Remove fighting skill

[johlstei]

Skills are most interesting when they represent a true choice, with opportunity cost. You choose to get ice magic is at the expense of something else. This works best when skills are truly distinct and not all that overlapping. There are a few issues here, but the biggest one is fighting.

Instead of a distinct ability, fighting 1. makes you better at melee combat, a very broad thing that most characters are going to use some amount of, and 2, gives you more HP, which every character wants. There's not much distinction - a character with low fighting doesn't make any different decisions than one with high fighting. Every character wants *some* fighting, and chooses when the opportunity cost of this big bag of HP/damage is sufficiently low. I don't think pausing the interesting choices between sharp, distinct skills so that a character gets a little more HP/damage is a worthwhile addition to the skill system. So, I propose removing the skill, and adding some extra HP/XL and damage/XL to each species, scaled by fighting aptitude. You could also slightly scale down skill XP gain if need-be but I don't think that's a big deal. This will bring sharper choices into focus instead of broad, universal ones like fighting.

[Malevolent]

I started writing a post about why I disagree, but by the time I typed out my response, I realized that it wouldn't make much of a difference to me if your change was implemented. Though for that matter, I don't really think it'd improve the game either. Just the fact that you can spread your skill points between different skills ensures that you already don't have to make these "sharp" either-or choices, and "more HP or more armour?" is just as meaningful a choice, if not more so, than "more AC or more EV?", so I kind of disagree with your premise, but eh. I'm also not emotionally invested in defending the status quo.

[Shard1697]

"more HP or ____" is not a very meaningful choice because the answer is almost always "more HP"

[Shtopit]

I guess the choice here isn't "yes or no" but "how much".

[yesno]

Agree... Sometimes I want more HP on one character than on another but it always feels like a pointless part of skilling.

[NhorianScum]

All for it.

That said if fighting stays forever that's also fine, but forthe loveof everything can it be a title-less skill? Getting petty tired of seeing the "conqueror" tag on every single dude.

[mattlistener]

I disagree with the main point here because leveling Fighting to 27 before putting points into anything else is certainly a choice with an opportunity cost, as is any other ratio of Fighting vs. other skills including zero.

"more HP or ____" is not a very meaningful choice because the answer is almost always "more HP"

...until it isn't. The return on investing in more HP eventually doesn't compare to investing in something else, same as with any other skill you want. One may not find it a personally interesting choice, but it certainly affects the survivability vs. killingness of a character. Baking it into Level would be a shame.

I agree with the point just above about making it title-less. "Had high Fighting" is less informative about a character than any other skill.

[bel]

One issue with Fighting is that, except in the very early game, I tend to pump it normally on all characters (perhaps a bit more on fighter-types). This is because of the following:

(a) A fighter-type character (or a hybrid) needs more HP and damage, so fighting is good.
(b) On a mage-type character, I tend to train fighting so I can use a zero-skill weapon to clean up (killing most things with spells), while waiting for a good weapon to drop. Also, more HP is good.

Either way, there is not much real range in my choices about when and how much I train fighting.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Deciding when to train Fighting and by high much is a meaningful decision and should stay IMHO. I played two Fighting-related characters: Sp with autotraining who had Fighting about 0 in Zot 5 and Tr who trained just Fighting all the way to skill level 27. These very interesting characters would be impossible if OP has been implemented.

[yesno]

I think those two examples are not great, sandman, because they are totally extreme examples... Super low HP species with no fighting and super high HP species with all fighting. For fighting to be really relevant interesting decision, it would be relevant most of the time. But most characters train fighting somewhere between those two extremes, where it is not really so interesting.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I think those two examples are not great, sandman, because they are totally extreme examples... Super low HP species with no fighting and super high HP species with all fighting. For fighting to be really relevant interesting decision, it would be relevant most of the time. But most characters train fighting somewhere between those two extremes, where it is not really so interesting.

Well, if I want to argue with "everyone trains Fighting in a boring average way so Fighting does not matter", I should provide examples where this is not true. Of course you can call such examples extreme because they are intended to be far from average by design.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Also I am sure we can find some unique patterns in how different players train Fighting, especially for different species. (Personally I overtrain Fighting often)
I still remember my hot discussion with a good online player who went for second level 8 spell instead of training fighting to 10 as Sp. And I am not sure who of us was closer to optimal training.

