Making +acc more useful

[PleasingFungus]

Right now, there seems to be a general consensus that +acc isn't very useful. Since most characters tend to get the skill necessary to hit most enemies pretty reliably, regardless of their weapon type, the accuracy of weapons and +acc from slaying effects isn't very valuable.

Having most attacks hit is good; games where the player's characters tend to miss a lot are very frustrating for players! But it does seem like a pity that the +acc is mostly irrelevant. If it's in the game, it should have a purpose!

My thought was to provide a bonus for high accuracy. On each melee attack, if you exceed the defender's ev by some large margin, you would get a significant damage bonus (multiplier?). This would keep accuracy fairly distinct from +dam, while still providing a use for high acc.

Alternately, to reduce swinginess, you could have every attack get bonus damage based on the margin by which it exceeded the defender's ev.

The main advantages of this scheme are in making +acc useful; this is particularly relevant for shortblades, which tend to have excessive acc, and the Sure Blade charm might actually become useful. (You could also bring back the Knife of Accuracy!) The disadvantages are the rebalancing of combat math required to compensate for the extra damage, and potentially added swinginess.

I'm also told something like this was suggested in the past & rejected, though I haven't been able to find any trace of this when searching - if that's true, it'd be good to know!

[Patashu]

Have you looked at how accuracy and damage are made distinct in Sil? It's a really deep system. Love it. Doubt you could make it work in Crawl without Melee Combat Reform (tm) though.

[WalkerBoh]

If it's in the game, it should have a purpose!

Alternatively, if it doesn't have a purpose, it shouldn't be in the game.

[PleasingFungus]

Have you looked at how accuracy and damage are made distinct in Sil? It's a really deep system. Love it. Doubt you could make it work in Crawl without Melee Combat Reform (tm) though.

I haven't, actually! Can you say a little more about that?

Alternatively, if it doesn't have a purpose, it shouldn't be in the game.

Well, sure, you can always go around removing things. But I prefer to try to fix them first...

[Patashu]

Have you looked at how accuracy and damage are made distinct in Sil? It's a really deep system. Love it. Doubt you could make it work in Crawl without Melee Combat Reform (tm) though.

I haven't, actually! Can you say a little more about that?

http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/gam ... Manual.pdf Read the Combat section
Basically, attacks have accuracy and damage and defenders have EV and AC, just like in Crawl.
But, if your accuracy roll beats their EV roll by 'enough' ('enough' starts at 7, is higher for heavier weapons and lower if you take the skill subtlety) then you get an extra damage dice - 1d8 would become 2d8, but 8d1 would only become 9d1.
And if you beat it by 'enough' a second time, you add a second damage dice. A third time, a third, and so on.
What makes this system cool is a few things:
1) Purely from the numbers of whether a weapon focuses on dice or die size for its damage and how heavy it is, we get weapons that are more or less suited for critical hits. 1dxs are weak but build up damage very fast if you can get a double or triple critical. 2dxs get a moderate benefit from criticals, 3dxs a weak benefit, criticals get harder for weapons that are heavier, etc. But it never stops or starts working.
2) It's a hybrid critical hit and stabbing system, because if you get your enemy into a state where their EV tanks (unwary, asleep, maybe something else? I forget) you can get a huge stacked critical, but it's all based on the same numbers.
3) It's perfectly symmetrical, enemies can critical/stab you because their damage/accuracy/AC/EV works the same as yours.

But it only works so well because it's very finely tuned to have numbers that make sense over the course of the game. With Crawl's huge variety you can't get it so close with just simple numbers unless you have a lot of time to rebalance all the content. But it's a good way to show how this kind of thing can work.

[tedric]

This would make accuracy another form of +dam

FTFY

I agree that accuracy doesn't seem to matter much. But turning it into another damage bonus, whether additive or multiplicative and whether applied randomly or to every hit, underwhelms me: lots of effects do that already. However, since you mention swinginess...

What about a GDR-like effect, where high acc doesn't increase max damage but just makes it less likely to hit at the low end of the damage range the weapon has already achieved through base type, enchantment, skill, etc.? Like GDR, it would reduce swinginess.

This makes sense to me because increasing a weapon's accuracy doesn't make it more damaging in an absolute sense, but a very accurate weapon is more likely to deliver its full damage potential with every blow.

