Make base/enchantment/slaying the same

[Galefury]

It has the not so nice effect of requiring rebalance of all item generation formulas and fixedarts. I think consistency would be good, but I don't know if it's worth it.

[absolutego]

i believe it's worth it, it's one of the less intuitive parts of the game. i like this proposal better than the current changes to trunk, and i'm surprised it didn't come up before. this system would be very simple to explain and understand. and the scrolls (the act of enchanting) would be more valuable, which is a nice touch.

there's work to be done, but the formulas need to be fixed anyway, with the current changes.
i'd like to take a look at the numbers and come up with some means to convert existing weapon enchantments from one system to the other, but i won't be able to do it anytime soon.

[dpeg]

Currently, the value of a scroll (or now also slaying) is independent of the weapon. I think that is a good feature.

[KoboldLord]

So, was the weapon plus improved in any way during this commit? I'm a little bit fuzzy on reading the code, but it's still basically +1dN damage, where N is the second plus? Only now slaying now works the same way?

[absolutego]

Currently, the value of a scroll (or now also slaying) is independent of the weapon. I think that is a good feature.

i knew i had to be missing an obvious downside. that's true, enchantment would be more significant the lower the base damage value.

you could follow the armour approach: cap the maximum enchantment to base damage (or a fraction of it).
big weapons would benefit less from a single enchantment scroll, but would have the upper hand on the long run. you may have a limited use for EW scrolls if you're using low base damage weapons, but that's (to some degree) what happens now with EA scrolls when you're wearing robes. it would also require some tweaks (what to do with corrosion, for instance; weapons could be immune at lower enchantments). slaying would work over the cap, which would be reminiscent of its traditional role.

could be rubbish, too. it needs some math.

[njvack]

Currently, the value of a scroll (or now also slaying) is independent of the weapon. I think that is a good feature.

For what it's worth: I'm thoroughly spoiled -- I've read the source -- and still don't have a clear idea how or why base damage and enchantment differ. I need to use the weapon lab spreadsheet to see what weapon to use.

My understanding to date has been "base damage and slaying are infinitely more relevant than enchantment," but I know that's not quite true.

[XuaXua]

ENCHANTMENT-RELATED

Any reason why jellies always corrode the DAMAGE enchantment? Why isn't it just a random chance between damage and to-hit?

[KoboldLord]

So, was the weapon plus improved in any way during this commit? I'm a little bit fuzzy on reading the code, but it's still basically +1dN damage, where N is the second plus? Only now slaying now works the same way?

Yes.

I was actually hoping I was misreading the code.

So, uh… Anybody care to explain why melee combat builds needed another nerf relative to casters? This seems counter-intuitive to me. The change certainly makes things more clear and intuitive, which is certainly a benefit, but does the benefit of clarity outweigh the drawback of making the weakest sorts of characters even worse?

[thenewflesh]

I think, minmay's proposal is the best of both worlds. It makes the whole damage calculation business much more intuitive without nerfing already weak characters.

[Ashenai]

I was actually hoping I was misreading the code.

So, uh… Anybody care to explain why melee combat builds needed another nerf relative to casters? This seems counter-intuitive to me. The change certainly makes things more clear and intuitive, which is certainly a benefit, but does the benefit of clarity outweigh the drawback of making the weakest sorts of characters even worse?

If melee characters are too weak, there are many ways to buff them that make sense: argue in favor of some of those. Don't argue in favor of keeping an old, bad feature just because you feel it happened to randomly shove balance in the right direction.

It's like people who were complaining about lightning bounces being nerfed. Did Air Elementalists need a nerf? No. But that doesn't mean a bad feature shouldn't be removed; it just means builds that were relying on that feature should be compensated in other ways.

If melee builds needed the ridiculous slaying bonuses to stay viable, then that is a problem, but the right way to solve it is to give them other good options: maybe heavy armor needs further buffs, maybe weapon skills should have a bigger impact on your damage output, especially at higher levels (it always bugged me that most weapon skills max out in usefulness well below level 27.)

It is important to focus on the long term regarding game balance; don't complain when a single change pushes balance in the "wrong" direction, especially in trunk.

[KoboldLord]

If melee characters are too weak, there are many ways to buff them that make sense: argue in favor of some of those. Don't argue in favor of keeping an old, bad feature just because you feel it happened to randomly shove balance in the right direction.