[yesno]

I think those two examples are not great, sandman, because they are totally extreme examples... Super low HP species with no fighting and super high HP species with all fighting. For fighting to be really relevant interesting decision, it would be relevant most of the time. But most characters train fighting somewhere between those two extremes, where it is not really so interesting.

Well, if I want to argue with "everyone trains Fighting in a boring average way so Fighting does not matter", I should provide examples where this is not true. Of course you can call such examples extreme because they are intended to be far from average by design.

I said "most", and called "extreme" two examples which were literally the limit cases for effect of fighting skill on a character. So I don't think it is fair to imply I will just call extreme any example you bring up.

I think your second example, where a Sp might want to rush some spells and neglect fighting, is better and more to the point. But I don't think this proves that there is anything good or interesting about fighting skill itself... If fighting skill did not exist, you would have to sacrifice some other skill in order to achieve the same thing. It might even be a harder decision to make!

It isn't that it is impossible for fighting skill to be a factor in some interesting decision, but rather skill is too generic, most characters want some and balancing its growth is not really much fun. For me it is usually a matter of wanting to train some magic or weapon or defense skill but, oh, I need to keep my HP growth rate up, so... Or else it's just a safe skill to train to avoid sunk cost into a bad weapon or a spell school I might not find good spells for... If I find great tools and am super-specialized to use them well (like I'm a Sp) then I might be able to neglect it...

[VeryAngryFelid]

I think your second example, where a Sp might want to rush some spells and neglect fighting, is better and more to the point. But I don't think this proves that there is anything good or interesting about fighting skill itself... If fighting skill did not exist, you would have to sacrifice some other skill in order to achieve the same thing. It might even be a harder decision to make!

It already works this way. That Sp was an almost pure caster so Fighting was not very different from Dodging (just defense).
Also that was interesting choice because player went for CBlink (primarily defense again).
I think it is ok to remove melee damage factor from Fighting but I believe player should keep control on gaining extra HP like they do for extra AC or extra EV.

It isn't that it is impossible for fighting skill to be a factor in some interesting decision, but rather skill is too generic, most characters want some and balancing its growth is not really much fun. For me it is usually a matter of wanting to train some magic or weapon or defense skill but, oh, I need to keep my HP growth rate up, so... Or else it's just a safe skill to train to avoid sunk cost into a bad weapon or a spell school I might not find good spells for... If I find great tools and am super-specialized to use them well (like I'm a Sp) then I might be able to neglect it...

Just remove melee damage bonus. (Actually I don't even remember if Fighting adds ranged damage so it will be a clear improvement).
I agree: when I get Robust, I train less Fighting and more Armour/Dodging. When I am lucky with equipment, I train more Fighting and less Armour/Dodging. So now I don't see why you want to remove Fighting. Training magic is more boring IMHO.

[yesno]

I don't think training magic is boring compared to fighting because I am training specifically to use some ability, and there are a lot of different spells of different schools and combinations of schools, so often I have a lot of choices as to which spells I should prioritize. Without fighting, there would be fewer skills, the remaining skills would be more relevant, and HP growth would be automatic.

I had same thought as you... You could remove melee combat effects and rename 'fighting' to 'toughness' or something, so that fighting is not such a thoughtless fallback for doing melee damage while also getting HP. But still I don't think this is desirable. Controlling HP makes less sense than controlling armor and dodging because those skills' effects are dependent on equipment, whereas health is health... Everyone wants some, and it does the same thing no matter what your equipment is, even though its strategic value might change slightly depending on circumstances.

[bananaglory]

Removing fighting skill will lead to really beefy casters, while other backgrounds wont get anything.(Not a good balance, casters are good without much hp really)

Another thing, there are a lot of "universal" skills (Fighting, Armour, Dodging, Stealth, Spellcasting, Invocations and even Shields) that you want at some point. Do you want them removed too and get their effects for "free"? Every skill is investment, it is players decision when to train them.

[yesno]

Spellcasting is the only comparable skill on that list and it could be removed for a lot of the same reasons as fighting.

