Ogres best friend GSC

[MrRokkomies]

I have been playing Ogres lately and give a bit thought on the almost no-brainer weapon choice they have. I have come up with only 1, or perhaps 2 other weapons on my latest run that might situationally be more optimal than my GSC +9 (of protection). One was Antimagic Lajatang which crosstrains with M&F and other is Great Mace of HW. I am not even sure if the Great Mace would be better against vulnerable enemies. (I siwtched to TSO, so it doesn't matter anyways)

My biggest issue is that the Giant clubs are pretty much a no brainer for Ogres and you can get them pretty much always before lair. Also, the first Ogre you encounter can have a GSC making GC pretty much pointless (ba dum tish). This narrows down the window where a lucky item generation could make you want to train something else than M&F.

I am fine with the aptitudes Ogres have, it's fine that they pretty much always use M&F, but at least there should be more viable options in that category for them than the GSC. One option would be to allow them to use regular sized Two handed maces with one hand. If this is too much or hard to balance, change GC to be one handed for Ogres and perhaps nerf it some. Then others could perhaps use it with two hands. Unless the handle is too thick for their hands to grip properly at all...

Also it could be good to make GC and GSC appear more apart from each other. Regular Ogres carry only GC, but Hill Giants and Stone Giants would introduce GSCs. Or even better, rename GSC to Demon Hammer, Giant Hammer, Battle Hammer etc. and introduce a new monster type that carries them. (This game needs more hammers!!! Great mace should also be Great Hammer...)

[kuniqs]

I have been playing Ogres lately and give a bit thought on the almost no-brainer weapon choice they have.

GSC is a weapon that tends to miss half the time, so I wouldn't say it is no-brainer. IMHO executioner axe vs GSC is a no-brainer for the axe.

This narrows down the window where a lucky item generation could make you want to train something else than M&F.

You can say the same about every other species... like Merfolks (tridents) & Orcs (axes).

but at least there should be more viable options in that category for them than the GSC.

Like demon whip/eveningstar + shield? Ogres have some serious defence issues in mid-late game.

One option would be to allow them to use regular sized Two handed maces with one hand.

Eveningstars. Even regular maces right now are good weapons.

change GC to be one handed for Ogres

Play Formicid

Also it could be good to make GC and GSC appear more apart from each other.

Agree. There's no point in using GC if you have GSC, and these are 2 very simillar race-exclusive weapons. One should be enough.

[MrRokkomies]

You are probably right about the no-brainer thing. I am probably overlooking one handers too much on an Ogre. They do get bonus to shields as a large specie...

Still my point about GSC making GC obsolete very fast stands... and the lack of hammers.

[and into]

I am fine with the aptitudes Ogres have, it's fine that they pretty much always use M&F, but at least there should be more viable options in that category for them than the GSC.

I think this is backwards; I'd say that, so long as GC and GSC exist, and are as common as they are now, then Ogres might as well have +3 M&F aptitude.

[crate]

considering that ogres exist pretty much just to be a gsc-using race i dont see what the problem is?
maybe you think that is not a niche that should be filled by a race, which is reasonable, but ogres have been in that place for years now so

[TeshiAlair]

Idea: Rename GC to Giant Sledgehammer. Make it slower and weaker, but give it a knockback chance against small enemies to create a tactical defensive option for Ogres other than shields and "hope I killed it fast"

[Sar]

random knockback sounds pretty awful and you know the stance on active melee abilities

Edit: is there really a big problem with ogres and GSC? I mean yeah, you go M&F on every ogre ever but at least GSCs are kinda unique unlike Polearms.

[kuniqs]

I remember knockback discussed in a weapon thread. It was deemed too annoying to make it a maces&flails gimmick. Just imagine fighting polearmed enemies in a corridor with something like this.
We already have Dark Maul and everyone agrees it's worse-by-numbers than Giant Spiked Club...

[Giant Orange Brainbow Dash]

Move giant club into the giant spiked club stat range.

Make giant spiked club an artefact weapon. If it needs a silly gimmick, give it bleeding before you give it knockback.

