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[ShadeJS]

It's an unnecessary asymmetry that prevents victoriously running thematically interesting builds (re: atheist non-caster tank). It's also showing that less love and attention is being given to the non-casters and godless (or god-limited) builds, which is both somewhat disappointing and a waste of potential. The devs could be fitting a lot of interesting mechanics in there, that meaningfully add to the breadth and depth of Crawl's gameplay. It's always kinda' disheartening to see potential wasted.

See: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:item:weapon_reform&s%5B%5D=moves

Plus they doubled GDR, and are nerfing a bunch of enchantments found on things, and lighter armour.

So it's on the radar.

[beorn080]

Except said conjurer can still have zero in other casting skill and still be able to bust out blink or butterflies or spammels since it has a high spellcasting skill. The fighter, even with 27 fight skill, gets no new means of escape it can pick up easily. It either has to branch out to evokations, invocations, or spellcasting to get escape abilities, unless you count trog.

Couterpoint: Any character can learn enough magic to bust out blink or butterflies or spammals. That's what hybrids are all about.

Anyway, I think that making magic powers an integral part of the game is an entirely valid design choice. Being able to warp the laws of nature with your mind makes the game easier, and that's just how the world works in this particular instance.

Double counterpoint. I was responding to someone who said a better comparison was between a straight fighter and a straight conjurer. A character starting as a spellcaster has significantly easier time picking up the the required tricks to help them survive.

A straight up MDFi vs a Straight up DECo(Fi), the DE can instantly learn the spells they find, whereas the MDFi has to get some spare xp, victory dance with scrolls to lvl 1 spellcasting, then get more xp and burn it on spellcasting. All the while, they are losing xp from their primary killing method, which the DE never has to do, since spellcasting covers lvl 2-3 spells when past midgame for the most part.

Yes, Hybridization is expected. But the caster's hybridization involves spreading xp to one or two spare schools, or just skipping em and pumping spellcasting. A fighter has a much harder chore of it.

[Strange guy]

I agree with beorn in this case- I don't think I've ever even gained a spell caster level as a non-caster (admittedly my most successful characters have mostly been spell casters or Trog followers, but I have had a couple of not completely awful assassins). With the benefits of spell caster skills casters can immediately be decent at new schools of magic without much hunger cost. Even if a spell caster wants to learn physical combat skills (not that they need to) it's easier since you are able to properly train them immediately (rather than relying on scrolls).

[freeformschooler]

I know that you guys aren't too happy with the balance issues in the game. Neither am I. However, isn't the game open source to the point that submissions to the code via git/whatever they use now are completely open? Couldn't you just learn to program and help them balance the game yourself rather than complaining in a place that they devs you speak of are unlikely to see? Correct me if I'm wrong and the version control system is read-only outside of a specific ("devs") group.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Except said conjurer can still have zero in other casting skill and still be able to bust out blink or butterflies or spammels since it has a high spellcasting skill. The fighter, even with 27 fight skill, gets no new means of escape it can pick up easily. It either has to branch out to evokations, invocations, or spellcasting to get escape abilities, unless you count trog.

Fighters aren't suppose to need escape spells. They're tanks. Frail casters shouldn't let a dangerous monster get within melee distance, which is why they have so many escape options in the 1st place.

[Robsoie]

At least the 0.8 doubling of the guaranteed damage reduction finally give the melee characters a chance.
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/recent-heavy-armour-changes

I noticed my high AC / low EV current chaos knight has survived battles with some specific monsters in melee that would have killed it surely in 0.7 due to the EV being too low with heavy armor to resist multiple hits.
Melee characters seems to finally be able to count on their heavy armor to actually be a good protection and not just a way to cripple their EV so they could be killed later by monster with very high damage output.

That's a very positive change to finally balance more the AC in comparison to the previously almighty EV and repair the too strong nerf the AC got a few versions earlier.

[beorn080]

I know that you guys aren't too happy with the balance issues in the game. Neither am I. However, isn't the game open source to the point that submissions to the code via git/whatever they use now are completely open? Couldn't you just learn to program and help them balance the game yourself rather than complaining in a place that they devs you speak of are unlikely to see? Correct me if I'm wrong and the version control system is read-only outside of a specific ("devs") group.

Well, at that point it would be a different branch. Plus I don't know much coding, but I'm a fair hand at detecting balance and such. Mostly, we hope that the devs read this thread and take some advice, and if you are reading this thread devs, feel free to comment and discuss with us.

[Tinker Thinker]

GRAH! Luck is so frustrating in the early levels. My first character in 7.1 (previously I'd played 5.1 exclusively) was a Kobold Earth Elementalist, due to the great fun of zooming in, shanking the enemy, and then sandblasting them into oblivion if they're still alive.

So this one died with 61 stones in her inventory.
Why?
Cursed sword.
The sword wasn't cursed when she equipped it, and she managed to play a hugely long dodging game with Ijyb (who I've discovered is basically impossible for this character build to touch without Stoneblast (Sandblast w/ Stones wielded)), escaping him no less than three times, twice due to scrolls of teleport and the third time by managing to lose him in the corridors, thanks to a wand of slow.

What killed her? An iguana, because it could hit for 3/4ths of her HP in one hit, was *slightly* faster I think (believe me, I expended the charges of that wand trying to lose this damned thing), and she'd used up her overt escape options on Ijyb. It was at this point I stopped having fun. I knew running was a losing strategy, and so I kept running the iguana in circles until I was at max power, and expended about half my mana on resisted or missed Sandblasts before being taken under.

It's this sort of thing which really bugs me.

[G-Flex]

• Sandblast can't be resisted. There's no such thing as earth elemental resistance. AC is checked two or three times against it, though.
• Iguanas are the same speed as your average player character, including kobolds.

Also, you might have the erroneous idea that you should be killing everything you come across. In Crawl, this is emphatically untrue.

[ShadeJS]

Also, you might have the erroneous idea that you should be killing everything you come across. In Crawl, this is emphatically untrue.

And while fleeing for your life, or with the Orb of Zot, you really should learn how to make the most effective use of diagonal movement.

[Leafsnail]

How does diagonal movement work at the moment?  I heard they might've changed it in some strange way.

[Frumple]

Is there anyone here that doesn't use diagonals regularly? I remember speccing someone during the tourny and they weren't using 'em at all, which just seems ridiculously counter-intuitive. Diagonal movement doesn't take any more time/energy than cardinal movement, at least in 0.7.0.

According to my RSS feed, there hasn't been any changes to diagonals (other than burrowers being able to dig along them.) since at least last February.

[Leafsnail]

I just heard it might be taking slightly longer.

Lack of consistency is becoming a bit of a problem regarding diagonal movement.  I mean, compare it to spell radii...

[ShadeJS]

Is there anyone here that doesn't use diagonals regularly?

The guy that just got ate by the Iguana?

I'm on .7 (whatever Debian feeds me), but some work has gone into LOS and movement in HEAD. Apparently it's not the default. The discussion is here:

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:square_los&s%5B%5D=square&s%5B%5D=los

edit: How do diagonals work? (not necessarily for the previous poster.) Well, any time you allow for diagonal movement on a square grid, and don't figure the distance of the current square to a diagonal square as 1.41 (off the top of my head), it is always advantageous to move on the diagonal. It's a problem for a fair number of roguelikes and a lot of 8 bit NES games.

[Leafsnail]

Hmm... I'd support a move to one or the other.  The current "Approach orthogonally if you're ranged, diagonally if melee" is a bit silly and unintuitive.  Moving to a square LOS isn't exactly realistic, but it at least means you won't have a disadvantage or advantage based on direction of monster...