Stacked Brands and Branded Throwing Melee

[XuaXua]

Was inspired by the Javelineer thread to post this.

I'm of the (probably wrong) opinion of three things regarding branded weapons:

1 - THROWN BRANDED HAND WEAPONS SHOULD APPLY
Brands on thrown hand weapons should work when thrown. I am currently under the impression that they do not.

Throw a Poison dagger, target might get poisoned. Throw a handaxe of flaming at a hydra, lop off a head. Vorpal club? Let it snickersnack when it hits the ogre 3 spaces away.

I mean, why else are some orcs generated with 6 handaxes of electrocution/flaming (I've seen it happen!)

2 - SOME BRANDS SHOULD STACK
Any given weapon (ranged or melee) should be able to have any number of non-elemental brands and EITHER at most one elemental brand plus at most one slaying brand OR at most one unique brand.

Brands are still restricted to weapon types as necessary (Reaching applies only to polearms (implicit) and whips, Speed only with artefacts/short swords/staves, Evasion only works with missile weapons, etc.)

Non-Elemental brands:
Returning, Reaching, Speed, Protection, Evasion, Penetration, and Vorpal

Elemental brands:
Flaming, Freezing, Electric, Draining, Antimagic, Venom, Reaping, Vampirism

Slaying brands:
Dragon / Orc slaying, Holy Wrath, Pain

Unique brands:
Chaos, Distortion

3 - PENETRATION REVISION
Penetration could be applicable to melee and used in conjunction with reaching-branded (or implicit) weapons.

[XuaXua]

Thrown hand axes/spears/clubs having brand effects would not work well with distortion.

Then don't throw them unless you worship Xom or Lugonu.

[XuaXua]

I think you misunderstand. This has nothing to do with distortion unwield effects, which don't occur on throwing. There's a reason you can't distortion-brand launchers or ammo; it would be badly overpowered.
Then again, making distortion unwield effects occur on throwing would solve that problem by making it completely useless to throw such weapons. But then that leaves the question of what to do with vampiric weapons.

Do note the second sentence under point #2 above:

"Brands are still restricted to weapon types as necessary (Reaching applies only to polearms (implicit) and whips, Speed only with artefacts/short swords/staves, Evasion only works with missile weapons, etc.)"

Where the key word is emboldened. If we couldn't distortion-brand something before, we can't do it now. So if launchers were out of the question, etc...

IMHO, Blinking brand, which isn't listed above because I grabbed the data from the Crawl Wiki which is always incomplete apparently, is the missile equivalent of distortion brand.

[XuaXua]

You still don't get it. I am saying that distortion-branded ranged attacks in general would probably be bad, at least if they came from weapons. Throwing a hand axe is a ranged attack.

You still don't get it.

Throw a distortion weapon; forget your target as you suffer the distortion unwield effect.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Erm, why not make distortion weapons completely useless to throw? That is, not make them do anything when they throw-hit anyone? As if they just blink to the target's square (probably trying to seduce the target to pick it up).
Since you are going to modify the brand behaviour, why not make distortion actually distort the new logic for itself? That, with the fact that you still can suffer from the unwield effect...

Nevertheless, I am against brand stacking. A glaive of fiery distortion poison would be quite too much.

[Kate]

This all sounds like a lot of added complexity for very little gain. Although throwable melee weapons (spears/hand axes/whatever) do act sort of weird, in that you can throw holy weapons if you're undead and so on, and curses don't activate when you throw... not sure that this would be a good way of changing things, though.

[cerebovssquire]

This manages to overcomplicate, unbalance, add boring brand micromanagement with vorpalisation and add unnecessary complexity all at once, in my opinion, so I'm also strictly against it unless some argument can convince me that this makes sense.

[XuaXua]

Nevertheless, I am against brand stacking. A glaive of fiery distortion poison would be quite too much.

Your post shows you didn't read the proposed guidelines in the first post at all.

You can't stack Distortion (a unique brand), fire (an elemental brand) and poison (an elemental brand) together.

[XuaXua]

This manages to overcomplicate, unbalance, add boring brand micromanagement with vorpalisation and add unnecessary complexity all at once, in my opinion, so I'm also strictly against it unless some argument can convince me that this makes sense.

I'm making vorpalization at least somewhat useful.

[cerebovssquire]

Vorpalisation the scroll is totally useful right now. It enables heavy armour users which would never normally cast brand spells to permanently brand their weapon with the strong elemental brands.
And if you're referring to vorpalisation the brand... not every brand has to be strong, right? And if it would be an issue (it isn't) the solution would be "make the brand stronger", not "overcomplicate branding mechanics".

[Roderic]

Erm, why not make distortion weapons completely useless to throw? That is, not make them do anything when they throw-hit anyone?

or simply being distorted themselves when thrown, i.e, missing the throw, going to somewhere else, maybe banished in the middle of the trajectory... which makes them a bad item to throw.

[XuaXua]

Erm, why not make distortion weapons completely useless to throw? That is, not make them do anything when they throw-hit anyone?

or simply being distorted themselves when thrown, i.e, missing the throw, going to somewhere else, maybe banished in the middle of the trajectory... which makes them a bad item to throw.

The unwield, people. Throwing is an unwield. Unwield distortion.

[XuaXua]

Throwing isn't currently an "unwield." That is why nobody assumes distortion unwield effects will occur; they currently don't.

It isn't only because brands don't work on thrown weapons except darts.

[KoboldLord]

I notice that in your proposal I can stack speed, electric, and pain brands on my weapon, and they all work at the same time.

I have only this to say: Man, what?

[XuaXua]

I notice that in your proposal I can stack speed, electric, and pain brands on my weapon, and they all work at the same time.

I have only this to say: Man, what?

1) It's a proposal, subject to discussion and change, not a hard fact.

2) Pain and Holy are opposites. Pain doesn't work on undead/demons in the same fashion that holy doesn't work on the living. They can be moved to the Unique section like Chaos and Distortion, but I consider them slaying in the same sense as Orc/Dragon slaying bonuses.

IN OTHER NEWS REGARDING THROWN BRANDS ON HAND WEAPONS

I again encountered an orc armed with FIVE +1/+1 Flaming Hand Axes, obviously intended for throwing, as he also carried a mace.

What's the deal? Is branding slated to be used for throwing or did someone program the arming sequence for orcs improperly?

[valrus]

What's wrong with an orc carrying 5 hand axes of flaming?

[XuaXua]

What's wrong with an orc carrying 5 hand axes of flaming?

They're for throwing. The orc throws them. The brand is never applied. It's a waste.

[valrus]

If they throw them and it hurts, that doesn't seem like a waste to me.

[pratamawirya]

It's not a waste when you grab one of the axes and use it to cut a hydra's heads.

[KoboldLord]

I suppose the devteam simply didn't bother to special-case generation of those axes to keep them from getting brands. It was meaningless with your flaming hand axes, but I ran into an orc with a whole bunch of distortion spears once. Distortion didn't kick in when the orc threw them, but then the orc wielded the last one and came after me. I retreated to avoid getting hit, and then the other orcs in the pack all picked up the thrown distortion spears…

[valrus]

Sounds like an interesting tactical situation!

[XuaXua]

Calls for a memphitic cloud.

[Happylisk]

I think a lot of this is complicated, but I love the idea of polearms getting penetration as a rare brand, so you could attack two monsters at once in the right situations.