The Tavern

Demonic Touch currently grants an off-hand attack which does a small amount of irresistible damage, and at the 3rd stage inflicts Magic Vulnerability.
I actually find it quite cute, as an auxiliary attack specifically tailored to spellslingers (with low str+dex and some spells that check Will)

However it's nowhere near powerful enough to be worth giving up the shield slot for.

I've heard the suggestion to tweak the mutation so that it works for main-hand attacks too, like claws.
Another option occurred to me, to significantly buff the mutation but have it take away the shield slot instead of the gloves slot. I don't know how buff it would have to be.

Would it be OK if DT didn't do anything for characters with a 2-handed weapon (unlike all other mutations of the same type, which always take away an equipment slot)?

Also, how should DT interact with Manifold Assault?
I think repeatable, reliable, ranged potent debuffs have the potential to be OP.

I rolled a Demonic Touch + Demonic Magic demonspawn summoner (https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/pete ... ordia6.txt) which got me thinking. I'm hesitant to train any weapon skills because it seems rather likely that DT will be changed before I finish the run. (My runs take a looooong time )

Allowing players to wield 2-handed weapons with their offhand disabled would be really bad in terms of consistency. Making the will debuff stackable would be interesting, though... instead of a simple binary risk/reward decision, it would become a press-your-luck risk/reward decision.

I just won with a DsFi with Demonic Touch. It seemed to me to be strictly a deficit, and it simply meant that I lost the glove slot for no benefit. I had no idea of the actual quantifiable damage, so I assumed adding a small amount of off-hand damage would be far worse than 2-handing or using a shield. And applying -Will seemed not as effective as killing the target. But, IDK. I would be happy to learn that I was incorrect.

From my testing, the -Will seemed to have only a minor influence on success rates for affecting monsters. Generally not enough to justify using a turn to apply it, even if successfully applying it on the first attempt were guaranteed.