Let Artificer choose starting weapon

[PlatinumSpider]

Give the artificer a choice of starting weapon from among short sword, club, hand axe, and unarmed. There's no reason to force a short blade start since they're not particularly stealth based and ,inho, they benefit from going heavy weapon/armour more than sneaking.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I disagree that there is no a reason to use short blades (wand of random effects can confuse/paralyze) but I still like the proposal. Those who don't want to use short blades should have a chance to pick anything else. I would even suggest to make it similar to Monk. If MfMo can start with spear, MfAr should be able to also.

[Lasty]

My understanding of the rationale behind giving a short blade is that it's a nerf to a strong background. Getting to start with a better weapon class would be a buff. See also hunter.

[nago]

Personally think it's more elegant to give the weapons choice at the beginning for all melee class instead of forcing them to ctrl-f the first drop. I also think that giving the same choice of Be would be fine powerwise too - as any other background would be still weaker than Be

[kuniqs]

A short sword is pretty much the best starting weapon, so what's the problem?

[dowan]

FR: Berserkers start unarmed, a necessary nerf to a strong background.

[VeryAngryFelid]

FR: Berserkers start unarmed, a necessary nerf to a strong background.

Except TrBe who should start with cursed dagger I suppose?
It is weird indeed that we are trying to balance backgrounds or new gods when we have Be and Xom.
Only species are supposed to serve as difficulty levels, right?

[Quazifuji]

Only species are supposed to serve as difficulty levels, right?

"Challenge gods" are definitely a thing (Xom, Chei, Qazlal). Chaos Knight and maybe Wanderer are the only "challenge backgrounds," and Chaos Knight is challenge just because it worships challenge gods, but it still seems to me that all three major character choices are designed to not necessarilly be balanced, species is just the one most often treated as a difficulty setting. Personally, I think it's pretty silly to consider it perfectly okay to have gods and species be unbalanced, but then worry about balancing backgrounds.

That said, letting character choices be unbalanced to serve as difficulty levels doesn't mean there's no such thing as one being too strong, or that balance shouldn't be a major factor in deciding how to tune backgrounds. Be's existence mean's Ar wouldn't be the strongest class if given a weapon choice, that doesn't mean we actually want to give it that buff.

[duvessa]

A short sword is pretty much the best starting weapon, so what's the problem?

What? It's the worst starting weapon in the game (unless you count unarmed as a weapon, in which case short sword is the second worst). At least En and As's daggers are enchanted.

Seems best to start Ar without any weapon or melee skill at all.

[Siegurt]

a. The -1 short sword "Artificer's starting weapon" {*corrode}

[Rast]

FR: Berserkers start unarmed, a necessary nerf to a strong background.

FR: They start with a +1 hand axe, trained to 2.0. If the player wants to use a different weapon, those are available on the dungeon floor.

[duvessa]

a. The -1 short sword "Artificer's starting weapon" {*corrode}

the best part is almost all the rc code for autoinscribing rods also autoinscribes *Corrode items (you can't just use ^rod because of "lightning rod")
so it's like you're starting artificers with a rod again

[jwoodward48ss]

...what?

[Siegurt]

...what?

Most people who use auto inscriptions have a search pattern, "rod" happens inside "corrode" so auto inscriptions that match "rod" match "corrode"

^rod would match r-o-d at the beginning of an item, so for example "rod of clouds" would work, but "lightning rod" would not.

\brod\b (match a word border, r-o-d, and another word border) would work for better specificity, but nobody does that.

[Gozigzag]

My understanding of the rationale behind giving a short blade is that it's a nerf to a strong background. Getting to start with a better weapon class would be a buff. See also hunter.

Arcane marksman wish he could receive that nerf.