[spudwalt]

What about a GDR-like effect, where high acc doesn't increase max damage but just makes it less likely to hit at the low end of the damage range the weapon has already achieved through base type, enchantment, skill, etc.? Like GDR, it would reduce swinginess.

This makes sense to me because increasing a weapon's accuracy doesn't make it more damaging in an absolute sense, but a very accurate weapon is more likely to deliver its full damage potential with every blow.

Makes sense to me, too.

[DracheReborn]

Oh, PF is in Tavern now. I, for one, welcome our new Coleopteran overlord. (Why isn't your name in orange?)

tedric's suggestion seems pretty good if you're looking for a low impact change. Might mean that a player would value +acc more on high base damage weapons, which seems reasonable.

For critical hits, crawl has stabbing, but it can be argued that stabbing is too binary (either you get a stab or don't), and perhaps accuracy can be used to provide a more gradual system of increasing multipliers (much like Sil's system as described by Patashu) topping off at the current stab multipliers for sleeping/paralyzed enemies. Such a system would be elegant and consistent, but probably requires an overhaul of all existing weapons.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

What about a GDR-like effect, where high acc doesn't increase max damage but just makes it less likely to hit at the low end of the damage range the weapon has already achieved through base type, enchantment, skill, etc.? Like GDR, it would reduce swinginess.

This makes sense to me because increasing a weapon's accuracy doesn't make it more damaging in an absolute sense, but a very accurate weapon is more likely to deliver its full damage potential with every blow.

Makes sense to me, too.

me 3

[crate]

Why not just remove +acc as an item property?

I don't think there's a benefit to making melee damage more complicated: it already confuses lots of players (particularly the part where +dam enchantment is not the same as base damage), and I'm sure you've seen the many topics on tavern asking for more numbers. Additionally, if the thing you actually want accuracy for is dealing more damage per hit, you should probably not actually call it accuracy. I also don't think it would be very distinct from +dam (in the same way the fighting damage bonus is not really distinct from the weapon skill one: obviously they work better if you have both, but they do the same thing). And, as you have hopefully seen with the ranged combat overhaul, if you make it actually noticeable you risk needing to reexamine lots of numbers later.

Crawl players in general seem to want crawl to be less opaque, as well: see the several topics here and in DCA asking for crawl to display more numbers. Even as someone who does not agree with wanting more numbers, making melee damage even more complicated seems a step in the wrong direction.

Removing +acc from items (you can keep it around from fighting/weapon skill; and keep base accuracy, if you think it matters enough to keep it different for different weapons) seems better:
1) It makes weapons have only one plus. No more confusion about which plus is which, no more questions about whether +3,+6 is better than +6,+3. As a bonus you can eliminate two of the three enchant weapon scrolls altogether, which has UI benefits (you don't want to carry them around, so you turn them off autopickup for them ... unless you plan on using the scrolls right away, in which case you want autopickup on; changing 3 scroll settings in the autopickup menu is more work than doing so for 1; plus this would eliminate any possible confusion about whether the order you use enchant weapon scrolls matters).
2) As you mention +acc does not actually do very much in lots of cases, so this is dramatically less likely to require further balancing.
3) It's making crawl less complicated, not more, and this is particularly important when you are suggesting making it more complicated in a fashion which is not easily understandable.

As an aside, in my opinion the single best change you could make to crawl weapon enchantment is to make to-dam enchantment (and slaying) identical to base damage. This would prevent an enormous amount of misunderstandings. Very nearly 100% of all crawl players think the wrong thing about weapon to-damage enchantment when they first play crawl.

To make a suggestion like this worth the added misunderstandings it must be a dramatic gameplay improvement, and I don't see that here.

---

You might note that the Sil example is a good example of why this should not be implemented in crawl: the Sil weapons tell you how much damage they do exactly, whereas crawl goes to lengths to hide this information.

[Bim]

What about a GDR-like effect, where high acc doesn't increase max damage but just makes it less likely to hit at the low end of the damage range the weapon has already achieved through base type, enchantment, skill, etc.? Like GDR, it would reduce swinginess.

This makes sense to me because increasing a weapon's accuracy doesn't make it more damaging in an absolute sense, but a very accurate weapon is more likely to deliver its full damage potential with every blow.

