I ran into something that I think may be a bug in adventure mode, but I'd like to ask about it here before I make a bug report on Mantis.
By doing a little science, I figured out that the attribute bonuses/penalties selected at character creation are applied on top of semi-random(within the "average" range, as this is what unaltered attributes are always reported as in the in game menu) stats of your new character. You can see that the attributes of new adventurers are not equal to each other by genning two adventurers and comparing their speed. Speed is a result of strength, agility, and encumbrance, so if all adventurers started out with generic, identical attributes, then they'd all have the same initial speed, which they don't.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106233.msg3152939#msg3152939I figured that I would abuse this randomness by re-re-re-genning (gen-scum?) until I got an adventurer with ridiculously high starting strength and agility(within the "average" range), with "superior" bonuses piled on top of that, to have a ridiculously fast character. It ended up working quite well, as my brand new human demi-god adventurer had a starting speed of 2057, much faster than any of my previous adventurers.
Happy with this result, I proceeded to go commit a little animal abuse to try to get my weapon skills up to a level I could feel comfortable with. In the process of doing this, I found that soon after I starting using and gaining skill levels my speed score would suddenly and dramatically drop over 450 points. My character was not injured in any way, sneaking, swimming, encumbered, or using a crutch(hadn't found one yet), any one of which can alter speed. Nothing that I tried would return my speed stat to its original level.
I thought that this might be a one-off bug, and decided to force-quit without saving and try again from my initial zero turn save. I found that it happened again, soon after I starting replaying from the save. A bit frustrated and perplexed, I then looked on Mantis to see if this apparent bug had been reported before. I found nothing specifically on it, but a related bug report mentioned that becoming a vampire while having high attributes in adventure mode would cause a dramatic loss in speed.
I think what may be happening is that having a strength or agility attribute that is too high is breaking something with the equation to calculate speed. Perhaps if the value of the attribute is not within a specific range, it is discounted completely in the calculation, which could account for the large drop in speed. When my very fast new adventurer started gaining attributes from using his skills, he pushed either his strength or agility past the breaking point and lost a ton of speed because of it.
Has anyone else noticed this happening to their characters, and do you guys think this should be bug reported?