Allow Monks to start with staves

[errorstarter]

Whenever you imagine monk with a weapon you will imagine the one holding a quick wooden staff.
And Formcid Warriors can start with a quarterstaff. Any Gladiator can do the same.
Still..
Monks in DCSS can't do so! What the heck? Why?
I suppose it's because any staff is well-balanced, and Monks can't start with a good weapon. Then why not add a bad-to-medium weapon of that category (long stick, for example) and allow Monks bring it?
If such a change may not be allowed, then please explain me - why. Monks without staves make me slightly confused.

P.S: Sorry if there is same topic.

[ontoclasm]

Well, they used to start with quarterstaves. Then, uh, they had a weaker "staff" item made specifically for them, since quarterstaves were too powerful. You're basically describing the past here. But then they got restricted to UC-only; the goal was probably to make monks slightly more distinct from Fi and Gl.

More to the point: why should they start with a staff? They work fine right now, so where's the problem that would be solved by changing them? Flavor is not a reason; it's neat when the gameplay matches the flavor, but give me good gameplay over good flavor any day. For one thing, it's easy to take good gameplay and stretch the flavor to match (the dungeon is always brightly lit because of... lets say torches and magic), but if you start with flavor (monks should have no worldly possessions!) and then build the gameplay around it (...so monks can't ever carry items?) you tend to end up with bad gameplay.

In other words, monks in other games use staves, but why does that mean Crawl monks should? How would having a staff make playing them more interesting or fun? Why should they be made more like Fi and Gl, when they're already extremely similar anyway?

[sooheon]

Why this antagonism against staves? Monks can start with any other damn weapon, why shouldn't they start with a staff? It's not flavor at the expense of gameplay, it doesn't really hurt gameplay, when there's already another *better* class that has the option to start staves. Personally I'd want monks to be staves/UC and no other more warlike weapons. As it is now, they're far too similar to Fi and Gl (choosing from a veritable armory), paring down their weapon choices and making them really about the god choice and adapting from there will make them more unique. Staves are more interesting than long blades or axes for monks because they're a very minimal weapon class, there is only one upgrade. It fits the ascetic theme.

Besides, weren't a bunch of "zealot" classes removed for being too generalist with the benefit of early piety? The current monks are basically a lighter version of that. Make them less generalist and play up their god choice more, rather than giving them every weapon choice.

[Shard1697]

It does hurt gameplay because the whole point of monks is they have worse equipment but bonus piety, giving them a great starting weapon is the opposite of that design goal.

[chequers]

The rationale for the change to monk from unarmed to having a weapon selection can be found in the commit message for the change:

  Code:

c8dcfc9 PleasingFungus Rework Monk start (chequers) (9 months ago)
The monk start has two largely unrelated ideas. It's a strongly UC
focused start (more starting skill points invested in offense than
fighter or gladiator), and it's a "bonus piety for your first god"
start.

Both aspects are quite weak individually, and they have no
particular synergy. Since the bonus piety aspect is considerably
more distinctive and evocative than 'shitty tm/gl/fi', tying these
aspects together annoys players: people want to experiment with the
bonus piety, but don't want to be tied to UC.

This change dumps the UC focus, replacing it with a choice of
weapons; a sort of 'store-brand zealot'. (UC is still a choice, of
course.) I suspect the background will still be weak, but it should
at least be more conducive to experimentation.

[sooheon]

Thanks for the context chequers. It seems like the rationale was that monks had a lot of offensive xp to start with, and there was no reason for it all to be forced into UC. I can agree with that, but I disagree with the solution being to give them access to nearly any weapon class from the start. It just begs the question, how different is it *really* than just going Gl and picking up an early altar?

What if instead of working around the high offense oriented xp investment, we go the other way? Move that offense oriented weapon-specific xp toward defense and general offense, dodging, some armour, and fighting, and give them no starting weapon at all, or maybe just a dagger with few points. This mirrors the saved-up piety: it's essentially saved up xp for whatever weapon you choose to use, once you pick one up off the ground. Yes, until you find something you'll have to be skill-lessly smacking things, but with high enough dodge and fighting you should be able to hold off cockroaches and rats until you find a weapon, any weapon. Once you do, you have the xp to spare to pump it all into the weapon of your choice, because your defensive stats are already there.

Flavor wise, it fits the idea of a monk who has trained his body for health and discipline, but has not studied any particular weapon, for lack of a need. Imagine an ascetic stepping foot into the wrong cave, and being thrown into an adventure. Gameplay wise, it gives a truly different starting experience from Fi/Gl/Hu, in that it is truly up to you to find what you can on the dungeon floor and fight to survive.

The only thing balance wise we need to prevent is the case of characters just being so weak on D:1 that they die to everything. Of course there will be some unavoidable deaths, and the percentage may be greater than for Fi or IE, but as long as we give them enough fighting and dodging to compensate, it can allow for an interesting tradeoff.

[duvessa]

The piety gimmick does literally nothing to distinguish Mo until you start worshipping a god. Monk threads are kind of like the joke about Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879: everyone involved agrees that Mo should be a shitty Fi but violenty disagrees on what exact type of shitty Fi it should be.

[Reptisaurus]

Then, uh, they had a weaker "staff" item made specifically for them, since quarterstaves were too powerful.

Monks should have a weaker "staff" item that is made for them.

Honestly, that seems to address the gameplay and the theme issues fairly well. I can see why it was previously removed as a needless complication, but since we have weapon-y monks now anyway, why can't they start with a Staff of Nothing?

[chequers]

DCSS generally takes a "gameplay before lore" approach. Adding a special item for a single background is very much "lore over gameplay".

[Reptisaurus]

Not adding, un-removing!

[Elitist]

A common staff would make it easier to branch into staves.

[pratamawirya]

Does nobody else other than me see how cool sooheon's idea is?