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[Leafsnail]

it's all NERF NERF NERF until everything is equally useless. the devs question the need for the class at all and just remove it.

Fix't. I'm still bitter about the Thief.

Surely if you want a thief, you just pick Assassin and then drop your blowgun.

[Dakk]

The statement is valid though. I read the devblog from time to time, and everytime one dev suggest something interesting, most of the other devs just keep saying its bad or will ruin "the balance", despite said devs frequently talking about how armor is nigh useless and how spelless characters have no chance of winning.

[G-Flex]

how armor is nigh useless

It was, or damn close. It's better in trunk now.

and how spelless characters have no chance of winning.

It's not a sure bet, but you're at a really serious disadvantage if you can't even cast low-level spells, nor is there reason for that to be the case for most characters.

[Leafsnail]

I'd disagree.  It was significantly worse than useless.

[G-Flex]

True. Heavy armour (especially the heaviest) screws you over in ways that aren't very easy to circumvent. It takes significant skill for it not to prevent you from attacking a significant portion of the time, and you're basically screwed when it comes to spellcasting. Oh, and stealth. And I forget what else.

[Leafsnail]

Dodging.

[G-Flex]

Right.

The problem is/was that Dodging and robes were still useful enough for protection (mostly via EV) that there was just no point to using heavy armor. Now, heavy armour has better GDR (guaranteed damage reduction), armour enchantment maxima are based on the base AC of the armour type (so you can only get robes up to +2, but can get plate up to +10), and... well, I'm not sure if anything else was changed, but that's probably enough.

[Taxus]

Unrelated: I'm still huttburt about major balance issues, especially with ogres.

Ogres are a challenge race. They are supposed to be hard to win with. And boy, are they.

[Leafsnail]

I'm not sure if they were meant to be.  They do have advantages.  Just... not very big ones.

[nenjin]

Yeah, I just pine for the thief because its removal speaks to what they're not planning. For the longest time I've wanted chests and locked doors, things that actually require thieving.

Unfortunately Crawl is ultimately a combat roguelike, so the whole "just be an assassin and drop the blowgun" pretty much describes the depth of the current vision. That's not a dig at them, but, removing stuff because you can't/won't create the content to back it up makes me sad. If some race/class combination are more challenging than others, leave them in and let the players choose.

With a few added things that don't 100% revolve around combat, there would be more places for classes like a thief (or more interesting archaeologists and tinkerers, ect....)

Also, yeah, the Death Knight removal hurt more than the Thief. That's a combo I dearly wish I could play now. I can see why they did it, since the combination was pretty much OP to teh max. I dunno. I'm just never very happy when content that isn't broken still gets removed.

Playing a Vampire Necromancer of Kittiqutiouthtinashsdfasdl;asdjkfaskl;df (sp?) atm. Really enjoying it, but man, I can't seem to keep an abomination around me for more than one level. Everything is going fine, and then I hit one super monster or another and it just shreds them. Ran into Stone Giant Skeleton that plowed through TWO Abominations AND a Dragon zombie!

I also can't seem to keep my favor high enough, consistently, to get the god's blessing at his altar. By the time I walk my happy ass back to the Temple, I've already lost his favor through piety decay. Kind of annoying.

They really need to find a way to make the game interesting and viable for non-caster, non-worshipers. So many parts of this game that are fun completely revolve around non-mundane things. Is there any long running character that doesn't turn into a hybrid fighter/caster by some point?

[Frumple]

If you're including god-stuff under the hybrid umbrella, then... no. No, there aren't. A character is either going to turn into a spellcaster, invoker, or evoker, to some degree, before the endgame, or they're not going to reach the endgame. There's just not enough perishable resources (scrolls, potions) for a fellow to survive without some sort of non-perishable supplement.

[nenjin]

Or....spell-less, godless characters don't have enough natural resources to rely on themselves.

Think about all the "innate" powers characters get from a variety of sources. I personally think class should impart more innate abilities that aren't invocation than they do now. Although that may get a little too close to something like Diablo for many people's taste...I think it would give non-caster, non-worshipers a reason to play those classes. Even stuff as simple as a Might Blow ability that eats a lot of food per use, spell like abilities that aren't in any way related to caster skills...would make the mundanes more fun to play.

It'd also give them an excuse to make more classes around ability sets.

-Aside-

It's funny, Stone Soup actually shakes out much the same way one of our old D&D campaigns did. The casters were always the stars of the show, and the fighters, the thieves, and the rest usually had to turn to the gods to get the sexy weapons/god powers so they could not just be baggage. Almost every person in the group had a god and a pretty close relationship to them because it brought a lot of advantages. It was such an ingrained part of game play we dubbed the main campaign party we used "The God Party."

[Frumple]

Haven't the devs at some point or another kinda' spoke directly against classes as having anything special about them beyond the starting skill/item/piety loadout? The major character aspects are race, skill, and god, from what I understand, with only some skills (The spellcasting ones, including invo/evo.) having any emergent aspects to them. It would definitely be more equitable to have th'non-spell (i.e. 'mundane') skills have their own emergent aspects -- like your Mighty Blow suggestion.

As for th'fighter vs spellcaster thing... yeah, the stabby meatshields eventually being utterly and totally outclassed is so common to fantasy games that there's probably a page for it on TVTropes somewhere. Casters get new and better toys to play with, while non-casters just get better at using th'same old ones Is annoying thing, all too often.

But hey. Plenty of RLs that are going in other directions with that junk.

[nenjin]

I haven't tried to keep track with what the devs are saying on DC. But I'd guess that's their stance. "Specialness" comes from race, god and mutations. Class only further modifies your aptitudes.

Which just seems like it's overlooking perhaps the biggest place to make new and interesting stuff, to me. When characters already can get everything but the kitchen sink on one character....why not increase the amount of uniqueness they find when trying a new combination?

[Candlejack]

Unrelated: I'm still huttburt about major balance issues, especially with ogres.

Ogres are a challenge race. They are supposed to be hard to win with. And boy, are they.

If I wanted challenge, I'd play a non-recommended race/class and even some of those are better than the best ogre combination.