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Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 28, 2020 at 4:13 pm
I do like the idea of a wand/scroll case, although that's what I use strongboxes for (when I find them).

To take these ideas one step further: how about a couple new legendary items, ripped straight out of D&D (and maybe reskinned to be nice and IVANesque): the Bag of Holding and the Portable Hole. Now, I see the bag of holding as being able to carry as much as a large chest, but not being able to lock, weighing a lot less, and not changing weight as items are added. The portable hole, on the other hand, is just a trick item: at first glance it seems like it should be a Bag of Holding Plus - but it's actually just a hole, and anything you throw in it is irrecoverable.
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 25, 2020 at 11:59 pm
Do items that are on fire produce smoke? Because they should.
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 24, 2020 at 9:26 pm
Current character is ~2 levels into GC actually, was debating cracking one open on my way back to NA for science talking purposes...
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 24, 2020 at 9:25 pm
New dungeon: The Mine
Every level is mine themed. So there is a level with a bunch of ore and pick axes and shit. Another level has a lot of mines of both the gas and explosive variety. A third is full of firedamp - flammable gas that you can't breathe. Maybe one has a bunch of sirens (who just say "Mine" and you give them stuff).
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 24, 2020 at 5:17 pm
I looked through the wiki, and couldn't find any information about the tiny sealed chest "rooms" that spawn in UT (and sometimes GC?). Mostly, I'm trying to remember what the guardian golem is made of so I can decide if I can take him or not...
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 10, 2020 at 5:14 pm
My naive assumption is that for a weapon wielded in both hands, it would use your displayed (that is, average) dexterity and strength for all calculations. Anyone with source access and time to kill want to check?
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 9, 2020 at 7:12 pm
red_kangaroo wrote
But if we have right handedness, we should definitely have left handedness!

I agree in principle. You would need some way to indicate it in a quite obvious way, otherwise it's just one more barrier for new players.
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 9, 2020 at 7:11 pm
capristo wrote
Honestly I had no idea that people thought dual wielding was the way to go lol.

Twin Saal'thul was always popular back in 0.50, and my only win (again 0.50) was with twin Neerc se'Ulb. I've always thought sword-and-board, or two-hander, was the cooler option, and in fact for a good chunk of my 050 win I had to use Neerc in both hands. Eventually I built up like 25 or 30-something arm strength and was able to switch to mace-and-shield. It got rediculous when I got gifted a second Neerc after that though...

I've been considering a build where I carry around all three options and switch weapons for the task at hand.
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 9, 2020 at 4:51 pm
I have several points to make really quick.

Point 1) This is IVAN, not Dwarf Fortress or Real World Medieval Combat Simulator 2020. Some concessions to "what the system supports" and "what is cool" should be made. If I want to be able to (theoretically) swing two halberds around, don't you dare try and stop me.

Point 2) Blocking an attack with a mace and blocking an attack with a sword are basically the same. The difference is that swords are generally longer and better balanced, which makes them easier to move around. Recall that in-game, the block formula is affected by weapon accuracy.

Point 3) As envisioned by the original devs, the three (main) combat styles each had their own purposes. Two-handed weapons pack a lot of punch, but are slow and inaccurate. They are excellent for crushing through blocks, but are ineffective against fast, agile enemies. Sword-and-board gives you a lot of blocking potential and respectable offensive power. They are great for dealing with many weak attacks, such as you might deal with when fighting a fast, agile character. Dual wielding gives you many weak attacks that come rapidly - great for overwhelming the limited blocking capacity of a two-handed weapon, less effective against the greater blocking power of a shield. They were supposed to play a sort of rock-paper-scissors. Dual wielding came to prominence mainly because of the power of Saal'Thul, the relative paucity of powerful two-handed weapons (beyond Mjolak), and the ineffectiveness of "tank builds". Whether dual wielding is STILL the dominant playstyle, I don't know.

Point 4) Fighting with two weapons is not the same speed as fighting with one, whether in one hand or in two. What I mean to say is that the amount of time it takes you to complete one attack cycle when using two weapons is not equal to the amount of time it takes you to complete one cycle with one weapon. It's slower. Maybe not half as fast (I don't know the equation) but it is slower.

Point 6) I'm going to make a new thread for discussion of "swords akimbo" discussion. You can find it here.
Posted by Ischaldirh, Apr 9, 2020 at 4:50 pm
Hijacking from this thread. The waters were getting muddied with multiple topics being discussed, so I'm splintering this part of the discussion.

There were some interesting suggestions. I'm going to run with one of them: Dexterity requirements. Here's my own take on the suggestion:

Weapons gain a soft dexterity requirement (if they don't already have one?). For the vast majority of weapons, this requirement will be low - around 3-8 for lower-tier weapons/materials. It will scale down with weapon mass, so heavier weapons require less dexterity (and more strength), and up with flexibility, so a whip would require higher dexterity. (I'm thinking a whip might require somewhere around 12.) When i say soft, I mean it will not actually prevent you from using it - but there will be penalties, up to and including a chance to simply fail to attack, or to accidentally hurt yourself.

The base dexterity requirement assumes you are wielding the weapon in one hand with nothing in the other hand. (Using two hands on one weapon would not help you meet the dexterity requirement.) If you are wielding anything in the other hand - a shield, another sword, whatever - the requirement to wield the weapon (effectively, anyways) increases in proportion to the size of the other item. Shields are large, so using your sword with a shield is a little harder than using just the sword. Halberds are huge, so wielding two halberds is ... hard.

Ancillary: Handedness. A character may default to being right-handed (most characters) but sometimes they are ambidextrous. (No lefties here - honestly that would just add annoyance to the player, unless it was very clearly pointed out.) What does handedness do? Well, it changes your strength and dexterity balance slightly. Your primary hand gets +1 strength and dex, your off-hand gets -1 strength and dex. It also changes the stat growth rate for each arm in a similar manner. (Recall that your right arm and left arm have independent stat values, and the displayed value is their average.) Ambidexterity just... doesn't do this, both hands are main hands and develop equally.

Game effects of dex requirements: It would rather penalize two-weapon combat in general, and make it harder to pull off.It would also make whips a lot harder to use with anything in the off-hand (except, perhaps, a dagger). Further, when using mismatched weapons, your smaller weapon will suffer a greater penalty than the larger weapon.

Game effects of handedness: Especially in combination with dexterity requirements as laid out above, it would make a non-ambidextrous character a bit less efficient at developing as a twin sword fighter, and would encourage them to use a sword-and-board or greatsword type weapon. Otherwise, effects would be relatively minimal.