Transmuters only fight unarmed?


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 17

Joined: Sunday, 25th September 2011, 23:42

Post Saturday, 5th November 2011, 18:51

Transmuters only fight unarmed?

One of the great things about crawl is that weapon types are pretty balanced, including UC.
One of the things about crawl I don't love so much is that hyper-specialization to one weapon type seems necessary to successful play.
I am playing a DrTm right now, and I would really rather pick up a weapon and hit something with it when I am not changing form. But, I feel like that would be a bad meta-gaming move for the char's long-term success.

My question is, is this intentional to make using multiple forms of melee suboptimal, or is it an artifact of a balanced skill system, or what?

Is UC essential to the concept of a Tm? I mean it's not like the headbutt a minotaur would use should necessarily translate to better combat skills in Spider Form. Wouldn't skill with swords be more informative to success with Blade Hands than biting someone with UC?

Trust me, I have zero understanding of how to contribute to this project (I can code, but that's not really the primary ingredient of starting to contribute to this game, IMO), so this is not some windy prelude to complaining about the devs. But, for openers, I am interested in whether the practical need to get to lvl 20 or above in your primary weapon is a bug or a feature.

cjo

Spider Stomper

Posts: 217

Joined: Tuesday, 20th September 2011, 02:03

Post Saturday, 5th November 2011, 19:45

Re: Transmuters only fight unarmed?

spurious wrote:
Is UC essential to the concept of a Tm? I mean it's not like the headbutt a minotaur would use should necessarily translate to better combat skills in Spider Form. Wouldn't skill with swords be more informative to success with Blade Hands than biting someone with UC?


I look at it as part of the magic. It's true that blade hands look a bit like swords, but they're positioned very differently - a replacement for your regular arms, rather than something you hold away from your body in your hand. Imagine that part of the spell is that it makes you comfortable with your new shape.

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 17

Joined: Sunday, 25th September 2011, 23:42

Post Saturday, 5th November 2011, 21:35

Re: Transmuters only fight unarmed?

minmay wrote:There was never a practical need to get to level 20 or above in your weapon skill. Practically, what you will do is train your weapon skill to minimum delay for your weapon and no higher. Sometimes this is over 20, but for one-handed weapons it's much lower. Unarmed combat you'd probably train to a maximum of 25; this doesn't give the minimum delay now that the progression is smooth, but it is still the breakpoint for guaranteeing delay of no more than 5 (half a turn, you can see why this is useful).


I was exaggerating a little (which you should NEVER do in a forum :geek: ) but the point is the same. It seems like it would take most of the 3 rune game to get marginally competent in 2 melee weapons. I can't recall ever seeing a morgue file where someone trained UC and a melee weapon. The species enhancements to UC function when a melee weapon is equipped. This leads me to believe that UC might be intended to be complementary to melee weapons. Am I incorrect?

If I'm not, then I think it is odd that I never see anyone play UC and a melee weapon. In theory, it seems possible to do it successfully, but the game is balanced against it in practice. Is that intentional or a byproduct of other game balancing decisions?

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 2996

Joined: Tuesday, 28th June 2011, 20:41

Location: Berlin

Post Saturday, 5th November 2011, 22:13

Re: Transmuters only fight unarmed?

Auxiliary attacks don't even benefit from unarmed skill, but just stats anymore, if I rembember correctly... and they never were worth training UC for.
Also, UC deals so much damage that it is currently the strongest melee option so there's usually no reason to use a weapon instead if you're good at it.

It takes very little time to become not only marginally competent in 5 different classes of weapons: Polearms 14, Short Blades 8, Long Blades 14, Staves 14, Maces&Flails 12, done. This seems doable in a small part of a three-rune game, especially on Minotaurs or comparable species. Of course noone will ever do this for a good reason, really...
In fact, the only two classes that require a lot of skill to be used optimally (with the exception of Ogres, and of course bardiches and triple swords are pretty good too so you _could_ train Polearms and Long Blades higher, but you're very competent with just 14 skill each) are Axes and Unarmed Combat.
User avatar

Zot Zealot

Posts: 1060

Joined: Tuesday, 21st December 2010, 17:22

Location: United Kingdom

Post Monday, 7th November 2011, 09:15

Re: Transmuters only fight unarmed?

spurious wrote:I was exaggerating a little (which you should NEVER do in a forum :geek: )


I tend to agree with you generally, but this particular subforum - Game Design - should be treated a little differently. It's actually used by (some of) the developers to try and get a feel for how mechanics are affecting people, and if possible, how they should change.

The traditional forum tropes of rhetoric, snark and exaggeration should be checked at the door, if at all possible, if for no other reason than signal-to-noise.

(This is not directed particularly at you, just worth saying from time to time.)
I am sure I played flawflessly. This was an utmost unfair death. -- gorbeh

For this message the author joellercoaster has received thanks:
dolphin

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 181 guests

Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.