Proposal: Hand crossbows and the Thief background

[sgrunt]

The reasoning here is a bit complicated, so bear with me for a bit.

You may have heard of the ranged_combat branch, currently playable on cszo and cbro, in which I'm working on rewriting the entire ranged combat system based partially on the melee combat formulas. One significant aspect of this is that it allows for ranged weapon stabbing (i.e. bonus damage against unaware targets), though this is currently mostly disabled (it's currently used to give blowguns bonuses against unaware targets).

The absence of any damaging weapon here strikes me as a bit of an unexplored design space, and a ranged weapon that would be especially suited for ranged stabbing would help to fill that hole.

I then remembered our old friend, the hand crossbow, which was removed a very long time ago for mostly obvious reasons - under the old ranged combat regime they did pitiful damage and didn't have any obvious long-ranging uses. So here's a use for them - give them a ranged stabbing ability, making them a good utility weapon for stealthy types.

For those of you that remember, the old original Thief background started with a hand crossbow (before they were removed); with the new usable hand crossbows this provides a niche for the Thief class to fill as a ranged stabbing/stealth type of enemy. Alternatively, Assassins could get a choice of starting with a blowgun or a hand crossbow. Either way, starting with a hand crossbow lends itself to a possible new style of play.

tl;dr: Bring back hand crossbows as a ranged stabbing weapon; either bring back hand crossbow Thieves or let Assassins start with the weapon.

[HilariousDeathArtist]

Ranged stabbing is an interesting concept and I would enjoy seeing how it plays.

However, keeping both darts as a throwing weapon and as ammo for a hand crossbow seems strange to me.

You've already removed stones as throwing weapons, why not go one step further and remove darts as throwing weapons, and instead now using them as ammo for blowgun.

This would allow you to introduce ranged stabs without introducing a second launcher based on throwing skill.

Backgrounds that start with darts could start with Tomahawks instead.

Edit: I misunderstood about stones being removed as throwing weapons, it seems their damage has just been adjusted. I still support removing stones/darts as weapons that do reasonable throwing damage (without stabs).

[crate]

Ranged stabbing seems very uninteresting to me.

Melee stabbing at least has you finding a way to approach the monster without it waking up (except in practice this is pretty simple for 90% of monsters since you just go invisible and get your free kill, but in theory it's interesting). Ranged stabbing just means that you get one shot at extra high damage if you happen to have stealth, since there's no requirement to get within a certain range. I don't really see how this "lends itself to a possible new style of play" ... obviously you can't have ranged stabbing actually kill things (otherwise why ever bother with melee stabbing?) so it's mostly just like using a regular ranged weapon (where stealth is, not coincidentally, already very good). Or you can make the hand crossbow utterly useless outside of stabbing, and then it's different, but that has the problem of hand crossbows being completely useless outside of stabbing.

If you want to spend your time coding it up then ok, but I am doubtful of it actually adding much to crawl.

[evilmike]

I also have doubts about ranged stabbing. I think if something is done it should involve throwing skill, because blowguns are already a sort of "ranged stabber weapon". In fact blowguns could be good enough here; you already mentioned giving blowguns a bonus vs unaware targets. A damage bonus for blowguns seems weird to me, but maybe you could get something like a highly reduced chance of targets seeing you if you blowgun them, and an increased chance of the effect working. I haven't thought about it much though.

Maybe, if you think there should be a pure-damage ammo type, there could just be a new needle brand added (steel??). That seems better than having two entirely different launchers for stealth characters.

[bcadren]

I'm seeing a lot of overlap with curare; but that's obvious. I'd say making Needles ignore (some) AC when the target is asleep (or extending the effect, increasing the poison) being enough of use for 'unaware bonus damage'. [Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the needle itself does some weak damage that needs to be non-zero for the effect to kick in; I got that from the wiki, so I'm not sure.]

As for hand-crossbows...I don't think we need ranged stabbing, but I'm alright with bringing them back...long as they use the xBow skill. Give a weaker xBow skill variant with somewhat more common (in early to mid game) branded ammo. Almost be a better starting weapon than a normal xBow (because bolts are so rare in early game).

tl;dr: No Ranged stabbing. Yes, bring back hand Crossbow, using xBow skill as a start weapon for Hu and AM.

[Leafsnail]

Maybe it would work if the hand-crossbow's range was shorter than LoS, with maybe radius 3/4? So it would be less risky than regular stabbing but you do less damage.

[XuaXua]

You've already removed stones as throwing weapons

Nothing good ranged against jellies then, eh?

[and into]

You've already removed stones as throwing weapons

Nothing good ranged against jellies then, eh?

Edit: I misunderstood about stones being removed as throwing weapons, it seems their damage has just been adjusted. I still support removing stones/darts as weapons that do reasonable throwing damage (without stabs).

Stones are staying, they just were tweaked.

So throwing has
stones, darts, tomahawks, javelins, large rocks (for troll/ogre)

The OP was suggesting that darts will get a different use as ranged stabbing-like damage with handcrossbows, possibly retaining their use as thrown weapons as well.

[Lyrick]

Why not force the player to "aim" for a few turns? Allow hand crossbows to be evoked to enter an aiming stance (like Searing Ray), where your character takes aim at a target. After several turns (depends on distance? and enemy size?) of not moving then you fire for massive stab damage. (If the target is awakened and notices you then the aiming is cancelled)

It could do less damage than normal stabbing, but at least ranged stabbing gives you some distance when your target wakes up inopportunely.