One less base item generating in exchange for one more artefact. Seems like a fair trade.

[Siegurt]

Perhaps just giving them dire flails one handed would be enough, a one handed great mace would be over the top, but I think a dire flail (being roughly equal to a demon blade) as a one-handed alternative for trolls and ogres would give them some variety without breaking the power balance much at all.

[ackack]

Perhaps just giving them dire flails one handed would be enough, a one handed great mace would be over the top, but I think a dire flail (being roughly equal to a demon blade) as a one-handed alternative for trolls and ogres would give them some variety without breaking the power balance much at all.

Having the big thing be a one-hander (even if it is a good one-hander) makes the +3 M+F a lot less meaningful. While it would be useful, it also wouldn't be all that fun, either, since demon whips and eveningstars fill very similar niches.

EDIT: it's possible I'm misinterpreting and you're not saying to get rid of GSC, in which case I don't mind the change.

[Siegurt]

Perhaps just giving them dire flails one handed would be enough, a one handed great mace would be over the top, but I think a dire flail (being roughly equal to a demon blade) as a one-handed alternative for trolls and ogres would give them some variety without breaking the power balance much at all.

Having the big thing be a one-hander (even if it is a good one-hander) makes the +3 M+F a lot less meaningful. While it would be useful, it also wouldn't be all that fun, either, since demon whips and eveningstars fill very similar niches.

EDIT: it's possible I'm misinterpreting and you're not saying to get rid of GSC, in which case I don't mind the change.

I was suggesting not getting rid of the GC/GSC at all, and simply adding dire flails as a one-handed choice for ogres and trolls (Thereby giving them some sort of competition in the "common" weapons)

[XuaXua]

I was suggesting not getting rid of the GC/GSC at all, and simply adding dire flails as a one-handed choice for ogres and trolls (Thereby giving them some sort of competition in the "common" weapons)

Sort of in the same way that certain 1-handers become 2-handers for small races. I don't see any problem with adjusting a single weapon so that Ogres/Trolls can make further use of shields.

[and into]

...Except that handedness is already not all that consistent and clear, and this adds (yet another) level. It also steps on Fo's toes.

In terms of "positives," I really don't see what is gained. So your choices become dire flail + shield, or GC/GSC without shield. That's hardly any richer or deeper than the status quo.

At least an Ogre using GC or GSC has a bit of a distinctive feel, early on, compared either to trolls or to minotaurs using M&F. An Ogre using dire flail and shield would, I imagine, feel closer in game play to what other species can already do.

[Siegurt]

This hardly steps on FO toes at all. So one other race gets one more choice of a one handed weapon, it isn't like I am suggesting that great maces or executioner axes be one handed.

You are correct, this is hardly any richer of a choice set, but it *is* slightly richer, Right now it's gsc or it is a waste of time, one handed dire flails would at least give you one slightly appealing other option.
Right now an ogre can use a Morningstar or eveningstar or demon whip, with a shield, and feel the same as other races. I am not really sure what point you are trying to make there, it isn't as if the ability to use a dire flail one handed suddenly makes the different-feeling choice of a gsc go away...

[xentronium]

Current status:
GC: 20 damage, 20 skill for min delay.
GSC: 22 damage, 22 skill for min delay.

To differentiate, why not increase GSC base damage to 23 and require 26 skill for min delay? Then you'd have a choice more like battleaxe vs. exec axe.

[duvessa]

Of course it's a no-brainer to use the best weapon you have. Like, duh. How could shuffling around maces' base stats possibly change that?

I assume weapon class choice (along with many others) is also intended to be a no-brainer on most species since they have different aptitudes. I don't like this at all but I can sort of see the reasoning behind it; making species more distinct at the cost of making individual games less interesting. Ogres and merfolk are hardly unique in this respect, but they're probably the most egregious since the typical poster here seems to notice big numbers more than anything else.

