The Tavern

I'd like to see a system implemented which creates a numeric "Fatigue" percentage. I feel that it would balance AC/melee with spellcasting and stealth builds. Currently, there are some bizzare combinations which work well, particularly with the removal of strength weighting on items (a poor choice in my opinion.) I feel that defense, AC in particular is often more important than offense. While a strong offense may allow you to survive by removing threats more quickly, it's a larger gamble to stay alive in times where there is a lot of danger. For example, with high AC you can potentially chip away longer with a weak offense, all the while more safely assessing the amount of danger you are in. Splattering everything quickly until the time you don't, then being in hot water isn't as valuable overall towards completing the game as living to fight another day. A combination I'm thinking of is for example, a melee character that wears super heavy armor without enhanced STR and very little skill, but swings a venom dagger over and over and over. Melee's effective "infinite mana" makes it quite a bit more effective for a large amount of the game than spellcasting. I'm glossing over the reasons why here, there are a lot of factors, but this is my conclusion. Fatigue would even the playing field some, without being a solution which boosts other techniques, but instead makes heavy armor/melee more challenging to play.

Each time you swing your weapon, it creates some fatigue, based on how heavy the armor you are wearing is.
Each time you take another action besides melee, it reduces your fatigue (you catch your breath)

Fatigue would modify the accuracy and damage of the melee attack. At 0% fatigue, you strike with no penalty, at 100% fatigue, you would have horrible accuracy and damage, and possibly you might not be able to perform a melee attack at all, or even worse, you stand the chance of passing out.

I realize my statements about AC and melee being overpowered as compared with casting/stealth (except in extreme or late game circumstances) may be met with skepticism, but I feel like defending that position would take quite a bit of explanation, so rather I am presenting this idea instead for anyone who already "gets it."

That would lead to more luring and pillar-dancing which is bad IMHO. I don't want to retreat 8 tiles before killing popcorn just to have full fatigue in case a dangerous monster comes into view. It is enough that we do it for non-popcorn monsters due to HP reasons.

I find the scenario (heavy armor melee with venom dagger) to be rather farfetched. Is there any evidence that this happens? But since the OP says they don't plan to defend the premise here, I won't post ITT anymore.

I disagree with the premise that "high AC, low damage characters are better than ones that invest in melee abilities." And further, since you're uninterested in discussing that premise, I feel like it's inappropriate to be discussing in the game design forum - we have enough "I'm right and uninterested in arguing the merits of my proposal" here already.

Even if I agreed with your premise, I don't like what it would change. First, it just introduces "melee mana," and I don't feel like we need a system that makes the different ways to kill stuff MORE similar. It's a GOOD thing that killing stuff with melee feels different from killing stuff with magic - ideally, every skill would feel different, but this brings us in the wrong direction. Second, I agree with VAF, it just makes pillar dancing better. Which... why do we want to do that? Running away doesn't cost anything unless you're slower than the thing you're fighting, and even then, if you're in heavy armor, it doesn't really cost that much, either.

For someone who's biased to preferring hybrid characters using at least some magic, I feel the game is biased to pure TAB-TAB-TAB melee builds (especially with Trog's "pseudo-magic").
I'm not sure if introducing Fatigue would be the best option as a first choice tweak to making pure melee builds less buffed but it is worth considering if nothing else seems viable.

Ranged spellcasters are vastly more powerful than melee builds, and hunger is a terrible "balancing" mechanism.

tbh I think it might be kind of cool to see the opposite system, where melee gets better the longer you stand still and keep whacking. ("man, I'm starting to take heavy fire from these deep elves and should probably retreat back to that corridor. but I've spend the last ten turns attacking and I'm at that 200% damage sweet spot!")

I agree that melee characters are better than characters that cast damage spells.
I don't think that fatigue is a good mechanic. It would encourage players to walk away even more than what is currently a "good" amount of walking away, and that would be too much time spent on walking away in my opinion.
Especially with the proposed idea of losing accuracy in relation to fatigue gained, that would be quite unfun. It's not like mp where casting a spell at 30 mp is the same as casting it at 4 mp. Of course this accuracy reduction thing could be scrapped but I just don't feel good about the idea overall.
I'd recommend other balance changes instead, but the current balance between melee and damage spell characters is not that bad either.

FWIW when this combination is available in the early game I use it nearly every time, it's pretty much the most effective thing you can do with no skill investment. Obviously your skills may make other things more useful in the long run, but for the first say 7 levels of the dungeon or so, this combination is gold..

Not to say that that means I agree with the OP's contention that it's a problem or with the proposed solution (it sounds pretty awful to me, honestly), only that it's a thing that's pretty effective.