Galefury wrote:I also lost some non Oka fighters in the midgame though, and I can honestly say it was almost never due to lack of a decent weapon.
I expect it was from the aggregate effect of being forced to use consumables frequently. As a fighter, you run out. Casters rarely need consumables, because their starting books always provide either an escape option or the raw power to terminate combat through superior firepower. Since a challenge must be horrendous to cause any attrition at all to casters' permanent resources, there's very little that can challenge them without simply being unbeatable.
Galefury wrote:I have however lost some Wizards to not finding a decent attack spell to keep me going.
Wizards are currently unique amongst offensive casters in that they don't have any mid-level direct offense. Every other caster has mid- AND high-level options, and I'm suggesting that maybe they don't actually need to be guaranteed those high-level options. They can fight for it. It's excusable to have trouble with the wizard background's sole weakness, but that doesn't need we need to give away the farm to every wizard-like character.
By the way, as a wizard your imps should carry you to mid-Lair with no real trouble, regardless of deity choice. It's a highly unusual game that doesn't get you some manner of book spawn by then. Acquirement scrolls will usually get you something usable, too, if you're starting with absolutely nothing.
Galefury wrote:"A caster" cant blanket the whole screen with long lasting confusion clouds from the start. I think two casting backgrounds have guaranteed access to mephitic cloud at level 3 (with rather bad success rate which is somewhat hard to raise), and two more get distill/evaporate (guaranteed access at level two, fairly good success rate). I don't think this is good, mephitic cloud and evaporate are definitely overpowered. I have no idea why they have not been nerfed. This is a separate issue though.
Nearly every caster will have at least one of the three examples I listed. It is not very nice to list one of the three examples I listed, claim that only four casters can use it, and pretend you've addressed my argument.
Galefury wrote:My point is that both casters and fighters have mechanisms in place that guarantee the usefulness of their starting abilities into the mid and possibly endgame.
I don't know where this is supposed to be coming from. A warrior and a caster both have skills, and those skills will continue to be valuable if they are trained. This is not of particular interest because at worst the skills are equivalent. A warrior, however, will discard every item in that starting inventory at the first opportunity for replacement, while the caster has a guaranteed line of stepping stones through the hardest part of the game.
Galefury wrote:Why do you propose removing this mechanism for casters?
Because casters could, you know, stand to be nerfed a bit?
Galefury wrote:Fighters might start with an exec axe (or more realistically a broad axe that they cant even equip until level 6 and not use well until about level 10 to 15. It also causes massive hunger when attacking and you can only attack with it five times per fight.).
This would be a more relevant problem if dumping your mp on a monster didn't nearly always successfully kill it, or if most monsters weren't made out of food. Casters rarely run out of mp in practice because they only have to make it to the stairs to get it all back.
Galefury wrote:But there also wouldn't be any enchant weapon scrolls and they would only find new weapons every three floors and on branch ends. About 80% of those rare finds would be completely useless to them by the way. And half of the remaining 20% would require serious skill investment to get any use out of.
The impact of enchant weapon scrolls are less than trivial compared to the upgrade from Throw Flame to Bolt of Fire. Even a slaying bonus doesn't measure up to that gap. The capability to hit targets hidden behind meat shields alone is game-changing, to say nothing of the ability to sextuple damage output in corridors.
Galefury wrote:If casters were like fighters on the other hand, yes, they might start with only a level one spell. But also every enemy and their mother would drop new spells, there would be a spellbook on every floor, and they would find quite a few scrolls of improve spell lying on the floor.
You do realize that the vast majority of trash weapons dropped off monsters are useless to a fighter-type, right? A gnoll's halberd is unlikely to be of interest to a polearm-specialist, much less the user of another weapon. Finding an acceptable weapon base type with a brand that is actually useful is a much harder task, certainly not much easier than finding a mid-level spellbook.