[Brannock]

GSC is a weapon that tends to miss half the time, so I wouldn't say it is no-brainer. IMHO executioner axe vs GSC is a no-brainer for the axe.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Ogres have +3 aptitude for maces, vs. -3 aptitude for axes. That's a swing of 6 which is an enormous XP difference. How does that make an exeaxe a no-brainer, especially considering how gimped Ogre's other aptitudes are?

[MrRokkomies]

Move giant club into the giant spiked club stat range.

Make giant spiked club an artefact weapon. If it needs a silly gimmick, give it bleeding before you give it knockback.

One less base item generating in exchange for one more artefact. Seems like a fair trade.

This would solve the problem of both clubs being too similar to justify the existence of both. How ever I do not like the fixed art solution, it is too rare to get to actually play with them.

Promoting the GSC to same rarity as Evening Star, Double Sword and Excec Axes would be more suitable in my opinion.

Simply removing the other entirely would also be justified, but disappointing in my opinion.

Also change them to XXXhammers...

[nagdon]

I think simply increasing the non-optimal aptitudes of Ogres and other similar species would be enough. For example on Ogres replace -4 SBl /-3 LBl / -3 Axe / 0 Pla / -1 Sta / -1 UC with -1 SBl / 0 LBl / 0 Axe / 1 Pla / 1 Sta / 0 UC (or simply 0 aptitude for all non M&F weapons); this would make weapon choice not completely trivial (while still preserving that maces/GSC are usually optimal). Differentiating species by aptitudes is a good thing, but if the other skill choices are not completely useless, then playing with the species is more interesting.

[kuniqs]

GSC is a weapon that tends to miss half the time, so I wouldn't say it is no-brainer. IMHO executioner axe vs GSC is a no-brainer for the axe.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Ogres have +3 aptitude for maces, vs. -3 aptitude for axes. That's a swing of 6 which is an enormous XP difference. How does that make an exeaxe a no-brainer, especially considering how gimped Ogre's other aptitudes are?

GSC have terrible accuracy, and meele damage mechanics are so that GSC's damage is very variable.
Axes are a viable option for ogres because cleaving. You're not immediatelyboned ogre when they surround you. GSC is horrible when you are surrounded.

[Sar]

I think if Ogres had +3 in all weapon apts GSC would still be the optimal choice in 99% cases because it's so good and so common.

Generally I wouldn't mind weapon apts being more uniform, though I guess it comes down to flavor. Don't get me wrong, I like that different weapon skills exist, because you need to make a choice and sometimes you can choose to train another if you found a good weapon, and that choice is not always trivial as well; I also don't mind races being generally "bad at melee stuff, good at magic stuff" and vice versa. But I don't think that "this race is really really good at weapon X and terrible at weapon Y" (and "this race is really really good at magic school X and really really bad at magic school Y", where X and Y are Fire/Ice/Earth/Air/maybe Venom, you know, those schools you add to Conjurations on your average caster) adds much to the game.

Also I don't think I would ever take an exec axe on an ogre even if exec axes existed. Besides, not only melee damage mechanics are very random, melee accuracy can be pretty random as well. There are situations where I actually felt the lack of accuracy on the GSC - they usually involved pre-Lair Dungeon, relatively low M&F/Fighting, low enchantment on the club itself and killer bees. Had to switch to a morningstar there.

Edit: also, don't get surrounded? That's like the bigger half of melee gameplay in Crawl is: "don't get surrounded by things that matter".

[Lasty]

We already have Dark Maul and everyone agrees it's worse-by-numbers than Giant Spiked Club...

Dark maul just got a buff:

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... a8f9290975

[goo]

I just 15 runed using dark maul Almost exclusively. Its legit.

[tasonir]

Note: not on a ogre, so GSC wasn't a choice, but that's another benefit of dark maul: medium races can use it. His morgue is here: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/goo/m ... 045845.txt

Impressive AC, but kind of surprised you'd give up experience on a gargoyle, who already suffer from low hp. Still, it clearly worked for you

[Hurricos]

Here's a thought: Give GC (and ONLY GC) eVokable knockback attempt. The attempt would have lower to-hit / damage (considering you'd need to aim on the target and hit them directly to get them to move), but would act somewhat* like melee-range Force Lance.

