Chaos brand

[Lyrick]

So, there was a game I played a few weeks ago, where I got to the late game with my +20 slaying stabber, and of all things that the scroll of brand weapon coughs up it's the chaos brand for my quickblade.

Needless to say that was obscenely fun. I'm not sure why I bothered rebranding it, a +10 quickblade of chaos is ridiculous.

At the moment it's appearances in a game are limited. A few uniques have chaos weapons of various types, as do Xom's vault guards. It isn't randomly generated on any weapon though.

Is it just too strong to appear more often?

[KoboldLord]

It's a joke weapon that has a random chance to get you killed, usually indirectly but sometimes flat-out instant death. You should virtually never choose to use a chaos weapon, and you should avoid melee contact at all costs with threats that may have chaos weapons. It also has kind of terrible flavor, since it literally does nothing but pick a random result off a huge table of unthemed and unrelated effects. Most of the other joke items at least offer a trade that is aesthetically interesting, even if there is basically no reason you should ever choose to risk the use of a shield that makes the loudest noise in the game or an axe that mesmerizes you whenever there's a monster anywhere on the screen.

The big old list of effects has a lot of good ones, but you swing your melee weapon thousands of times even in a 3-Rune game. You will roll some of the bad effects sooner or later, and some of these effects are very dangerous if they trigger in the wrong situation.

[Sar]

I actually disagree, I think chaos is very strong, and most of the really bad effects had been removed or neutered lately. Chaos is really terrible in early game though, since you don't have escape items to deal with the few bad effects. If I were to play a CK I would be looking to replace my chaos weapon as soon as possible.

Yuif's staff is one of my favourite weapons in the game.

[Jarlyk]

One of the funniest effects was when you would randomly shaft yourself. I had that happen once with Yuif's staff and fell into the middle of a herd of yaks, if I recall correctly. I'm pretty sure that was removed, though.

[Lyrick]

It's a joke weapon that has a random chance to get you killed, usually indirectly but sometimes flat-out instant death. You should virtually never choose to use a chaos weapon, and you should avoid melee contact at all costs with threats that may have chaos weapons. It also has kind of terrible flavor, since it literally does nothing but pick a random result off a huge table of unthemed and unrelated effects. Most of the other joke items at least offer a trade that is aesthetically interesting, even if there is basically no reason you should ever choose to risk the use of a shield that makes the loudest noise in the game or an axe that mesmerizes you whenever there's a monster anywhere on the screen.

The big old list of effects has a lot of good ones, but you swing your melee weapon thousands of times even in a 3-Rune game. You will roll some of the bad effects sooner or later, and some of these effects are very dangerous if they trigger in the wrong situation.

I think the flavor is fine. It chooses its attack brand with each new attack. If the huge table of effects were related or themed then it wouldn't be chaotic after all, right?

Naturally, the RNG is not always in your favor. Eventually I do end up berserking Antaeus or something. But then, is that not similar to the situation with the other joke items? I end up getting mesmerized to Polyphemus, or wake up all of Elf:3. Taking up the chaos brand just means you'll accept a challenge, the possibility that you'll end up in a bad, unsurvivable situation. If you make that choice early game, hats off to you. Late game, you can take that on too. The tradeoff, for having an awesome list of possibilities for good effects, is awesome possibilities for bad effects.

Certainly, with the Shield and the Axe, you're guaranteed your damage and other useful stats, and Chaos makes no guarantee that you don't clone a hydra four times in a row. Does it need that guarantee of some useful effect to make it interesting?

Just letting it randomly occur on weapons wouldn't be disastrous, I think. After all, we still have d:1 distortion daggers, and that's a lot worse than accidentally wielding a chaos branded weapon, which don't occur randomly on the ground or in non-unique non-vault monster's hands.

Monsters hitting you with chaos weapons will at worse banish you, which already happens regularly with another brand. Given that, if implemented, it would have an extremely low weight in brand selection, an encounter with a weapon of chaos would be an interesting surprise.

[KoboldLord]

Rolls from a massive random table of unthemed results are the most boring kind of randomness. I know that there's some lingering fondness for it in the community because Gygax and Arneson liked to use it as filler to inflate page count, but I like my randomness to happen as an emergent feature from complicated interactions, such that you can reasonably follow cause and effect in retrospect even though it catches you by surprise when it happens.

Yes, this does mean that in my opinion Xom is the most BORING deity in the entire game. I have noticed the irony.

[ackack]

I actually disagree, I think chaos is very strong, and most of the really bad effects had been removed or neutered lately. Chaos is really terrible in early game though, since you don't have escape items to deal with the few bad effects. If I were to play a CK I would be looking to replace my chaos weapon as soon as possible.

Yuif's staff is one of my favourite weapons in the game.

Yes, Yiuf's staff is usually legitimately useful when you get it. But this is often still quite early. The problem with chaos weapons CK starts with is that they are really crappy weapons. A weapon that has something to recommend it that then has chaos tacked on is usually just fine.

[daggaz]

It's a joke weapon that has a random chance to get you killed, usually indirectly but sometimes flat-out instant death. You should virtually never choose to use a chaos weapon, and you should avoid melee contact at all costs with threats that may have chaos weapons. It also has kind of terrible flavor..

Xom is immensely displeased with you...

No but KoboldLord is right at least about its uselessness/danger at low levels. Crazy Yiuf has a cloak, but you should always cripple him from range if possible. Maybe Xom is amused if you use his staff, but generally its just a great way to haste/invis/heal whatever foo you are trying to murder instead. At high levels, I think chaos brand is just annoying. Maybe not as much as vanilla orcs on orc:1 throwing tomahawks of distortion, but annoying all the same.

[damiac]

Chaos brand is really good on stabbers, once you're to the point where you can deal with an accidentally berserked, invis, or healed foe. There's a lot of effects that lead to a stabbable foe.

Of course, following this thought through to its logical conclusion of trying to start as a chaos stabber is an exercise in killing off lots of characters. Chaos is a terrible brand to start with.

[XuaXua]

An early Scroll of Branding might make Yiuf's staff a bit more palatable.

[Rumbleguts]

Also had a character with qblade of chaos. Didn't have phenomenal slaying, but every enemy was guaranteed to die to it eventually - even OOFs. If a monster transformed into a berserk ettin, well, a couple hits later it was petrified and got stabbed to death.

qblade of chaos is great