Game Balance: Slaying Ammo is Too Powerful

[Stingray1]

Don't you dare touch my babies.

[Superteeth]

Missile weapons in general are a great balancing fail-safe; almost all characters have unfettered access to them and can become competent enough to fight effectively even into the late game. With the proper slaying ammo, characters who have a very hard time winning a straight-up fight otherwise are back in business.

There aren't many viable ways to play many of the weaker classes to begin with. Nerfing perhaps the greatest source of raw killing power they can obtain is just going to increase the gap to wizards, archers, barbarians even more. That's the opposite of balance.

Personally, I think that the issue here is that there are some classes that are so fantastically weak that it does not make sense to play as them unless you can take advantage of slaying ammo. The main reason that all race/class combos are playable is partly due to herbs and partly due to slaying ammo. There had been an issue with how herbs work before, since everyone typically has easy access to them, making every character's mid-game stats (specifically, willpower, toughness, and dexterity) converge on a single number (25).

Not to mention that if one is patient enough, they could farm as many slaying arrows as they wanted from bow-using monsters.

If there are so many typically nonviable classes that have to rely on slaying ammo for the bosses, then it kind of removes the point of having variety in the classes that you can choose, since they are all going to end up doing what archers do anyways.

[littlebrather]

Not to mention that if one is patient enough, they could farm as many slaying arrows as they wanted from bow-using monsters.

IRC one can not, since milked arrows can only be 'of slaying' indirectly.

If there are so many typically nonviable classes that have to rely on slaying ammo for the bosses, then it kind of removes the point of having variety in the classes that you can choose, since they are all going to end up doing what archers do anyways.

Let then everyone starts as a CK, 'cause everyone ends game as a corrupted being. Or even stop trying to make anything in your life, since everyone dies and you are not exception.
Stop trying to make a Chess game from ADOM. It's good as is. All these 'balance' features are useful then you play some MMORPG or that new bright childish Dota2. ADOM is not a game there a kind of 'ultimate math law' exists. It's driven by the RNG-god.

[Superteeth]

I have milked slaying arrows from barbarians. They are rare, but virtually limitless.

About the classes: What this means is that the classes need more balance in some way. It should be possible to win with any race/class combination without everyone having to resort to the same tactics. At least every class should have something that they bring to the table, that can be helpful in the right situations. You cannot compare this observation with something ridiculous like "Why not always start as a chaos knight, since everyone gets corrupted anyways?" That is ridiculous, and you know it.

[Silfir]

The point is not that they rely on this one overpowered thing. They rely on an extensive toolbox of which slaying ammunition that actually deserves being called slaying ammunition is a part. To some extent, every character does. Slaying ammunition is no different from spellbooks, wands, potions, scrolls, et cetera. If you start nerfing those things one by one because they are too useful you're just making the toolbox smaller. The smaller the toolbox becomes, the more are you going to force weaker characters to grind until they can brute-force their way through late-game challenges. (The kind of poor soul that would grind for slaying ammunition from barbarians deserves pity, not game balance attention. You can only get the generic slaying suffix from shot arrows or quarrels; dedicated slaying ammo people can actually find in useful numbers without killing themselves is sparsely distributed.)

You must have an intact bow or light crossbow to use it with; both can get destroyed. For that matter, all slaying ammunition is made of either iron or metal and can easily get destroyed in turn just by having it with you. It must be light, since you can't shoot in the dark. You need a clear shot, which sometimes means you have to stay in melee range anyway. You only have a limited amount of shots, so you do have to train in bows and crossbows extensively if you want to rely on it in a pinch. If your slaying ammunition runs out for whatever reason, there's no telling if you can reuse it in the next battle, or even the same; it's even more vulnerable on the floor than it is in your inventory. Slaying ammunition also doesn't come with bells and whistles - the base damage is relatively pitiful. Compare all of this to using a slaying melee weapon. With most slaying weapons being artifacts, you can use them in melee indefinitely; the only thing that can stop you is a disarmer. The base damage on slaying weapons tends to be at least above average, too.

Slaying a full dragon vault with Wyrmlance is a risky proposition unless your character is very tanky since they will take some hits in melee. Slaying a full dragon vault with dragon slaying ammunition is straight up impossible - even if you're saving them for ancient dragons or wyrms you run out after a couple. Slaying ammunition is a valuable resource to be handled with care, where a slaying melee weapon is an inexhaustible bringer of doom and destruction. It's not actually overpowered, is the point. Slaying ammunition needs to be significantly more powerful, per-punch, to have a comparable impact.



