On the one hand, yes, they are very powerful now.

On the other hand, so are other non-guaranteed artifacts like Executor, Vanquisher, Bracers of War, etc. and no one asks for nerfing those. Why can't an artifact arrow be as good as an artifact sword?

I think some nerfing would be OK but much less than suggested in the OP, maybe 10d5 damage for True Aim and 15d4+8 for Thunderstroke or something like that.

...or some really powerful magic wizards get. (And no, this isn't a suggestion to nerf Magic Missile or Acid Ball - some classes are meant to be more powerful or easier than others.)

Voted against, for reasons expressed by al-Khwarizmi above.

It very well can. Currently both missiles are several steps above the likes of Executor and Vanq.

I think the reason is that these items are much, much better than Executor, Vanquisher, BoW, etc. Executor is considered a top-tier artifact with a paltry base damage of 5d6+6 (23.5 average) and slaying powers. Vanquisher has even lower damage at 6d5+3 (21 average). Thunderstroke does 58 on average--ie. Thunderstroke does more damage than Executor including the slaying powers. And yes, I know slaying powers multiply things like tactics scores, strength bonuses, etc. to bump up the damage quite a bit, but remember that even though Thunderstroke doesn't slay, it does get a 2-5x missile crit multiplier. For a character with max find weakness (~25% crits), Thunderstroke ends up getting nearly the same effective crit multiplier as Executor and Vanquisher.

The damage is fine if you have to suffer the obnoxiousness of having to retrieve it after every single shot. It is patently not fine if it comes back on its own every round, ready to be shot over and over to an approaching enemy.

I'm all for this one. Suggested stats are good.

The problem is that it DOESN'T come back every turn, far from that.
Every 7-8 turns it will decide to not return and you have to fall back to other missiles or take pains to retrieve it, not an easy feat when you're clearing a GUV with it for example.
If you rely solely on the artifact missiles, you will inevitably run into situation where your main weapon is out of picture, what then?
This is probably the cost you're paying for such an amazing weapon - there is a chance of losing it and then you're screwed.
No such thing happens with melee weapons, save for the extremely rare situation of having to clear a ratling duelist vault, and even then it's just one tile to retrieve it and no summons.

When I start using either true aim or thunderstroke, I do so occasionally and I never go against many powerful monsters if I can't also slay them in melee.
Otherwise it would be a big surprise to have to resort to smashing giant kings and titans in a greater vault with a scorched spear or other mediocre weapon, just because you didn't find anything better.
You build your char over true aim or thunderstroke because greater id shows they return when thrown and then *poof*.
In blatant defiance of its advertised properties, it drops somewhere without returning and there goes your build.
You go through swarms of monsters to retrieve it and try to ignore what must have been a rare occurrence but it does it AGAIN just three shots later and gets stomped over by a host of brand new ancient karmic dragon summons.
I had a situation like this with a high-dex early crowned archer clearing a GUV in the jarl cave using True Aim.
Trust me, it's not a funny situation, especially when you had the misfortune of not finding any undead slayers and have to resort to killing emperor liches with 1d6 arrows.
Then you just watch as they heal repeatedly because you're not doing enough damage, while your true aim is lying somewhere in the middle of that rainbow of monsters filling half the level or more.

I will say this: if both projectiles had an undisputed 100% return rate, I'm all in for a 50-60% damage nerf, maybe more.
Otherwise I feel both missiles are balanced.

Yes, I think if they had a 100% return rate they could have the damage described in the OP and be perfectly fine, even without the stunning.

I might repeat again: every 7-8 turns is not my experience. It may depend on Dexterity, Luck, whatnot, but I've cleaned an entire GUV with it once (and it had ~10 emperor liches which went on summoning galore) and used to great extent for other stuff. Sure, once or twice it failed to return at inappropriate times, but nothing that several TPs and luring cannot solve.

If anything, GV are not even remotely a measure of power. They have tight quarters and a lot of monsters. And even then for a poorly equipped char the missile is much better than a melee weapon. If you fight a GV with low on defense, you will die with a melee weapon 100% of the time. If you fight a GV with a missile, you have a chance to clear a large portion of it because it's ranged.

Let's consider everything else - everyday trip through lower CoC, ToEF, whatnot. There are no large packs of monsters. You can take your time, run around the target to pick it up again. But you can attack without endangering yourself! That werewolf king can't hit you because you're like, not even close to him. But you can and you will.

