Talk:XNetHack

Thoughts on mithril-coats

Hi! I was reading through xNetHack's change list, and upon you mentioning remaking mithril-coats I was struck with an idea: why not just make 'elven' and 'dwarven' into another kind of object properties, like material?

It generalizes pretty well: elves start with elven items. Those can be enchanted to +7, don't get penalties from being made from wood (as opposed to iron) , and elven weapons get a d(+1) against small creatures (e.g. d5 instead of d4, like elven daggers). Orcs start with crude items, which get d(-1) against small creatures and -1 to AC. Dwarves start with masterwork items. Masterwork armor gets +1 AC. With weapons it's trickier: dwarvish short swords get d(+1), and dwarven spears get d(+2). And DnD masterwork weapons just act as +1 that doesn't stack with enchantment. +1 seems the most appropiate to me, but anything works.

Most racial items fit rather well with this mechanic, with exceptions for elven short swords which are d(+2) and dwarven weapons, which are inconsistent as mentioned before. As for mithril-coats, it works perfectly: EMC are elven, mithril ring mails which thus get +1 AC and can be enchanted to +7; DMC are masterwork mithril ring mails and thus get +2 AC but no enchantment bonus. Although if you want to keep them as MC3, you will need to tweak mithril material properties.

If you make all three parameters mutually exclusive (elven masterwork items may be a bit OP), they should fit into 2 bits. You will probably need to manually specify which items gravitate towards which races, but overall it very nicely cuts down on many similar item types. --Tomsod (talk) 10:39, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Oh, and elven cloaks/boots will probably need to be renamed to "cloaks/boots of stealth". Because otherwise elves would start with "elven elven cloaks". And dwarvish cloak is a bit of an oddity since it's worse than leather cloak despite being dwarven. Not sure what to do about it. --Tomsod (talk) 10:47, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Racial items are something that have crossed my mind before, yes - dnethack has them, I think, and it would allow further merging of similar items that have racial counterparts. There are two main problems. First, assigning traits across all racial items has some unfortunate balance implications - how do you prevent elven/dwarvish items from being totally overpowered? Right now (in vanilla) they're sort of "mid-game optimal" to use; there's nothing better than a +7 elven cloak or dwarvish mithril-coats before you find better magical items. And if you want to (in vanilla) use a sword that has an elven counterpart, you're best off using that elven counterpart because it has higher damage. But if you allow items to generate like this - for instance, an "elven long sword" which has d9/d12 damage versus small/large (if I'm reading it right), and can't rust or corrode - why ever use the "human" counterparts, given the choice? And it heavily, heavily incentivizes playing as an elf since many elven characters start with elven gear. I guess the extant problem is that we're already having trouble finding reasons why you would want to play a human, and giving the other races even more buffs only makes it worse.

The second problem is that orcish racial items just exacerbate their current problem of being useless piles of garbage that nobody ever wants to use. Even more so than human gear's woes, can we do anything that gives orcish armor some benefit at all? It really only exists now so that o monsters can have flavor-appropriate gear.

Similarly, ironwood by combining only the best parts of iron and wood would obsolete any items made from actual iron or wood if an ironwood counterpart is available.

TL;DR - giving racial characteristics to items and letting other types of items be generated as differently-racial counterparts needs to be balanced out somehow, it can't just be a pile of buffs to elven and dwarvish items. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 14:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Or you could make a special "ironwood" material which combines wood and iron properties. That would be more lore-accurate.

Because all enchanted weapons are assumed to be masterwork by default.