Wanderer starting items

[Lasty]

So, wanderers start with at least three "items", based off their skills, one "good" and two "decent". The list of "decent" items seems fairly solid to me, but I think the "good" list could use work. Here's what it is right now:

Take a (weighted) random skill the wanderer has and do give an item based on it:
Fighting/Weapon skill: +1-3, +1-3 starting weapon of the chosen type.
Magic skill: an appropriate spellbook.
Shield skill: a +0 buckler
Dodging, Stealth, UC, Invo: 2x attempts to get curing or teleport and a good potion or scroll (from a list)
Evocations: a random low-level wand (from a list)
Armour skill: +0 scale mail

It seems to me that if Fighting/Weapon is chosen, you get something very good, ranging up to possibly a +3/+3 crossbow or quarterstaff, whereas if Armour is chosen, you get something significantly worse. Some of the other skills give something of good power level, but maybe not as apropos as possible, like Dodging and perhaps Stealth.

So, let's brainstorm a more balanced and useful list. Here's my attempt at adjusting it:

Weapon skill: +1-3/+1-3 short sword|mace|hand axe|blowgun|spear|falchion or +1-2/+1-2 bow or +1/+1 quarterstaff|crossbow.
Armour skill: +1-2 scale mail armour or (+0 scale mail armour and +0 helmet)
Dodging skill: +1-2 leather armour or +0 cloak
Stealth skill: +2-3/+2-3 dagger or 2-4 nets

[Lasty]

I put together a patch for this, and elliptic suggested some revisions:

* All good_item weapons have max enhancement of 1-2 instead of 1-3.
* Keep Stealth good_item unchanged.
* Make Dodging good_item either +1-2 leather armour or +0 leather and also nets.

After that, I also started thinking, maybe good_item weapons should pull from the same list as the new Fighters and be limited to +1. This would level out the weapons a little better and also increase the variety of wanderer starts.

Overall, I'd like to discuss the design of current wanderer items, though: There's a very wide range of item quality that you can get from your good_item, ranging from a +1/+1 short sword to a single scroll of fear to a +3/+3 crossbow or Book of Frost or Book of Necromancy.

Given that some of these good_items are way, way better than others, let me ask: what should wanderers be? Should they be a random background that compensates for schizophrenic stats and skills with above-average equipment? Should they be a lottery where good ones are amazing and bad ones are awful?

My personal view is that to the greatest extent possible, wanderers should all be playable and of roughly equivalent power, but have their exact starting package randomized enough to usually provide distinct starts that do not replicate existing backgrounds and require the player to adapt to what they're given. Given that the stats and skills will (almost) always be suboptimal compared with existing backgrounds, I'm fine with them getting slightly better equipment than any other background, but the range of equipment given should strive to be of uniform value.

So, what do you all think?

[and into]

My personal view is that to the greatest extent possible, wanderers should all be playable and of roughly equivalent power, but have their exact starting package randomized enough to usually provide distinct starts that do not replicate existing backgrounds and require the player to adapt to what they're given. Given that the stats and skills will (almost) always be suboptimal compared with existing backgrounds, I'm fine with them getting slightly better equipment than any other background, but the range of equipment given should strive to be of uniform value.

Well, I don't have much to add because I agree completely with the above. However I imagine that might be quite difficult to achieve reliably in practice amongst wanderer starts.

[Lasty]

The proposal has changed over some discussion. If you want to keep track of the current state, check this Mantis ticket:

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.ph ... 7#bugnotes