The Tavern

These ideas were already brought up 2-3 years ago at https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... t:stabbing. I would like to exhume them, since it has been a long time and I can't find a record of anyone who was strongly against them.

The Proposal:
- One-handed polearms are treated like long blades for stabbing (I would love to stab a sleeping Polyphemus with a spear....)
- Unarmed stabs on a target smaller than the player are treated like long blades for stabbing ("You snap the foo's neck!")
- Bludgeoning and crushing weapons get the confusion effect currently reserved for clubs and rods

The Motivation:
Stabbing is one of my favorite mechanics in Crawl, and I would like if it came up more often for characters who are not built around it. If a character who is not using short/long blades winds up a few tiles from a sleeping monster I think they should get a bit more of a reward for taking the risk of sneaking closer to it, rather than casting buffs and waking it up or moving away to fight at range. At the same time, short blades should remain distinctive. In particular I don't think any other weapon class should get an additive stabbing bonus.

shoop wrote:One-handed polearms are treated like long blades for stabbing (I would love to stab a sleeping Polyphemus with a spear....)

This is already true for spears.

(More when I get home.)

Actually spears, tridents, demon tridents and trishulas are all treated like long swords for stabbing (And have been for a long time), as are felid claws.

how about make all weapons (and unarmed), or at least all non-short blades, stab the same

club stab confusion is worthless (you could just wield a short blade and kill the monster instead) and all this stuff like some polearms being stabbier than others is pretty weird
i won't make a statement on whether they should all be long blades stabby or all be axes stabby, but imo having all four of "dagger stabby", "other short blade stabby", "long blade stabby", "axes stabby", plus the useless club confusion thing, is pretty pointless

making stabbing actually short blades' thing would seem to me to be a good (and less confusing to players!) design decision, yes

If stabbing reform happens, (which might be a good idea, if only to make the game (even more) straightforwards for new players,) I would limit stabbing bonuses to short blades and UC. Short blades should stab for obvious reasons- that's pretty much their gimmick. Unarmed combatants are already (pretty heavily) steered away from using heavy armour, and letting them keep a stab bonus seems to keep in line with this. Not to say that UC is a weak school-- it isn't, but it would be weird to penalize heavy armour and not allow stabbing.

If stabbing reform happens, which might be a good idea, it should be renamed something equivalent to "critical hit" and applicable to all weapons, but allow different weapon styles to have different bonuses.

XuaXua wrote:If stabbing reform happens, which might be a good idea, it should be renamed something equivalent to "critical hit" and applicable to all weapons, but allow different weapon styles to have different bonuses.

Crawl doesn't need critical hits, and I enjoy that there's no such thing.

XuaXua wrote:If stabbing reform happens, which might be a good idea, it should be renamed something equivalent to "critical hit" and applicable to all weapons, but allow different weapon styles to have different bonuses.

We've allready got horrendous damage spikes, am I correct in thinking you want to make it worse?

All weapons can currently "stab" with varying bonuses depending on the weapon type and stabbing(paralysed/sleeping or confused etc.) type, with damage increasing with the average of stealth/weapon skill.

Here are the marvelous benefits for those that wish to be (over) informed:

Spoiler: show

Patashu wrote:Crawl doesn't need critical hits, and I enjoy that there's no such thing.

Crawl already has crits due to high damage variations (damage spikes). They just aren't called crits. And didn't you just said in that other thread that you like your crawl spiky?

Zammy wrote:
Patashu wrote:Crawl doesn't need critical hits, and I enjoy that there's no such thing.

Crawl already has crits due to high damage variations (damage spikes). They just aren't called crits. And didn't you just said in that other thread that you like your crawl spiky?

Exactly. It's already got good variance and it doesn't need an extra mechanic to provide extra variance (because it's already all there!)

Renaming stabbing to critical hitting doesn't increase damage variation. It does, however, drastically increase bikeshedding on the forums. XuaXua only suggested a rename, not a new mechanic.

tasonir wrote:Renaming stabbing to critical hitting doesn't increase damage variation. It does, however, drastically increase bikeshedding on the forums. XuaXua only suggested a rename, not a new mechanic.

I think the problem is, in other systems "critical hit" means something very different from what we mean by "stabbing". The commenters assumed it meant what it means elsewhere (chance of doing extra damage on every attack).

As for renaming "stabbing" in-game, there's not much to rename: Here are the places where we use the term "stab" in-game to refer to doing extra damage to unaware opponents:

"It is especially good for stabbing unaware enemies"
"Short Blades are more effective at any other weapon type at stabbing helpless foes"
"Assassins are all about stealth, ready to stab unaware opponents"
"Spriggans make highly competent stabbers and spellcasters."
"Vampires are accomplished stabbers and casters."
Two options: stab_brand and may_stab_brand

I don't think any of those would be improved by using the phrase "critical hit".

tasonir wrote:Renaming stabbing to critical hitting doesn't increase damage variation. It does, however, drastically increase bikeshedding on the forums. XuaXua only suggested a rename, not a new mechanic.

XuaXua wrote:If stabbing reform happens, which might be a good idea, it should be renamed something equivalent to "critical hit" and applicable to all weapons, but allow different weapon styles to have different bonuses.

duvessa wrote:
tasonir wrote:Renaming stabbing to critical hitting doesn't increase damage variation. It does, however, drastically increase bikeshedding on the forums. XuaXua only suggested a rename, not a new mechanic.
XuaXua wrote:If stabbing reform happens, which might be a good idea, it should be renamed something equivalent to "critical hit" and applicable to all weapons, but allow different weapon styles to have different bonuses.

Isn't that the current mechanic?

neil wrote:
duvessa changed what XuaXua wrote:If stabbing reform happens, which might be a good idea, it should be renamed something equivalent to "critical hit" and applicable to all weapons, but allow different weapon styles to have different bonuses.

Isn't that the current mechanic?

pretty much.

Awww man, I was about go all super nested quotes on duvessa, but yeah, that is exactly what we have now. Perhaps duvessa said it best:

duvessa wrote: imo having all four of "dagger stabby", "other short blade stabby", "long blade stabby", "axes stabby", plus the useless club confusion thing, is pretty pointless

Well I figured he meant "different bonuses" more complex than each weapon being either useless for stabbing, or not useless for stabbing

Perhaps add in a "less useless for stabbing" bonus.

I can see the argument for renaming "stabbing", if it's meant to be something that blunt or edged weapons can do to some degree. Also that would prevent the current situation where some pretty random seeming weapons get a bonus for flavour reasons.

Also with the removal of the "Stabbing" skill I don't think it's that obvious what a "stabber" character does. Generally "stabbing" is just the act of driving a point into something, it doesn't necessarily imply sneak-attacks.

If you do want to rename it how about "ambush" - or just "sneak attack"?

+1 for ambush! Apologies if this counts as bikeshedding, but I can't just thank his post because he also mentioned sneak attack, and I just want to support Ambush. Everyone else is welcome to thank me for this post though. :twisted:

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