Affixes that add dice

[CunningGabe]

I am currently playing a high-elf prowess warrior, down on DL85 or so. Since DL60, I've had a nonartifact weapon that just makes everything else I've found look like junk. It deals 571.2 damage per round (767 vs. demons), and everything else I've found tops out at about 350 damage per round, even including specialized slays.

I've only recently realized why there is this great discrepancy. My weapon is a battle axe (5d9). A battle axe is usually 2d8, but mine has the 'Slicing' affix, giving it 3 extra dice and increasing die size by 1. Without taking damage multipliers etc into account, this increases the average damage per blow from 9 to 25. The net effect is a near-tripling of damage output at the end, which seems excessive.

The issue is that the 'Slicing' affix only applies to polearms, and most of those are prowess weapons. Thus, they have a small number of large dice, so adding 3 more dice is a huge boost. I'd suggest going down to 2 extra dice -- and even then, it would still be pretty good.

[Derakon]

It occurs to me that the three "big weapon" modifiers are all biased towards prowess characters. Slicing is, as you say, a polearm affix; Disruption is a "big mace" affix; Chaos is a "big sword" affix. Ideally there'd be one affix for each playstyle, but thematically linking them up may be tricky. Presumably prowess characters keep Disruption (especially since Disruption was originally an anti-undead effect and the two holy casters are both prowess fighters). I guess Blades of Chaos become the unbiased weapon type, going to longswords, scimitars, etc. And then we replace Slicing with, I dunno, Perforating, and make it the finesse modifier to go on rapiers, daggers, and so on.

[Magnate]

Good points. These three affixes were, of course, designed to re-create the SoS, MoD and BoC exactly. Now that the heat has died down a bit and there's more acceptance of v4 being different, we don't necessarily need to do this. I'd be happy to tone Of Slicing down to +2 dice. In fact, I ought to do this at the same time as enabling affixes to change balance and heft, because IMO Of Chaos ought to increase at least one of these.

[debo]

Originally Posted by Derakon

And then we replace Slicing with, I dunno, Perforating, and make it the finesse modifier to go on rapiers, daggers, and so on.

If I could find a dagger in v4 with the affix 'of Stabbity', I would play it for sure.

[Djabanete]

Scythes of Slicing have such character! Just make it a Scythe-only affix and use "of Slaying" like Hengband or "of Chopping" like Crawl or "of Reaping" or some such for the general case.

[CunningGabe]

Originally Posted by debo

If I could find a dagger in v4 with the affix 'of Stabbity', I would play it for sure.

+1

Originally Posted by Djabanete

Scythes of Slicing have such character! Just make it a Scythe-only affix and use "of Slaying" like Hengband or "of Chopping" like Crawl or "of Reaping" or some such for the general case.

That's not a bad idea. There are some other polearms that aren't so overpowered with the 'of Slicing' affix, but a lot of them also don't make much sense. (Spear of slicing?)