Proposal: changing weapon can't wake up enemies

[Hurkyl]

One irritation I have with playing a stealthy stabbing character is that if my best melee weapon and my best stabbing weapon are different, it's annoying to have to have to wield the stabbing weapon every time I finish a fight and go exploring, and then switch back to the melee weapon when things turn into a fight.

Currently, the available options look something like

• Put up with the annoyance
• Carry the melee weapon most of the time, and give sleeping targets I really want to stab an extra chance to wake up
• Use the stabbing weapon for melee, unless it's a target I need the better melee weapon for
• Give up on having different melee and stabbing weapons

The proposed change will convert the second option into a more convenient one; I still carry the melee weapon most of the time, but when a sleeping target really needs a big stab, I can switch to my stabbing weapon.

The change as stated will also have other consequences:

• Players can pass arbitrary amounts of time in LOS of sleeping enemies without waking them up by repeatedly switching weapons
• Stabbers get a slight boost in that, should the target wake up just before the stab they don't have to waste 0.5 aut to switch to the good melee weapon

There is a potential drawback that the proposed change could trigger the opposite problem of trying to exploit the second consequence mentioned above. I'm not sure if that worry is paranoia or a real drawback; but maybe it could be mitigated somehow.

---

For completeness, an alternate approach to solving my perceived problem is to nerf weapon swapping somehow.

[johlstei]

Are you talking about short blades, or switching to an entirely different weapon class? If it's still short blades, I might propose giving all short blades dagger-level stabbing. That would prevent a lot of the swapping, but doesn't solve the problem in the general case where you're swapping to a demon whip or something.

[duvessa]

could have the game stab with the stabbiest weapon in your inventory, regardless of wielded weapon

[Hurkyl]

Are you talking about short blades, or switching to an entirely different weapon class? If it's still short blades, I might propose giving all short blades dagger-level stabbing. That would prevent a lot of the swapping, but doesn't solve the problem in the general case where you're swapping to a demon whip or something.

I had both cases in mind.

[Igxfl]

could have the game stab with the stabbiest weapon in your inventory, regardless of wielded weapon

This sounds pretty convenient.

I'd say if you have a short blade in the a) or b) slot, and you aren't wielding a short blade, guaranteed stabs are taken with your short blade instead.

[Igxfl]

Alternately, all stabs are taken with the slotless knife you butcher with, and scale only on your SB/Stealth skills, not weapon stats.

[milski]

Alternately, all stabs are taken with the slotless knife you butcher with, and scale only on your SB/Stealth skills, not weapon stats.

But then how will I use Boots of the Assassin to one shot everything with a +9 Vamp Exec. Axe?

[jejorda2]

The boots of the Assassin are special and let you stab with what you are wielding instead of the butchering dagger.

[Pollen_Golem]

let "wear" the stabbing implement in one's shield slot

actually, no

• Players can pass arbitrary amounts of time in LOS of sleeping enemies without waking them up by repeatedly switching weapons

Why would you go through with the proposal if you yourself realized that with this change, juggling weapons would keep enemies asleep?

[Hurkyl]

Why would you go through with the proposal if you yourself realized that with this change, juggling weapons would keep enemies asleep?

I mentioned it because I did notice it, but I failed to imagine it being a problem. Do you see it being a problem? How so?

Juggling weapons won't wake up the monsters, but you still have to approach them which will have all of the usual chances to wake them up. The only actual application of this trick I've come up with is trying to pass time when a wandering monster comes into view... but I hadn't envisioned that this would change their chances of noticing you, and so this trick wouldn't actually help: you'd be better off approaching your target (or backing off) as usual.

The other changes suggested wouldn't give that ability, so even if it is a problem, it was still a useful conversation starter.

[Laraso]

Let's say you fall through a shaft or get teleported into a pack of dangerous, but sleeping enemies. You manage to successfully read a teleport scroll without waking them up, but now need to wait out the teleport timer. The obvious action in that situation would be to repeatedly swap weapons so they stay asleep.

[Pollen_Golem]

Not even to mention that unless you're at full HP/MP and suffering no negative statuses, you would want to postpone reading the tele scroll until you're fully recovered.

Also, if you're given the tele status, even by yourself, you'd want to juggle while waiting for the tele to kick in, so as not to wake up anything you'd get teleported to.

[Hurkyl]

I'm surprised to learn that reading a scroll doesn't wake things up in LOS.

[milski]

If there's no way to implement "stab with your best weapon" easily, why not just make changing weapons a 0.0 aut action? It's already quick to the point of being basically irrelevant, and the edge case of "always hits with the perfect branded weapon" is a lot healthier for the game than "wiggles weapons around to fully heal."

[tedric]

I'm surprised to learn that reading a scroll doesn't wake things up in LOS.

I'm surprised that you learned that!

[Pollen_Golem]

why not just make changing weapons a 0.0 aut action?

That would encourage swapping to your resist stick every time you do anything other than attack, even if it's to take 1 step to close the distance.

