The Tavern

Deep Dwarves are easy for experienced players, but they're not a good newbie species like Minotaurs because new players hate them.

Deep Dwarves almost always use heavy armor, a broad axe, and a shield. This makes games very similar, more so than for any other species.

Making Deep Dwarf healing always cost 1 max HP instead of sometimes costing 1 max mana would make them more challenging to play as melee characters. That plus some slightly better magic aptitudes would make a pure necromancer or a transition to casting a more viable option. Maybe something like:
-1 spellcasting
+2 earth
0 conjurations
+1 fire
0 hexes

DD is already better with spells than without; not only is Vampiric Draining particularly good, their spell aptitudes are as good as humans' overall or possibly better and they have the same starting int (with slightly better int growth but also a lower xp aptitude).

I'm also mystified at the implication that shields are optimal with axes, the only weapon class that specifically has anti-synergy with shields.

I like the idea, but don't believe the reasoning. My reasoning for this change being good is:
1. it's simpler than the current behaviour
2. max HP is important for survival while max MP is mainly just convenience (unless you're wearing guardian spirit)
Currently players aren't even told what the chance of losing max MP is, if you're unspoiled it could be 50% or it could be 10% for all you know, unless you want to go start and quit 100 deep dwarves to do enough trials to estimate it. A guaranteed loss would be a massive improvement.

Isn't this going to cost a gigantic amount of your max HP before you get reliable HP recovery online? Sure, at max level the cost might be handle-able, but I'm talking about when you're like, lv9 and have used the ability 35 times because you had the gall not to start as a Necromancer. (Example taken from this morgue because they're a good player)

I mean, if you don't find mahkleb until D:7 (the example got him on d:5), that's a lot of max HP to burn on healing yourself. A level 9 deep dwarf will only -have- roughly 90 hp, without using the ability. (depending on Fighting skill) If you find makh late it seems reasonable to extrapolate you'd burn literally half your max hp off and have as much HP as a felid.

To be fair, that game did not really attempt to optimally conserve HP (I played the early game drunk and pretty sloppy) and is also one of the weakest earlygame backgrounds.

Deep Dwarf is literally the most powerful species in the game, so from a balancing perspective it's reasonable to nerf them pretty hard. That said, I don't think this change will make Deep Dwarf more appealing to anyone. The worse their inbuilt healing gets, the more incentive there is to stash weak monsters for vamp drain or to kill with Makhleb for healing later, and the more incentive there is to hyper-optimize every trivial fight earlygame. I think these problems need to be fixed in any prospective DD rework. Ideally, you'd also want to make Makhleb less attractive so that DD characters become more diverse.

As far as clarity goes, you can put the chance that the healing ability costs max HP/max MP in the ability description.

duvessa wrote:axes, the only weapon class that specifically has anti-synergy with shields.

Please explain

Cleave does nothing unless you're next to multiple monsters, so axes compare very poorly to maces/polearms/long blades if you're fighting one-on-one. SH is heavily penalized if you are getting attacked multiple times in a turn, which is exactly what will happen if you're next to multiple monsters. The best situation for axes is the worst situation for shields and vice versa.

I suppose you can also say long blades have anti-synergy with shields since SH can prevent you from getting ripostes, but that's such an infinitesimally small effect that it makes more sense to ignore it imo.

Doesn't unarmed have anti-synergy with shields too?

Hellmonk wrote:The worse their inbuilt healing gets, the more incentive there is to stash weak monsters for vamp drain or to kill with Makhleb for healing later, and the more incentive there is to hyper-optimize every trivial fight earlygame.

I don't like that personally, but I kind of thought that was the "theme" of Deep Dwarves.

If you want to make other gods more viable, you could give Deep Dwaves an ability that trades piety from any god for healing...?

Axes are fine with shields. They block a lot of ranged damage when your primary damage dealing method is at melee range. Even when there are multiple targets next to you, it's often because one or two slipped past a doorway rather than you charged into being fully surrounded immediately. Also, if you're fully surrounded, chances are decent that you aren't that concerned about several of the monsters because they are just popcorn or going to become healing potions as you focus your damage on a primary target. Add to that, that despite any penalties, the offensive benefits to reducing incoming damage by a significant amount are still worthwhile because you cannot deliver damage as effectively unless you are able to mitigate it. Broad axe's base 13 damage and better than executioner's accuracy are more than sufficient to clear everything in the game, and with less skill required. Leaving shields trained at 0 leaves several levels of cheap skills and potential shield/artefact properties on the table.

Honestly, Deep Dwarf's lack of natural healing is so fundamentally contradictory to the game philosophy's focus on the tactical layer that the only real fix is to remove or radically rework them.

cliffracer wrote:Honestly, Deep Dwarf's lack of natural healing is so fundamentally contradictory to the game philosophy's focus on the tactical layer that the only real fix is to remove or radically rework them.

I'm not sure how 'lack of natural regeneration' is fundamentally contradictory to any perceived tactical focus. Regeneration, itself, is a fundamentally strategic concern, the amount of hps you naturally regen during combat isn't usually relevant at all.

I mean you might have legitimate concerns about how DD's 'lack of regen' schtick can be fit into the game, but it's pretty much not relevant to the tactical layer of the game at all.

Siegurt wrote:I'm not sure how 'lack of natural regeneration' is fundamentally contradictory to any perceived tactical focus. Regeneration, itself, is a fundamentally strategic concern, the amount of hps you naturally regen during combat isn't usually relevant at all.

I mean you might have legitimate concerns about how DD's 'lack of regen' schtick can be fit into the game, but it's pretty much not relevant to the tactical layer of the game at all.

That's pretty much the idea--Deep Dwarf's chief restriction has almost no effect at the tactical layer and thus shifts things upwards to the strategic layer. The species bonuses make every fight easy (hence the popularity for speedrunning) and the game becomes entirely about strategic management of an abstract pool of HP between fights.

Contrast it with well designed power-at-a-price species like Formicid and Demigod. In both of these cases the prices (no haste, teleportation, or blinking or no divine abilities) are most acute at the tactical level.

Plantissue wrote:Doesn't unarmed have anti-synergy with shields too?

Technically no; but the offhand aux attack does (which is probably what you meant). Unless I'm mistaken the offhand punch doesn't actually require using unarmed, but rather having a free hand. So you could for example use a demon blade + offhand punch, rather than shield. Offhand punch is sort of its own separate thing, but then again it's only really used by unarmed people because without unarmed skill to raise the damage it's pretty useless. Honestly even when I am training unarmed I generally don't care about a second weaker hit. I know some people like the offhand punch, but I'd much rather just hit with my main hand.

I thought shields also made unarmed attacks slower as well, but nevermind.

In any case I don't consider axes with shields that much different in terms of effectiveness than with any other weapon type. It's going to be pretty rare you would want to engage more than one enemy with axes anyways, exceptions being healing onhits and kills, and when you do end up engaging more than one enemy without such abilities, the shield is just as effective irrespective of the weapon; it is the axe itself that is less efficient, not the axe and shield combo.

The Tavern

make DD healing cost 1 max HP

make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP

Re: make DD healing cost 1 max HP