The Fighter Background

[some12fat2move]

The ranged attacks it doesn't help against are the only actual threats to a troll.
The offhand attack is such a huge portion of your damage output it's not even funny.

Do you even play trolls?

None recently, but I've splatted 100 if not more Trolls in my day. When I start wielding a shield to train up shield skill, it seems to almost break even in melee damage lost vs damage blocked at 0 shield level, a bit to the worse I'll admit, but that changes after a few levels. Never tested it in fsim though so I can't say for sure. I'll agree with you that ranged attackers are a much bigger concern, but "only actual threats" is an exaggeration.

[BlackSheep]

Except your own thread shows that a large shield cuts incoming damage by around 67%...

[some12fat2move]

Regarding the offhand attack...

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5738

It's 20% to 30% of your damage

Against a rat, yes. Against some real AC, different story.

[crate]

At 27 unarmed/27 fighting the offhand punch is about 20% of your total UC damage on a troll against skeletal warriors (so your main hand attack deals about four times as much damage). This probably goes down a bit as your skill levels decrease since your individual hits are less powerful, but probably not too much.

I seem to be using a version of crawl where fsim doesn't work with shields defensively and I'm too lazy to update so I can't speak about the defensive upgrade. From a quick non-mathematical test a large shield at 15 skill was an enormous defensive boost against skeletal warriors (much more than makes up for the lost damage).

Anyway on a troll I would almost always prefer to have a shield because troll defenses are awful and you do a ton of damage anyway (and a large shield is a pretty significant defensive boost for a troll in a 3-rune game at least, and you might have an ego on the shield also). For other races perhaps you don't want a shield with UC ... Ghouls come to mind, since they'll not have very much SH anyway unless you use something larger than a buckler, which is obviously a large investment.

[some12fat2move]

I honestly think some people who post here have never actually won before. I can just imagine you casting meph cloud with like a 35% fail rate while tabbing into confused enemies with some short sword that you have almost no skill in because your XP is spread over too many skills. Yes you can do stupid crap like that but it's far from optimal and you're just setting yourself to die before the temple.

If you want to play a hybrid then play a hybrid. Play a necro, enchanter, skald... and not some janky HOWz that melees. I guess skald is the closest to a light armored fighter as it gets but even then it's still optimal to invest in armor and wear dragon armor. Going with a robe when you don't have to is just a bad play.

Magic Dart kills everything in the early dungeon just fine, you just have to remember to level conjurations before anything else. Once you have good success rates on Meph and Flame, then you get badass in fighting, armour, and weapon skill (probably polearms, though it depends what you find). Remember, orcish armour impedes spell success less on orcs. High Elves are another great species choice for light armored fighter.

PS: just last week I won two characters in a row. They were pure wizards though, not this kind of build. If you want to criticize a point or idea, by all means go ahead, but don't make worthless comments attacking the people who post them. They don't help me, you, or anyone else reading your posts. I'm not trying to be condescending here - staying polite all the time can get very difficult and I have no right to throw the first stone - but I'd really appreciate it if we could argue in a respectful tone.

[snow]

I'm criticizing your HOWz build and not your personal character. If anything as someone who's ascended multiple times I hold you in high regard and just... I don't know... expect MORE from you. I mean you level conj too? How many skills are you putting XP into exactly? And HO isn't exactly known for having high int or casting apts.

If you're going to argue for some conj/dodging/armor/melee/etc./etc. sort of hybrid I'm going to question it because there's just not that much XP early in the game... and by mid game if you just went all into armor and your weapon skill you can easily tab your way to Zot (the early game is the hardest part IMO).

[TehDruid]

Shields have that extra penalty, which has a (if i remember correctly) 50% chance on each attack of increasing your attack delay by 0.1 when attacking unarmed with a shield, a penalty that never disappears even if you have the appropriate Shields skill to remove al other penalties. Not sure how a shield makes up for the loss of your off-hand punch (rather low damage against decent AC opponents, just like all the auxiliary attacks pretty much) and the extra attack delay that kicks in regularly... I suppose a shield is good for a 3 rune game. Still, there's the exp investment. Unless going with Trog, learning Haste instead of using a shield is probably much better. In some light/medium dragon armour I guess.

We can all pretty much agree that Shields suck in extended and that doesn't change unless Shields are re-designed to give at least partial protection from hellfire and/or other similar boons. Haste will stay relevant here, so if going for extended, there's another issue to think about. Shields will be nigh-useless, is it worth training it up for more than a buckler or just work on Charms for Haste and use a two hander for extended?

