Make maces not recommended for Troll starts.

[Arrhythmia]

Honestly.

[duvessa]

Also, make short blades not recommended for...well, pretty much everything except Sp. Ko having short blades recommended and not maces is especially bad.

[genericpseudonym]

Also, make short blades not recommended for...well, pretty much everything except Sp. Ko having short blades recommended and not maces is especially bad.

Make short blades not recommended for anything except enchanter starts and maybe artificer.

Oh and VS as well.

[rchandra]

I use "viable" weapons to enforce random starts on the hyper account (otherwise a character with weapon choice could be rerolled), and it's often annoying getting sbl (I think I got that on a Minotaur?). The Ko / Tr maces situations seem particularly bad, yes.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I don't know. It's Tr's second best melee aptitude and they can use giant spiked clubs.

I understand that Tr UC is very strong, but maces are hardly bad here.

[duvessa]

No. Maces are absolutely bad for Tr. Polearms is Og's second highest weapon aptitude, polearms are still a terrible choice for Og.

[Sandman25]

No. Maces are absolutely bad for Tr. Polearms is Og's second highest weapon aptitude, polearms are still a terrible choice for Og.

What about +9 demon whip of electro and large shield? Troll can put saved XP into Dodging/Armour/Fighting.
I would use M&F with Trog/Oka easily.

Also Oka/Trog can gift something like giant club of speed

[Arrhythmia]

No. Maces are absolutely bad for Tr. Polearms is Og's second highest weapon aptitude, polearms are still a terrible choice for Og.

What about +9 demon whip of electro and large shield? Troll can put saved XP into Dodging/Armour/Fighting.
I would use M&F with Trog/Oka easily.

Also Oka/Trog can gift something like giant club of speed

yeah i agree that having a +9 demon whip of electricity is pretty good. these don't spawn on D:1 though, unlike the mace you start with, which is shitty, and way worse than claws 3

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Sure, UC with claws 3 is great. Still, at character generation TrFi with a flail outperforms a HuFi with a long sword. I still fail to see what the big deal is.

If you extend the logic than several species end with a single weapon type recommended. At that point one wonders about the need for a weapon option in the first place.

[Sandman25]

yeah i agree that having a +9 demon whip of electricity is pretty good. these don't spawn on D:1 though, unlike the mace you start with, which is shitty, and way worse than claws 3

Do you mean you die as Troll on D1 if you don't use UC?

[Sandman25]

Main problem is that Mo starts with UC 4 and Gl starts with weapon 3.

XL 1.0 Vs adder, version 0.18.1

TrMo:

+ Level 4.0 Unarmed Combat

  Code:

           AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking:      7.3 |     28 |      45% |   3.4 |    93  |  1.08 |      3.6

TrGl with UC:


+ Level 3.0 Unarmed Combat

  Code:

           AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking:      7.2 |     26 |      41% |   2.9 |    94  |  1.06 |      3.1


TrGl with flail:
+ Level 2.6 Maces & Flails

  Code:

           AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking:      5.8 |     16 |      33% |   1.9 |   127  |  0.79 |      1.5

Though I wouldn't care much since you still will win as TrGl with flail (you have 19 HP and the adder has 6-16 HP)

  Code:

Defending:      1.1 |      5 |      55% |   0.6 |    76  |  1.32 |      0.8

Also you regen 0.5 damage per turn, that's more than adder can deal to you if you are pillar dancing (ignoring poison here).

[Arrhythmia]

yeah i agree that having a +9 demon whip of electricity is pretty good. these don't spawn on D:1 though, unlike the mace you start with, which is shitty, and way worse than claws 3

Do you mean you die as Troll on D1 if you don't use UC?

No, I don't. I mean that UC is way better during the hard part of the game than a flail is. You know, the part of the game where you don't have a +9 demon whip of electricity.

[Arrhythmia]

Sure, UC with claws 3 is great. Still, at character generation TrFi with a flail outperforms a HuFi with a long sword. I still fail to see what the big deal is.

If you extend the logic than several species end with a single weapon type recommended. At that point one wonders about the need for a weapon option in the first place.

There's a lot of species where weapon types are within epsilon of each other (e.g., Hu), and letting the players make weird fun roleplaying choices (I'm going to be the SPEAR OGRE) are both cool and fine and should stay, as long as the game doesn't recommend bad starts.

[duvessa]

Sure, UC with claws 3 is great. Still, at character generation TrFi with a flail outperforms a HuFi with a long sword. I still fail to see what the big deal is.

At character generation TrFi with unarmed outperforms a TrFi with a flail. By a lot.

If you extend the logic than several species end with a single weapon type recommended.

What the hell is wrong with that? It's already the case for 6 other species. Ghouls only have unarmed recommended, and nobody ever raised a stink about that.

[Siegurt]

I guess the question is, is 'recommended' intended to be "the best or one of the best" or is it intended to be "pretty decent, or at least good enough"

For comparison, a TrFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 2.0 against a hobgoblin and an HOFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 1.8

[Arrhythmia]

I guess the question is, is 'recommended' intended to be "the best or one of the best" or is it intended to be "pretty decent, or at least good enough"

For comparison, a TrFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 2.0 against a hobgoblin and an HOFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 1.8

The former.