'Bad feature' is a rather strong way to phrase it. There was no problem gameplay-wise for slaying bonuses to be especially powerful and valuable, although of course there also isn't necessarily a problem with slaying bonuses to be less powerful or valuable. The problem was almost entirely a matter of presentation, since representing slaying bonuses in the same way as the weapon enchantment frequently caused unspoiled players to assume that the two were roughly similar.

It's like people who were complaining about lightning bounces being nerfed. Did Air Elementalists need a nerf?

Yes.

If melee builds needed the ridiculous slaying bonuses to stay viable, then that is a problem,

No, even if true I don't think this is a problem. Characters need equipment, and it is preferable to have good equipment. Slaying bonuses are roughly similar in impact to enhancer staves or archmagi robes.

maybe weapon skills should have a bigger impact on your damage output, especially at higher levels (it always bugged me that most weapon skills max out in usefulness well below level 27.)

Would it be satisfactory to you if weapon skills of 27 were made useful by making weapon skill weaker at every point up until 27, with 27 being slotted in where 14 is now on the power curve?

It is important to focus on the long term regarding game balance; don't complain when a single change pushes balance in the "wrong" direction, especially in trunk.

That's a very nice attitude to have, but sometimes you do have to pay attention to changes that are unfavorable. They start to stack up over time.

If there's a reason why the damage enchantment and slaying unification had to be a strict nerf affecting melee types exclusively, I'd still like to hear it.

[Galefury]

It's a nerf to slaying, not to melee in general. Melee works fine without slaying, it has to, because getting lots of slaying is unlikely.

[Ashenai]

That's a very nice attitude to have, but sometimes you do have to pay attention to changes that are unfavorable. They start to stack up over time.

If there's a reason why the damage enchantment and slaying unification had to be a strict nerf affecting melee types exclusively, I'd still like to hear it.

Instead of thinking about "nerfs" and "buffs", it might be helpful to think of features "in reverse", in a way. Consider the current status of trunk, without an awareness of the previous difference of slaying. You say that melee characters are too weak. Very well, what's your suggestion for fixing it?

"I think the best solution would be to make slaying bonuses different, so a +1 to slaying should mean something more than a +1 for weapon damage. How much more? Well, I don't think anyone should be able to tell, exactly, maybe 1.5 or 2 times as much, depending on weapon skill."

Does that sound like a good suggestion? I submit that it does not. It sounds like a completely random feature addition that makes no sense and makes the game more difficult to grasp for no real gain. Assuming no one knew of the previous state of trunk, such a suggestion would meet with very obvious and valid criticisms like "What's the point of making slaying bonuses harder to evaluate? Why not just keep them working like weapon bonuses, and increase the numbers, for example?"

The point is that if a feature would not be worth implementing (if it never existed), then it's usually not worth keeping. Players have a terrible tendency towards inertia: if you're used to something, it feels weird to change it. Thankfully, Crawl's devs mostly avoid this trap, and evaluate features based on their absolute merit, not on how long they've been part of the game.

[thenewflesh]

As for suggestions, there are many games where pure melee is both fun, interesting and powerful. Upcoming battle manoeuvres, inherent reaching for polearms are steps in the right direction. And already you can see that polearms buff made game as a whole better. For example, gnoll packs on D:3-4 is interesting now.

More on topic, I think, that a) damage bonuses from weapon skill should be buffed, so it wouldn't be no-brainer to turn it off once you reach maximum speed as reducing armour/shield penalties becomes much more important; b) base damage / enchantments / slaying should become one and the same; c) enchantments should be capped at 50% of base damage, except for artefacts.

[rjrrt]

What if slaying damage bonus were treated like a stackable form of the slaying brand instead.
A slaying enhancer % could be stacked on any weapon used, regardless of existing weapon brand.
The % could be something like 3% per point. Is this a ridiculous thought?

[snow]

Casters are stronger than melee builds but honestly I feel that most melee builds are really strong too. Berserkers are extremely popular for a reason. Just because a fighter can't tab into that ogre but a caster can kill it trivially doesn't mean much... there are many situations that a fighter can survive that a caster can't.

The "hard" area for melee builds, in my experience, is after the temple but before the lair (or sometimes the early lair too). This is when you don't have a huge stack of items to deal with any situation that comes at you and it sucks to be you if that hydra gets within melee range because you don't have blink. swiftness, all those other utility spells casters get to play with.

[sanka]

OFF - Sorry for off topic, maybe move it to another thread.

