You can't wear this

[snow]

Most players wait until they have 9 strength to wear armour with a -3 evasion penalty since it's really not worth it otherwise. Why not simply remove the penalties altogether and prevent players from equipping such armour until they have 9 strength? At the moment spoiled players generally wouldn't put on armour that makes them weaker and unspoiled players will die and probably not understand what they did wrong.

A little prompt that says "you need 9 strength to wear this" would prevent a lot of seemingly unavoidable deaths for new players. I mean, they are avoidable, just only if you're spoiled and the fact that you even need to be spoiled isn't exactly apparent. This is borderline dipping-for-excalibur.

[mikee]

Well, actually wearing armour with less than 3*EVP in str is sometimes the right thing to do. For example, wearing dragon armour with 8 str would be like wearing -4 EVP armour. So your suggestion would just be restricting choices for no clear reason.

Also, players already get a warning when they wear this amour with 'insufficient' str. So I don't think the reality is anything like the tableau you have painted regarding nethack.

[snow]

It's not very apparent because a player might think that armour always gives a penalty and the penalty in turn is always worth it. There definitely are situations at the moment where wearing weaker armour is the better decision and it's just not very apparent without being spoiled. The differences could literally be the difference between life and death in the stages that it matters.

This is a black and white example of how spoiled info that isn't always acquired from multiple ascensions can prevent seemingly unavoidable deaths.

[greepish]

I don't think it's quite so bad, as one need only to check spell success to find it suddenly drop. Newbies tend to only wear robes if they cast spells anyways. Even the -3 EV penalty, without any strength penalties, can and will cause newb death if they don't prepare their skills accordingly or check spell success.

[Blade]

It's not very apparent because a player might think that armour always gives a penalty and the penalty in turn is always worth it. There definitely are situations at the moment where wearing weaker armour is the better decision and it's just not very apparent without being spoiled. The differences could literally be the difference between life and death in the stages that it matters.

This is a black and white example of how spoiled info that isn't always acquired from multiple ascensions can prevent seemingly unavoidable deaths.

"Your low strength makes using this armour more difficult."

This is not a matter of being spoiled. It is a matter of basic reading comprehension and common sense. The message makes it very, very clear that there is a penalty and how to reduce/remove that penalty. It arguably takes a tiny bit of spoilers to know how much strength you need to mitigate penalties, but anybody skilled enough to have a chance of winning spoiler-less should not have much trouble with this.

[TwilightPhoenix]

So what happens if you're wearing plate with just enough strength to do so and sickness/mutations take your strength below that amount?

[Zelkelion]

So what happens if you're wearing plate with just enough strength to do so and sickness/mutations take your strength below that amount?

Currently, you just whimper a little and hope to regain lost stats, or mutate it away. Jivya likes to do this with stat shuffling.

[TwilightPhoenix]

I don't mean now, I mean with the whole "Can't wear this if your stats aren't high enough" suggestion. That's a biggie because what's preventing someone from getting around it by putting on rings of strength, putting on their armor, and then switching rings?

[njvack]

I don't mean now, I mean with the whole "Can't wear this if your stats aren't high enough" suggestion. That's a biggie because what's preventing someone from getting around it by putting on rings of strength, putting on their armor, and then switching rings?

You *can* wear whatever you want; you just suffer penalties if your STR isn't high enough. So you'd take off the rings and start suffering the penalties.

[Stormfox]

I don't mean now, I mean with the whole "Can't wear this if your stats aren't high enough" suggestion. That's a biggie because what's preventing someone from getting around it by putting on rings of strength, putting on their armor, and then switching rings?

You *can* wear whatever you want; you just suffer penalties if your STR isn't high enough. So you'd take off the rings and start suffering the penalties.

The suggestion at the top of the thread was to not allow wearing of the armour at all if you can't do so without penalty, and the question was how to handle it if you temporarily buff your Str.

[njvack]

Aw man, y kant njvack read?

That alone seems like e convincing reason to leave things as they are, then.

And anyhow, we don't prevent equipping an Exec Axe with no Axes skill; the game doesn't even warn you in that case.

[jejorda2]

Preventing suffering of equipment penalties is removing meaningful decisions, which seems to run counter to the crawl design philosophy listed in the manual. Maybe it's also adding clarity, but clarity is listed as a minor goal while decisions are listed as a major goal.

[CommanderC]

Penalties are fine. The problem is that sometimes you can completely cancel them if you reach a certain threshold (e.g. spell's food costs). An example of a well designed penalty is the effect of heavy armour in spellcasting: no matter how high your armour skill is, the penalty never disappears.

If you give the players something for free, they will always aim for it.