charm proposal: sharpness

[luckless]

viz.,

Sharpness | Charms 8
Casting this spell makes your currently-wielded slicing/chopping/stabbing weapon impossibly sharp, thus bypassing some or all of your target's AC. The effect lasts indefinitely, but degrades over time as your weapon begins to dull. That is:

• When you first cast the spell, your weapon attacks ignore all your target's AC. However, each hit has a chance to lower the amount to 75% of your target's AC, and then to 50%, the lower limit: after that, each hit has a chance to end the spell.
• The degradation chance is inversely proportional to your spellpower, and further decreases exponentially at each stage. So you'll probably only completely ignore AC for a few hits, but ignore half AC for a lot longer.

rationale:

Spoiler: show

Charms should give melee characters a way to use their MP to do more damage. The low-level spells do a decent job of this, but in the absence of Haste there's no longer a high-level upgrade. Sharpness fills this niche. As a bonus, it keeps short blades viable into late game as direct combat weapons. This also mitigates its steep XP cost: in practice, I imagine characters getting rapiers (or if they're lucky quick blades) to min delay, and then pumping the XP that might otherwise have gone toward two-handed weapons into Charms.

Note that the degradation model gives Sharpness a finite duration without the annoyance of casting it at the start of every combat, since it lasts indefinitely while exploring. It also may make for interesting tactical decisions, since presumably it will occasionally (though not always) be a good idea to refresh Sharpness once the AC bypass hits 75% or 50% but before it runs out.

[Quazifuji]

I think there is room for a high-level offensive charm with haste being gone, and a way to lower/bypass enemy AC would potentially be nice as a way to improve the scaling of shortblades. However, I have two main concerns here:

1. This has the same issue as all other charms: You just want to always keep it up. It's not even much of a way to use MP to do more damage, since you can use the MP out of combat. I think we need to figure out the long-discussed charms reform before adding more spells with the same problem.

2. I don't understand why you'd limit the spell to only slicing/chopping/stabbing. I mean, I get it from a flavor standpoint, but I really don't like it from a gameplay standpoint (both the part where you limit it to specific brands, and the part where maces and flails don't get access).

[hannobal]

I'd say it should always be on without degradation after casting (until toggled off or MP runs out), but consume 1 MP per turn in addition to casting cost.
That would make it more powerful and more costy, meaning you would cast it only when needed.

[VeryAngryFelid]

1 MP per attack is not a big deal for characters who learned level 8 spell and decide to use it instead of Shatter or Bolt of foo. Make the spell always ignore all target AC and cost N HP per attack where N is one of following:

• 1 for missed attacks or for attacks where rolled AC was reduced by 0
• 2 where rolled AC was reduced by 1-9
• 3 where rolled AC was reduced by 10-19
• 4 where rolled AC was reduced by 20-29
• 5 where rolled AC was reduced by 30+

As rolled AC I mean roll of AC i.e. if orb of fire rolled 8 vs your attack, you lose 2 HP for ignoring it and if it rolled 25, then you lose 4 HP for ignoring it.

Now you can always have it on, it makes you lose HP for doing nothing sometimes and still makes short blades and demon weapons very good vs high AC monsters. Of course it helps scary weapons like triple sword too.

[hannobal]

Well the cost could be X MP per turn, instead of one.

[luckless]

1. This has the same issue as all other charms: You just want to always keep it up. It's not even much of a way to use MP to do more damage, since you can use the MP out of combat. I think we need to figure out the long-discussed charms reform before adding more spells with the same problem.

Is "just want to always keep it up" really the issue, or is it "always have to cast it before a fight"? I find the latter more annoying than the former (though the former is still annoying). But I take your point and in any case you're right about the MP.

2. I don't understand why you'd limit the spell to only slicing/chopping/stabbing. I mean, I get it from a flavor standpoint, but I really don't like it from a gameplay standpoint (both the part where you limit it to specific brands, and the part where maces and flails don't get access).

Ah, didn't mean it to limit it to vorpal weapons! (does vorpal even use those names anymore?) still, I agree that the maces/flails restriction was bad design.

Make the spell always ignore all target AC and cost N HP per attack

I think this is a really promising proposal and I hope the devs consider something in the neighborhood. though is there a reason why the player shouldn't pay the cost up front, say as x% of their max HP?

also, it'd be easy to flavor: you infuse your weapon with otherworldly energy to ignore AC like a phantasmal warrior, but with the side effect of sapping your vitality with each blow.

[VeryAngryFelid]

though is there a reason why the player shouldn't pay the cost up front, say as x% of their max HP?

This would make it optimal to explore without the spell active and activate it just when adjacent to high AC monster because many monsters have ranged attack.

[Quazifuji]

Is "just want to always keep it up" really the issue, or is it "always have to cast it before a fight"? I find the latter more annoying than the former (though the former is still annoying). But I take your point and in any case you're right about the MP.

"Always want to have it up" is a big issue for spells with durations, but you're right that it's less of an issue for repel missiles-style ones that end with use and not turns. That said, this style of activation has its own issue - since you can get a lot of benefit just by casting it out of combat, you don't need to get it to a reliable success rate to use it, and you can even easily take armour off or swap to wizardry items to cast it between fights and then swap back.

I'm also not sure if I like the whole "gives a benefit that's only useful after it wears off" mechanic, or at least not at described. The concept of it providing a lasting effect after it wears off that's a less powerful version of the buff is neat, but I wonder how often it would actually make the decision of when to recast the spell more interesting. More importantly, it makes it even less important to have a low enough failure rate to use it in combat, which I think is a bad thing.

[luckless]

1 MP per attack is not a big deal for characters who learned level 8 spell and decide to use it instead of Shatter or Bolt of foo. Make the spell always ignore all target AC and cost N HP per attack

Thinking about this a bit more, I don't know if you'd actually need to use a HP cost.

Suppose it just cost 3 mp per attack. In that case, if you used this spell with a rapier of speed you'd be burning through MP as fast as you would if you cast a level 9 spell every turn. (And it's not like three AC-ignoring rapier hits are overwhelmingly more damaging than a casting of Shatter or whatever.) And it's not like you'd want the spell to be always on, either, since using that many MP to deal with popcorn would often leave you without enough ammo to comfortably handle tougher stuff.