Makes sense to me, too.

me 3

Me 4 - this makes total sense. It's easy to understand by players and has a meaningful impact without just buffing the damage.

[Hurkyl]

1) It makes weapons have only one plus. No more confusion about which plus is which,

Actually, it might actually increase confusion, for people coming to crawl from other games -- or even just the current version of crawl -- where a +X weapon gets the same bonus both to damage and to accuracy.

(unless, of course, this is what you mean by "one plus"; I read you as meaning that you wanted to simply get rid of the accuracy bonus)

[crate]

1) It makes weapons have only one plus. No more confusion about which plus is which,

Actually, it might actually increase confusion, for people coming to crawl from other games -- or even just the current version of crawl -- where a +X weapon gets the same bonus both to damage and to accuracy.

(unless, of course, this is what you mean by "one plus"; I read you as meaning that you wanted to simply get rid of the accuracy bonus)

There's almost no difference between the two cases here, which is the entire point of this thread, so it's harmless "confusion". It doesn't really matter which way you go.

[tompliss]

From what I understand, right now, you roll your accuracy, and if you "hit", the enemy rolls its EV to make you miss anyway.
What if a high enough accuracy would put a malus (for this swing) to the enemy's EV ?
It would make some of the EV based monsters less luck-based, and could even make the player swamp weapon when facing an enchantress-like enemy.

[argonaut]

A while ago I made a local patch to try and make acc more interesting and did a bunch of fsims. I tried making accuracy reduce the variance, tried it sometimes giving a critical hit, and one or two other effects that I could think of. Eventually I dropped it because it didn't end up doing anything more than an extra +x damage would have.

I agree with crate - just drop the accuracy enchantment altogether. Making +dam and slaying the same as base damage would be great too - then you could just look and say "yes that +12 dagger is the same as a +0 great sword".

[neil]

I agree with crate - just drop the accuracy enchantment altogether. Making +dam and slaying the same as base damage would be great too - then you could just look and say "yes that +12 dagger is the same as a +0 great sword".

If players, including those who frequent GDD, think that a dagger with 16 base damage would be the same as a great sword, then I don't think the change does a very good job of reducing confusion. Perhaps we should remove weapon speed as well.

[damiac]

I think the original proposal seems like a good idea. The argument against it is that it makes +acc the same as +dam. Well, guess what, if you hit more, you'll do more damage over time, so it already is that way. The problem is, extra acc over a certain point just adds so little average damage that it practically doesn't matter. So why not do exactly what you said, and say if you get a much better acc roll than the opponents ev roll, you landed a 'sure hit' and do max damage, or just apply some extra damage.


Another possibility is to say better accuracy means you can hit the weak spots in armor, meaning you'd ignore a certain amount of AC if you land a very accurate hit.

To me, saying "More accuracy means you'll do more damage overall" is much more understandable than "More accuracy means pretty much nothing, ignore it"

[PleasingFungus]

Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful responses! Sorry I can't respond to everyone individually, but this would get pretty unreadable...

What about a GDR-like effect, where high acc doesn't increase max damage but just makes it less likely to hit at the low end of the damage range the weapon has already achieved through base type, enchantment, skill, etc.? Like GDR, it would reduce swinginess.

My problem with this idea is that it would be pretty useless for short blades, which were one of the main weapon types I'd hoped would be affected by +acc, for Sure Blade/etc purposes. That doesn't mean the idea is unviable, but it's not what I'd hoped for. (And I suspect that in the end you would end up with something like, well, GDR: an obscure, hidden effect that it's best not to base your decisions on!)

Why not just remove +acc as an item property...

This may be the right decision. The simplicity of the idea is appealing... and it'd be returning to crawl's D&D roots! Which is obviously an important consideration.

Sure Blade remains not very useful past the early-game, but that's an okay place for a level 2 charm from a starting book to be - thinking about it more, I'm not sure why I'd decided it needed improvement in the first place.

I know ChrisOelmueller had a patch lying around to combine item plusses; that meant that weapon plusses still gave +acc, but, as you said, that doesn't make too big of a difference either way. I may try to dig that up & rebase it.

As an aside, in my opinion the single best change you could make to crawl weapon enchantment is to make to-dam enchantment (and slaying) identical to base damage. This would prevent an enormous amount of misunderstandings. Very nearly 100% of all crawl players think the wrong thing about weapon to-damage enchantment when they first play crawl.

