Class/magic: non-casters and hybrids

[bio_hazard]

At first reading, this sounds more like the outcomes of a skill tree than distinct classes.

[Whelk]

I've always liked the idea of removing spellcasting from rogues entirely, but giving them some sort of magic-device-related boon to make up for that. Always seemed weird that rogues were running around casting spells from magic tomes, but the idea that they come upon some nifty magic devices in their life of "treasure hunting" that they've learned to use well jives well enough.

I mean, even if it's just a flavor thing in giving them a unique spellbook they use that isn't called a spellbook, but rather described as ... I don't know, some kind of magical doodad that can be activated for the effects.

[Estie]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Oh yeah. If you're revamping the archer class, can you please please please give it extra might instead of extra shots? At least try it out?

There is a problem with that. Namely, that melee has a bunch of modifiers that affect its damage - straightforward +damage on gear, +str, +str/+dex which add attacks, extra blows, whatnot. Archery has only 2 - extra shots and might. That is already a bad situation if you compare the artifact list of the plethora of melee weapons with the few possible combinations for launchers. Sofar, a ranger might not necessarily prefer a bow with extra shots. If you give him extra might, he always will.

If, as I believe, your objective is to reduce the relative damage increase, pretty much every other way is preferable to "more extra might" - a straight damage adder, fractional shots, a brand multiplier increase, you name it. Your suggestion would lead to zero variance itemisation.

I think I would add in a 3rd way of increasing damage to archery - not necessarily by adding it to the archer class (only). That would make the possible combinations more interesting and it also would reduce the weight of both the existing modifiers, shots and might. Off weapon straight damage would be the natural choice, but other ways can be conceived.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Estie

There is a problem with that. Namely, that melee has a bunch of modifiers that affect its damage - straightforward +damage on gear, +str, +str/+dex which add attacks, extra blows, whatnot. Archery has only 2 - extra shots and might. That is already a bad situation if you compare the artifact list of the plethora of melee weapons with the few possible combinations for launchers. Sofar, a ranger might not necessarily prefer a bow with extra shots. If you give him extra might, he always will.

If, as I believe, your objective is to reduce the relative damage increase, pretty much every other way is preferable to "more extra might" - a straight damage adder, fractional shots, a brand multiplier increase, you name it. Your suggestion would lead to zero variance itemisation.

I think I would add in a 3rd way of increasing damage to archery - not necessarily by adding it to the archer class (only). That would make the possible combinations more interesting and it also would reduce the weight of both the existing modifiers, shots and might. Off weapon straight damage would be the natural choice, but other ways can be conceived.

I've been thinking about this too. I like the idea of accomplished archers (with long/short bows) getting faster shooting speed, but the current implementation is way overpowered. My (and other people's) ideas so far include:

• Shooting speed tied to DEX
• Shooting speed tied to shooting skill
• Shooting speed tied to a specific class power (this already happens)
• Some sort of shooting speed modifier which works differently for the different launcher types (fast shooting doesn't really make sense for crossbows)
• Slings able to fire multiple shots, or even arbitrary objects
• Different shooting profiles for different races

As a first cut, making +1 extra shots actually +1/3 extra shots is maybe worth thinking about.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Now, regarding your contemplations:If you're going to have multiple low-magic classes, they'll need to be strongly-differentiated by some other method. Warriors are acceptable-to-good at basically every non-magical skill except devices, so that doesn't leave you a lot of room to maneuver. On the flipside I have a little trouble saying that warriors need to be nerfed just so you can add more classes that are different from them. They feel like they're in a good spot balance-wise right now.

I think warriors are pretty good now too, and I'm not looking to add classes for the sake of it - rather it's if there's a good coherent concept for a class.

Originally Posted by Derakon

Why steal from monsters when you can kill them and take everything? What's my incentive here? More generally, keep in mind that everyone needs to win, and to win they have to kill Morgoth and Sauron, so that implies a certain amount of martial capability; how do rogues kill things?

Because you can steal from things you can't kill yet They'll certainly need to be able to fight; I'm actually seeing the stealing as a means of accelerating their power increase.

Originally Posted by Derakon

You're going to run into trouble with player expectations if the ranger is merely "goodish" at archery. Rangers are baked into the public consciousness as master archers, so they'd at least need to be next-best after the straight-up Archer class. Either that or ditch the Ranger entirely, seeing as Druids (current Nature users) already seem to be a hybrid class in playstyle if not in intent.

I guess they would be the next best at archery. I'm also thinking of the ability to make monsters track to the wrong place, which lends itself to missile combat.

Originally Posted by Derakon

There's a lot of conceptual overlap here with the burglar. I think that frankly Bilbo is just a "good" brigand, or alternately Wormtongue is just an evil burglar. Most of our classes don't currently make moral judgements, which provides some pleasing ambiguity about @'s nature (see also all the "maybe the player is evil" discussions we occasionally have). It'd be a shame to lose that.

I think directly evil players are probably a consequence of having a shadow magic realm at all. That said, I think there probably is too much overlap between the rogue and assassin ideas. I like Gwarl's idea better; I'm thinking fighter powered up by shadow magic that massively enhances combat at the cost of personal damage and danger. There are plenty of Middle Earth examples - Black Numenoreans, followers of the Witch-King, etc.

Originally Posted by bio_hazard

At first reading, this sounds more like the outcomes of a skill tree than distinct classes.