Bottom line, about shields, they could use some love, 'cause staying where they are is just horrible (at the very least having a medium shield as a starting piece of equipment for the fighter is really obnoxious, the way shields are now), and removing them entirely is... Uh, I'm sure there's some people that wouldn't appreciate such a removal.

I still think Fighter should get a buckler for now, though. To make things less awkward.

[snow]

As for shields tests on my thread: those are for melee hits. Ranged hits are calculated differently which is the whole point of my argument: if ranged hits were calculated like melee hits then shields wouldn't be trash.

Anyway I agree with fighters instead getting a buckler. Gladiators recently lost their buckler anyway I think.

[some12fat2move]

I'm criticizing your HOWz build and not your personal character. If anything as someone who's ascended multiple times I hold you in high regard and just... I don't know... expect MORE from you. I mean you level conj too? How many skills are you putting XP into exactly? And HO isn't exactly known for having high int or casting apts.

If you're going to argue for some conj/dodging/armor/melee/etc./etc. sort of hybrid I'm going to question it because there's just not that much XP early in the game... and by mid game if you just went all into armor and your weapon skill you can easily tab your way to Zot (the early game is the hardest part IMO).

"I honestly think some people who post here have never actually won before" is not a logical criticism of the HOWz build. Saying "your arguments are just silly" doesn't help the discussion. Again I'm not trying to villainize you here I just don't like reading statements like those and I'm pretty sure nobody does.

I actually find tabbing through Zot to be pretty darn tough, which is interesting since my favorite build used to be MiBe. I do much better with DEWz, MuWz, OpWz, and SpWz. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for magic but my brute characters tend to die out after early game. I have to admit my hybrid characters don't do a whole lot better, but they seem fairly effective. While it might be a saner choice to start out purely physical and work magic in when armour skill is higher, you lose the benefits of having awesome spells like Meph to protect you from early-game perils, and the gigantic INT gain from the Wizard class. I'm not saying hybrid builds are the best, but they work and definitely have some cool advantages.

However, it could be that I've just gotten used to them after playing a ton of them. A couple of friends of mine play crawl, and we used to get together and have our own sort of tournaments in which one of us would click random species and then random background, all three of us would play a single character of the resulting combination, and the highest scoring player would be declared the winner. I learned a lot about the game this way from seeing the many different species and backgrounds in action, trying to get as much score as possible on every character I played, and watching others play the same exact character and learning from their mistakes and triumphs. It also brought me into contact with a lot of hybrid or "battlemage" characters - not that good at melee and not that good at magic, but powerful in their capacity to do both.

In any case, from looking at CIPs and such on this forum, I got the impression that a hybrid style was pretty common... Is that not the case?

[KoboldLord]

There's a whole lot more nuance on the shields issue than it usually gets credit for, but I honestly don't think it's very on-topic anyway. We already got lots of shield threads in this forum; why not take the sweeping generalizations and utility arguments there? The problem with the fighter's medium shield is a narrower one, anyway; -3 to accuracy is too severe a hit to accept when you're already sucking up another penalty from body armor and are hoping to get another penalty from a weapon upgrade. Early-game weapon skill really only stretches so far at mitigating the penalties. It's more-or-less the same reason you don't start spamming Sticky Flame the moment you ding XL4; it has a good chance to kill you until your skills are higher.

The commit that removed bucklers from gladiators and gave them to fighters wasn't really the solution I was hoping for, but I suppose it did manage to distinguish their starting gear as intended.

[roctavian]

Would it be better or worse if fighters started in ring mail, rather than scale? Or is it too little a difference to matter anyways?

[some12fat2move]

Would it be better or worse if fighters started in ring mail, rather than scale? Or is it too little a difference to matter anyways?

IMO fighters do better in scale mail because of the GDR. I never notice EV penalty affecting anything but spell success, unarmed attacks, evasion, and stealth, none of which are likely to be a priority of a normal-size fighter before they spot a ring mail on the dungeon floor.

[cerebovssquire]

Would it be better or worse if fighters started in ring mail, rather than scale? Or is it too little a difference to matter anyways?

IMO fighters do better in scale mail because of the GDR. I never notice EV penalty affecting anything but spell success, unarmed attacks, evasion, and stealth, none of which are likely to be a priority of a normal-size fighter before they spot a ring mail on the dungeon floor.

