off-hand butchering

[Southpaw]

Why is it that all adventurers carry a small knife to butcher corpses with, but are utterly incapable of putting their shield down to use it if their weapon is glued to their other hand with magical adhesive?

I can understand not being able to carve up a corpse using your off hand if you were holding a cursed two handed weapon or holding a cursed one handed weapon and a cursed shield, but if I'm holding a cursed mace and an uncursed shield (or worse...nothing else at all) it makes no sense that I can't use that hand to cut up a dead hobgoblin when I'm starving to death.

[Blade]

Southpaw: It used to be that you had to carry a bladed weapon for butchering, which was terrible and made things unpleasant for everyone. That was changed fairly recently, but the curse aspect was kept. If it didn't exist, wielding unid'd weapons would be even less risky than it already is, and curses would be even more meaningless.

[Galefury]

All dungeon denizens (even those with clean meat) have poisonous organs almost everywhere in their body. So same as for pufferfish in real life, butchering them is an extremely delicate matter, and one wrong cut could mean death. Because of this peculiar anatomic anomaly any dungeon delver, even the most insane worshiper of Xom or Lugonu, will refuse to butcher anything with their off hand.

[nicolae]

All dungeon denizens (even those with clean meat) have poisonous organs almost everywhere in their body. So same as for pufferfish in real life, butchering them is an extremely delicate matter, and one wrong cut could mean death. Because of this peculiar anatomic anomaly any dungeon delver, even the most insane worshiper of Xom or Lugonu, will refuse to butcher anything with their off hand.

*dungeon delver with a cursed polearm stands six feet away, delicately removing a tiny venom sac from the viscera of a rat with the giant blade of a halberd*

[Southpaw]

All dungeon denizens (even those with clean meat) have poisonous organs almost everywhere in their body. So same as for pufferfish in real life, butchering them is an extremely delicate matter, and one wrong cut could mean death. Because of this peculiar anatomic anomaly any dungeon delver, even the most insane worshiper of Xom or Lugonu, will refuse to butcher anything with their off hand.

Poison Resistance exists, allowing the consumption of otherwise toxic chunks.

Ever killed someone with disintegrate? It blows their (equally edible) chunks all over the ground, which doesn't seem too carefully cut to me.

Southpaw: It used to be that you had to carry a bladed weapon for butchering, which was terrible and made things unpleasant for everyone. That was changed fairly recently, but the curse aspect was kept. If it didn't exist, wielding unid'd weapons would be even less risky than it already is, and curses would be even more meaningless.

I know it's a recent change, I've been playing since 0.6. However, a weak mechanic isn't really a good excuse for a logic gap to remain in a game. You're correct, cursed items are fairly meaningless and the abundance of remove curse scrolls makes them even less threatening. But, it still does not make sense that a character cannot use his offhand to butcher a corpse when his main hand is glued to something blunt.

First off, it is unfairly biased against specific weapons, while not too terrible for the other 75% of weapons out there (getting stuck with a cursed sharp weapon isn't really too bad and you can usually survive until you find a scroll). The fact is a cursed blunt weapon is way worse than a cursed sharp weapon, which is poor design in the first place as it's not exactly like blunt weapons are hugely better than sharp weapons in the early game (early game is really the only time this is a problem, as later on you should have tons of remove curse scrolls or detect curse scrolls to prevent this from being an issue)

Secondly, it's also not terribly difficult to make changes to gameplay to compensate for it. Just to list a few possibilities:

• Increase the number of offhand items which appear early in the dungeon, making them more frequently cursed
• Reduce the amount of remove curse scrolls which appear early in the dungeon, making it harder to get rid of cursed items
• Introduce new enemies which curse items you're wearing

Obviously none of these are perfect, and it may be simply that the curse mechanic is broken in the first place and needs to be addressed to make them more meaningful (i.e. cursed weapons have a chance of doing damage to you instead; armor interferes with you, making you easier to hit or increasing your attack delay; etc.) in addition to the current sticky curse that they exist as. Ashenzari could prevent these additional effects as well.

[BlackSheep]

The nature of cursed weapons isn't just that you can't let them go, but that you don't want to let them go and refuse to use any other weapon.

[Galefury]

A more serious justification: you need both hands to butcher something. Ask any butcher.

The part that does not make sense is that you don't have to remove your shield, and that you can butcher something with 2h weapons.

[galehar]

gameplay > realism

[Jeremiah]

Ways in Which Roguelikes are Not Like Real Life #476

[jejorda2]

A weak mechanic isn't really a good excuse for a logic gap to remain in a game.

This is the crux of your comment, and it's completely the opposite of how crawl works. Logic contributes to clarity, which is only a minor goal. Mechanics contribute to interesting decisions, which are a major goal.

[XuaXua]

Logic contributes to clarity... Mechanics contribute to interesting decisions.

Clarity and interesting discussions lead to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Therefore Crawl leads to suffering.

[defen]

Alternatively, the dungeon is in one of the parts of the world (like the real-world Middle East) where the right hand is used to eat and the left is for wiping. Given the shortage of clean water and utter lack of hand sanitizer, offhand butchering would guarantee nausea/sickness.

[XuaXua]

Off-hand butchering is OK on occasion because it's kinda like someone else handled your meat.

[mumra]

Off-hand butchering is OK on occasion because it's kinda like someone else handled your meat.

Uh ... what?