[yesno]

A lot of games have an extra layer of player abilities which Crawl kind of lacks... Many RPGs have systems like feats, or perks, alongside their skill and attribute systems... These are minor abilities that are usually small adjustments to resistances, hit points, etc., or special abilities and combat maneuvers that are useful, and whose combined effect can be very meaningful, but individually are less important than, say, finding a great magic item or learning a powerful spell. As an example, in Dungeons & Dragons (thinking of 3.0 here, hopefully it hasn't changed too dramatically) characters can take feats every few levels, one of which allows the player to increase a character's hit point total. Apart from taking levels in a class with larger hit dice, this feat is the only way to permanently increase hit points.

Of course, Crawl has religion and mutations, and lacks classes, so I'm not saying Crawl should or easily could adopt such a system, but my point is that the skill system might be picking up some responsibilities that would in another game probably be taken up by a different subsystem...

[johlstei]

Removing fighting skill will lead to really beefy casters, while other backgrounds wont get anything.(Not a good balance, casters are good without much hp really)

Another thing, there are a lot of "universal" skills (Fighting, Armour, Dodging, Stealth, Spellcasting, Invocations and even Shields) that you want at some point. Do you want them removed too and get their effects for "free"? Every skill is investment, it is players decision when to train them.

Those skills are much "sharper" and more distinct than fighting is - they represent a distinct thing that simply trades off with other things. Fighting is more amorphous. Maybe if fighting were strictly HP, it would be worth keeping? (Perhaps rename it constitution or something.) The damage could then be rolled into weapon skill.

I'm willing to guess that fighting is more frequently trained than any of those skills. Although I don't generally make these sorts of characters myself, I could imagine a character on whom I'd never train armour, or dodging, or stealth, or spellcasting, or invocations, but not one where I never train fighting. It's broad and universal in a way those are not.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Making fighting more specific (i.e. either health or melee damage) seems good. Considering that melee damage should be governed by the existing weapon skills I would lean towards HP.

Having a skill purely for extra health does seem a little bit empty then.

Perhaps fighting can turn into something like vigour and give HP and MP and nothing else. One could then go the other direction and take HP/MP increases away from xl potentially.

Spell-casting loses its MP bonus and gains a spell-cast delay reduction. Different spells could start at different delay, so 1.0 for lvl 1 spells and 2.0 for level 9 spells. Spell-casting could then reduce lvl 1 spells to 0.5 and lvl 9 spells to 1.0 at some amount of skill.

It can also give spell-slots, but that could easily be rolled into levelling.

[luckless]

One important thing that the Fighting skill does that nobody has mentioned yet is make weapon mindelay matter more.

Before you hit mindelay on your weapon, it is usually a good idea (for non-casters) to train your weapon skill more than fighting. (In early game, a lot more.) After you hit mindelay, it is never a good idea: your Fighting should always at least equal your weapon skill. (This is because your weapon and Fighting skills stack multiplicatively when it comes to increasing damage--the higher your Fighting, the more damage you get from increasing your weapon skill, and vice versa--and Fighting increases damage almost as much in addition to giving you HP.) So, the sooner your hit mindelay, the sooner you will be able to distribute XP between both of your damage-increasing skills in the most efficient way.

Now, tbh I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think it is a good thing that mindelay matters for skilling in this way. On the other hand, this mechanic is both (a) completely spoilery (you need to know details about the game's math that the game doesn't tell you), and (b) completely counterintuitive (the unspoiled player presumably thinks that weapon skill always matters more). So while there is certainly room for improvement, it's far from clear to me that removing the Fighting skill wholesale would be worth it.

[johlstei]

One important thing that the Fighting skill does that nobody has mentioned yet is make weapon mindelay matter more.

Before you hit mindelay on your weapon, it is usually a good idea (for non-casters) to train your weapon skill more than fighting. (In early game, a lot more.) After you hit mindelay, it is never a good idea: your Fighting should always at least equal your weapon skill. (This is because your weapon and Fighting skills stack multiplicatively when it comes to increasing damage--the higher your Fighting, the more damage you get from increasing your weapon skill, and vice versa--and Fighting increases damage almost as much in addition to giving you HP.) So, the sooner your hit mindelay, the sooner you will be able to distribute XP between both of your damage-increasing skills in the most efficient way.