I agree that scale mail is better than ring mail, but AC, not GDR, is the main factor here. GDR is extremely low for both of these armours, especially when you have very low AC anyway. It makes no noticable difference.

[Baldu]

I'm criticizing your HOWz build and not your personal character. If anything as someone who's ascended multiple times I hold you in high regard and just... I don't know... expect MORE from you. I mean you level conj too? How many skills are you putting XP into exactly? And HO isn't exactly known for having high int or casting apts.

If you're going to argue for some conj/dodging/armor/melee/etc./etc. sort of hybrid I'm going to question it because there's just not that much XP early in the game... and by mid game if you just went all into armor and your weapon skill you can easily tab your way to Zot (the early game is the hardest part IMO).

Dude wizards are great for making hybrids like the guy is saying. Here`s what a typical one of mine looks like going into lair (was actually a wanderer rather than wizard but started with high int and minor magic book so pretty much the same):

  Code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.11.0 character file.

Baldu the Conjurer (Demigod Wanderer)             Turns: 16587, Time: 01:30:08

HP  84/84        AC  9     Str 17 (18) XL: 11   Next: 17%
MP  27/27        EV 13     Int 25      God:
Gold 456         SH 11     Dex 14      Spells:  8 memorised,  7 levels left

Res.Fire  : . . .   See Invis. : .   a - orc trident
Res.Cold  : . . .   Warding    : .   u - +2 orc leather armour {MR}
Life Prot.: . . .   Conserve   : .   V - +0 buckler
Res.Poison: .       Res.Corr.  : .   e - +0 spiked helmet
Res.Elec. : .       Clarity    : .   L - +1 cloak {MR}
Sust.Abil.: . .     Spirit.Shd : .   (no gloves)
Res.Mut.  : .       Stasis     : .   K - +0 pair of boots
Res.Rott. : .       Ctrl.Telep.: .   (no amulet)
Saprovore : . . .   Levitation : .   f - +3 ring of strength
                    Ctrl.Flight: .   i - ring of regeneration

Skills:
 + Level 5.9 Fighting
 + Level 5.2 Dodging
 - Level 1.0 Stealth
 - Level 1.7 Stabbing
 - Level 5.3 Shields
 + Level 5.5 Traps & Doors
 + Level 6.8 Spellcasting
 * Level 9.0 Conjurations
 - Level 3.0 Summonings
 - Level 3.0 Translocations
   Level 1.7 Earth Magic

You know the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Magic Dart            Conj           #####        1%          1    None
e - Conjure Flame         Conj/Fire      #####....    4%          3    None
f - Mephitic Cloud        Conj/Pois/Air  ####.....    10%         3    None
g - Call Imp              Summ           ####......   4%          2    None
l - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          4%          2    None
m - Repel Missiles        Chrm/Air       ##........   14%         2    None
w - Fulsome Distillation  Trmt/Necr      N/A          10%         1    None
x - Sublimation of Blood  Necr           ##........   14%         2    None


Once i`m done with lair and orc, if I haven`t found good books or if I found a good weapon I`ll put on heavy armor and train weapon+armor and later charms for haste+phase shift, otherwise I`ll keep using (demon) trident to tab the easy stuff and spells for everything else.

As for your assertion that with high weapon and armor tabbing will easily get you a victory it is a massive exaggeration otherwise everyone would have dozens of wins. Every build has different challenges they have trouble with, the easiest probably being (cross)bow + heavy armor of oka/tso with charms, wizard hybrids being somewhere in the middle for difficulty.

Anyway, sorry for continuing the derail! On topic, for the change that removed bucklers from gladiators and gave them to fighters I guess that probably solves the problem. I`m guessing fighters will now get their starting skills in weapon/armor/shield while gladiators will get them in weapon/dodge?

[cerebovssquire]

Gl got slightly higher dodging to compensate, and has higher weapon skill than Fi. Fi has higher Shields, Armour and Fighting.

[XuaXua]

Can Gladiators take unarmed, or is that only the realm of the Monk?

[cerebovssquire]

Gl with claws can, so Fe (forced) and Gh/Tr (recommended option), but so can Fi. Otherwise no.

[snow]

I'm criticizing your HOWz build and not your personal character. If anything as someone who's ascended multiple times I hold you in high regard and just... I don't know... expect MORE from you. I mean you level conj too? How many skills are you putting XP into exactly? And HO isn't exactly known for having high int or casting apts.