[Brannock]

I agree with crate, I don't like the idea of ranged stabbing at all. The explicit drawback of stabbing is that you have to get in close to your target, sacrificing safety and positioning for the chance at an instakill. When you take that requirement away, what's left?

[jejorda2]

Why not force the player to "aim" for a few turns? Allow hand crossbows to be evoked to enter an aiming stance (like Searing Ray), where your character takes aim at a target. After several turns (depends on distance? and enemy size?) of not moving then you fire for massive stab damage. (If the target is awakened and notices you then the aiming is cancelled)

It could do less damage than normal stabbing, but at least ranged stabbing gives you some distance when your target wakes up inopportunely.

Instead of requiring explicit resting or repeated action like searing ray, can it just take more than 10 aut like swinging a two-hander without weapon skill?

[Tiktacy]

Ranged stabbing seems very uninteresting to me.

Melee stabbing at least has you finding a way to approach the monster without it waking up (except in practice this is pretty simple for 90% of monsters since you just go invisible and get your free kill, but in theory it's interesting). Ranged stabbing just means that you get one shot at extra high damage if you happen to have stealth, since there's no requirement to get within a certain range. I don't really see how this "lends itself to a possible new style of play" ... obviously you can't have ranged stabbing actually kill things (otherwise why ever bother with melee stabbing?) so it's mostly just like using a regular ranged weapon (where stealth is, not coincidentally, already very good). Or you can make the hand crossbow utterly useless outside of stabbing, and then it's different, but that has the problem of hand crossbows being completely useless outside of stabbing.

If you want to spend your time coding it up then ok, but I am doubtful of it actually adding much to crawl.

I think you have some interesting points, but I'm going to have to disagree with you overall. I think your post had a lot of one sided arguments, and that's really the only reason it attained all those thanks.

Not Ironically, your point that ranged stabbing can't kill things goes against your previous statement of melee stabbing and invisibility(despite it just being a "passing though" I.E. Parentheses). In reality, pure stealth stabs are usually luck. But, confusion, hibernation, invis, and a few other things make it quite viable. In the same sense that stabbing does this, you can make hand-crossbows do this. Of course they will deal less damage than daggers at range, so does every other weapon in the game, so immediately killing enemies right away shouldn't always be an issue.

I think the idea behind this is to add a different interesting alternative to weapon class that literally has one weapon and one use(unlike slings, who cross train with throwing). Am I making any sense?

[TeshiAlair]

What if ranged stabbing was more of a sniper shot: Doing it gives a massive damage boost, but guarantees every enemy in Los wakes up and is distracted because their friend just got stomped out of nowhere.

[File200]

I'm personally in favor of a ranged stabbing weapon. It's already the case that successful stabbers aren't pure melee dudes: they're hybrid casters. If they had an option for stabbing that was safer, but did less damage or had some other drawback, that would give them a more interesting tactical choice than the standard "Invisibility/confuse->melee->melee->melee." Do I want to try for the instant kill, or do I play it safe with the crossbow? Though this would have to be balanced so the safe choice isn't TOO safe.

[XuaXua]

I'm all for renaming "stabbing" to "critical hit" or an equivalent to reflect the nature that it represents the capability to do massive damage. Sure "stabbing" ties it to "daggers"
which are the most optimal weapon to use, but I think this mechanic is too tied to daggers and should be scaled based on the relative size / standard damage capability of the weapon instead (the more deadly the weapon, the less chance of a critical). Should be applicable to ranged weapons in some fashion.

Split the thread if this is too off-topic.

[khalil]

Here's an idea with ranged stabbing: the bonus damage is dependent on range.
If you shoot someone from melee range, it's equivalent to stabbing them with a dagger.
If you shoot someone from the edge of los, it's equivalent to stabbing them with a club.

[Lasty]

I think crate's right that ranged stabbing isn't all that different from having Stealth skill give a damage bonus to ranged combat. Ranged stabbing necessarily means you don't need to spend as much time in LOS and you don't need to risk melee combat, meaning that you've removed two of the biggest obstacles to melee stabbing, and it's hard to imagine how that could be balanced out in any way other than just making it a one-time damage bonus you get for investing a little bit in Stealth -- and to be clear, it would only have to be a little bit, because it's not that hard to get one turn in LOS of a monster w/o it waking up.

That said, I don't think that's necessarily bad if implemented right, and I was also thinking of something like what khalil proposed, but with the both the amount of damage and the chance of triggering based on damage. At max range, the chance of a "stab" attack would be quite low and the amount of damage it would deal would be minor, but it would increase exponentially as you get nearer, encouraging would-be ranged stabbers to also approach their targets. However, the damage bonus should never be anything close to what short blade stabs do now, since that would make short blade stabbing obsolete. I'm not yet certain whether such a scheme would add anything or not, but I'm not against giving it a try.

I do think that adding hand crossbows or a thief background is probably unnecessary. Blowguns seem like the natural assassination ranged weapon, and so it seems reasonable to reuse them for that here -- assassins could start with fewer curare needles and a couple of these new assassination needles, for example.