Weapon Discussion

Various weapon-related ideas.

It's confusing for newbies that Crawl calls some vorpal weapons “slicing”, some “chopping”, etc. Please instead call all of them “vorpal”: e.g. “vorpal dagger”, “vorpal hand axe”, et cetera.

Monqy and due agreed with me on ##crawl-dev that this is a good idea.

This is 1921, incidentally. — og17 2011-02-07 09:34

Katanas were removed recently, with the justification that they were too similar to double swords. Considering this, the following weapons are also suspect.

• Knife - nobody uses this as a weapon, though the Spriggan's Knife has a niche.
  • It can go the cutlass' and the Knife of Accuracy's way. — kilobyte 2011-04-08 03:12
• Long sword - very, very close to scimitar, but is a signature fantasy weapon.
• Hammer - only smoothes a very small gap between whips and maces
• Dire flail - very poor flavour as it's not even a real weapon (and would be a terrible weapon if it were), and M&F already has a ton of weapons

In addition, the removal of the best long blade makes demon whips even more obvious as a one-handed choice, especially since double swords are extremely rare. I'd either buff double swords or nerf demon whips to keep them competitive. — minmay 2011-04-06 15:58

Agreed, I'd strongly like to remove all of those weapons. I'd also get rid of ankuses (they only ever even show up in some weird special-casing for certain Ogre backgrounds, and don't have any interesting niche) and flails (mace/flail/ankus/morningstar are very poorly differentiated, only two of the four at most need to exist and I'd go for the two extremes). Demon whips and demon tridents (and their blessed versions) could definitely have some stats lowered too, they could probably each lose a point of base damage at the very least. — marvinpa 2011-04-08 02:32

I just nerfed demon whips and tridents. — kilobyte 2011-04-08 03:12

I support all of this. With the knife removal we may wait until implicit butchery is in. But we can also be bold and remove them right now (for 0.9, of course) and hope that that's enough incentive to get the implicit butchery for 0.9 as well.
Removing hammers would take away some flavour from Yiuf but I am sure that we can find another useless item as Yiuf's obsession instead. By the way, a case could also be made for removing scythes… but Sigmund's flavour is even more important than Yiuf's. It would be possible to have those wacky one-off weapons, but just not generate them randomly anymore. — dpeg 2011-04-08 14:31

While knives indeed serve no purpose other than butchery, I've rethought the matter and came to a different conclusion for most of the rest. Unlike races and backgrounds, there is no cost in having redundant weapons. To the contrary – there are flavour gains from having a variety. Kind of like gloves/gauntlets, various helmet types or various randart descriptions.
Of course, there might be other reasons to remove a weapon: dire flails hurt realism and are a stinking D&Dism, katanas are an overdone trope, double/triple swords insult not only realism but sanity, knives are utility only. — kilobyte 2011-04-08 14:35

What exactly is the impetus behind consolidating weapons, aside from nerfing options some feel are too powerful? Player confusion? Users can already look at the weapon stats in the description if they don't know the difference between a Sabre and a Longsword. More weapon names is good, in the same way that more randart names is good. Taken to its logical extension, you should just have “blade”, “bigger blade”, “immense blade” etc. Also, if you take away all the “superweapon” options, you eliminate the thrill of obtaining one. If this is good for weapons, why is it not good for armor (i.e. eliminate Crystal Plate Mail and GDA too?) Personally, I'd add back in all the different weapon type names (and add more), have the various weapon names spawn across a range of damage/speed, and let the individual instances vary. (You could still eliminate dire flails/double-swords/triple-swords on immersion grounds, though :-) ) — jeffqyzt 2011-04-08 19:34

Getting rid of the various weapon names instead of adding to them is like getting rid of gnolls for being orcs without the optional spellcasting and priest'ing. Variety is the spice of life. I do think replacing/renaming (not eliminating) ridiculous (double/triple sword) or unthematic (katana, lajatang) weapons makes sense. Granted, we have a lot of ridiculous in Zot:1-5, plus imps, so ridiculous weapons do have a place. If creatures and classes which occupy the cultural themes of the weaponry exist (we do have a monk monastery portal for katanas…), then it would make more sense to accept those that are unthematic. Eliminating makes no sense. — XuaXua 2011-04-08 21:04

I'm really not sure where the hate for double- and triple swords comes from - they're silly, sure, but are they sillier than a moth of wrath or a kobold eating a whole dragon? And I know katanas are unpopular because none of us are anime-watching kiddies and we can prove it, but that seems like pretty reactionary reasoning. In general, eliminating weirdness and adding consistency isn't exactly the best for a game of exploration and chance - knives are mostly useless, but I cherished my early randart knife with rPois more than anything. It was my eating utensil! A dagger just wouldn't have felt the same. pepperfez 2011-05-18 12:26

It just seems appropriate – at least double the decay rate, and reduce effects of explosions somewhat. The other effects of the brand would keep abuse from getting too attractive for casters, but the real question is, would we want it strong enough to counteract a MUT+ artifact, or not? — mental_mouse 2011-09-18 16:04

Two-handed weapon, 12 damage, 14 delay. So slightly better than a war axe but two-handed, and distinctly inferior to a broad axe. Unique among axes in that it does not cut off hydra heads: its damage is of the “piercing” type. Always generated unenchanted or nearly so, and never with a brand (but can be generated cursed). I think this would make an interesting possibility for axe users: for those working towards an executioner's axe, it would be a nice thing to use before you find a broad axe (it should be relatively common). And it would give axe users a way to deal with hydras other than to cross-train M&F or find a flaming weapon.

And no, you should absolutely not be able to dig with it. Although one consider making that a racial ability of dwarves, but that's another discussion. -IonFrigate

Perceived problems:

1. too many different stacks of ammo
2. ammo on floor doesn't alphabetise nicely like wands do
3. brand overlap between launchers and ammo

Proposed solutions:

1. restrict plusses to launchers only
2. reorder all ammunition names as “ammo of foo”, thus “bolt of poison” not “poisoned bolt”
3. restrict flame and frost brands to ammo only

Possible issues:

Mulch rates: if these become problematic as a result of this proposal, have mulching determined by launcher plusses

Nessos might need to be special cased somehow. Maybe a bow of poison and arrows of flame? -Grimm

When you discover a weapon has +1, +1 or whatever (both artefact and non-artefact), I think an enhancement to all right click weapon descriptions should be considered. By this I mean explain which number is to hit and which number for damage it is. I always mix it up, and I do not think having it mentioned inside the in-game help documentation is enough. Not sure how useful it is to compare crawl to other games, but I have actually never seen a fantasy game label discovered weapons as +1, but not show what ”+1” actually means. ~~~~ . argh. could someone tell me how you sign your posts?