Casters are stronger than melee builds but honestly I feel that most melee builds are really strong too. Berserkers are extremely popular for a reason. Just because a fighter can't tab into that ogre but a caster can kill it trivially doesn't mean much... there are many situations that a fighter can survive that a caster can't.

The "hard" area for melee builds, in my experience, is after the temple but before the lair (or sometimes the early lair too). This is when you don't have a huge stack of items to deal with any situation that comes at you and it sucks to be you if that hydra gets within melee range because you don't have blink. swiftness, all those other utility spells casters get to play with.

I feel that spellcasting start is not so much stronger than meele start because of the skill/stat differences, but spellcasters all (or almost all) got an excellent starting item, a very good spellbook. It usually contains good moderate level spells. Non-casters starting items are much weaker, and much more heavily depend on good findings early (or god abilities). This is not necessarily a bad thing - you have the xp to quickly raise invocations (or evocations) if you do not invest on magic early, and if you are lucky, you can be stronger than a caster early on.

I had a MDFi that happened to find a +10 randart platemail (rPois) and a rod of destruciont (ice) early on. It was much stronger than allmost all of my casters, no matter what my caster found (ring of wiz, or staffs, or good books are useful, but nowhere as game changing than good equipment for a fighter.)

Later in the game I feel that spellcasting start is stronger because IQ (the only important stat for allmost all builds that use magic) is higher. You can learn spells with a fighter and learn fighting with a wizard. But a fighter will be way behind the wizard in casting because her IQ will be much lower, while the wizard is not much hindered by the lower STR/DEX. This is not relevant for Trog of course, and I think he is not weak as a start in the first place without spells.

ON

There are three source for damage numbers in the game. base damage, enchantment damage, ring of slaying damage. I think it would be nice to make them equal. I do not feel that rebalancing would be so hard.

[thenewflesh]

The problem is that Fighters in crawl right now are glorified wanderers the way you rely on RNG and roll with what dungeon or your gifting god give you. Not to mention that gifting code for casting gods is so much better, it's not even funny: imagine if, say, Trog were guaranteed on max piety to gift you +9,+9 Executioner's Axe (antimagic) and you're close. Instead, you get a bunch of weapons for which you have 0 skill and, like, -5 aptitude.

[Galefury]

Weapon gifts for untrained skills are gone in trunk (if you have one weapon skill of at least 8). It's a bit more complicated, but the gist is that you wont get weapons of types you don't use. [Edit: this is wrong, only affects scroll acquirement]

Also I don't get all the whining about fighters, I don't think they are that hard. Sure, you need some luck, but I have always been able to find some halfway decent equipment.

[thenewflesh]

Does this change affect normal acquirement code or only Trog/Oka's gifts?

[Galefury]

Actually I was wrong, the change only affects scroll acquirement, not god acquirement. Sorry to get your hopes up.

[starless]

[url=http://www.gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commit/eb71eb6f778cc1bedcda4273de0b9c5b4c8b350e]I've actually seen a lot of people thinking that (for example) a -1, +5 whip is the same as a +0, +0 demon whip.

Offtopic but could you explain the difference. I've been playing for 2 years now and always thought that to be the case...

[Galefury]

First off, enchantment of x gives only 1dx bonus damage, not x. Second, base damage is affected by stat and skill modifiers while enchantment isn't. The end result is that +5 base damage gives you far far more extra damage than +5 enchantment.

[njvack]

First off, enchantment of x gives only 1dx bonus damage, not x. Second, base damage is affected by stat and skill modifiers while enchantment isn't. The end result is that +5 base damage gives you far far more extra damage than +5 enchantment.

Wait, I thought the benefits of stats on damage output were negligible, and that it doesn't make sense to train weapon skill once you've hit min delay.

Sigh, gotta spend some more time with the spreadsheet

[Galefury]

Saying stats don't matter for damage and min delay is all you need is an oversimplification. Int is usually better than str and dex, and there is often a better exp investment than training weapon skills beyond min delay. But that doesn't mean the damage increase is weak. Just that there usually is something that provides better returns.

[thenewflesh]

There are three source for damage numbers in the game. base damage, enchantment damage, ring of slaying damage. I think it would be nice to make them equal. I do not feel that rebalancing would be so hard.

Ideal solution is to ditch the ancient D&D-like XdY system altogether. There are places where extreme randomness is good (level design as a prime example), there are places where it just isn't and damage calculation in my opinion is one of them. Adding some sort of guaranteed minimum damage analogous to guaranteed damage reduction (as suggested in one of the neighbouring threads) while still retaining a certain degree of randomness might be a bit less radical solution.