My feeling is that this would be a very dramatic change, with a large number of knock-on effects. It might or might not be worth doing, but I really do not know enough to say.

[johlstei]

Once the equipment that I wanted to wear just happened to have a total of +23 Acc, it was definitely noticeable then, especially on monsters like spriggans! That is an extreme case though, and the simplicity of combining +Acc and +Dam is appealing.

[Bim]

Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful responses! Sorry I can't respond to everyone individually, but this would get pretty unreadable...

Why not just remove +acc as an item property...

This may be the right decision. The simplicity of the idea is appealing... and it'd be returning to crawl's D&D roots! Which is obviously an important consideration.

I'm not a fan of this, it gets rid of interesting (or what should be interesting) decisions of whether to go for more damage or more accuracy on weapons you aren't skilled in and so forth. A dire flail/great mace with high acc and low dmg may be better in some cases, or a branded/artefact weapon that you aren't skilled with at all, but has high acc so you can still use it reliably. There's been plenty of times when I've got a +6/+3 mace of electrocution and changed from swords/whatever because I know it's got enough acc to carry me.

Getting rid of this means everything becomes pretty black and white/good or bad - and I don't think that's what we want.

There have been a few ok suggestions, but just weighting accuracy more heavily on weapons might be the easiest or nerfing enemies EV that are attacked by high acc. I'm not sure what, but I hate the idea of rolling them into one.

[duvessa]

I don't think that decision is very interesting. I just use the weapon that's better.

[XuaXua]

Have you looked at how accuracy and damage are made distinct in Sil? It's a really deep system. Love it. Doubt you could make it work in Crawl without Melee Combat Reform (tm) though.

I haven't, actually! Can you say a little more about that?

http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/gam ... Manual.pdf Read the Combat section
Basically, attacks have accuracy and damage and defenders have EV and AC, just like in Crawl.
But, if your accuracy roll beats their EV roll by 'enough' ('enough' starts at 7, is higher for heavier weapons and lower if you take the skill subtlety) then you get an extra damage dice - 1d8 would become 2d8, but 8d1 would only become 9d1.
And if you beat it by 'enough' a second time, you add a second damage dice. A third time, a third, and so on.

Sounds like Column Shifts in DC Heroes RPG. It's cool, but I thought we were reducing "damage spikes".

[XuaXua]

From what I understand, right now, you roll your accuracy, and if you "hit", the enemy rolls its EV to make you miss anyway.
What if a high enough accuracy would put a malus (for this swing) to the enemy's EV ?
It would make some of the EV based monsters less luck-based, and could even make the player swamp weapon when facing an enchantress-like enemy.

If this is the way it works, since players tend to have enough Acc for their own roll, using the +Acc as a penalty to the opponent's EV roll would be very useful.

I also like the +acc reduces GDR from armour idea.

[damiac]

Well... enemies don't get GDR. I suggested it should just reduce their effective AC for that attack.

[XuaXua]

Well... enemies don't get GDR. I suggested it should just reduce their effective AC for that attack.

That's a good idea as well. Regardless, they should get GDR because damn, consistency.

[Lasty]

Any change that makes accuracy matter more is making accuracy increase damage, so that's not a good reason to dismiss any proposals. I think what's getting lost in some of these proposals is what decisions we want to have players be making in regard to accuracy enchantment.

Do we want players to carry around and switch to more accurate weapons when faced with spriggans and killer bees? Do we want high accuracy weapons to have a different damage-over-time curve than low accuracy weapons, and if so, what would that achieve? What sorts of interesting choices around accuracy aren't currently being made because accuracy doesn't increase actual chance to hit enough?

I don't have answers to these questions, but I think anyone who has a proposal to change accuracy should be should be able to answer them.

[partial]

how about making certain weapon types see a greater bonus from accuracy?

a dagger would benefit much more from more accurate strikes than a giant spiked club

[cerebovssquire]

Making +acc affect already accurate weapons more doesn't make it significantly more useful.

[and into]

This might be a bit off the wall, but I'll throw it out there all the same.