If it were already quick to the point of being irrelevant, then it would be quick enough to not be worth wiggling weapons around when healing/exploring.

[ololoev]

People will carry a disto weapon with an escape purpose. Omg! Mara! swapswapswap.
Anyway they carry it to leave bazaar to farm some gold, so doesn't matter.

[kroki]

FR:

stab damage depends solely on stealth skill level, unaffected by wielded weapon

there

[Pollen_Golem]

stab damage depends solely on stealth skill level, unaffected by wielded weapon

so... automatic boots of assassin for everybody?

[kroki]

what

[Quazifuji]

what

I think they were assuming that you just meant all weapons stab equally well, rather than stabbing having nothing to do with the wielding weapon in the first place.

Isn't this proposal essentially the same as "everyone stobs with their butchering knife" suggested earlier in this thread?

One question this raises: if short blades effectively lose their stabbing bonus, what's the point of using them? Is there any character with a good reason to use short blades right now besides a stabber or someone who happens to find an electric quick blade or something early on? If not, and you take away their stabbing bonus, it seems like you may as well just remove most short blades from the game (maybe keep quick blades and make them used long blades skill, which could just be renamed to "blades" or "swords" or something).

[ion_frigate]

Stabbing is very powerful, and forcing people to train an otherwise-useless skill (once Stabbing, now Short Blades) is probably a necessary balance decision.

One way to salvage short blades would be to give them meaningfully good to-hit bonuses: this combined with their low attack delay would give them a niche as an effective early-game weapon. The decision "use this easy weapon now" vs "have to sink more XP into weapons later on" is fairly meaningful and interesting in my opinion.

[tasonir]

0 aut weapon switching would be overpowered. You could do things like hit monsters with draining/antimagic weapons until they get the debuff, and then instantly switch to your main damage weapon.

Automatically picking a short blade to stab with even if you're wielding a mace seems possible, although there could be some issues with having it pick the correct weapon. Does it always pick a dagger? Does it know that my 35 dex highly skilled character can get a better stab with a rapier? Does it care about flaming brand vs fire vuln monsters...Side note, how often would brand damage actually matter vs the huge flat damage increase...but anyways...

That's all solvable, of course, just a matter of how intelligent you want to make the auto-stabbing system to be. Having it correctly pick your best stabbing weapon might make it smarter than some/most players.

[dynast]

If you have a weapon for melee fighting and another for stabbing that means you will always explore with your stabbing weapon wielded and switch to your melee weapon if the target is already awaken. Not the other way around.

[Hurkyl]

If you have a weapon for melee fighting and another for stabbing that means you will always explore with your stabbing weapon wielded and switch to your melee weapon if the target is already awaken. Not the other way around.

No, that means what you want to do is always explore with your stabbing weapon wielded and switch to your melee weapon if the target has already awakened.

This requires constantly switching back and forth. And that's irritating that you have to do it so often if your melee weapon is not good at stabbing. And it's differently irritating when your melee weapon is decent at stabbing, because you should do it but most of the time it turns out to be a wasted effort.

[dynast]

I pressume you hate rods as well.

[Hurkyl]

There have been several threads about the rod interface. However, this is not one of them.

[dynast]

Just follow your heart and give up on anything that is annoying to you. Except food, we all still have to put up with that.

[tasonir]

I'm currently playing a stabber with roughly 25 dex, 15ish short blades, 10 stealth. So that's 25 x 12, or ~300 stabbing effectiveness. You need 350 for a max dagger stab, or 700 for any other short blade. I stab things with my main melee weapon which is a rapier because I'd rather be half as effective than switch weapons. It's usually good enough damage, and if not, I just hit them a few more times. It only takes one key to switch weapons, if anything crawl has taught me how incredibly lazy I am. It also helps that as a spriggan if the stab fails I just walk away, but hey.

edit: fixed stabbing damage formula. I believe it's dex * ((weapon + stealth) / 2), rather than dex * (weapon + (stealth/2)). Correct me if I'm wrong.

[prozacelf]

I'm currently playing a stabber with roughly 25 dex, 15ish short blades, 10 stealth. So that's 25 x 12, or ~300 stabbing effectiveness. You need 350 for a max dagger stab, or 700 for any other short blade. I stab things with my main melee weapon which is a rapier because I'd rather be half as effective than switch weapons. It's usually good enough damage, and if not, I just hit them a few more times. It only takes one key to switch weapons, if anything crawl has taught me how incredibly lazy I am. It also helps that as a spriggan if the stab fails I just walk away, but hey.

edit: fixed stabbing damage formula. I believe it's dex * ((weapon + stealth) / 2), rather than dex * (weapon + (stealth/2)). Correct me if I'm wrong.

I just get murdered in Vaults once I have a good stabber, because I forget to train other skills as much as i should. so I then hit them with my great sword of X and realize that I've been getting away with 15/23 defenses for way longer than I have had any right to, but luckily I'm dead so I have plenty of time to reflect on my mistake.