Sure, this can be balanced. But when a missile attack which eliminates the possibility of danger deals more damage then a physical attack (which leaves you out in the open and actually is only reasonable on aggressive tactics), I know there is something wrong.

Next time you're gonna tell me magic is balanced... (which is by the way overpowered for the exact same reason).

Yeah, "this artifact alone isn't powerful enough to clear a greater undead vault" is not exactly a great standard for balance.

I think a slight decrease in power is acceptable but not as much as suggested in the feature description. For this reason I voted no, but I don't think they're at teh sweet spot either right now.

My own experience, even with archer characters, is that they often fail to return and you have to switch to other ammo. I think that's OK. I wouldn't want a 100% return rate with enormous damage.

If they return, then I think their default damage should be somewhere between eternium ammo and ammo of slaying.

If they don't return, I'd like them to have special features. For example, True Aim might ignore range penalties--allowing you an accurate shot out as far as you can see (it would be nice to hit Keriax from 15 squares away with Farsight!), and have an increased chance of critting. Thunderstroke could have very high base damage and act as ammo of thunder.

I'd actually prefer the latter--I'm one of those who was excited to find these artifacts even before they were made returning.

If the returning feature is left as it is right now, with occasional non return then perhaps Ln's suggestions regarding special features could be expanded.
"Unerring *foo*" quality for true aim so it lives up to its name, coupled with 5d5+5 new damage. For thunderstroke - 8d3+8 damage and equally high lightning damage that bypasses PV.

So, I think the real problem here is that this suggested nerf is way too much. I'd be much in favor of something like:
8d5 True Aim [whatever +to-hit]
10d4+4 Thunderstroke

This about halves their avg. damage - but much more importantly imo, their max damage is now slightly to significantly under their former avg. damage. I think the focus on average really misses that facet [that about half the hits are higher than average damage], and that such new stats would go a long way towards rebalancing them.

But the suggested nerf goes way overboard.

A sidenote:
I've posted a lot about this issue, and this approach is wrong. This adversely impacts melee characters just as much as people attacking from range. To fix this requires abilities that don't affect melee characters. You can view some suggestions I compiled from the forums @ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...gZJXm2_0kcCx8/. Hopefully soon, I will get around to posting the majority of them as RFEs.

Assuming that ADOM throws actual dice rolls for calculating the damage, then it's pretty unlikely on a 20d4 or 15d5 roll you're going to get a damage that is very different from the average value. The odds of getting the max damage on a 20d4 roll is (0.25)^20 = 10^(-13). Statistically, in the history of ADOM, probably nobody has ever got a max damage hit with Thunderstroke.

Yes, certainly. A back-of-the-envelope calculation says that the interval [48,60] contains 34% of the damages you do with Thunderstroke (68% on [36,60], obviously). You can carry this over to my proposed numbers (which are just an example - not meant to be perfect) and see there's a huge difference - 34% on [24,32] and 68% on [16,32] (n.b.: std. is 8.66 in this case so actual range of first std. interval is 17 not 16 - i.e. numbers are off by a very tiny amount). Lessening the die rolls lowers the std. deviation and tightens the range of damage you do - thus, halving the rolls does a lot more than halve the damage output.

The "half above average" was simply a [radical] simplification of the math :)

I suggest just nerfing missiles and missile crits in general.

This is path to complete chaos, as we'll have to nerf magic next. I don't have a problem with this per se, but I fear that some charm/fun of ADOM will be lost if we embark upon it.

I agree with the majority opinion. Little too good right now (but useless in earlier versions, so let's not go back to that). I think several good ideas have been presented, I think Thomas can figure out what the sweet spot is with the feedback already offered.

I obtained true aim (once combined with sun's messenger) both with duelists recently, and while it didn't entirely take over from my melee attack it was almost that. That's with duelists, with their missile skill penalty. I think regardless of class you should have to vary your strategy once in a while. That said others rightly point out that losing missile in a crowd is something you have to consider, you can't completely auto-pilot with it. And the usefulness isn't quite as high near the end game when everything becomes a damage-sponge due to monster-leveling behaviour. I think slaying ammo is significantly more damaging (not just slightly). Anyhow, I think the emphasis should be more on utility than raw power with these artifacts...