[YAWP] Dunlin, the Dunadan Paladin

[Derakon]

Ladder dump

This was a randarts game, and on the whole, I think I would have been better-off with a standart set this time around. I found a vast profusion of worthless weapons (low +to-dam, low damage dice, useless slays, no stat boosts, etc.) and a lot of useless armor artifacts too. My final gear has only four artifacts! (arkenstone, body armor, cloak, and gauntlets). My cloak is pretty badass, though, with +2 blows, and I was using an artifact axe for most of the game.

I've uploaded my artifacts spoilers here. Looking at it, there were some decent items that I never found -- Isirie, Ndiste, Amena, Marverot (which I must assume is Deathwreaker or Doomcaller), Sulir, etc. So I'm not blaming the randart generator for giving me a crappy set; just the RNG for not giving me useful ones from that set. Never did find an artifact launcher, for that matter...looks like there were some nice ones there. And plenty of lovely-looking body armors that just never showed up...not that the one useful randart body armor I found was bad, mind.

In general this game just feels like I found tons of useless stuff and one useful item for each slot, if that. No useful randart launchers/rings/shields/boots, one marginally useful amulet, one early-game useful helm. One early-game useful weapon, one late-game useful weapon, one useful body armor, one (very!) useful cloak (and one reasonably useful cloak, Rogril), one useful set of gloves. That said, I still feel quite lucky, because a) I was able to do without for much of the game, and b) the items I did find ended up covering all of my important holes and giving me an impressive offense. Plus, I got very lucky with my ego items in the late game.

[Zikke]

Congratulations on the win! You just win too fast and don't give the RNG time to give you leet gearz.

I've had some really bad randart games too. At least with a paladin it matters a bit less.

[Derakon]

The weird thing is that I didn't really feel like I was playing very quickly. I did several recalls where I didn't take stairs at all around about 1750' -- I was missing basic resistances and see invisible, and didn't really want to go any deeper. Granted my actual dive to the basement went quickly, thanks to the batch of scrolls of Deep Descent I got from the black market. But then I hung around in the deeps for a decently long interval, going from running the heck away from almost everything to beating the snot out of a carefully-chosen subset of the uniques, and finally getting my stats up and important resistances covered.

What I find interesting about my final loadout is how delicate my resistance coverage is. I have only one source each of resistance to poison, blindness, confusion, nexus, nether, chaos, and disenchantment -- and those latter four are each on separate items! I have one source of free action, one source of see invisible, and one source of telepathy. And of course I never found sound/shards resistance in a useful form.

And yeah, playing as a paladin is very nice. You have good melee throughout the game, so no horribly slow start like the priests have, but that 300HP Heal spell came in handy so very often. While I was breaking down big dragons in melee, I was thinking to myself "Man, how do other classes manage to kill these things with so few Healing potions available?" and then I remembered, oh yeah, you buy out the Temple to get lots of CCW potions, and phase door and chug 'em like they're water. Or you play like a Ranger and shoot everything to death from outside melee range. Casting big healing spells is much easier, and more fun.

[Magnate]

If +2 blows appeared on a randart cloak every few games then it would be silly - but since it occurs once in about a thousand games (and might then never be found), it's not too terrible! Interesting that your randart weapons sucked so badly though - even the Zweihander aggravated and lacked any extra dice ...

[Derakon]

Well, I'm playing a new half-troll warrior, and I'm already (after ~20k player turns) down in stat-gain; just found a randart helm with +1 blows on it. Not worth replacing my Metal Cap of Telepathy over, but it's worth carrying as a swap...

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Well, I'm playing a new half-troll warrior, and I'm already (after ~20k player turns) down in stat-gain; just found a randart helm with +1 blows on it. Not worth replacing my Metal Cap of Telepathy over, but it's worth carrying as a swap...

Et voila - if it's not worth wearing over ESP, it's not exactly overpowered ... would you have worn it if it had +2 blows?

[Derakon]

Tricky. At that point, any other class would be wearing it certainly. With a warrior, though, ESP is my only source of seeing other monsters (no -Detection yet). I honestly don't know.

Note that I'm pretty dang lucky to have ESP this early. I got a Defender broadsword off of some unique, and then went to town and saw the ESP cap in the armorer's shop, at a price of 1 Defender broadsword.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

But a helm of +1 blows may well become the choice when a source of ESP comes available in a different slot. The power of a feature can often be how it combines.

But, +1 blows, or even +2 blows, is less of an issue than +1 shots. +1 shots means +100% damage; +2 blows even to a mage means only +50%, and to a warrior it's only +33%. That's maxed out, of course; prior to stat gain, one could find a nice heavy weapon that only gives one high-damage swing. Now the extra blow == +100% damage.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Tiburon Silverflame

But a helm of +1 blows may well become the choice when a source of ESP comes available in a different slot. The power of a feature can often be how it combines.

But, +1 blows, or even +2 blows, is less of an issue than +1 shots. +1 shots means +100% damage; +2 blows even to a mage means only +50%, and to a warrior it's only +33%. That's maxed out, of course; prior to stat gain, one could find a nice heavy weapon that only gives one high-damage swing. Now the extra blow == +100% damage.

Which is of course a rather nice side effect, making heavy weapons possible choices in the early game, which they otherwise wouldn't be.

I think perhaps the solution to shots and blows on nonweapon randarts is to make them supercharges - i.e. they don't appear alongside (m)any other attributes.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by Magnate

I think perhaps the solution to shots and blows on nonweapon randarts is to make them supercharges - i.e. they don't appear alongside (m)any other attributes.

You do realize that the difference between a warrior and a rogue is +1 blow? I.e. the old wisdom is that a single additional blow is, although not as good, at least comparable to all of the spellcasting and stealth and whatever else a rogue gets. An additional blow is a *really* big deal.