[Grimm]

He's alluding to an old Andrew "Dice" Clay joke.

[mumra]

He's alluding to an old Andrew "Dice" Clay joke.

Oh, lol. I think I can figure out what the joke was now

[roctavian]

I'm just glad this topic comes up every few months because nobody gets too heated and we can make silly jokes. Anyways, off-hand butchering is in Crawl already, and is called "Animate Dead."

[BlackSheep]

Also, wand of disintegration.

[mageykun]

Orb of destruction. Inner flame.

...isn't it wonderful how many ways we have to literally make things explode?

[XuaXua]

He's alluding to an old Andrew "Dice" Clay joke.

It's not specific to Dice.

[Jabberwocky]

I'm just glad this topic comes up every few months because nobody gets too heated and we can make silly jokes. Anyways, off-hand butchering is in Crawl already, and is called "Animate Dead."

Animate dead resurrects a corpse into a non-edible zombie that will try to kill you if you try to eat it.

[rebthor]

I'm just glad this topic comes up every few months because nobody gets too heated and we can make silly jokes. Anyways, off-hand butchering is in Crawl already, and is called "Animate Dead."

Animate dead resurrects a corpse into a non-edible zombie that will try to kill you if you try to eat it.

FR: Allow players to take bites out of newly created zombies.

[mageykun]

neculimancy

[BlackSheep]

I think we've veered into CYC territory at this point.

[Jabberwocky]

It might be a good idea to move the necrolinary brainstorming into generic brainstorming.

[sardonica]

gameplay > realism

This response is getting really tedious. It's the equivalent of [citation needed] on a forum.

It doesn't add anything to the discussion, it completely ignores whatever problem (real or otherwise) that the OP is trying to suggest, and it's dismissive and rude.

EDIT: The OPs argument here does not rest on realism, it rests on the fact that having a cursed blunt weapon early, really sucks. His argument, in and of itself, incorporates a gameplay element that has nothing to do with realism.

[Grimm]

The OPs argument here does not rest on realism, it rests on the fact that having a cursed blunt weapon early, really sucks. His argument, in and of itself, incorporates a gameplay element that has nothing to do with realism.

Having a cursed blunt weapon early sucks by design.

[BlackSheep]

Why is it that all adventurers carry a small knife to butcher corpses with, but are utterly incapable of putting their shield down to use it if their weapon is glued to their other hand with magical adhesive?

This is questioning the "realism" of cursed weapons. Changing it to be more "realistic"--and I enclose that in quotes since there is no reality to how cursed weaponry operates--does not improve the game. Galehar's statement was a succinct way of saying that appeals to realism should not trump game mechanics. If that's all there is to a discussion, then the discussion is most likely not worth having. If you just want to carp about starving to death because of an early cursed weapon, Game Design Discussion isn't really the place for it. The same post in Dungeon Crawling Advice would garner several suggestions that maybe it's not such a good idea to wield-ID early blunt weaponry without at least reading a scroll of detect curse first.

[XuaXua]

To be honest, the primary blunt weapons you'll pick up early (maces, hammers, clubs) aren't worth wielding in the first place.

[galehar]

gameplay > realism

This response is getting really tedious.

This word is being used haphazardly more and more often.

It's the equivalent of [citation needed] on a forum.

I would quote the philosophy section of the manual, but I realized that this part has been omitted from it. Anyway, it is well known that when game design decisions need to be made, the gameplay criteria has priority over theme, which has priority over realism. That's what "gameplay > theme > realism" means.
It doesn't mean that we don't care about theme and realism, just that they are less important than gameplay.

[KoboldLord]

I'd personally prefer that we not be allowed to butcher with oversized edged weapons, either. Or even any weapon at all save the implicit butchering knife. A bardiche that can reach two tiles over is way the heck too big to be put to the task of chopping a carcass into edible portions. You'd have to choke all the way up the haft that you'd be practically handling the blade itself, at which point you'd have a poor grip and angle to work around.

More relevantly to gameplay, casters following Ashenzari don't sacrifice enough in exchange for binding whatever edged weapon turns up. Early on there's rarely any wield item worth swapping to for a character that doesn't depend on a weapon for damage, and there's no scroll cost to switch weapons for a character that never actually uses one. Giving up butchering would be an actually-meaningful sacrifice for an early-game caster, rather than just handing them a variant of slotless Faith for free.

[XuaXua]

Ashenzari implicitly encourages use of animate skeleton, so it's kinda irrelevant.

[KoboldLord]

Ashenzari implicitly encourages use of animate skeleton, so it's kinda irrelevant.

If you actually find it, there's nothing wrong with a lucky find being useful. Finding a particular rare spell is a very different sort of event than finding a single edged weapon of absolutely any type.

[sardonica]

How about giving blunt weapons a chance to "gib" a meat enemy upon death if the final hit does more than (some fraction) of monster HP?

This would give strong melee characters better luck with Ash while leaving casters (who have other options)

[Galefury]

The only decent suggestion in this thread is KoboldLord's: no butchering with any cursed weapon. Disallowing daggers would be hard to justify, but all other weapons would clearly be very hard to butcher with. This would not only enhance realism, but also simplify curse effects, which would make the game slightly more accessible. Having to memorize which weapons are on the fairly arbitrary "can butcher" list is not interesting at all. And the effect on weapon choice of Ashenzarites and early wield ID are not worth keeping IMO.