What if accuracy gave a chance to "wound" your enemy with your attack? This wouldn't do extra damage, but it would temporarily distract (give ! status to) the enemy for a short duration (like 20 or 30 auts). Enemies that have been wounded once can't be wounded again for a while, kind of like hibernation, so you can't indefinitely kite/wound-lock something with really high accuracy melee. Some enemies should probably be immune to wounding (namely undead, "constructs" [golems and OoF and the like], perhaps plant-type enemies).

Spoiler: show

If a dev thinks this isn't a terrible idea, I'd suggest something like this:

The difference between your accuracy roll and the enemy's EV roll gives a number that is your "to-wound" roll, which is then compared to your enemy's HD.

If you succeed with that roll, you still have to do damage with the attack for the wound effect to stick—it it fails to get through enemy AC, you can't wound. If it does go through, you wound the enemy and for a random length of time between ~10 and 30 auts, that enemy is stunned.

[duvessa]

You hold the orc at bay.

[Igxfl]

One potential problem:

Suppose I have a +0 great sword, at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
Net accuracy is +27. (-3 weapon, +18 LB, +12 Fighting)

Compare a +0 cutlass at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
Net accuracy is +30. (+4 weapon, +14 SB, +12 Fighting)

I doubt this is enough to make a serious difference in practice. Even if I train Short Blades from 14 up to 18 (a pretty decent XP investment), it's just +34 vs +27, probably barely enough to cause a noticeable difference in the frequency critical hits.

Because +acc currently only matters for a binary hit/miss system, and because missing most of the time is annoying, Crawl's numbers for +acc are set up so that all mindelay weapons end up with fairly similar accuracy. Look up the weapon list, and you'll notice that +0.1 base delay comes with roughly -2 acc, across all weapons of all types.

I very much support the OP's idea -- turning excess +acc into crits would make Crawl's weapon system a lot more varies and interesting, IMO.

However, if we want crits to work better on some weapons than on others, the numbers for +acc might need to be tweaked.

Some obvious options:
-- Differences in base +acc is made greater across different weapon types/speeds.
-- Skills affect +acc less, base +acc is higher across the board.
-- The amount of excess +acc needed for weapons is higher for weapons with higher base delay. (vaguely analogous to Sil's system)

EDIT: Fixed arithmetic error.

[and into]

You are comparing two weapons' accuracy at different levels of training, though. If accuracy mattered more it might make sense for some characters to eventually train that cutlass up higher than 14 skill. Also the base accuracy could be made to matter more, kind of like how base damage matters more than +dam.

And at any rate I think the major point/problem raised in the OP was that the +acc property (from weapon enchantment as well as from rings of slaying and artefacts) should matter more.

________________

Anyway PF's idea was to do a damage multiplier in order to try to keep the damage bonus from a highly accurate "critical hit" distinct from +dam. The question is whether or not it would be sufficiently distinct. If the damage multiplier effect was fairly uncommon (maybe ~7 or 8%, max) even at very high accuracy, and gave a big damage multiplier, it would certainly feel different from straight up +dam, in much the same way that AC feels different from EV.

[Leafsnail]

Even if +acc starts to "matter" that doesn't make any difference if it has basically the same effect as +dam. I'll still dump all my enchant scrolls onto the weapon I want to use either way. I guess you could make it so that accuracy makes you want to use different weapons against different enemies, but I think that's more of a mathematical problem to be solved than a strategic choice to be made.

I also don't think it can be compared to AC/EV directly. Being able to occasionally hit an enemy for large amounts of damage isn't as interesting as occasionally being hit for large amounts yourself. Only one of those two things requires a response from you. In general I'll keep swinging at something until it's dead or I'm in danger in some way regardless of whether I'm doing damage slowly over time or in large bursts.

I also think that +acc being the unreliable one is very counter-intuitive

[crate]

Sure Blade remains not very useful past the early-game,

Aside: This is actually not really true, it's really quite noticeable (rwbarton has a famous learndb quote about it, in fact, which came from mantis). The problem is it only works on the worst weapon type and the gimmick that makes that weapon type worth using (stabbing) ignores accuracy (well, on the good stabs), so even with sure blade short blades are bad.

Of course, removing Sure Blade is not a huge loss.

[XuaXua]

Suppose I have a +0 great sword, at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
Net accuracy is +27. (-3 weapon, +18 LB, +12 Fighting)

Compare a +0 cutlass at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
Net accuracy is +30. (+4 weapon, +14 SB, +12 Fighting)

I doubt this is enough to make a serious difference in practice.