[XuaXua]

What are the aspects of a weapon:

ability to hit
ability to cause damage
weapon speed
inherent abilities (reaching)
weight
branding
size

Would it be out of the question to ditch Enchant I/II scrolls in favor of a scroll randomly positively enhancing one (or more with and Enchant III Scroll) of the said abilities of a weapon?

[ElectricAlbatross]

I've actually seen a lot of people thinking that (for example) a -1, +5 whip is the same as a +0, +0 demon whip.

I thought this for months until embarrassingly recently. Every Crawl newbie I personally know thinks this. What else are we supposed to expect? When you associate additive numbers with the weapon, it is most intuitive to expect that these numbers will affect numbers in the weapon, i.e. base accuracy and damage, and not some other part of a formula you don't even know.

The manual isn't really helpful either. The only word there on what the two numbers mean:

The first number is the enchantment to-hit, which affects the weapon's accuracy, and the second is its damage enchantment...

There is nothing here to indicate that enchantments do anything other than affect a weapon's stats.

Furthermore, even if players knew what enchantments did, what use could they get out of the information, when they don't know the formulae for damage and to-hit and the effects of those numbers on the relative effectiveness of a weapon? Enchantments are not only spoiler-heavy but also still confusing even after spoilers. That has got to change. The suggestion in the OP is the only way I can think of to make the system less confusing and reliant on spoilers.

[thenewflesh]

Enchantment of X gives you random (1dX), fixed (skill and stats modifiers don't apply to it) bonus to the to-hit / damage. Damage enchantment also increases weapon's resistance to corrosion (+5 makes it immune, I think, too lazy to check). Slaying after the nerf becomes the same as enchantment (except it doesn't protect from corrosion, of course). It's not very intuitive, but it's not that confusing, really.

[dolphin]

Sure, the difference between slaying bonuses and enchantment bonuses are no longer confusing, but that doesn't address the main point of confusion, namely the difference between weapon base stats and anything else. And the misconception that enchantments = stats is a problem, especially coupled general ignorance about Skills and Weapon Delay. Based on the information present within the game, an uninformed player would logically choose the weapon with highest DPT, which, to that player, looks like highly enchanted floor trash. Yes, experience will eventually teach them otherwise, but it would be better to be intuitive, right?

[Thasero]

Yes, that's the original problem with the system of slaying, enchantment, and base damage - they're all presented to the player as flat numbers chained together with plus or minus signs, but in reality your damage isn't calculated by adding (or subtracting) them in the same way.

Unfortunately, it's also true that there would probably need to be some playtesting and rebalancing if everything acted like base damage and was subject to the same bonuses from skills etc. Because the flip side of making a -1, +5 whip actually equivalent to a +0 demon whip is that a +9, +9 dire flail would be equivalent to a +13, +0 giant spiked club usable by non-Ogres. Which would be cool, but it's not something the game is currently built to expect in terms of difficulty.

There was another suggestion a while back to rescale weapon speed so that you don't have an odd breakpoint where getting just enough skill to swing a weapon at maximum speed is optimal and subsequent skill levels are drastically less important. It might make sense to tie everything together and rationalize melee damage and speed calculation as one chunk of work.

[dpeg]

I agree the system is confusing (but it is so for reasons... setting up a system where all the parameters are relevant is no mean feat -- that is why we read so often "it will need some balancing and tweaking"). However, I don't like this pervasive talk of "reliant on spoilers". Folks, the game is winnable without knowing any formulas. And by this is I mean that I won fighters since pre-DCSS, I never cared about the numbers, and I am not alone (and far from a really good player). If you pick up the +6,+6 falchion, you will realise at some point that the damage output is lackluster. As I said, not ideal but it is manageable.

It is always the case that players who want optimal performance need the source or spoilers. There is no reason to make all formulas available in the game. (This is a design decision.) It is desirable to reduce confusion. I believe that making slaying work like enchantments does reduce confusion a little.

[jejorda2]

If slaying is changed to work like enchantment, it will be so much less valuable that you'd almost always want some other ring instead. Short blades would be much harder to use in the later game. But balance will be mostly unaffected otherwise, so that's a pretty easy way to make enchantment work the same way as slaying. But you still have the problem of enchantment and new slaying working differently from base damage in a confusing way.

If enchantment is changed to work like slaying and base damage, everything works the same way and is easier to understand. But now enchanted weapons are too powerful, and it's too easy to make cheap weapons into good weapons. It's hard to know just how much to change things to bring balance.