If you're going to argue for some conj/dodging/armor/melee/etc./etc. sort of hybrid I'm going to question it because there's just not that much XP early in the game... and by mid game if you just went all into armor and your weapon skill you can easily tab your way to Zot (the early game is the hardest part IMO).

Dude wizards are great for making hybrids like the guy is saying. Here`s what a typical one of mine looks like going into lair (was actually a wanderer rather than wizard but started with high int and minor magic book so pretty much the same):

  Code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.11.0 character file.

Baldu the Conjurer (Demigod Wanderer)             Turns: 16587, Time: 01:30:08

HP  84/84        AC  9     Str 17 (18) XL: 11   Next: 17%
MP  27/27        EV 13     Int 25      God:
Gold 456         SH 11     Dex 14      Spells:  8 memorised,  7 levels left

Res.Fire  : . . .   See Invis. : .   a - orc trident
Res.Cold  : . . .   Warding    : .   u - +2 orc leather armour {MR}
Life Prot.: . . .   Conserve   : .   V - +0 buckler
Res.Poison: .       Res.Corr.  : .   e - +0 spiked helmet
Res.Elec. : .       Clarity    : .   L - +1 cloak {MR}
Sust.Abil.: . .     Spirit.Shd : .   (no gloves)
Res.Mut.  : .       Stasis     : .   K - +0 pair of boots
Res.Rott. : .       Ctrl.Telep.: .   (no amulet)
Saprovore : . . .   Levitation : .   f - +3 ring of strength
                    Ctrl.Flight: .   i - ring of regeneration

Skills:
 + Level 5.9 Fighting
 + Level 5.2 Dodging
 - Level 1.0 Stealth
 - Level 1.7 Stabbing
 - Level 5.3 Shields
 + Level 5.5 Traps & Doors
 + Level 6.8 Spellcasting
 * Level 9.0 Conjurations
 - Level 3.0 Summonings
 - Level 3.0 Translocations
   Level 1.7 Earth Magic

You know the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Magic Dart            Conj           #####        1%          1    None
e - Conjure Flame         Conj/Fire      #####....    4%          3    None
f - Mephitic Cloud        Conj/Pois/Air  ####.....    10%         3    None
g - Call Imp              Summ           ####......   4%          2    None
l - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          4%          2    None
m - Repel Missiles        Chrm/Air       ##........   14%         2    None
w - Fulsome Distillation  Trmt/Necr      N/A          10%         1    None
x - Sublimation of Blood  Necr           ##........   14%         2    None


Once i`m done with lair and orc, if I haven`t found good books or if I found a good weapon I`ll put on heavy armor and train weapon+armor and later charms for haste+phase shift, otherwise I`ll keep using (demon) trident to tab the easy stuff and spells for everything else.

As for your assertion that with high weapon and armor tabbing will easily get you a victory it is a massive exaggeration otherwise everyone would have dozens of wins. Every build has different challenges they have trouble with, the easiest probably being (cross)bow + heavy armor of oka/tso with charms, wizard hybrids being somewhere in the middle for difficulty.

Anyway, sorry for continuing the derail! On topic, for the change that removed bucklers from gladiators and gave them to fighters I guess that probably solves the problem. I`m guessing fighters will now get their starting skills in weapon/armor/shield while gladiators will get them in weapon/dodge?

Instead why don't you just win? It's like you have this elaborate plan to try to hammer a wizard into a fighter when you can just, you know, cast mystic blast or whatever over and over, grab three runes, and win. It's really not that hard. If you want to play as a fighter then chose a fighter. If you want to play as a skald then chose a skald. If you want to do everything at once... well... enjoy a very long and tedious game where every fight is a struggle because you're a jack of all trades and master of none.

It's sad but I used to think like you. You want to play as class X but it has a hard time early on... so you play as class Y and try to hammer it into a class X. Instead honestly you should just learn to be better at class X... it's much easier. As for heavy armor fighters being all about the tab key: it's true. Yes you have to stair dance, lead things into hallways, and bring rangers around corners. Yes sometimes you get an early dragon or something and need to sip a resistance potion. But those are things you have to do with ANY combination and heavy armor fighters have the easiest 3 rune games because the thinking process is MUCH simpler and 99% of the time you just tab dudes.

