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#2971 weapon brands and randart weapons
I suggest that randarts should try much harder to come up with a brand. Any brand, including orc slaying etc. This should make them much more attractive.
If we want to go further: the speed brand can *only* occur on randart weapons. Idea by sorear, I like it a lot.
Speed idea is interesting but runs the risk of making vorpal even more the default.
Possible fixes:
1. Vorpalize weapon scrolls apply a random brand.
2. Vorpalize weapon scrolls, when read on a demon weapon, may give pain, poison, draining or fire instead.
3. Slight boost to flame and electrocution damage, leaving other brands unchanged. (Fire/cold symmetry is boring, and cold has the slow-reptiles perk.)
Lemuel
Completely forgot to mention that certain other egos need revision,
Vorpal is a pretty bad branding right now. I'd like to keep the scroll (and how it interacts with spell-branded weapons) but the current effect of 'vorpal' is too simple. I think that vorpalising an unbranded polearm should make it reaching. Apart from that, random egos (excluding the slayers and speed) would be interesting, although not ideal.
I think all polearms and whips should have reaching. It isn't a very good brand and those weapons aren't widely used anyway.
At some point, I have proposed reaching for all polearms already. Note that reaching is not weak. In particular with summons/allies, it is very strong. Polearms are used, ask any Merfolk.
Polearms are good enough, if anything, it's M&F that are weak.. and/or short blades. Though if normal weapons lose speed, that's a polearm perk lost.
Megane
I've had similar thoughts about this: I think the plain "vorpal" brand should be removed from the game.
unless you're lucky enough to get a speed brand (and long blade users are the only ones that can really rely on doing so) it's vorpal all the way, and that's just dull. Plus, it's one of the things that makes randarts relatively unappealing (along with anaemic plusses).
(as an aside, i did some wizmode testing to see how many weapon acquirements it would take to get something that beat a +4 vorpal battleaxe - something pretty easy to make yourself mid game. It took over 50 attempts)
I also think it would be nice if weapon aquirements tested Shields skill, to bias towards 1 or 2 handed weapons.
~panda
(previous comment was also me)
Removing vorpal and speed makes axes much better and long blades much worse on a comparative scale, which is kind of boring. If, however, there were NEW brands added to compensate I'd be fine with both changes. Here are a few ideas for extra brands:
- crushing: weapon damage only affected by 1/2 of monster damage reduction, maces only.
- shadows: in trunk but not implemented, turns kills into zombies.
- hunting: does extra damage for animals (would be really fun for the lair) and slightly less to hybrids (nagas).
- acid: splashes enemy with acid for plenty of extra damage but occasionally corrodes your armour. Would be an interesting tradeoff.
Panda: Agree about shields skill for weapon acquirements (not that that idea belongs here :)
Part of the idea is to add new, more interesting brands. Come up with proposals. (I just browsed the FR's with keyword "brand" but didn't find something that caught my eye. Let me mention that I find draining, pain, distortion, reaching, electrocution to be very good brands, and fire, frost, holy decent. And speed and vorpal to be bad.)
On the topic: simply having randart weapons come up more often with some brand helps against the ubiquity of vorpal weapons. In other words, simply doing this would help; the other steps could be left for later.
Some brand ideas:
of Whirlwind -Attacks a around the player
of (monster type) summoning -A chance to summon a creature.It will be unfriendly ,if the summoned monster is weaker than the monster that was attacked with the
weapon and if it is stronger it is friendly
of Transfer -If the player has a negative status effect and hits a monster with this weapon he is healed and the monster gains the status effect
of Marking -If a monster is hit with this weapon it can gain the coronaeffect
of Illusion - A hit has the chance to create a friendly 1HP monster that has no attack and the @ Symbol
of the invisible hand (for two and 1 1/2 hand weapons) - You can wear a shield with them
Whirlwind: I like it. Note that is overlap with the Cleaving tactics which I'd like to see be either built-in for all axes or be the axes vorpal brand. In any case, Whirlwind could extend that to other weapons.
of (monster type): e.g. "of the yaks", I assume it produces yaks? (as opposed to producing monsters only when attacking yaks). Sounds interesting, although we might want to come up with a list of acceptable monsters here. I'd like evil stuff: of the skeletons, of the zombies, of the abominations, of the (minor/major?) demons.
The invisible hand is cute but probably overpowered.
Transfer: interesting idea. But the proposed version has a very narrow scope. I can't see this being really useful.
Illusion: might work, not clear without testing.
Marker: too weak. It would be a weapon of "better hitting".
Very interesting thoughts, keep going :)
I think the slaying brands could be expanded a LOT more (probably not, but some of them would be funny).
...of regicide (Q slaying)
...of murdering (whatever-your-race-is slaying)
...of tremors (M&F brand; hits each square adjacent to your target)
...of parrying (blades; increases SH)
...of grounding (or something? temporary -tele and -cast on targets)
Another version for marking - The monster stays visible even if it leaves LOS
of switching -If a monster is hit it changes location with the player
of adaption -It acts as a weapon of slaying for the monster that was killed the most with it
of sacrifice - Kills produces double piety
of Pedigree: 20% more XP on kills. "You feel uncannily confident."
of Hell: monsters leave columns of hellfire (3 turns) and a few smoke clouds (5 turns) when they die. Does no extra damage. "It smolders with the embers of an unholy fire."
of Feyblood: "It oozes with glowing blood!"
