The Tavern

Change bucklers to allow the use of two-handed weapons, except that if you use a two-hander and a buckler, the skill penalty should be much higher and require a much higher skill level to mitigate back to zero. Formicids would have zero penalty associated with using a buckler.

Why?
Because currently, two-handers of all sorts (except for formicids) often fall short of a one-hander and shield combination. Why? Well, it's potentially a long discussion. The short answers are that the best one handers approach similar damage as two-handers but with increased accuracy, while of course you gain extra defense from blocking and you can take advantage of extra brands and artifact stats/properties. I'm aware I could probably be challenged on this assertation, and I can defend it... but I'd rather this not become the main focus. Bottom-line is, for me, I would appreciate not almost all the time finding a two-hander and thinking to myself, gee too bad it's two-handed, POS, chuck.

This change would allow a person to use a two-hander but still potentially take advantage of properties on a buckler, thus somewhat bridging the gap in effectiveness between one-handers and two-handers.

It's funny how far opinions on this have changed. It feels like not too long ago(a few years ago when I first started playing) "common knowledge" was that 1H and shield just wasn't worth it because of how base damage is multiplied by weapon skill and so each point is worth more than it looks.

My personal opinion is that 1H/2H is already fairly balanced.

Change the game in a significant manner because of reasons that I am sure of but which I admit are highly complex and hotly debated, but dont ask me to explain any of that I cant be bothered to actually defend my position (even in my OP), just believe me when I state my extreme opinion despite the fact that my in-game reaction to the perceived problem is blatantly wrong.

crawlnoob wrote:Change the game in a significant manner because of reasons that I am sure of but which I admit are highly complex and hotly debated, but dont ask me to explain any of that I cant be bothered to actually defend my position (even in my OP), just believe me when I state my extreme opinion despite the fact that my in-game reaction to the perceived problem is blatantly wrong.

Although brief, I did state supporting reasons, unlike you.

Shard1697 wrote:It's funny how far opinions on this have changed. It feels like not too long ago(a few years ago when I first started playing) "common knowledge" was that 1H and shield just wasn't worth it because of how base damage is multiplied by weapon skill and so each point is worth more than it looks.

My personal opinion is that 1H/2H is already fairly balanced.

I recall 2-handed weapons doing more damage in the past, but their base was reduced.

Claymores had a base 19 damage, then renamed to triple swords currently with 18.
Executioner's axes had 20 damage, now 18.

Another thing which has changed is that when strength weighting was in, the biggest two-handed weapons generally speaking had the highest preferences towards strength, which adds damage. In relational terms to the weapons with strength weighting, one-handers without strength weighting can take better advantage of pumping strength. That they are more accurate and thus less dex is needed to reliably hit (instead going into str) only further seals it. Sure 2-handers work ok in terms of accuracy when skills are very high, but at that point the relative cost of at least a moderate amount of shield training isn't as great (meaning: a few points weapon training at the highest levels costs as much as many points of shield training up from 0) On that note, I'm not completely sure - but I think that the way experience worked changed also. Don't crucify me if I'm wrong but I think that skill level costs used to go up the more skill level points you possessed across all skills, but now it doesn't matter.

shields penalize accuracy too

duvessa wrote:shields penalize accuracy too

By the time you can confidently swing a 2H-weapon, no, they don't.

I don't see a problem with balance: it's all determined by weapons in particular game. For extreme examples, in one game I switched to 2h weapon when already having 15 levels in shields, in another game I switched to a regular shield when already having great mace at min delay and 0 levels in shield.

Majang wrote:
duvessa wrote:shields penalize accuracy too

By the time you can confidently swing a 2H-weapon, no, they don't.

By the time you can confidently swing a 2H-weapon, you dont even care about accuracy because you hit almost every time anyhow. You also do more than enough damage, not only to make up for the times that you miss, but for the possibility that you are lacking an ego or three on a magic/artefact shield you may or may not have found in a given game, unlike a very common 2H weapon (and we all know crawl is a game of opportunity). Given how commonly players take them to the endgame even if they are not the "top-tier" 2H version of their weapon class, then it becomes pretty clear that "chuck them in the trash they are shit" is a really bad decision, which draws into serious question of course all of the arguments that OP based that decision on in the first place.

But of course, OP would rather we not get into that old chestnut, as he finds the debate to be rather long and dull and, I imagine, painful to his position.

If it were up to me, I would take the argument in the opposite direction completely. Sword and board tactics are vastly underplayed and could use a boost. Bump the loading numbers for special 1handers which are awfully rare, if just a little bit. Eveningstars, broadaxes, quick blades in particular are pretty hard to hope for, would be nice if you could aim a build towards having a decent chance of picking one up by depths, given that your decision to hamstring your XP use by picking shields is typically going to come MUCH earlier in the game. I like the demon-blade/demon-whip solution... would be nice to see more higher end monsters wielding useful weapon types.

svendre wrote:
Shard1697 wrote:It's funny how far opinions on this have changed. It feels like not too long ago(a few years ago when I first started playing) "common knowledge" was that 1H and shield just wasn't worth it because of how base damage is multiplied by weapon skill and so each point is worth more than it looks.

My personal opinion is that 1H/2H is already fairly balanced.

I recall 2-handed weapons doing more damage in the past, but their base was reduced.

Claymores had a base 19 damage, then renamed to triple swords currently with 18.
Executioner's axes had 20 damage, now 18.

Axes got base damage reduced after introduction of cleaving - as they could more damage per turn to multiple monsters.
Long blades got base damage reduced after introduction of riposte - as they could do more damage... no wait no one has yet calculated what the fuck is the damage result after this change, both 1vs1 and 1vs.
I won't focus about the debate 1vs1 is better or worse of 1vsN and this was rather a strict nerf than a gameplay change as it isn't the question.

Anyway, those changes affected both 1h and 2h in same way. Actually, 1h long blades were penalized more because riposte interact badly with shield as shield block trigger before dodging.
Moreover it's also arguable that past early game there are more dangerous monsters with relatively high AC than ones with high EV, so a reduction to a lower base damage (1h) is a bigger nerf than a reduction of an higher base damage (2h).

svendre wrote:The short answers are that the best one handers approach similar damage as two-handers but with increased accuracy, while of course you gain extra defense from blocking and you can take advantage of extra brands and artifact stats/properties.

This seems wrong to me. An executioner's axe at min-delay does vastly more damage than a broad axe at min-delay. Same with a triple sword / demon blade.
(I tested a HuFi with +9 demon blade of freezing at 14 long blade/15 shields and a +9 triple sword of freezing at 24 long blades. The damage difference is huge. Change freezing to elec if you like; it doesn't make much difference.)

in general, 1H/2H is fairly balanced. Throwing might be a bit overpowered. Bucklers are mostly placebos, but sometimes give convenient resistances.

What is the damage difference in percentage? For the most part playing a melee character, I find lvl 15 shields in the game blocking about half the attacks. Then again in the later parts of the game for shields don't block most of the deadliest attacks.

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