Remove giant spiked clubs (keep giant clubs)

[Cimanyd]

With the recent removal of Ogres' Maces & Flails aptitude, giant spiked clubs serve no purpose for players. The change says "[ogres are] still uniquely able to make the most of GSCs" but that's not really true. Trolls have the same M&F apt as Ogres now, and, just like Ogres, can wield GSCs but have no reason to ever do so.

Giant clubs, on the other hand, are better* than great maces, giving a higher base damage (20 vs 17) at a lower skill for mindelay (18 vs 20). This is what would actually give ogres an advantage for going M&F, and it is unique since Trolls won't go for GCs either (or any weapons, but that's another topic).

*Conventional wisdom is that base accuracy doesn't matter, right?

Changing all the GSCs in the game to GCs will keep the element of "those ogres hold huge weapons I can't use, but that's fair since if I play an ogre I can use them too!", without it being a newbie trap like -1 M&F mindelay-at-24 GSCs would be.

The GDD guidelines ask that I explain how this fits the design goals. As far as I know, it is now always a no-brainer not to wield GSCs, and I have not seen anyone say anything otherwise in the discussion of these changes. If I am wrong, please tell me.

[VeryAngryFelid]

With Trog or Ash you still may want to go for GSC.

[luckless]

Trog, sure, but with Ash (or Oka I guess, which lets you use GSCs with heroism) you're probably better off using the XP on magic.

Anyway, I don't think OgBe and similar edge cases constitute enough reason to keep GSCs in the game. (This is especially true because OgBe is itself too similar to TrBe to justify the existence of a class of items uniquely designed for it.)

And as it stands the GC is enough to make M/F uniquely accessible to ogres since it is so good for the skill level, and encourages non-Be ogres to hybridize when they should.

[CanOfWorms]

you know the game lets you use weapons even if you don't have the skill to swing at min delay right

[Speleothing]

Ogres should have +1 M&F apt anyway, I expect this to be fixed within a month.

[duvessa]

(a very personal concern that is very secondary is that -1 m&f means now gsc has really no reason to exist and that is most probably better to not use gc for any Og except Be)

Now that this has its own thread, I'll copy paste my offtopic post from the other thread:
I posit that, practically speaking, it's almost never optimal to attack with a triple sword, bardiche, great mace, executioner's axe, or giant spiked club.
Bardiche and executioner's axe, compared to glaive and battleaxe, trade 3 base delay (and 3 or 2 accuracy) for a 20% increase in base damage. It takes twice as many skill points to reach minimum delay for a bardiche or executioner's axe as it does to reach minimum delay for a glaive or battleaxe, and at 20 skill a glaive or battleaxe is always better than the equivalent bardiche or executioner's axe under reasonable conditions (i.e. not "0 fighting and 1 str against a stone giant"). They typically break even between 22 and 24 skill. And since the bigger weapons are much rarer, usually you aren't comparing a bardiche to the equivalent glaive; you're comparing the bardiche to a glaive with better enchantment/brand, especially since you should have been putting all your enchant weapon scrolls into that glaive.

So to justify a triple sword over a great sword, a bardiche over a glaive, a great mace over a dire flail, an executioner's axe over a battleaxe, or a giant spiked club over a giant club, you not only need to be lucky enough to find a really good one (better than the 20 glaives that generated first), you need to justify an experience investment that is extremely disproportionate to the damage increase (100% more xp for 20% more base damage), compared to the investment you made to use, say, a battleaxe at min delay instead of a war axe at min delay (70% more xp for 36% more base damage) or a war axe at min delay instead of a hand axe at min delay (36% more xp for 57% more base damage). Unless the bardiche you found is so good that it's better than all your glaives even at low skill, but then you have to get even luckier - this pretty much only happens with acquirement.

There is one other situation where a bardiche is way better than a glaive: when your skill is very low. At 0 skill, bigger weapons are pretty much always better. Great maces are even better than dire flails at 0 skill, which is impressive considering that they're often worse at 20 skill...
Unfortunately for those big weapons, the part of the game where you are likely to have a bardiche/triple sword/etc. has no overlap whatsoever with the part of the game where you are likely to have less than 10 weapon skill. (Unless your character never planned on training a weapon skill at all, but in that case doesn't matter what you wield anyway).

The obvious response to this is "but duvessa then why do i always see you wielding triple swords???" and the answer is that I value killing things in fewer keypresses, enough that I will gimp my characters' actual power for it. It's the same thing that leads me to train skills to 27 or get level 8+ conjuration spells. I imagine it's the same for a lot of other players. There might be some misinformation about, or memetic value in, the biggest weapons as well, but I think the effect of that is small (most of the people who don't understand melee damage end up wielding smaller weapons than they should, not bigger weapons than they should).

[Leszczynek]

High skill requirement weapons have their place in the game as long as Okawaru exists. Heroism costs virtually nothing.

Rather than GSC being out of reach (they are not), it's more of an issue with how amazingly good normal giant clubs are.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Anyway, I don't think OgBe and similar edge cases constitute enough reason to keep GSCs in the game. (This is especially true because OgBe is itself too similar to TrBe to justify the existence of a class of items uniquely designed for it.)

Do you use a weapon with Tr? Artefact GSC and GC are the funniest items in the game probably and you need either Trog or Oka for that.

[Sar]

giant spiked clubs serve no purpose for players

gee thanks and here I thought I actually wanted to wield the strongest non-Transmutations weapon in the game because it's cool and all and postend has infinite XP anyway, but I guess I actually didn't

[kuniqs]

*Conventional wisdom is that base accuracy doesn't matter, right?

I've noticed I missed so much with a GC/GSC that I just threw it away and went with eveningstar. Much better, considering you can at least wear a shield to help your horrible defences and they at least come in randart form sometimes.

30% more damage doesn't matter if you miss 30% more often, right?

[duvessa]

giant clubs are hugely better than eveningstars at all skill levels, in addition to being far, far more common

strongest non-Transmutations weapon in the game

giant club would be the strongest non-transmutations weapon in the game both before and after this change

[Rast]

30% more damage doesn't matter if you miss 30% more often, right?

What is the supposed justification for the acc penalty on big weapons? No, don't say game balance, we know that had nothing to do with it.

If the theory is "big heavy weapon is slow to swing therefore the enemy can dodge it more easily":
1) That's stupid
2) This is already covered by big weapons having larger delays
3) it's a lot easier to dodge the point of a small dagger than an entire huge weapon that can cut/splat you in half
4) fight me IRL

[Elitist]

30% more damage doesn't matter if you miss 30% more often, right?

What is the supposed justification for the acc penalty on big weapons? No, don't say game balance, we know that had nothing to do with it.

If the theory is "big heavy weapon is slow to swing therefore the enemy can dodge it more easily":
1) That's stupid
2) This is already covered by big weapons having larger delays
3) it's a lot easier to dodge the point of a small dagger than an entire huge weapon that can cut/splat you in half
4) fight me IRL

I've got the gloves on and I'm ready to brawl with you, Rast.
I think if GC got differentiated in speed and accuracy or something, that'd be cool. Maybe take on GSC's damage, GC's acc, and perhaps have 0.8 delay as its own unique sort of thingy.

[ion_frigate]

Can we seriously remove weapon accuracy? It seems like everyone agrees it has little effect, and it's great at confusing players. I've actually had to unlearn what DCSS "taught" me about weapon accuracy for games like CDDA, where a weapon with -1 accuracy is *much* worse than one with +2 accuracy.