Ranged > melee classes ?

[JellySlayer]

> Personally, I'd say it's bad. ADOM 1.1.1 is very unbalanced,

Gotta disagree. Ars holds the record for a melee speedrun, and
it's under 20,000 turns. I think if one removes a wizard's ability
to use teleportation his primary means of transportation, they
are about even. I think it's more about a player's attitude toward
grinding.

Well, I think some of the problems the monster AI are more exploitable by wizards too. Things like being able to bolt monsters while invisible and they won't see your position, for example. Sure, a melee can reproduce the same effect with a wand, but not nearly so easily. A lot of behaviour with darkness and invis is, if not a bug, at least very poorly thought out, IMHO.

The ability to attack multiple targets at once, while it doesn't make a difference in speedruns quite so much, does make a difference in, say, clearing greater vaults. Completely clearing a greater vault on D:45 is probably worth 6-7 corruptions and considerably more risk for a melee, whereas a wizard could probably clear it and only pick up one or two. Greater undead vaults are also really nightmarish for melee, where for a caster they're at least tractable.

[Andy Williams]

I don't like grinding. It's boring. If you don't play ADoM for fun, why do you play it? *watches in horror*

As far as 1.1.1 goes, I only play it anymore to keep the GB up to date. I don't like grinding either. ADOM has always had the midgame stall problem. For melee classes it's worse.

As for balance, here's an example. I like dual-wielding rangers. During the pretesting of g10, I found that an experience level 50 ranger, dual wielding swords of sharpness, with Grand Mastery in swords, could not take down Srraxxarrakexx in melee. That's unbalanced. Changes were made to bring that kind of thing into balance. With the change in to-hit that occured somewhere in 1.0.0 or 1.1+, things have gotten out of balance again. For me, 1.1.1 is more tedium than fun for melee classes.

[gut]

There are some enemies that (almost) can't be killed in
each of the 3 main attack methods. Dopplegangers for
missiles (almost), the Archmage for spells (My most
recent wizard had to kill him in melee with Skullcrusher),
and Ancient Karmic Wyrms for melee (almost). I think the
game tries to force everone to explore more than just
one style.

> being able to bolt monsters while invisible

All drakes can spit acid while invis, and any PC can if they
have the proper corruption. It's not the same as a bolt
spell though.

> With the change in to-hit that occured somewhere in
>1.0.0 or 1.1+, things have gotten out of balance again.

My recent study of rangers' dual wielding to-hit bonus left
me with the impression that it was unholy.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I have always killed the Archmage with spells, namely acid balls and magic missiles.

[gut]

Never have been able to kill him with MM, but acid ball
works great if you have it. I usually don't.