The rationale for giving ONLY the Giant Club knockback is this: GSC sticks to things. ("A heavy, smooth club such a this is perfect for whacking foes backwards.")

Of course, these knockback attempts would be able to be resisted, so it's not much of a "stop them from following me up the stairs" gimmick as it might seem.

*I would also argue that having it duplicate force lance would be sketchy - we already knock back tentacled monstrosities and dragons nearly as much as we do small creatures with the spell, and flavor-wise that only makes sense when considering Force Lance is magic. Perhaps make the knockback much more effective on smaller creatures? (I like the idea of swatting a Spriggan Defender into the previous century when you actually do manage to hit them.)

[XuaXua]

I just 15 runed using dark maul Almost exclusively. Its legit.

You're just lucky none of your enemies were evoking the Obi Wand.

[duvessa]

There are very, very few cases where I would actually want to knock back an adjacent monster if I am a species capable of wielding a giant club.

[Hurricos]

There are very, very few cases where I would actually want to knock back an adjacent monster if I am a species capable of wielding a giant club.

In 0.16, we have collision damage. If you're righting a line of monsters, knocking them back into each other ends up stunning them repeatedly, letting you wear down everything in the line before taking each one on.

Also:

Hydras (so you can large rock them more!)
Snakes (so they don't bite you! That hurts!)
Things that explode when damaged (Shock Serpents!)
<Insert threatening, normal-movespeed monster here> (So you can run away / use more large rocks on them!)

... and the list continues.

It's not always about killing something directly - it's about killing something in a fun way!

Also, again, I just really want to be able to bat spriggan defenders across a map.

[partial]

Good call on the GC/GSC redundancy

either take one out or spread them out further

[tasonir]

Good call on the GC/GSC redundancy

either take one out or spread them out further

Interesting idea. Simple way to do that:
GC gets 22 base damage, replaces current GSC.
GSC becomes mini-dark maul with base delay of 23 aut, min delay of 10 aut at 26 skill (does not become 9.5 aut at 27 - basically the same as a triple crossbow). For the increased delay, it's damage can become roughly 30ish, pending balance reviews.

Realistically you'd want the GC 8 times out of 10, but some ogres would switch in the late game to GSC's once they had the mace skill in place.

[duvessa]

what does adding a completely new weapon have to do with removing the redundancy? just get rid of giant club

when ankus was removed they didn't add afternoonstars to compensate

[tasonir]

If you're referring to my post, I didn't add a new weapon, just changed the stats on the GC/GSC to make them further apart. Removing GC's would also be fine, I have no objections to that, but thought it could be useful to have a crossbow-speed mace for people who would give up 7 aut min delay.

[duvessa]

If you're referring to my post, I didn't add a new weapon

yes you did, you just gave it the same name as an existing weapon in an attempt to fool people

[and into]

GSC becomes mini-dark maul with base delay of 23 aut, min delay of 10 aut at 26 skill (does not become 9.5 aut at 27 - basically the same as a triple crossbow). For the increased delay, it's damage can become roughly 30ish, pending balance reviews.

This would remove the redundancy, I suppose, but at the cost of adding a weapon that diminishes the uniqueness of both xbows and the unrandart Dark Maul. Also I think ogres and hill giants are in a good spot (when they first show up) in terms of being a 10-speed monster with solid HP and low defenses, that does huge damage in melee with a slow attack. I don't think it would be a good idea to give some of them a +10-ish boost to damage.

[Siegurt]

What if ogres only spawned with GC in this scenario, and you weren't going to find the higher-level GSC until you started encountering higher level giantish things?

[and into]

This is applying post-hoc rationalizations to a bad idea.

If higher level giantish things need a buff, then increase their base damage. But that's a different topic. I think late giants are generally fine, but if we were to buff them, it would probably be a good idea to buff them in a way that does not force players to pay more attention to weapon types than they already do, as this would be an 8- or 10-pt difference in damage from weapon, which is much steeper than any other weapon type, and also would create a common enemy melee weapon so slow it could encourage swing-kiting.