What if enchantment directly increases or decreases base value, but only by one third of the enchantment value? Then it's worthwhile to use enchant weapon scrolls, the limits to enchantment can stay the same, and the number of scrolls can stay about the same. And the different values will make sense when directly compared together, so long as the fraction is mentioned in the manual or in scroll descriptions or somewhere relevant.

[njvack]

However, I don't like this pervasive talk of "reliant on spoilers". Folks, the game is winnable without knowing any formulas.

You're absolutely right. At the same time, I think a reasonable design goal for melee is that for any two unbranded weapons, it should be trivially apparent which is "better" (say, which will do more damage per turn on average).

There are lots of ways to achieve this; one would be to collapse the effects of slaying, base damage, and enchantments. Another would be a "weapon power" screen as discussed somewhere in the Tavern.

You don't need to know formulas to win the game; however, as it stands, the ways you can know +0 demon whip is better than a -1, +5 whip are:

* Hit stuff with both and see that they seem to die faster with the demon whip.
* Note that "demon whip" sounds cooler and that kobolds don't carry them.
* Read a spoiler.

Branding is a whole other can of worms -- elec and pain are best on fast weapons, while flame, frost, and holy are better for high-damage weapons. Those mechanics are at least as important to know as monster resistances, while being completely invisible to casual players. Venom, distortion, and chaos are probably actually the most player-comprehensible brands -- it's obvious what they do and when they've fired.

[nicolae]

You don't need to know formulas to win the game; however, as it stands, the ways you can know +0 demon whip is better than a -1, +5 whip are:

Just out of curiosity, what enchantments on a whip would make it as close as possible to being as effective as a demon whip? Or is that question not even meaningful.

[jejorda2]

Just out of curiosity, what enchantments on a whip would make it as close as possible to being as effective as a demon whip? Or is that question not even meaningful.

Using the weapon lab spreadsheet, if I have 12 str and 13 dex, wear leather armour and buckler with 9 shield skill, and train fighting and maces & flails to 12 (minimum delay) then a +2,+7 whip does the same damage per turn against a dragon as a +0,+0 demon whip.

If I train fighting up to 20, the whip needs to be +1, +8 to keep up. If I'm fighting a troll (lower AC than a dragon) then a +6 +6 whip can keep up at 12 fighting, 12 M&F.

[KoboldLord]

I agree the system is confusing (but it is so for reasons... setting up a system where all the parameters are relevant is no mean feat -- that is why we read so often "it will need some balancing and tweaking"). However, I don't like this pervasive talk of "reliant on spoilers". Folks, the game is winnable without knowing any formulas. And by this is I mean that I won fighters since pre-DCSS, I never cared about the numbers, and I am not alone (and far from a really good player). If you pick up the +6,+6 falchion, you will realise at some point that the damage output is lackluster. As I said, not ideal but it is manageable.

It is always the case that players who want optimal performance need the source or spoilers. There is no reason to make all formulas available in the game. (This is a design decision.) It is desirable to reduce confusion. I believe that making slaying work like enchantments does reduce confusion a little.

The phrase 'reliant on spoilers' is, indeed, frequently abused as a dogwhistle on this forum against something that the poster in question doesn't like, but I think the difference between base weapon damage and damage enhancement bonus is legitimately a point where that criticism can be applied fairly. Base weapon damage is a wildly different measurement than damage enhancement bonus, but unlabeled as they are in the user interface I believe nearly every newbie confuses the two until another forum poster disabuses them of their confusion. This isn't something that only occasionally comes up as confusing.

As a user interface issue, this really shouldn't be too hard to fix. One possibility would be to add 'dice' as units to the base weapon damage in the weapon description. For instance, a falchion would have base weapon damage '8 dice' and a demon blade '13 dice'. No explanation about what dice actually means, but the +5 on your weapon is just +5, and not +5 dice, so it's intuitive to presume that +N is going to end up generally smaller than +N dice.

Another possibility would be to simply stop giving weapons numeric base weapon damage at all. Instead, they get letter grades for base weapon damage and base weapon accuracy, graded on a curve. Demon weapons are all A-ranked weapons, with clubs and daggers being F-ranked. Two-handed weapons have a parallel scale, since they don't really need to be directly compared to one-handed weapons, so an executioner's axe would be a two-handed A-ranked weapon and a halberd would be D- or F-ranked. This tells an unspoilered player absolutely nothing about the inner workings of the game, but nevertheless tells them exactly what weapons are actually useful without any potential for confusion.