[Siegurt]

I guess the question is, is 'recommended' intended to be "the best or one of the best" or is it intended to be "pretty decent, or at least good enough"

For comparison, a TrFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 2.0 against a hobgoblin and an HOFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 1.8

The former.

Why do you believe that to be the case? I mean my impression of 'recommended' has been to give novice players some sort of indication of "this isn't going to totally suck", which a troll using a flail doesn't (it's not as good as a troll using claws, but it's better than most non-trolls with a flail start)

[duvessa]

Weapon choice recommendation is a little different from species/background recommendations. Crawl's races and backgrounds hold the pretense of playing differently from each other. Weapon classes do not. The only reason to pick maces on a troll is that you want a worse troll.

Mf shouldn't have long blades recommended either.

Alternatively, get rid of weapon class recommendations altogether, and don't shoehorn HE/DE/DD/HO/Ha/Ko/Sp/Og/Tr/Ce/Mf/Gr/Vp into specific weapon classes.

[Sandman25]

In case of UC vs M&F there is a very significant difference, the latter can have amazing things like vampiric, antimagic or holy brand.

[Arrhythmia]

I guess the question is, is 'recommended' intended to be "the best or one of the best" or is it intended to be "pretty decent, or at least good enough"

For comparison, a TrFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 2.0 against a hobgoblin and an HOFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 1.8

The former.

Why do you believe that to be the case? I mean my impression of 'recommended' has been to give novice players some sort of indication of "this isn't going to totally suck", which a troll using a flail doesn't (it's not as good as a troll using claws, but it's better than most non-trolls with a flail start)

Did you miss when sandman posted that a troll using UC was twice as good as a troll with a flail? Compared to UC, yeah, M&F totally does suck.

[Siegurt]

[quote="Siegurt"]I guess the question is, is 'recommended' intended to be "the best or one of the best" or is it intended to be "pretty decent, or at least good enough"

For comparison, a TrFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 2.0 against a hobgoblin and an HOFi starting with a flail has an avgeffdmg of 1.8

The former.

Why do you believe that to be the case? I mean my impression of 'recommended' has been to give novice players some sort of indication of "this isn't going to totally suck", which a troll using a flail doesn't (it's not as good as a troll using claws, but it's better than most non-trolls with a flail start)

Did you miss when sandman posted that a troll using UC was twice as good as a troll with a flail? Compared to UC, yeah, M&F totally does suck.[/quote]

Trolls with a flail is certainly not as good as claws, by a large margin, but trolls with a flail do as much or more damage than an orc with a flail, does that mean we should also not recommend orcs?

It isn't that i don't see a disparity between the two, but if a new player was to say "i really want to play a troll with a mace start, do you think that would work ok?" I would say "not the best choice, but it would probably be fine" not "omg that is going to be a horrible pain in the ass"

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I'm not even opposed to this proposal, but I would prefer consistency. Removing recommendations altogether, or having the recommendations be strictly 'this is the best' would be fine with me.

That said, I'm a bit puzzled buy the intensity of some of the posts, given the fairly minor impact. Oh well.

[duvessa]

I don't think unrecommended weapons are communicated as being "horrible pain in the ass" level of bad. Just "this is a bad choice" levels of bad. Unlike backgrounds, they aren't even greyed out - they're just not bolded.

Trolls with a flail is certainly not as good as claws, by a large margin, but trolls with a flail do as much or more damage than an orc with a flail, does that mean we should also not recommend orcs?

A starting TrFi with any weapon choice does more damage than a starting HOFi with the same weapon choice. Do you think war axe, trident, and long sword should be recommended for TrFi, since they are recommended for HOFi and do more damage on TrFi?
Similarly, a starting DEFi does less damage than a starting HOFi with any weapon choice. Should DEFi have no recommended options at all?

[Siegurt]

I don't think unrecommended weapons are communicated as being "horrible pain in the ass" level of bad. Just "this is a bad choice" levels of bad. Unlike backgrounds, they aren't even greyed out - they're just not bolded.

Trolls with a flail is certainly not as good as claws, by a large margin, but trolls with a flail do as much or more damage than an orc with a flail, does that mean we should also not recommend orcs?

A starting TrFi with any weapon choice does more damage than a starting HOFi with the same weapon choice. Do you think war axe, trident, and long sword should be recommended for TrFi, since they are recommended for HOFi and do more damage on TrFi?
Similarly, a starting DEFi does less damage than a starting HOFi with any weapon choice. Should DEFi have no recommended options at all?

Well, that's the point I'm trying to make, *any* set of recommendations is subjective and weird, It's weird that trolls have maces recommended and ogres have polearms *not* recommended.

I really think we should have more than one level of recommended, like a 'best' choice, and a 'acceptable' and 'not recommended' to convey stuff like this.

[sanka]

I think that duvessa tries to make the point that the game should recommend the best choice for a race and nothing more, and only give more if there is a tie. (For this you may consider cleaving and reaching as compensating the damage loss for the weapon category even if it is not true actually.)

Recommended weapon class should be a help for newbies, not some detailed information I think.