Angband. y u no give numerical damage output?

[BlueFish]

I have no idea why anybody would be against seeing specific damage numbers. I'd love to see it, personally.

[Derakon]

I remember reading about one of the D&D groups run by the Penny Arcade guys, where they decided to have the DM track player health instead of the players. When a character got hit, instead of being told how much damage they took and how much health they had left, they were given textual descriptions like "It's just a scratch" or "That really hurt, you're barely still on your feet". This greatly improved the roleplaying by removing one source of metagaming -- the "Okay, I know he can't hit for more than 20 damage, and I still have 22 hitpoints, so I can stand in melee with him one more round" type of thing. Introducing more uncertainty into the decision-making process increased tension and therefor fun.

So there is some plausibility behind hiding damage numbers from the player -- it can increase immersion by hiding the game mechanics. But if you're going to do that, you can't show the player's health either, since otherwise basic arithmetic will tell you how much damage you've taken in a round (though not necessarily how much damage each individual strike dealt since the HP display doesn't update continuously).

Obviously this is of little value to those who aren't in the game for immersion; it's the whole roleplaying vs. rollplaying problem all over again.

[UglySquirrell]

I know that any game with the option for numerical damage I've turned it on, liked seeing the big red damage numbers. That being said I think not knowing exact numbers in angband is pretty fun. How many people have taken the chance of trying for one more hit on a really dangerous creature, hoping to finish him off but knowing they might fail. Had Morgoth down to one star, didn't have any healing potions left but took one more swing. If you knew the numbers this wouldn't happen as much. For better or worse. I play with auto clear more prompts so I wouldn't see the numbers anyway, would like to see criticals affect status instead of damage. Monsters seem to have this already. If a yeek hits you for a critical it stuns you. How about different effects for different weapons? Blunt have a chance to stun or confuse, daggers have a chance to cause a mortal wound damage over time, whips to blind, sword of frost to freeze, of flame to set on fire, artifacts could have some cool ones, this way you could see by the health bars state you had landed a critical.

[buzzkill]

It's not at all a metegaming thing for me. It's strictly a curiosity. If there's a significant advantage to be had here, I've yet to recognize it. I'd go so far as to say that it's something that I might actually find annoying after a while, but I'll never know for sure if I don't get to try it.

[fph]

I'd definitely want to know
1) which one does the most damage (on average)
2) which one has the lowest fail rate
between my wand of lightning bolts, my enchanted arrows, my OoD spell, and my mace of slay orc.

Now I am daydreaming, but it would be great to have the possibility of displaying a graph displaying the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_density_function]probability distribution[url] for the damage of every single item --- I realize this is challenging to make in an ASCII art setting though.
This would somehow turn Angband into not only a fun game, but also an occasion to get some feeling for probabilities in real life.
Well, it already taught me "don't do 100 times one action with 1% catastrophic fail probability". (is it among the shopkeepers rumour messages? well, if not it should)

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by fph

I'd definitely want to know
1) which one does the most damage (on average)
2) which one has the lowest fail rate
between my wand of lightning bolts, my enchanted arrows, my OoD spell, and my mace of slay orc.

Well, with the exception of the skill bonus to the wand's damage, all that info is already provided. And we're happy to provide the multiplier for the skill bonus.

Actually there's another exception: monster recall tells you your chance to hit the monster with your current melee weapon, but not with any missile weapon. I guess we could add the chance to hit with the ammo in quiver slot 0.

There's an increasing divergence between people who want more information (transparent mechanics - this is a tactical game) and people who want less (bring back the mystery of F-K - this is a role-playing game). I just hope everybody bears in mind that it's not possible to please both camps.

[BlueFish]

Angband is decidedly not a role-playing game. It's a game of tactical combat, discovery of items, and inventory management. Those things are all served by seeing specific damage numbers. There is no good reason not to include them.

[d_m]

Originally Posted by fph

Dive fast, die young, leave a high-CHA corpse.

Great sig btw

[Jungle_Boy]

Originally Posted by BlueFish

Angband is decidedly not a role-playing game. It's a game of tactical combat, discovery of items, and inventory management. Those things are all served by seeing specific damage numbers. There is no good reason not to include them.

This is a matter of opinion, I think Angband is a role-playing game, not that I'm necessarily opposed to damage numbers but I kinda like the way it is now with the exact hitpoints and exact damage done unknown. I sometimes find myself hitting my keys harder to do more damage or more deliberately to make sure I don't miss.

[Nick]

Angband is many things to many people, which is what makes it so challenging to maintain.