Now, this sentence here:

Personally, I think that the issue here is that there are some classes that are so fantastically weak that it does not make sense to play as them unless you can take advantage of slaying ammo.

suggests to me that discussing class balance (which the thread is only tangentially relevant to) at this moment is just an unhealthy proposition for me, but here goes: Weaker classes exist a) by accident, b) to provide an additional, optional challenge, c) for roleplaying purposes, d) just for fun of it, and their existence in itself is not an issue, as long as ADOM offers a wide variety of ways for a player of any class to out-fight, out-think, out-maneuver or out-live the numerous obstacles in the game. It doesn't have to include slaying ammunition, no. But it doesn't hurt to have it in its current state either.



EDIT:

Please, please don't go down the "classes need to be balanced against each other" road with me. I'll kick and scream and yell obscenities.

There is no such thing as "the farmer way" to kill a dragon. What kills dragons? Weapons kill dragons, or magic kills dragons. Farmers don't get magic, so they have to use weapons. Armor too, once you get down to it - won't live very long wearing your work duds, that's for sure. One way or another, a farmer who wants to save the world has to do non-farmery stuff along the way. And it's the same for everyone; some classes come with skills that are relevant in battle, some don't. I can't imagine how you're going to have it any other way. Let thieves pickpocket orbs? Allow merchants to "h"aggle with Nuurag-Vaarn to buy the chaos orb off him? (Hell, merchants are all about the toolbox - more money to buy stuff, more shops, instant identification...) Even the weak classes have their strengths - it's just that they don't have direct applications when it comes to smashing dragon skulls in. That is perfectly fine. No hero ever had it easy.

[JellySlayer]

I have milked slaying arrows from barbarians. They are rare, but virtually limitless.

About the classes: What this means is that the classes need more balance in some way. It should be possible to win with any race/class combination without everyone having to resort to the same tactics. At least every class should have something that they bring to the table, that can be helpful in the right situations. You cannot compare this observation with something ridiculous like "Why not always start as a chaos knight, since everyone gets corrupted anyways?" That is ridiculous, and you know it.

It's definitely possible to win with any class without using slaying ammo. I actually rarely use it, even with weak classes like thieves or bards. Slaying ammo is uncommon enough pre-Casino that I don't rely on it, and post-Casino, any character is strong enough to drop even the most powerful monsters in melee. Regular missiles work fine for most practical purposes.

[Grey]

The specific slayers are rare enough that they're not a problem. The universal "of slaying" is perhaps a bit strong, but you won't find many in a normal game and they tend to disappear after use. As a powerful but limited resource I think they're fine.

And they're certainly not required to win the game! Some of us can win with drakeling spit alone ;-)

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I agree with Silfir.

Slaying ammo is already balanced because (1) it's rather rare, (2) it's consumable, (3) it breaks easily, and (4) it requires you to actually train the corresponding missile skill to be of real use.

If missiles did the same critical hit damage as melee weapons, it would be a joke. A slaying melee weapon can deliver thousands of crits, a bunch of slaying arrows can deliver four or five.

[LFk]

For start two facts:
I've heard eyes make for good salad.
I've also heard criticals are actually stable increase in damage. Or no - they actually do 0.5 to 6. And most surely they also autohit suff.

I don't know what this comment means. Eyes in salad? Is that an english saying? Maybe it's just from my area?

In any case, Jellyslayer was not too far off with his comment, it's not absurd at all.
According to the wiki, it can be 2-5x, while melee is always 2x.
If i remember reading the IGB, it mentioned something like damage* 1d4+2, so that would be 3-6.

I'm never concerned with researching that stuff myself, but I never assumed people are just rampantly lying about the crit roll.

Anyway, I don't really mind slaying ammo whatever way it is already.
Game balance never mattered too much, and especially not balance from class to class. I never feel overreliant on it, and without the power it's at, a lot of encounters would be quite a bit harder. If that's the intended goal, sure. Just for balance? Eh.

[JellySlayer]

I don't know what this comment means. Eyes in salad? Is that an english saying? Maybe it's just from my area?

In any case, Jellyslayer was not too far off with his comment, it's not absurd at all.
According to the wiki, it can be 2-5x, while melee is always 2x.
If i remember reading the IGB, it mentioned something like damage* 1d4+2, so that would be 3-6.

I'm never concerned with researching that stuff myself, but I never assumed people are just rampantly lying about the crit roll.

Anyway, I don't really mind slaying ammo whatever way it is already.
Game balance never mattered too much, and especially not balance from class to class. I never feel overreliant on it, and without the power it's at, a lot of encounters would be quite a bit harder. If that's the intended goal, sure. Just for balance? Eh.

I dug back through the archives on this. Empirical testing back from the google groups days, regular missiles do critical hits 2x-5x damage, and missiles of slaying do critical hits at 3x-6x damage. I've seen similar figures reported elsewhere by people whose testing are normally very reliable (eg. Twinge and sorear), so I'm inclined to believe it.