I would also second duvessa that tasonir's idea doesn't remove the redundancy, it simply creates a new, mostly terrible (and thus redundant, on its own) weapon.

[tasonir]

I hadn't considered the buff to monsters using the newer bigger GSC, so yeah, that's an unintended side effect. They could just use GC's, and make GSC's rare to find (floor only), but now you're trampling on the dark maul. I'm fine with scrapping the idea and just removing GC's, so all giant clubs are now spiked, and call it a day

[bcadren]

I just wanted to say; modern crosstraining (40% automatically invested in the neighboring skill, instead of the +4 boost to training later)...if you wanted to do an Ogre with Axes; it's significantly cheaper to keep hold of a club or rod and train M&F to boost Axes than it is to train Axes.

Training Axes via Crosstraining takes: 1.48 x 0 Apt. XP. [40% of +3 Apt.]
Training Axes directly takes: 1.68 x 0 Apt. XP. [-3 Apt.]

It's ridiculous that the difference is SO MUCH that it's cheaper to learn via cross-training than it is by direct training. This also happens if you wanted to go Axes or Staves on a Merfolk; training Polearms for the crosstrain, rather than directly is cheaper:

Training Merfolk Staves via Crosstraining takes: 1.25 x 0 Apt. XP [40% of +4 Apt.]
Training Merfolk Staves directly: 1.41 x 0 Apt. XP [-2 Apt.]

There may be more examples. I just noticed this silliness.

[Zooty]

I just wanted to say; modern crosstraining (40% automatically invested in the neighboring skill, instead of the +4 boost to training later)...if you wanted to do an Ogre with Axes; it's significantly cheaper to keep hold of a club or rod and train M&F to boost Axes than it is to train Axes.

Training Axes via Crosstraining takes: 1.48 x 0 Apt. XP. [40% of +3 Apt.]
Training Axes directly takes: 1.68 x 0 Apt. XP. [-3 Apt.]

It's ridiculous that the difference is SO MUCH that it's cheaper to learn via cross-training than it is by direct training. This also happens if you wanted to go Axes or Staves on a Merfolk; training Polearms for the crosstrain, rather than directly is cheaper:

Training Merfolk Staves via Crosstraining takes: 1.25 x 0 Apt. XP [40% of +4 Apt.]
Training Merfolk Staves directly: 1.41 x 0 Apt. XP [-2 Apt.]

There may be more examples. I just noticed this silliness.

Training the other skill was useful with old crosstraining. Now you get 40% of skill points, not skill level, so training m&f as an ogre gives you pitiful amount of axes skill.

[bcadren]

Training the other skill was useful with old crosstraining. Now you get 40% of skill points, not skill level, so training m&f as an ogre gives you pitiful amount of axes skill.

Alright. I'm a doof. O_O;

I'll still say though; I think it's stupid and just forcing a particular choice on the player to have THAT extreme of differences in levels; especially when the skills are supposedly related. Other than enforcing that 'Merfolk use Tridents!' is there any reason there's a 6! point apt. difference between them and the two weapon types that they crosstrain with? (Axes and Staves?) I propose let's just make it a rule that weapon types that crosstrain shouldn't have more than say a 2 level apt difference. I mean at +4 Polearms and +2 staves; most players are still going to go polearms, but it's no longer as extreme forced choice as +4 Polearms, -2 Staves...and having multiple positive weapon apts. wouldn't be a significant boost to most characters anyways. Few players end up doing enough significant weapon-swapping for that to be relevant.

[Siegurt]

Why does it matter if the two skills crosstrain? I have heard several arguments about extreme aptitudes on both sides, but putting aside the pro/con of high aptitudes in general, why does it matter if two skills crosstrain if their aptitudes are very different?

You get the same crosstraining benefit for the same amount of Xp regardless of the aptitude of the skill trained after all.