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[Tenth Speed Writer]

Hey, y'all. I just noticed something about the new military skill system that I kinda like:

Since Misc. Object fighting became a skill, dwarves have gained the ability to use shields as rather effective weapons. In a recent game, I received a couple of highly skilled armor smiths very early, but have had to trade for weapons; as a result, a couple of my militia dwarves leveled their fighting and wrestling skills to a mad point. Lately, one of those squads has been on cave critter response, and the shield-wrestler among them has been leveling his Misc. Object User skill significantly. It's not quite as good as a proper weapon in a fight, but having a shield has respectably increased his damage output over a bare wrestler.

It lead me to a thought, would it be reasonable if Toady were to expand the fighting system to include a second attack tier; that is, when the RNG rolls to determine what attack a dwarf makes, to consider alternate-but-not-unorthodox attack methods (such as kicking, but not biting) alongside the secondary attacks made with the equipped weapon?

It would certainly add an element of realism; pommel strikes and blows with bucklers were common fighting techniques, and I think it would be cool for dwarves to be able to do the same without having to use awkward loadouts to train them.



On a completely unrelated note: I just watched a rather dwarfy fight where said shield-wrestler batted one creeping eye into a magma pool before turning 180 and embedding his shield in another, all the while curb-stomping a third.

[Psieye]

Given kicking is in the raws but just never seen, I think that is Toady's intent but he just hasn't gotten round to getting it setup right.

[RenoFox]

I have occassionally seen dwarves striking with pommels, flats of axes and shafts of spears. They're nice variations in the combat logs although less effective than the standard strikes.