[ximxim]

What about a "damage" number displayed next to the ac, ev and shield values? Like them, it wouldn't be directly linked to how the mechanics actually work, but a representation of how much damage you could expect to do. Then you could hide the "base damage" display on weapons.

[Ashenai]

If slaying is changed to work like enchantment, it will be so much less valuable that you'd almost always want some other ring instead.

This makes no sense, because slaying is a variable quality. Are you saying you'd almost always want to use some other ring than a +100/+100 slaying ring? No? Well then clearly the only issue is what numbers make slaying worthwhile.

[dpeg]

Folks, the game is winnable without knowing any formulas.

Not sure what your point is here. You could say this about any game that exists or ever will exist.

Did you read the rest of my posting?

1. You cannot say this for any game. (Cf. Nethack.)
2. Transparence is good, but it is not the holy grail of design.
3. "reliant on spoilers" is nonsense. It is valid for a subset of players but that set is smaller than "winners".
4. Where to draw the line between "disclose all information, so that players can make optimal moves" and "hide some information to make the game more accessible" is a design decision.

[dpeg]

If slaying is changed to work like enchantment, it will be so much less valuable that you'd almost always want some other ring instead.

This makes no sense, because slaying is a variable quality. Are you saying you'd almost always want to use some other ring than a +100/+100 slaying ring? No? Well then clearly the only issue is what numbers make slaying worthwhile.

And, as it happens, the average has been increased. Not the maximum, buy you're less likely to get small numbers.

[dpeg]

The phrase 'reliant on spoilers' is, indeed, frequently abused as a dogwhistle on this forum against something that the poster in question doesn't like, but I think the difference between base weapon damage and damage enhancement bonus is legitimately a point where that criticism can be applied fairly. Base weapon damage is a wildly different measurement than damage enhancement bonus, but unlabeled as they are in the user interface I believe nearly every newbie confuses the two until another forum poster disabuses them of their confusion. This isn't something that only occasionally comes up as confusing.

Oh, I agree. The confusion is real. (I lobbied for the slaying nerf for two reasons: in my experience, the confusion between enchantment and slaying was even greater; and slaying could take a nerf.)

As a user interface issue, this really shouldn't be too hard to fix. One possibility would be to add 'dice' as units to the base weapon damage in the weapon description. For instance, a falchion would have base weapon damage '8 dice' and a demon blade '13 dice'. No explanation about what dice actually means, but the +5 on your weapon is just +5, and not +5 dice, so it's intuitive to presume that +N is going to end up generally smaller than +N dice.

Another possibility would be to simply stop giving weapons numeric base weapon damage at all. Instead, they get letter grades for base weapon damage and base weapon accuracy, graded on a curve. Demon weapons are all A-ranked weapons, with clubs and daggers being F-ranked. Two-handed weapons have a parallel scale, since they don't really need to be directly compared to one-handed weapons, so an executioner's axe would be a two-handed A-ranked weapon and a halberd would be D- or F-ranked. This tells an unspoilered player absolutely nothing about the inner workings of the game, but nevertheless tells them exactly what weapons are actually useful without any potential for confusion.

I like the "dice" proposal. And I did think about the weapon descriptions. The three numbers there are not sacrosanct, your other idea is also good. A few tiers (you propose 6) will do.
Would you mind adding this to the wiki? I believe something could be gotten out of this thread, but without wikification it will drop and rot.
I'd add the idea (from some old forum thread) that weapon descriptions should mention current speed (in a verbal way, to indicate skill influence).

[njvack]

Another thing that might help would be for the @ display to give you some suggestion of attack strength, just as it does attack speed, like:

  Code:

Your attack speed is quite fast. Your attacks are [pathetic|weak|average|damaging|devastating].

And then, to make this super obvious, it'd be great to have an option for those two descriptors to print on wield:

  Code:

_b - a +5 rod of demonology (14/14) (in claw)
Your attack speed is below average. Your attacks are weak.

Thoughts?

[KoboldLord]

Would you mind adding this to the wiki? I believe something could be gotten out of this thread, but without wikification it will drop and rot.

All right. I put it on the interface ideas page.

[dpeg]

nvjack: good stuff --> wiki!

[Ashenai]

Five "ranks" for attack strength description seems much too low to be useful, though. How about "You hit as hard as a <MONSTER_NAME>"? Not only would this be a pretty in-theme and natural description, it would also organically give players some help with evaluating monsters.