Also, at least a while ago, ironman ranger was a disaster. No fun. All the nerfs plus you have to carry three shooters to get enough ammo. And minimal incentive to use a bow. A create arrow spell would help a lot and maybe additional to-hit bonus for bows only.

I really like almost all of the new features so far. I think the new classes have really tightened up and are working well (though I'm inclined to agree with those who think Necromancers and Rangers are still a little underpowered).

Playing with randarts is even more fun than it was before. I actually like the trees, they require a bit of tactics to tackle (much like nexus quylthugs -- yes, they're annoying, but they're an interesting challenge) and make fire-related items much more worth hanging onto. My gameplay style is definitely changing to use items that I previously didn't bother with because they weren't useful enough. It's cool to have new uses for familiar objects that I never took notice of in earlier versions.

I agree with whoever said lanterns should be available in the General Store, though I'd be fine with them being relatively rare. Or maybe rings of light should sometimes turn up in the magic shop, or earlier in the dungeon? I'm also frustrated by how often there are no shooters available in the weaponsmith's.

Re: someone else's comment about Staves of Starlight, do they actually do more damage than a Staff of Light? If not, then I think they're completely pointless, but if they do significantly more damage they have value, especially for tackling orc or jelly pits.

Am I hallucinating or has dragon scale male become rarer? Also, I understand you've reduced drop rates for spellbooks @ can't use, but in my games with the build before this one, I was getting a LOT of prayer books, particularly Cleansing Power and one of the dungeon prayer books (at weirdly early dungeon levels), while playing a Rogue.

One random thing I've suggested before but thought I'd throw out there again anyway: I think it would be thematically appropriate for Kobolds to get, say, a +1 or +2 to tunneling given that they're meant to live in the underdark.

ETA another point: the behaviour of the Rogue spells Cure Poison and Resist Poison now seems inconsistent in light of the recent change to !RP to both cure and prevent poisoning (especially considering that the Heroism and Berserk Rage spells for other classes both cure and resist fear). I'm not sure this is really a problem (or whether it's already been discussed), but since they get Resist Poison right after they get Cure Poison anyway, maybe those two spells should be rolled together and a different spell added instead.

I'm not sure what other spell, but it occurs to me that something that could be super useful for Rogues would be a spell that temporarily enhances stealth in some way -- either by 'quieting' their footsteps or making them invisible/shadowy. Alternatively, some sort of 'backstab' spell might be useful -- phase door to target, make a sneak attack, and phase door away? Or would that be too powerful? I know the half-casters aren't meant to have attack spells but it does seem thematically appropriate. (It'd suit Blackguards as well.)

I don't know if this sort of thing has been suggested before because I don't follow the development forums too closely, but I'd be interested to hear what anyone else thinks about it. I'm just spitballing, as is the way of my people.

Rangers still get haste.

I'd say it's pretty severely broken. Here is an example with regard to a pretty great early launcher, and comparing some enchanted pebbles with a bog standard iron shot. The average damage/round calculations are definitely wonky. Have the magics all been excluded?! :confused:

@ STR 18/10 DEX 18/50
Sling of Accuracy (x2) (+19,+6)
Rounded Pebble (1d2) (+5,+4) Average damage/round 4.4
Iron Shot (1d4) (+0, +0) Average damage/round 6.4

This looks reasonable (well, expected) - with that sling you're getting (1d2 + 50%) x 2 for the pebbles, and (1d4 + 30%) x 2 for the shot.

This is pretty broken, I agree. If you are going to use deadliness, you really need to make the base damage higher, since angband monsters tend to have more HP than O monsters. Or you need to make the deadliness multiplier higher. +10 should be closer to 100% than 50%. You knocked the value of that sling almost to zero here. (Difference between 5 dam and 6.4 dam is just miniscule, and it is worthless after around DL 5.)

Finally, compare it to magic devices. With this calculation, a sling will ALWAYS be worse than a lousy wand of lightning, which I never carry for more than a little while. You need to balance damage with other forms of offense.

I think those calculations show why in variants that work of damage dice and % damage increase, ammo damage is always set much higher.

The current values are designed for much of the damage coming from damage bonuses.

Some math: with the new system, melee DPR is
where nblows scales from 1 to about 6 with CL, and base_damage currently from 2 to 20 depending on the weapon (with more powerful weapons at lower DLs).

Ranged DPR, on the other hand, is

where nshots ranges from 1 to 2 (maybe 3 for rangers with very good equipment), base_damage*launcher_multiplier scale together from 3 for a sling with pebbles to 12 for a heavy crossbow with bolts, for regular ammo, and 4x as much for specialty ammo such as mithril.

weapon_bonus, launcher_bonus, ammo_bonus all scale from 0 to about 1, very loosely dependent on level, but it's not impossible, with some luck, to find enchanted arrows and a bow of power with high bonus even early in the game. They are forced to have the same scale, if we want enchant weapon scrolls to work in the same way on all targets.

The most obvious asymmetry is that there are more multiplicative factors for ranged damage. This might require some more work to balance, but it's not so big of a problem.

In my view the biggest problem is that ranged damage scales less sharply with CL, since nshots is a lot more flat than nblows. This makes ranged damage very equipment-dependent, so luck-dependent. A possible solution would be having nshots scale with level like nblows (with rangers getting a bonus), but that would require everyone to blow through much more ammo. What about having a STR-dependent, or DEX-dependent, might multiplier? That would restore some scaling with CL for ranged damage.

Another effect of the change is that ranged damage now scales linearly with ammo and launcher type: slings will always deal less than half as much damage as crossbows. This isn't necessarily bad, but it makes them almost useless in the late game. Maybe bows and crossbows should be deeper items, so that there is a gradual upgrade through the game, with crossbow the natural late-game choice for everyone who isn't a ranger.

Why not make the draw (~multiplier) of a launcher require a minimum strength?
Sling = none.
Short bow = low
Long bow = bit higher
Light Xbow = high
Heavy Xbow = very high

We already have min strength for lances and other super heavy melee weaps

Another point to consider is that ranged damage is currently a very effective way to get through the early game, for various underpowered race/class combinations. A gnome mage is much tougher to play without a sling or a bow.