And at any rate I think the major point/problem raised in the OP was that the +acc property (from weapon enchantment as well as from rings of slaying and artefacts) should matter more.

Fix: Make base +/- acc a percentage bonus/penalty which affects overall accuracy. 2.5% for each 1, round up. Someone with time and math would have to figure out if that scales nicely.

a +0 great sword, at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
Net accuracy is +28 (27.6). (-8% weapon, +18 LB, +12 Fighting)

Compare a +0 cutlass at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
Net accuracy is +29 (28.6). (+10% weapon, +14 SB, +12 Fighting)

[and into]

Even if +acc starts to "matter" that doesn't make any difference if it has basically the same effect as +dam. I'll still dump all my enchant scrolls onto the weapon I want to use either way. I guess you could make it so that accuracy makes you want to use different weapons against different enemies, but I think that's more of a mathematical problem to be solved than a strategic choice to be made.

I also don't think it can be compared to AC/EV directly. Being able to occasionally hit an enemy for large amounts of damage isn't as interesting as occasionally being hit for large amounts yourself. Only one of those two things requires a response from you. In general I'll keep swinging at something until it's dead or I'm in danger in some way regardless of whether I'm doing damage slowly over time or in large bursts.

I also think that +acc being the unreliable one is very counter-intuitive

These are good points, you are right that the AC/EV analogy isn't apt.

Would the "wound" idea I spitballed earlier be too weird? High accuracy still wouldn't be as good as high damage, because killing something is better than stunning it for a couple of turns, but it would give accuracy a definite niche and benefit beyond "I can hit stuff reliably, further accuracy has extremely little value," which is a point many characters reach by Lair or sooner.

[Igxfl]

Fix: Make base +/- acc a percentage bonus/penalty which affects overall accuracy. 2.5% for each 1, round up. Someone with time and math would have to figure out if that scales nicely.

The percentage boost should probably be larger than 2.5% per +1, but that could be an interesting improvement over the current flat accuracy bonus/malus system.

Would the "wound" idea I spitballed earlier be too weird? High accuracy still wouldn't be as good as high damage, because killing something is better than stunning it for a couple of turns, but it would give accuracy a definite niche and benefit beyond "I can hit stuff reliably, further accuracy has extremely little value," which is a point many characters reach by Lair or sooner.

This is the only proposal so far that's seriously different from more +dam applied in a different way.

I doubt occasional stuns would be too wierd, but they could be abusable for constantly opening escape/staircase gaps. (No worse than Slow, though)
If occasional stuns are too fiddly, then consistent microstuns of a few auts, as per Freeze, is an alternative.

[Leafsnail]

Wound seems too weird to be a basic game mechanic to me - swapping to a dagger so you can distract a monster and run away seems weird to me. Might work as a brand if it were tweaked a bit though. In fact maybe the weapons that are currently meant to be distinguished through accuracy could be distinguished by having unique brands, but that's probably a whole different thread.

Personally I'd like a greater emphasis on speed vs DPS in the weapon system (speed is relevant because it determines how often you get a chance to respond to the unfolding situation) with maybe +speed +dam boosts, but that would probably require far too much rebalancing to be feasible.

[XuaXua]

Fix: Make base +/- acc a percentage bonus/penalty which affects overall accuracy. 2.5% for each 1, round up. Someone with time and math would have to figure out if that scales nicely.

The percentage boost should probably be larger than 2.5% per +1, but that could be an interesting improvement over the current flat accuracy bonus/malus system.

On review, 2.5% didn't seem significant, but I was trying to keep numbers near the current ones. 3% was nice; round up at .5
Assuming +Acc just counteracts the built-in weapon accuracy (AS A NORMAL PERSON MIGHT ASSUME)

GREAT SWORD

+0 great sword, at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
OLD Net accuracy is +27. (-3 weapon, +18 LB, +12 Fighting)
NEW Net accuracy is +27. (-9% weapon, +18 LB, +12 Fighting) = 30*0.91 = 27.3

+9/+0 great sword, at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
OLD Net accuracy is +36. (-3 weapon, +9 Acc, +18 LB, +12 Fighting)
NEW Net accuracy is +35. (-9% weapon, +27% Acc, +18 LB, +12 Fighting) = 30*1.18 = 35.4

