Rings of Flame, etc.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

IIRC you now get max blows with MoD with any char with 18/220 STR & 18/220 DEX. Fractional blows definitely changed heavy weapons (mainly high DEX affects a lot more than it used to). Not quite sure that you can get 6 with warrior, but definitely can get 5 with everyone.

Well, I think rogue/paladin/ranger could always get 5 blows with it, so if anything fractional blows should have increased the DEX requirements for that. But the blows table is eminently tweakable if the consensus is that it's too generous.

I tested that for my own variant long time ago. For ring slot it isn't bad, you have better uses for them (damage and speed). Things might have changed now because speed is so easy to get. Only problem with those was that dragon pits become really easy, which felt wrong.

I can see why that would feel wrong, yes. I guess you're right that with such competition for ring slots a single immunity wouldn't be a no-brainer, so it's another possibility worthy of consideration. I'll try allowing immunity on rings in v4 when we move jewelry to affix-based generation - I'll need to add a flag which says that "this affix cannot co-exist with any others", but I've been wanting to do something about affix compatibility for a while now (ticket #1562).

Brands OTOH are not available at all outside of weapons, except with those elemental rings, which makes that a lot bigger change.

Well, fizzix seems pretty clear that rings are staying un-branded in 3.4, so no worries there.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Magnate

Well, I think rogue/paladin/ranger could always get 5 blows with it, so if anything fractional blows should have increased the DEX requirements for that.

Rogue did get only four with MoD before fractional blows.

This is from 2.9.3 tables.c:


* First, from the player class, we extract some values:
*
* Warrior --> num = 6; mul = 5; div = MAX(30, weapon_weight);
* Mage --> num = 4; mul = 2; div = MAX(40, weapon_weight);
* Priest --> num = 5; mul = 3; div = MAX(35, weapon_weight);
* Rogue --> num = 5; mul = 3; div = MAX(30, weapon_weight);
* Ranger --> num = 5; mul = 4; div = MAX(35, weapon_weight);
* Paladin --> num = 5; mul = 4; div = MAX(30, weapon_weight);
*
* To get "P", we look up the relevant "adj_str_blow[]" (see above),
* multiply it by "mul", and then divide it by "div", rounding down.
*
* To get "D", we look up the relevant "adj_dex_blow[]" (see above),
* note especially column 6 (DEX 18/101) and 11 (DEX 18/150).
*
* The player gets "blows_table[P][D]" blows/round, as shown below,
* up to a maximum of "num" blows/round, plus any "bonus" blows/round.
*/
const byte blows_table[12][12] =
{
/* P/D */
/* 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11+ */

/* 0 */
{ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3 },

/* 1 */
{ 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4 },

/* 2 */
{ 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5 },

/* 3 */
{ 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5 },

/* 4 */
{ 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 },

/* 5 */
{ 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6 },

/* 6 */
{ 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6 },

/* 7 */
{ 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6 },

/* 8 */
{ 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6 },

/* 9 */
{ 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6 },

/* 10 */
{ 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6 },

/* 11+ */
{ 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6 },
};


Relevant factors: 240 points from STR, weapon weight divider is weapon weight in lbs*10, STR points get multiplied by class-dependent multiplier. Best case is then warrior with biggest multiplier:

Warrior: 240*5/400 = 3. max blows in row index 3 is 5, so one blow short of max. Second best would be ranger/paladin 240*4/400 = 2 (rounded down) . Those two did get max blows with DEX of 18/130. Rogue an Priest are next 240*3/400 = 1 (rounded down). Rogue or priest didn't get five and even getting four was not granted (needed that 18/130 DEX, which OTOH was easy to get with rogue, not so easy with priest). Mage gets 240*2/400 = 1 which is same.

BTW, it felt wrong then and still feels wrong that rogue is weaker melee-fighter than ranger. IMO ranger should be nearly as weak as mage for melee, it has excellent shooting ability and nearly all mage spells to compensate that, while rogue has weakest set of spells of all spellcaster classes.

edit: added missing end tt tag.