"This blade pulses with the lifeblood of the Fey, bestowing its wild enchantments on its victims."
Causes monsters it hits to glow. Heavily glowing monsters will release glow in a small magical storm (3x3 effect, irresistable, moderate damage). Essentially area effect electrocution that hurts YOU too.
Like distortion, this weapon would mostly exist to make the player's life miserable. If the effect is too annoying to use, somebody else think of a power. The description has a great WTF factor.
In general, a weapon brand should never encourage swapping -- whether for the first or the the last blow. (This rules out pedigree, sacrifice, marking.)
Hellfire could be made to work: instead of a death effect, the chance for the hellfire column builds up with each hit if the weapon on a monster. Already when hitting you can get smoke to see that buildup. But I wonder what kind of weapon has such a cool effect? Should be rare, perhaps on demon weapons only.
Feyblood sounds interesting. Would be very useful to warpers.
Switching: not unbalanced and possibly tactically interesting, but probably annoying to play. (Have to play very slow with all those location changes.)
Slaying: I am not sure we want more. Players complain about orc slaying a lot. I think that brand is fine because it can be used again player orcs and for Beogh. Then we added drac slaying because it is so classical in the myths. But in general, I don't think there's much to be got with more slayers. I like hydras much better who have fire as their slaying brand.
Tremors sounds very good, if way too strong. Must be balanced by something. However, encouraging usage in the open is always good.
Parrying is also interesting.
Well, tremors could also hit you with some collateral damage. Less against flying enemies, of course.
of binding - The hit monster can't leave a 2 field radius around the player
of genocide - It hits all monsters of the same type in LOS as the hit monster and attracts all monster of this type on the level
of friendship - The weapon has chance to pacify a monster
of boiling - Has a chance to produce a steamcloud on hit.Counts as fire for hydras.
Training sword,mace .... - Increase the aptitude of the skill but causes a little less damage as the same weapon without training
sword,hammer...bow - The bow counts in melee as a sword,hammer...
of wallpassing - The weapon can attack through 1 field walls
of distraction - The hit monster has a chance of doing nothing at his next turn
Transforming - This weapon uses the highest weapon skill you have.It doesn't matters which type it is.
of Antitoxin - A hit monster looses its poison attacks.
Transforming: No, weapon specialization is a central game mechanic in Crawl, and this brand breaks the mechanic. A short blades user shouldn't be able to pick up a battleaxe and wield it like a dagger.
If the weapon *transformed* into your favorite type of weapon upon wielding, the brand might be more interesting. Enchanting such a weapon for a long-blade user would guarantee of a katana/double sword/demon blade once the user reached high long blades skill, but the resulting blade would be unbranded. Rebranding the weapon by TSO/Lugonu should revert it to its (probably useless) base type.
antitoxin: This weapon essentially provides a weaker version of poison resistance. Removing a greater naga's ability to use poison arrow would be nice but that's just about the only plus over poison resistance. The scope of this brand is currently too narrow.
However, a weapon that temporarily denied enemies the use of *spells* would be quite powerful. It wouldn't stop a lich eight squares away from crystal-spearing you, but would be an interesting alternative to the silence spell in general.
wallpassing: You should not be able to attack monsters you can't see. If you can attack enemies through a translucent wall you've essentially got uber-reaching, and reaching is decent enough as-is.
distraction: it's essentially a less reliable version of speed that only provides the benefit vs one enemy. Speed means enemy gets half as many attacks as usual.
genocide: Doing damage to every single elf in the elven halls at once is ridiculous.
friendship: pacifying a monster by hurting it makes little sense. Pacifying a demon makes even less sense.
of boiling: similar to Hellfire proposal below but weakened enough to be viable in game. Mmm, boiled hydra...
Training: a weapon that gives you 3 extra skill levels would actually be pretty interesting. Fantastic in early game, worthless in late game.
Binding: a weapon that prevents enemies from fleeing would encourage weapon-swapping, since you'd want to use the brand just before the enemy would flee.
poop
Transforming - That was my first idea,but than i though how the exact longsword,short sword... should be determined and thought this version is easier.
Genocide - It would not hit every elf only the elftype you attack
Vorpal nerfing and speed restriction is now in.
Some ideas to make randarts more attractive:
-Nerf weapon enchancing. Maybe limit to +7. Or make going all the way to +9 harder.
-Add new possible properties to randart weapons. For example: torment resistance, permanent Regen, permanent Rmsl or Dmsl, +Cons, +ResCorr, etc. Of course some of these are quite strong, or even overpowered, but those should be extremely rare. So finding even one in a game could be considered lucky. A chance to find one of those could make players pick up randarts even if they already have exec axe +9. Same goes for body armour, there has to be chance for something special enough to outweight +9 GDA/RoR.
-More chance for randarts to have better base types.
Qui