Backup of a positive character roll?

[Elcs]

Hello there,

I've been rolling Hurthling or Gnomish Assassins ever since my HE Necro bit the dust and ended up one of the fallen and I have not had much success if I'm honest. Early game is feeling a bit tough and although it's fun, I'm struggling.. but that's not what I'm here for.

I have just rolled a Gnomish Assassin with a good set of starting stats and talents with a rather uninteresting star sign. I entered Terinyo and saved. Didn't check inventory or anything else.

What is the opinion of the experienced ADOM players about creating a backup of this 'start' and using it instead of re-rolling new characters? Is it classed as something like save scumming or other frowned upon shenanigans? I'm one that tries to stick within generally accepted rules and if this would break those, I'll just re-roll characters like normal.

Many thanks.

[Stingray1]

I frown upon such actions.

[quik]

I don't think that's worse than using a stat roller like the one in the server, so I'm fine with it.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

This is worse than stat rolling. Some game features, like vault locations and the sequence of corruptions the PC gets, are fixed at the beginning of the game IIRC, so doing this kind of savescumming means knowing them in advance.

Not that I approve of automatic stat rolling either, though. I think it's acceptable for extreme challenge games that try to see what could be done in optimal circumstances (like Brimstone), but I wouldn't accept an automatically stat-rolled ADOM win as legitimate. Rolling a bunch of characters (such as for starsign) is one thing, having a program that runs and discards tens of thousands of characters until you get your 20 To 20 St gnomish wizard is plain old cheating in my book.

[gut]

I suppose I agree with Al on this one. A stat rollered win isn't exactly the same as a pure legit one, (though still fine for fun).
Just so long as people document what they've done when posting about it I think it is fine.

To OP: there was once a very difficult-to-set-up challenge of playing a blinded PC. Basically, you rolled a monk, sprinted to
the ID and prayed to all that which does not suck that the first room was a mud trap one that would perma-blind the PC. If
it wasn't, you had to reroll and try again. Needless to say, without a standard save from which to play, nobody but a pure
masochist would have touched that challenge. Well, actually, nobody but a pure masochist did anyway, but it was marginally
more convenient for them... actually, they wound up rolling a different save anyway, moaning about the other monk's starting
toughness being to low

[quik]

This is worse than stat rolling. Some game features, like vault locations and the sequence of corruptions the PC gets, are fixed at the beginning of the game IIRC, so doing this kind of savescumming means knowing them in advance.

That's a good point I didn't think of.

[anon123]

What is the opinion of the experienced ADOM players about creating a backup of this 'start' and using it instead of re-rolling new characters? Is it classed as something like save scumming

It is savescumming. But I can understand why you'd ask this. Some days the RNG is just hellbent on giving you low stats. If you want to spend less time rerolling and more time playing, you can try the 1.1.1 stat roller in the server (or just install it locally; see my sig).

To OP: there was once a very difficult-to-set-up challenge of playing a blinded PC. Basically, you rolled a monk, sprinted to
the ID and prayed to all that which does not suck that the first room was a mud trap one that would perma-blind the PC. If
it wasn't, you had to reroll and try again.

Wow, that sounds... extremely tedious. For a tough as nails challenge like that, I would say it's permissible to use memory edition just once to permanently blind the PC with mud (offset for this is 604DD8 in 1.1.1).

[Elcs]

Thanks for the contributions, guys.

I knew something like crowning gift/immunity was fixed upon character generation but did not realise that other things were so set in stone.

Re: It is save scumming. Well, yes it is but as it's simply a freshly rolled character moved a couple of spaces I thought it may have been slightly different in that it is one saved game taken at the very, very start of the game rather that saving for better combat rolls, luck with loot/artifacts etc.

I shall play this guy like any other. Fresh and when he dies, re-roll a new one

[NMBLNG]

I don't think the immunity is fixed. I remember in older versions save-scumming to get fire immunity. May have been changed as of 1.2, though.

[SirTheta]

Immunity is not fixed (that's the whole point of wearing mummy wrapping so you don't get stuck with cold).