Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1131
Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03
Improve Large Shields
If experienced players thinks that shields are almost always do not worth the investment, or only a few levels, maybe we should suggest to change them somehow instead of simply tell every newbie to not use them.
I think that bucklers and even normal shields are fine now. You may switch to two handed weapons later, but they work well enough early/mid game.
Large shields are however very weak, and this also means you won't have a carrier path where you will upgrade to as a shield user, so most likely you will upgrade to a twohander, and then you won't have any use for your shields skill (unless TSO or the spell, but this is not enough.) So buffing large shields would help a lot.
Large shields provides good SH value, but it's not enough that late in the game for that much XP. So I think that large shields always should generate with an ego, and more large shield artefacts should generate. There isn't too much large shields generated in a game, so I think that always adding some ego is fine: the one with protection or a useless resist is still not good enough to invest in shields.
Maybe we should give them special ego types (as rare as the normal ones now or maybe rarer) - to differentiate them and make early finders consider investing in shields. Ideas:
- triple resist (rF+++ or something)
- permanent deflect missiles
- damage shaving like the deep dwarf
- every attack (even torment and hellfire) have X% chance to miss
- retailate attack with the shield (like minotaur headbutt: if you block a melee attack, you get an attack with your shield, somehow depending on your shields skill). Maybe this one is too similar to reflection.
- blocking for adjacent friends/sumons/slaves also
- decreasing LOS
- "inteligent shield": block even if paralysed etc.
- some egos from other slots: conservation, resist mutation, warding
- if you rest, double your SH for that turn.
Potential problem: large races. Maybe raise the requirement for Naga and Centaur.
Also, I think that enchanter staves should be twohanded, and unarmed combat be slower with shields (not removable with shield skill). Otherwise they should be comparable to one handed weapons in overall power. If they remain the same, then large shields are hard to buff.
Of course the numbers should be adjusted, but which one of those would make you think in investing in large shields?