I'm inclined to think get it out for testing as soon as you think it's worth it, and then update regularly.

Trying a blackguard from the latest nightly and I'm very amused by the collateral damage attack. Attack one cave spider and you get the message:

You have slain the cave spider. <4x>

Is the idea that they swing their weapon wildly in a big arc and so hit multiple foes?

That's the general idea. We should have significant changes out soon, too.

Update:
I've submitted my changes to Nick and he is looking into incorporating them. I think the wise thing for you, gentle reader, is to wait for that process to complete. BUT, if you want to see what I have in mind, you can find it here:

https://github.com/damedley/myband/tree/BGmod
(make sure you use this branch and not "master")

You can compile it if you wish and play. Selfishly, I'd like to see that early feedback. Grotug did some of this already, and his feedback was influential. But, again, the smart move for most of you is to wait for it to get into the nightly.

Looking forward to trying this out! Hopefully will have the time in the near future.

FWIW, the --single-branch option is fantastic for minimizing the amount of git fiddling.
"git clone --single-branch --branch BGmod https://github.com/damedley/myband"

Yeah, good point. I've been using

git clone --branch BGmod https://github.com/damedley/myband.git dirname

Is that any different from the command you posted?

There's some interesting changes in there, so I'm taking my time going through it (also, I'm going to simplify the git history). If it goes according to plan it should be ready for all you people in weird time zones to play on Friday morning.

EDIT: Actually a bit quicker than that

Not really - --single-branch just pulls down that specific branch, instead of the whole repo followed by a checkout. Probably doesn't make much real difference in this case but I found it kind of a satisfying flag... If you had a repo with large files in one branch it might be more relevant.

Initial thoughts from the changes: very interesting. The SP decreasing while not fighting takes some getting used to. Feels like you lose them quicker than I expected, but my character (level 26 now) is still at normal base speed.

I'm carrying less ammo and fighting more hand-to-hand.

Liking the Leap into Battle and Whirlwind spells, haven't used the 2nd store book much.

Should be 1/2 normal speed, just in the wrong direction. The main issue that I'm aware of is that, if you have 30 max SP, 29.999 current SP shows as 29. Which is really troublesome at very low max SP.