Here's a game I did not too long ago using a heavy armored fighter... so you can understand what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix7srBKuXd0

[some12fat2move]

heavy armor fighters have the easiest 3 rune games

Not for me they don't. I've played more MiBe than DEWz, and won more DEWz than MiBe. Guess we just have to agree to disagree as it chalks down to a difference of opinion.

[Baldu]

...

The point is that playing crawl is more about having fun than about winning. Hybrids are about middle difficulty in terms of achieving a win below the easier combos and above the harder ones, with wizards being one of the better starting points for hybrids since unlocking the full potential of the minor magic book takes very little experience and is enough to finish lair and orc, so all the other extra XP can be used to adapt/experiment.

Anyway, this is super off topic so if anyone wants to continue talk about hybrids make a new thread and post a link to it here, otherwise, it`s back to fighter chat.

[One-Eyed Jack]

Wizard is a really good hybrid background. They get three spells that are fairly easy to cast that have great synergy with melee combat (blink, rmsl, mephitic cloud) and have a very good stat array.

[cerebovssquire]

Conjure Flame is also great with melee, since you need to be in melee range to prevent monsters from stepping out of the flame. Call Imp isn't bad either - either you distract the monster, so the high-damage low-HP imps like white or shadow imp can survive, or your imps distract the monster, reducing the damage you take.
"Hybrid" in the early game doesn't have to mean skill investment. Branded daggers, whips and spears are all very good at 0 skill.
(probably split this topic?)

[galehar]

No I'm not splitting the thread and sorting through the mess. It's not like the original topic had much value anyway (I'm talking about the content, not the subject).
Next post not about the fighter background I'll just lock the thread.

[Jeremiah]

Maybe part of the problem with the background is not that their starting equipment is all that bad, but how easy it is to find equivalent gear on the early levels of the dungeon.

Imagine what it would be like if 70% of monsters carried a spellbook, but you could frequently get to late Lair before finding your first weapon or armour. Then maybe a fighter's starting gear might be valued a bit more highly.

So... maybe a solution could be to make it harder to pick up medium to heavy armour from the early dungeon, by stopping it being routinely dropped by low level monsters. Goblins should only get leather, low level orcs leather or ring mail. To have a decent chance to get chain or plate you should have to kill an orc knight or unique, visit the Orc:4 shops or worship Okawaru. Of course there would still be a chance for good armour to be generated on the dungeon floor or in shops just like there is for books.

Of course this would be a nerf to these monsters, so maybe they should get some base AC so their overall average toughness remains about the same.

An alternative would be to have weak monsters still wear armour but for there to be a greatly reduced chance for it to be available to the player. You could justify this as the armour getting damaged beyond usefulness by the fighting. (You just stuck your spear through that orc's chainmail 5-6 times - maybe it won't be as protective as it once was...)

[Lasty]

I haven't played many bookless backgrounds, and to the extent that I have, I haven't done all that well with them, so let me ask: what are some things that are significantly helpful for those backgrounds in the early game?

Starting with a book generally means starting with some combination of powerful attacks and escape methods, usually combined with one or two specific skills which can be boosted to increase the effectiveness of both the attacks and escapes.

Both types of fighters already have fine offensive options. Perhaps it would make sense to start Fighters and Gladiators with some distinctive panic buttons -- Fi gets potion of might and potion of berserk rage, Gladiators start with scroll of blinking (or teleport) and potion of agility?

[cerebovssquire]

Monster/player inconsistency is dumb and non-intuitive, so why should we have damaged/destroyed monster armour but indestructible player armour (with the exception of acid)?

[jejorda2]

Increase the amount of enchant armour scrolls, give every hit that does damage more than 15% of your max hp a chance of damaging armour, and let armour become unwearable when its enchantment is less than its base AC *-1. Now, armours are a consumable and you have to choose which ones you want to wear when. The second plate mail you find is no longer useless.

[One-Eyed Jack]

It seems like a counterproductive idea to make major changes to the game in order to accommodate a background. It'd be much easier to just remove fighter.