Now, tbh I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think it is a good thing that mindelay matters for skilling in this way. On the other hand, this mechanic is both (a) completely spoilery (you need to know details about the game's math that the game doesn't tell you), and (b) completely counterintuitive (the unspoiled player presumably thinks that weapon skill always matters more). So while there is certainly room for improvement, it's far from clear to me that removing the Fighting skill wholesale would be worth it.

It's not like puzzling this out is some big rewarding thing or anything either, and once you figure it out, "how do I improve my damage now" has a concrete correct answer and ceases to be a decision at all.

[luckless]

It's not like puzzling this out is some big rewarding thing or anything either, and once you figure it out, "how do I improve my damage now" has a concrete correct answer and ceases to be a decision at all.

Right, but that's not the point. The point is that if "how do I improve my damage now" has a concrete correct answer, you shouldn't have to look at the wiki to find it out.

[Jeremiah]

What about: remove fighting but make highest melee skill affect HP in the same way as fighting does now.

This would both make training weapons beyond mindelay more worthwhile, and to some extent maintain the rpg stereotype of "beefy fighters, fragile casters".

[VeryAngryFelid]

So, the sooner your hit mindelay, the sooner you will be able to distribute XP between both of your damage-increasing skills in the most efficient way.

I am not sure it is optimal point of view. First skill levels cost much less XP than last ones and also it is better to multiply damage by (1.4 *1.2) than by 1.5 especially provided that would result in higher accuracy and monsters do have AC. I mean if I am using giant spiked club as Og or battleaxe as HO I still have Fighting at pretty high level all the time. Nobody is going for Axes 26 while having Fighting 0. Similarly I remember crate suggested to have Fighting at least 40% of UC.

[tankra]

Let me try to sum up the issues that have been raised in this thread:

1) Training Fighting does not represent as meaningful a decision as other skills like Armor or Dodging, because HP is necessary for all characters;

2) The skill itself is slightly opaque in its effect, requiring some sort of knowledge of the wiki to really understand what it does, especially in terms of how it adds melee damage.

Removing Fighting definitely alleviates both of these problems. However, I have a different suggestion that might work as well:

- Separate Fighting into two separate skills that both contribute to HP at different rates (similar to how Spellcasting and Evocations both contribute to MP at a 100% and 50% rate, respectively)

- The first skill could be "pure HP" and be called something descriptive like "Toughness" or "Constitution"

- The second skill could be "half HP/half damage" and be called something like "Power" or "Strength"

How this addresses the two problems:

1) Choosing whether to train Toughness or Power would be an important decision for your character, similar to for example the decision between Armor and Dodging. Also, like those skills, a character could potentially want to train both at the same time. For example, if a melee character has 5 in Power, but wants more HP, he could either train all the way up to Power 10 for a large XP investment, or train Toughness to 5 for a lower investment and get the same amount of HP as Power 10.

2) The effects of training these two new skills would be clearly and much more transparently identifiable. Toughness obviously makes you tougher, and Power obviously makes you hit harder. An unspoiled player playing a "mage"-type character would be more likely to train Toughness than Fighting.

Another final rationale for this suggestion is that, presumably, the Fighting skill exists in the first place to try and allow players to make a meaningful decision between HP and their other core skills. This suggestion would hopefully actually represent this decision better than the Fighting skill and so offer more value than simple deletion.

Thoughts?

[yesno]

Thoughts?

Skill list is already cluttered, so personally I wouldn't like to see Fighting multiply as alternative to removal. Your suggestion of "Constitution" makes me wonder if a Constitution attribute would work in Crawl. It could replace both fighting skill and HP apt. It would restrict decisions about gaining HP to every few levels, and the decision to get more HP might be more meaningful in that context.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

"Meaningful choice" gets mentioned often, and I agree it's a great design goal. OTOH, it is at odds with the decision of hiding the actual numbers that make an informed choice possible, which IMO is a worse goal.

