Spider Stomper
Posts: 236
Joined: Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 13:16
Tuesday, 19th May 2020, 17:26
sword of power's *base* damage should scale with HP
It's generally recognized that the Sword of Power lacks a niche. The weapon's HP scaling makes it mainly useful to high XL-characters, but these characters will usually have access to, and be better served by, comparably effective weapons that do not risk becoming much worse in emergencies. Given the dev team's (great!) current goal of reworking the game's unrands to make them more interesting and impactful, this means the weapon should be changed.
As per the subject line, I suggest changing the scaling effect so that it increases base damage rather than slaying. While being pretty simple, this change would make the item much more powerful than normal weapons under ideal conditions, while preserving its risk/reward mechanic. As a bonus, it would reinforce the item's "reward the powerful with power/meek with weakness" theme, since the damage would be much more dependent on the wielder's Strength and skills.
For example, if the scaling worked like it currently does, the weapon's base damage would start at 15 and increase by 1 for every 10 HP, up to a maximum bonus of 27 (for a total of 42). At 20 long blades, this would make the max damage comparable to transmutation-enhanced unarmed damage at similar skill (i.e. more damage than Blade Hands, but less than Dragon Form).
This strikes me as rather high, but of course the numbers could be tweaked via playtesting. Offhand, my own suggestion here would be to set the weapon's delay to 20—so it would take 26 skill to hit mindelay—which would again reinforce what the weapon is supposed to be thematically (both as a big goddamn sword and as a weapon that demands a lot from its wielder) and bring its power closer in line with what Blade Hands can get you at the same level of unarmed. I'd also suggest adding some kind of unwield penalty (maybe a few turns of slow) to make it harder to mitigate the risk by switching to another weapon at low HP.
As per the subject line, I suggest changing the scaling effect so that it increases base damage rather than slaying. While being pretty simple, this change would make the item much more powerful than normal weapons under ideal conditions, while preserving its risk/reward mechanic. As a bonus, it would reinforce the item's "reward the powerful with power/meek with weakness" theme, since the damage would be much more dependent on the wielder's Strength and skills.
For example, if the scaling worked like it currently does, the weapon's base damage would start at 15 and increase by 1 for every 10 HP, up to a maximum bonus of 27 (for a total of 42). At 20 long blades, this would make the max damage comparable to transmutation-enhanced unarmed damage at similar skill (i.e. more damage than Blade Hands, but less than Dragon Form).
This strikes me as rather high, but of course the numbers could be tweaked via playtesting. Offhand, my own suggestion here would be to set the weapon's delay to 20—so it would take 26 skill to hit mindelay—which would again reinforce what the weapon is supposed to be thematically (both as a big goddamn sword and as a weapon that demands a lot from its wielder) and bring its power closer in line with what Blade Hands can get you at the same level of unarmed. I'd also suggest adding some kind of unwield penalty (maybe a few turns of slow) to make it harder to mitigate the risk by switching to another weapon at low HP.