[cerebovssquire]

  Code:

<LordSloth> Elynae: Increase the amount of identify scrolls. A tenth of the time you get hit hard by a blunt weapon, you have a chance of forgetting a previous identification

[TehDruid]

Gladiators come in different shapes and sizes in the arenas, they can be huge brutes or dexterous and cunning fighters and anything in between. Current Gl is self-contradictory quite a bit, stat-wise. They're supposed to be the cunning type of fighter that employs tactics as much as brute force by entangling his foes with nets to gain an advantage, but Gl are biased towards STR way too much, almost as much as the Fi, which makes them the same as Fighters practically, but with extra nets and an extra piece of equipment (the helmet is for flavour, I suppose). After the benefit of the nets is gone, you're probably going to use heavy armour, as many people suggested, due to your high STR, shitty INT, and kind of low DEX. Of course, some races won't do that because of apts and racial stat modifiers that can help with Gladiator base stats, but still. The Gl and the Fi are very close in terms of stats, (only 1 less STR and 1 more DEX as a Gl) which pretty much shoehorns the Gl into a similar playstyle to the fighter on every race). Gladiators could use a bit more DEX and quite lower STR than currently and perhaps a bit of INT (to show that they're more cunning than pure Fighters) as a means of pushing them away from the heavy armour route. I'm not really sure how much that would help, but truth be told, you're very likely to stick with a light armour as an Assassin than to use heavy armour, since the starting theme of the background sets the mood for the future growth of the character (since you're going to be stabbing, you want to have high stealth, as such medium-heavy armour is a no-go early on at least. Well, unless you go the heavy armour/needle stabber route, I suppose... ). Gladiators don't have anything pushing them towards light armour, other than some personal preference or racial shoehorning due to apts/size. Giving them more of an incentive to pick up spells with better-than-Fighter INT, or just gain better EV from a higher DEX would be a nice change, until any major changes come up.

[Roderic]

It seems like a counterproductive idea to make major changes to the game in order to accommodate a background. It'd be much easier to just remove fighter.

Just as it was much easier to remove MD... it seems there was a lesser effort put on combat rather than in magic in former versions so fighter-oriented builds are much difficult to differentiate

Giving them more of an incentive to pick up spells with better-than-Fighter INT, or just gain better EV from a higher DEX would be a nice change, until any major changes come up.

It will improve the creation of reaver-like hybrid if Gls learn offensive magic with ease, or rogue-like builds if they learn hexes or tloc. Also they can continue using HA if they want to fight more often.

[Grimm]

with extra nets and an extra piece of equipment (the helmet is for flavour, I suppose).

Though the retiarius, the one that carried the nets and trident, didn't wear a helmet.

[TehDruid]

Giving them more of an incentive to pick up spells with better-than-Fighter INT, or just gain better EV from a higher DEX would be a nice change, until any major changes come up.

It will improve the creation of reaver-like hybrid if Gls learn offensive magic with ease, or rogue-like builds if they learn hexes or tloc. Also they can continue using HA if they want to fight more often.

I wouldn't like it if they stepped on the toes of Skalds. I'll give an example using the base race, humans;

A level 1 HuGl has;

15 STR (+1 as Fi)
8 INT (same as Fi)
13 DEX (-1 as Fi)

My changes would be;

13 STR (+3 as Fi)
10 INT (-2 as Fi)
13 DEX (-1 as Fi)

HuSk currently has;

12 STR
12 INT
12 DEX

which would still be quite different.

I suppose what I'm proposing is that they should be more balanced between STR and DEX and they should have okay-ish INT if they want to go for hybrid. I think it fits the "smart fighter" type of character better. They can still go for Heavy Armour, especially with a race that favours that route, like a large race/minotaur/hill orc.

[One-Eyed Jack]

It seems like a counterproductive idea to make major changes to the game in order to accommodate a background. It'd be much easier to just remove fighter.

Just as it was much easier to remove MD... it seems there was a lesser effort put on combat rather than in magic in former versions so fighter-oriented builds are much difficult to differentiate

I don't know if this was serious but MD has nothing to do with backgrounds. Almost all melee characters employing the same tactics is a problem with much deeper roots than the fact that fighters are bad

[graffen69]

I really like the change made in trunk. Finally there´s a no-god-specific 2h-melee class that gets to both choose starting weapon and forgo shields. Hurray for the 2handed gladiator atheist

[Jeremiah]

If part of the problem is that shields are bad, maybe do something to improve them.

What if a shield gave a chance of getting an auxiliary shield bash attack, which if successful did a little damage but had a chance to make the enemy lose their next action, depending on shield skill and str? (maybe also the size of the shield.)

To make the shield a valuable piece of starting gear, it would have to have a reasonable chance to be successful early in the game at low skill, but if monster HD reduced the chances of success, it could possibly be balanced to be useful throughout the game, but only if you invested the XP into training shields to high levels.