In what way?

[PowerWyrm]

Originally Posted by Nick

I've been thinking about this too. I like the idea of accomplished archers (with long/short bows) getting faster shooting speed, but the current implementation is way overpowered. My (and other people's) ideas so far include:

• Shooting speed tied to DEX
• Shooting speed tied to shooting skill
• Shooting speed tied to a specific class power (this already happens)
• Some sort of shooting speed modifier which works differently for the different launcher types (fast shooting doesn't really make sense for crossbows)
• Slings able to fire multiple shots, or even arbitrary objects
• Different shooting profiles for different races

As a first cut, making +1 extra shots actually +1/3 extra shots is maybe worth thinking about.

PWMAngband has Archers and I never was able to fully balance them. Whatever I do they are either obscenely OP or pointless vs other classes using base archery. I ended up giving them +2ES like Rangers but for any type of shooters and spells giving either flat damage or brands. This works well except for the stupid damage bumps at levels 20 and 40. I'd like to add fractional shots to counter that, so they get small shooting speed increases every level, just like the Monk class which in PWMAngband gets 0.1 extra bpr per level.

[Estie]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

PWMAngband has Archers and I never was able to fully balance them. Whatever I do they are either obscenely OP or pointless vs other classes using base archery. I ended up giving them +2ES like Rangers but for any type of shooters and spells giving either flat damage or brands. This works well except for the stupid damage bumps at levels 20 and 40. I'd like to add fractional shots to counter that, so they get small shooting speed increases every level, just like the Monk class which in PWMAngband gets 0.1 extra bpr per level.

The reason you cant balance the archer is because, as a class, it is pretty well balanced as is - in fact I think of it rather as a lower tier option.
If you are adjusting the damage to that of a melee fighter (and call that balance), it will become pointless indeed.

The thing is that the weight on the other scale is hassle; an ugly and imo undesirable, but effective factor. The ranger pushes some ridiculous numbers when it comes to fighting the boss, but along the way, it is better to be the rogue.

The nightmare is a ranged fighter who plinks on endlessly, doing tiny pixels of damage for every normal monster. Even if he can do that undisturbed and has an easy time with it, its undesirable gameplay. My favoured take on this is burst damage. It was kindof well established in 3.0.0 or thereabouts with rare, but very damaging branded arrows. Unfortunately, it also requires the equally ugly non-stacking of ammo to work properly.

If burst is the solution, I see 2 options: for easy fights where you save resources, you eirther use basic arrows - probably in the form of a default attack not requiring any actual item arrows at all, and therefore no micromanagement - or you use melee.

Why dont you like the damage bumps at level 20/40 ? As a player, I prefer that to a pointless and barely noticable trickle of power from 0.1 bpr/level. It is something to look forward to and the phase of great damage is preceded by one of low damage you have to work through before the joy.

[t4nk]

The biggest hassle when playing a ranger is collecting arrows after fight. Consider making arrows always disappear after being shot. That will remove the hassle and also make rangers so balanced that perhaps increasing their damage will be a good idea (and increasing damage will also reduce the amount of keypresses when playing rangers). Maybe also introduce "magic quivers" that are infinite stacks of (weak) missles.
Some people will say "but that's not realistic!". Then these guys go ahead and play a game where zero dimensional characters take turns on a two dimensional surface, which is realistic enough to them

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by Estie

There is a problem with that. Namely, that melee has a bunch of modifiers that affect its damage - straightforward +damage on gear, +str, +str/+dex which add attacks, extra blows, whatnot. Archery has only 2 - extra shots and might. That is already a bad situation if you compare the artifact list of the plethora of melee weapons with the few possible combinations for launchers. Sofar, a ranger might not necessarily prefer a bow with extra shots. If you give him extra might, he always will.

We're dangerously side-tracking this conversation, but this is a fair point -- I forgot to mention that I want to see Extra Shots, at least in its current incarnation, removed from the game entirely. The fact that Vanilla rangers get 2 extra shots completely free is just the most obvious way that it's completely imbalancing, but if you've ever played e.g. a priest and found a +2 shots randart, and discovered that despite what you may have thought you're an archer now because it's by far your best source of damage? Then you should know what I'm talking about.

I'm absolutely not opposed to giving other things to archers, and I'm all in favor of giving nice, chunky power boosts to them. I just don't think that extra shots fits into that worldview.

Perhaps an Archer class could get a set of spells that let them fire magic arrows from their mana pool, instead of real arrows from their inventory. The stats and per-arrow mana cost would depend on the spell, so e.g. they might start out with a spell that produces 1d4 weak-fire-branded arrows for 1SP apiece (roughly on par with Magic Missile), and in the late game they'd have a spell to produce *Slay* Dragon 3d4+10 ammo for 40SP apiece, or something like that. The idea being that they could start each fight off with a flurry of magic arrows that do good damage against their target (whatever it might be), but they'll run out of SP before the target dies, so they still need to carry physical ammunition. Meanwhile, against low-level enemies, they can just use the magic arrows exclusively, and not have any inventory hassle.

[EpicMan]

Perhaps Rogues could become the new archer class if they lose (most?) magic - then they fill the archer and stealthy niches. Maybe a U power that does non-fuzzy detection, or give them a telepathy-like detection power that automatically detects treasure and whose radius grows with level?