+0 great sword, at 27 skill, 27 Fighting.
OLD Net accuracy is +51. (-3 weapon, +27 LB, +27 Fighting)
NEW Net accuracy is +49. (-9% weapon, +27 LB, +27 Fighting) = 54*0.91 = 49.14

+9/+0 great sword, at 27 skill, 27 Fighting.
OLD Net accuracy is +60. (-3 weapon, +9 Acc, +27 LB, +27 Fighting)
NEW Net accuracy is +64. (-9% weapon, +27% Acc, +27 LB, +27 Fighting) = 54*1.18 = 63.72

CUTLASS

+0 cutlass at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
OLD Net accuracy is +30. (+4 weapon, +14 SB, +12 Fighting)
NEW Net accuracy is +29. (+12% weapon, +14 SB, +12 Fighting) = 26*1.12 = 29.12

+9/+0 cutlass at mindelay with 12 Fighting.
OLD Net accuracy is +39. (+4 weapon, +9 Acc, +14 SB, +12 Fighting)
NEW Net accuracy is +36. (+12% weapon, +27% Acc, +14 SB, +12 Fighting) = 26*1.39 = 36.14

+0 cutlass at 27 skill, 27 Fighting.
OLD Net accuracy is +58. (+4 weapon, +27 SB, +27 Fighting)
NEW Net accuracy is +60. (+12% weapon, +27 SB, +27 Fighting) = 54*1.12 = 60.48

+9/+0 cutlass at 27 skill, 27 Fighting.
OLD Net accuracy is +67. (+4 weapon, +9 Acc, +27 SB, +27 Fighting)
NEW Net accuracy is +75. (+12% weapon, +27% Acc, +27 SB, +27 Fighting) = 54*1.39 = 75.06

Lower lows and greater highs. I would almost suggest to always round up, regardless.

ALSO I COULD BE 100% WRONG ABOUT MY NUMBERS SOMEONE ELSE DO IT BETTER IF YOU WANT.

[PleasingFungus]

Even if +acc starts to "matter" that doesn't make any difference if it has basically the same effect as +dam. I'll still dump all my enchant scrolls onto the weapon I want to use either way. I guess you could make it so that accuracy makes you want to use different weapons against different enemies, but I think that's more of a mathematical problem to be solved than a strategic choice to be made.

I also don't think it can be compared to AC/EV directly. Being able to occasionally hit an enemy for large amounts of damage isn't as interesting as occasionally being hit for large amounts yourself. Only one of those two things requires a response from you. In general I'll keep swinging at something until it's dead or I'm in danger in some way regardless of whether I'm doing damage slowly over time or in large bursts.

My basic motivation here was twofold. I wanted accuracy to be an actually relevant concern when choosing weapons, to reduce confusion among new players (similarly to my recent SH changes); and I wanted to make acc better for sbl so that Sure Blade & the Knife of Accuracy would be good. Merging +acc/+dam solves the former problem; the latter is, at best, a fairly low priority. In neither case was I trying to encourage more tactical weapon switching or significantly change the way combat plays out.

I'll let this thread play out, but I think I've been persuaded that the simplest solution, for now, is just to merge slaying bonuses. Possibly some of these other ideas can be used later, as e.g. weapon type differentiators or artefact effects, or as part of some larger scale combat revamp.

Sure Blade remains not very useful past the early-game,

Aside: This is actually not really true, it's really quite noticeable (rwbarton has a famous learndb quote about it, in fact, which came from mantis). The problem is it only works on the worst weapon type and the gimmick that makes that weapon type worth using (stabbing) ignores accuracy (well, on the good stabs), so even with sure blade short blades are bad.

I'll concede the point. I didn't find it very good or noticeable on the occasions I've used it, but that's argument by anecdote.

[Kramin42]

What if slaying accuracy and weapon base accuracy modifiers were added after acc is rolled, similar to the amulet of inaccuracy? This would effectively be making +1 acc --> +2 acc. What would you rather use currently, a +6, +0 slaying ring or a +0, +3 slaying ring? If the answer to this is not trivial then this would make +acc and weapon base acc relevant. It kind of makes sense for the slaying accuracy to not be rolled anyway, because accuracy is supposed to be about reliability (there would still be a lot of acc variation from the base acc and stat/skill acc bonus).

