Proposal: encumbrance warning on dragon hides

[Hurkyl]

Anecdote: I'm working on a low strength character who's putting stat increases into strength, because I'm planning on wearing medium armor with encumbrance rating 11. I just clear orc, and what do I see in an Orc:4 shop? A storm dragon hide! Only 11 encumbrance! That's wonderful. So I buy it, and buy a scroll of enchant armour... and gasp my lovely storm dragon armour now has 17 encumbrance! I can't wear this thing!

Okay, that's not how it actually went. I was quite suspicious as I had believed I had looked at a table in the past and saw that storm dragon armour was not a medium armor, so I went to the wiki to double check. And hit wizmode to triple check.

But it is a bit spoilery that one's ability to wear a dragon hide does not actually translate into one's ability to wear the corresponding dragon armor. I can easily imagine some poor person's game ruined by dumping all of their enchant armour scrolls into a dragon armor before they realized that the armor had a higher penalty than the hide.

I would suggest that the hides match the armors in encumbrance rating... but I suppose that storm and gold dragon hides do have some value if you're really desperate for a resistance. Thus

Proposal: Change the hint text on dragon armor to something like

  Code:

 Enchanting it will turn it into a suit of magical armour with armour rating 10 and encumbrance rating 17

[crate]

I would suggest just not allowing hides to be worn at all (you never want to do this anyway) and then having the stats for the dragon armour in the description.

[XuaXua]

I think the invisible presence of GDR is lost on players who wish to make a proper comparison between armours. You shouldn't need to have to use fsim to perform a proper 1:1 comparison.

[Kate]

Storm and Gold dragon hides appear to be the only ones without the same encumbrance rating as the dragon armour itself, so changing that seems simplest.

[duvessa]

I think the invisible presence of GDR is lost on players who wish to make a proper comparison between armours. You shouldn't need to have to use fsim to perform a proper 1:1 comparison.

The most common effect of GDR being invisible seems to be that people like you hugely overvalue it.

[johlstei]

I think the invisible presence of GDR is lost on players who wish to make a proper comparison between armours. You shouldn't need to have to use fsim to perform a proper 1:1 comparison.

A true 1:1 comparison involves EV tradeoffs as well, it isn't like GDR being visible would make it less obtuse. I don't think it is a big deal, bigger AC and bigger EV is better. EV is better against a few big hits, AC better against lots of smaller hits. No one is doing math to decide what armour to wear beyond that.

[Sandman25]

<dreams on>
Fire Dragon Armour. Wearing it will change your stats: +6 AC, -5 EV, -23% Stealth, +10% attack delay, -8% accuracy.
<dreams off>

[Hirsch I]

<dreams on>
Fire Dragon Armour. Wearing it will change your stats: +6 AC, -5 EV, -23% Stealth, +10% attack delay, -8% accuracy.
<dreams off>

I would be so happy...
any reason why this is not possible?

[Sandman25]

I would be so happy...
any reason why this is not possible?

It contradicts to crawl's philosophy.

[Hirsch I]

Which part of it?

[Wahaha]

Aside from "+6 AC, -5 EV" which are shown, the other numbers are useless and shouldn't be displayed to avoid confusing players for no reason. Armor doesn't even affect attack delay unless it's UC and it doesn't affect UC delay in a simple way like +10%.

[rchandra]

I would suggest just not allowing hides to be worn at all (you never want to do this anyway) and then having the stats for the dragon armour in the description.

You want to wear hides to quickly check their effect on your ev/spells. For some hides you could go find a similar body armour, but why bother?

[and into]

I would suggest just not allowing hides to be worn at all (you never want to do this anyway) and then having the stats for the dragon armour in the description.

You want to wear hides to quickly check their effect on your ev/spells. For some hides you could go find a similar body armour, but why bother?

Good point—don't want to burn an ?EA if the armor will be a bit too heavy for your current training in spellcastin'.

I think Marvin PAs recommendation is simplest. Just make everything *except* AC the same between hide and the armor it forms when enchanted.

[galehar]

The OP has been addressed, I'm locking this.