In a skill-based game with 4 defensive attributes (HP/AC/EV/SH) it makes sense to have a skill that (mostly) affects each. But because of the complex interplay of aptitudes, armour rating, armour penalty, shield penalty, and whatnot, it is hard for an unspoiled player to actually make a "meaningful choice" between the defensive skills.

Showing the skill cost of the next point of HP/AC/EV/SH in the skill information screen would help. Because Armour and Shields affect EV as well, the effect on EV should be visible as well.

* * *

As for the suggestion to remove the Fighting skill, I'd rather see it simplified to just give extra HP (and maybe renamed to Endurance to highlight this).

[Chicken]

this mechanic is both (a) completely spoilery (you need to know details about the game's math that the game doesn't tell you), and (b) completely counterintuitive (the unspoiled player presumably thinks that weapon skill always matters more).

This *COULD* be fixed by improving the player status reports, which is always a good thing! Just tell the player, maybe when he hits @, how his weapon damage and delay depend on all known factors. "Spoilery" is a sign of bad game information, not bad play design.

[johlstei]

"Meaningful choice" gets mentioned often, and I agree it's a great design goal. OTOH, it is at odds with the decision of hiding the actual numbers that make an informed choice possible, which IMO is a worse goal.

In a skill-based game with 4 defensive attributes (HP/AC/EV/SH) it makes sense to have a skill that (mostly) affects each. But because of the complex interplay of aptitudes, armour rating, armour penalty, shield penalty, and whatnot, it is hard for an unspoiled player to actually make a "meaningful choice" between the defensive skills.

Showing the skill cost of the next point of HP/AC/EV/SH in the skill information screen would help. Because Armour and Shields affect EV as well, the effect on EV should be visible as well.

* * *

As for the suggestion to remove the Fighting skill, I'd rather see it simplified to just give extra HP (and maybe renamed to Endurance to highlight this).

This would genuinely address all of my complaints - frankly changing its name and moving it to be alongside the other defensive stats would be better than nothing. (Maybe stealth should go there as well.

[tasonir]

Similarly I remember crate suggested to have Fighting at least 40% of UC.

So while it's somewhat unclear due to how much wiggle room you give to the term 'at least', I'd say 40% is too low and you probably want to shoot for around 75% in the general case. Some exception for new characters on D:1 who want to focus unarmed combat until it reaches some reasonable value (probably at least 6 and maybe up to 10), but after that reasonable value, then raise fighting to the roughly 75% range and keep it there.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Similarly I remember crate suggested to have Fighting at least 40% of UC.

So while it's somewhat unclear due to how much wiggle room you give to the term 'at least', I'd say 40% is too low and you probably want to shoot for around 75% in the general case. Some exception for new characters on D:1 who want to focus unarmed combat until it reaches some reasonable value (probably at least 6 and maybe up to 10), but after that reasonable value, then raise fighting to the roughly 75% range and keep it there.

I am not sure but as far as I remember crate provided some formula and it resulted in about 40% for maximizing damage. I think 75% is too high

[tasonir]

Fair enough, maybe I'll train it a bit lower. I could be underestimating how much the decrease in attack delay impacts things.

As for the general thread, I think the reason you see so many conqueror titles isn't actually a problem with fighting skill - it's with weapon skill. Out of 84 wins, I've only had the conqueror title 5 times, and 3 of those used weapons, with only 2 using unarmed. And I use unarmed far more often than I use melee weapons. Since weapon skill is usually worthless pass min delay, it puts a lot more incentive to keep training fighting all the way since it actually scales well up to 27. By that I mean the skill itself scales well, obviously the cost in experience per skill level has the same increasing cost as all skills.

Unarmed is useful to train all the way to 27 (again minus the increasing cost of skill points in general) so there's more choices than just "if you're melee, max out fighting".

[Phaedo]

I personally don't see the problem with having some "heavy commitment" skills like earth magic, where they don't help if you pivot, and "light commitment" skills like fighting and spell Aston get which do. It'd be a problem if 10 points of fighting were fully as good as ten points in staves, but I don't think they are.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

[...] It'd be a problem if 10 points of fighting were fully as good as ten points in staves, but I don't think they are.

I'm not sure which way you mean this, but just to clarify: 10 points in fighting is better than ten points in staves for the vast majority of characters. Many characters can win without training weapon skills after all.