[KoboldLord]

Shields aren't bad. Stop saying that without qualifiers.

Shields are usually bad for fighters, and other backgrounds which play in a similar fashion. Also bow/crossbow hunters.

Shields are excellent for conjurors, minion generators, Kiku hybrids, Lugonites, unarmed specialists, anybody who lucked into a fast electrocution/distortion/pain weapon, slingers, stabbers, and anybody who got an early demon weapon.

There is totally allowed to be a play style, or even two of them, where the default assumption is picking up a common two-handed weapon like a battleaxe or great mace and using it. This is not a problem that needs to be fixed.

[Eji1700]

Shields aren't bad. Stop saying that without qualifiers.

Shields are usually bad for fighters, and other backgrounds which play in a similar fashion. Also bow/crossbow hunters.

Shields are excellent for conjurors, minion generators, Kiku hybrids, Lugonites, unarmed specialists, anybody who lucked into a fast electrocution/distortion/pain weapon, slingers, stabbers, and anybody who got an early demon weapon.

There is totally allowed to be a play style, or even two of them, where the default assumption is picking up a common two-handed weapon like a battleaxe or great mace and using it. This is not a problem that needs to be fixed.

Shields are bad for the guys you would assume use shields, unless they get amazingly lucky, and awesome for most people who you'd assume don't(extra wtf for unarmed). I might be a minority in that, but I really don't think its ok to start a class with an item EQUIPPED where the very first thing you should do is remove it.

[crate]

You shouldn't remove your shield on turn 1 as a fighter (maybe if you're using a trident, certainly not for the other weapons).

[snow]

You might have a bad aptitude in polearms... though even then it can be argued that you should pick a polearm anyway.

[delilah]

Elven blade masters can dual wield, why not fighters? That might also take care of the Longblade/Mace&flail buff in one stroke.

There should be some sort of massive dodging penalty or some other caveat to keep non fighters from exploiting this (that includes hybrids) because of the massive advantage to having an extra enchantment slot.

[pratamawirya]

Duel wielding is on the Won't Do list (which means the devs cannot be persuaded AT ALL to implement it).

[palin]

Shields are usually bad for fighters, and other backgrounds which play in a similar fashion. Also bow/crossbow hunters.

Shields are excellent for conjurors, minion generators, Kiku hybrids, Lugonites, unarmed specialists, anybody who lucked into a fast electrocution/distortion/pain weapon, slingers, stabbers, and anybody who got an early demon weapon.

And you're not seeing how this is highly counterintuitive?

[KoboldLord]

And you're not seeing how this is highly counterintuitive?

The fact that the name 'fighter' doesn't make any sense at all from an in-game perspective is another issue entirely. Nearly every background fights things, and the 'fighter' isn't actually any better at fighting and killing than almost anybody else. Nobody in-universe would call an explorer who specifically has heavy armor and a shield a 'fighter' unless they also call the other brutal killers on the background list 'fighters'.

If simulationist shield use was going to be implemented, I'm afraid it would fall under the umbrella of 'dual-wielding', which is specifically called out by the devteam as a can of worms that they're never going to attempt to implement. Very few RPGs and roguelikes actually model shield use in a simulationist fashion, however, preferring to model shield use as a passive defense (usually either durability or evasion) bonus that doesn't actually correspond to how shields were used in real life. Consequently, many players coming to Crawl from other RPGs and roguelikes would incorrectly perceive simulationist shield use as unrealistic, and thus the system would be counter-intuitive to them anyway. Reality is unrealistic, so to speak.

It might actually be less counter-intuitive than you think, too; most players who come to Crawl has a recent background in other games, and several of the high-profile ones push two-handed weapons as the most favorable equipment for martial characters. Given the fact that the name 'fighter' is a D&D-ism, it might be reasonable to look there for inspiration on how a 'fighter' is supposed to be played, but you'll find that two-handed weapons have been unambiguously better for them than shields ever since 3E.

[palin]

Yes, but sticking to D&D (which is a bad example here because it's not a skill-based system) you don't have to start with a shield and relative skill if you don't intend to use it. That's counterintuitive.

[galehar]

If you don't intend to use shields, play a gladiator. Having a shield is the point of the fighter background. The only reason to play a fighter, pick trident and drop your shield is if you're playing with random character. Otherwise, gladiator is a better choice than a shieldless fighter.