Im not sure wether this would unbalance a lot of things, but it's another idea for keeping accuracy basically the same in general while making weapon base acc/slaying acc more relevant. If this is a bad idea then I would be in favour of removing slaying accuracy bonuses.

[tasonir]

Sure Blade remains not very useful past the early-game,

Aside: This is actually not really true, it's really quite noticeable (rwbarton has a famous learndb quote about it, in fact, which came from mantis). The problem is it only works on the worst weapon type and the gimmick that makes that weapon type worth using (stabbing) ignores accuracy (well, on the good stabs), so even with sure blade short blades are bad.

Of course, removing Sure Blade is not a huge loss.

So I went and looked this up:

For the record, Sure Blade is far from useless both early and late in the game. If anything, the spell is closer to being overpowered than underpowered. --rwbarton

That was not in the least bit informative. Much like 90% of learnDB, I suppose.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

What information do you need? Sure Blade gives a significant accuracy boost, and accuracy is helpful. It is pretty straightforward. The only problem with Sure Blade is that it doesn't work while you are wielding a useful weapon.

[duvessa]

4+1d[remaining duration] to your final accuracy, capped at 14. IMO having the equivalent of nearly +28 to-hit slaying is pretty good.

[snow]

The problem here is that accuracy has diminishing returns. You can have a 95% hit rate and a ton of accuracy would only get you to a 97% hit rate. Meanwhile damage is linear (you can have +150% damage or even +200% damage for example) so damage always turns out to be better than accuracy. The only way to fix this is to let accuracy go past 100%; a 105% hit rate, for example, would give a 5% chance of a stab attack (which seems to be the equivalent of a "critical hit" in Crawl).

Anyway I'm just going to wait 2 years for this to be implemented like every other obvious progression (removal of item destruction, removal of chunks, infinite ammo for launchers, etc.). Also when people say they want less hit variance, they're talking about TAKING random high hits. Giving random high hits is fun and taking them is not fun. I feel the move away from dice and towards reasonable damage ranges (with caps and floors that aren't 0% and 150% of your max health) is also an obvious progression, but that may be too radically left wing for Crawl.

[KoboldLord]

An alternative would be to include more monsters with meaningful EV. Hopefully not spriggan-caliber EV, of course, but the late game is loaded with giant and dragon fatties with EV scores in the single-digit range, and nobody's going to miss a swing at one of those. Then all of a sudden there are spriggans everywhere and suddenly trying to hit things is an exercise in frustration. Maybe a gradual continuum of EV enemies throughout the game would make the accuracy/EV curve feel a little more natural? Or maybe it would just be extra-super-special annoying, who can say?

[headcrab0803]

Do we want players to carry around and switch to more accurate weapons when faced with spriggans and killer bees? Do we want high accuracy weapons to have a different damage-over-time curve than low accuracy weapons, and if so, what would that achieve?

isnt weapon swapping a thing anyways like carrying a flaming blade against a hydra and using freezing brands against cold blooded dudes

[Leafsnail]

Also is it really a good thing to have to swap weapons based on a hidden characteristic of the enemy you're fighting? Again, I think that if enemy EV/acc were made more meaningful it would introduce a purely mathematical problem, not a tactical one. I don't see why having a lot of high EV monsters rather than just a few would change this.

[Bim]

Do we want players to carry around and switch to more accurate weapons when faced with spriggans and killer bees? Do we want high accuracy weapons to have a different damage-over-time curve than low accuracy weapons, and if so, what would that achieve?

isnt weapon swapping a thing anyways like carrying a flaming blade against a hydra and using freezing brands against cold blooded dudes

Weapon swapping is good in my opinion, as long as it's not allll the time. It adds a tactical consideration and hopefully makes very few weapons 'no brainers' - encouraging more of that (not making it mandatory) would be good.

Just generally increasing the EV of later game things may be enough to make accuracy more useful without buffing it directly - it'd also compensate for some of the general buffs we've had recently.

[snow]

For the record I haven't swapped for a hydra in ages. If you have any book or wand at all hydras are trivial as they have no defenses.
They're only hard if you're playing a tabber with a bladed weapon, don't have any decent wands, and you've made a poor god choice.
The whole fire brand thing for hydras would be a cool if it actually mattered. Their glass cannon style makes them bad for this sort of gimmick.