 skill points decreasing your delay by 0.1, etc etc

[tabstorm]

Late UC dosen't need to be nerfed. It is decent if you are using forms but otherwise comparable or slightly worse than weapons. Honestly, your opinion that lategame UC is overpowered is wrong.

[duvessa]

If early UC is bad and late UC is bad, why does it exist.

Lots of bad stuff exists in crawl, presumably by accident. Before 0.6, maces were garbage, for example. It happens that unarmed is quite bad at the moment unless you have claws or started the game as a transmuter, but that could be changed without too much difficulty.

So basically you want UC to become just another weapon skill without any differentiation from other weapon schools.

it already is

[Siegurt]

Unarmed isn't very bad at level 1, it's not good *untrained* but if you start as say a HuMo or something it's about the same as starting as any non-GL/Fi background in terms of weapon damage (UC:3 on a human is about equal to a +0 shortsword, UC:7 is about equal to a +1 longsword, UC:10 is about the same as a +2 scimitar, UC:13 is about the same as a +3 greatsword.)

It's not the *best* starting weapon, but it's definitely better than a dagger or club (for regular melee attacks) and about equal to a shortsword/mace/falchion.

[tasonir]

If you want to buff early UC and nerf late UC, suggest both proposals at the same time. Suggesting only the nerf part first is not really going to work.

UC late game isn't very strong - it's just that it pairs well with one of two things: claws, and transmutations. A HuMo with 27 unarmed does about the same damage as someone else with a good branded weapon, but you do a troll/demonspawn with claws 3 and now the damage is somewhat higher; throw in blade hands/statue form/dragon form, and the damage is much higher. But that's no longer a comparable amount of experience to training 20 of a weapon skill.

I wouldn't terribly mind buffing early UC and nerfing it late, but then you are making it a lot closer to every other weapon; imho there's basically two weapons in crawl, any weapon and unarmed. I like unarmed

[Pollen_Golem]

Do you actually think the best way to distinguish UC is to have it unbalanced with respect to weapons at certain points in the game? That seems an utterly compromist position to take. It's not like disbalancing something is a hard or good way of making it different.

[kroki]

Why not add some UC weapons: studded/bladed gloves (could be gloves brand?), knuckledusters, cesti, katars?

[Pollen_Golem]

Nah, some games such as the Fallout franchise have Unarmed Weapons, lol. But in Crawl, UC has its own unique mechanics and we wouldn't want to mess with them by somehow melding weapon mechanics and UC mechanics. And we wouldn't want to take away UC's unique property of not relying on weapon finds. UC already has its considerations: the aux/shield decision, gloves/claws sometimes, a choice of forms. Also, skill training is harder to prioritize properly, with UC.

I did however propose unrand gloves for UC specialists (anti-wiz was a silly idea, scratch that): viewtopic.php?f=17&t=16328