[slashem] Value of an early Dragonbane

[Janis Papanagnou]

My neutral healer got the Dragonbane from an early (dlvl:2) altar.
Another trashy artifact, I thought. Though it happens that _a lot_
baby dragons appeared which get killed quite fast with it (2 hits).

What I was keen to know was what damage that artifact deals. The
Wiki seems to be wrong about Dragonbane in Slashem; it speaks of
a spear as base item, while the source code declares it (as in NH)
as a broadsword. In addition the source code lists dragons as
"kebapable" (with a connotation and relation to spears?); does
that mean anything in context of that artifact weapon?

Anyway, I cannot derive the to-hit and the damage done. Any ideas
or hints about that?

Janis

[Pat Rankin]

Post by Janis Papanagnou
In addition the source code lists dragons as
"kebapable" (with a connotation and relation to spears?); does
that mean anything in context of that artifact weapon?

Kebabable means that hitting with a weapon which uses spear
skill gets an extra +2 damage. Oddly, the kebab bonus isn't
given for lances (since they have their own skill); that seems
like a bug to me.

Since Dragonbane is not a spear, the fact that dragons take
extra damage from spears is irrelevant. It does double damage
against dragon-class monsters but ordinary damage against
other foes.

For 3.6.x, javelin skill was eliminated and javelins got changed
to use spear skill. That was done to make spear skill more
useful (stacks of spears are eligible for multi-shot throwing)
but had a minor side-effect of giving javelins the kebab bonus
(which applies to a few other targets besides dragons). Still,
I doubt if they're ever used except as trash to throw at floating
eyes and gas spores once daggers are depleted.

[Chris Bowers]

Post by Pat Rankin

Post by Janis Papanagnou
In addition the source code lists dragons as
"kebapable" (with a connotation and relation to spears?); does
that mean anything in context of that artifact weapon?

Kebabable means that hitting with a weapon which uses spear
skill gets an extra +2 damage. Oddly, the kebab bonus isn't
given for lances (since they have their own skill); that seems
like a bug to me.
Since Dragonbane is not a spear, the fact that dragons take
extra damage from spears is irrelevant. It does double damage
against dragon-class monsters but ordinary damage against
other foes.
For 3.6.x, javelin skill was eliminated and javelins got changed
to use spear skill. That was done to make spear skill more
useful (stacks of spears are eligible for multi-shot throwing)
but had a minor side-effect of giving javelins the kebab bonus
(which applies to a few other targets besides dragons). Still,
I doubt if they're ever used except as trash to throw at floating
eyes and gas spores once daggers are depleted.

Janis: In America we refer to meats cooked on a skewer as a "Kebab" (it has a middle eastern origin). So hitting a dragon with a spear makes it "kebabable" in other words able to be pierced by a long object.

This reference is quite bizzare, even to native English speakers, and I've heard it only rarely used in this way outside of Nethack, such "The falling lamp post turned the man into a Kebab." It's a really, really obscure reference.

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by Pat Rankin
Kebabable means that hitting with a weapon which uses spear
skill gets an extra +2 damage. Oddly, the kebab bonus isn't
given for lances (since they have their own skill); that seems
like a bug to me.

I always thought of lances as blunt tournament weapons that deal
damage by the push impact. While I'd associate "kebapable" with
a pointy sharp weapon (like spears and the like). I suppose that
without body armor and shields lances will also impale the target.
The verb "lance", OTOH, seems to be translated also to "impale"
and the noun to also to spears, so there seems to be some fuzziness
inherent to that word?

Janis

[Chris Bowers]

Post by Janis Papanagnou

Post by Pat Rankin
Kebabable means that hitting with a weapon which uses spear
skill gets an extra +2 damage. Oddly, the kebab bonus isn't
given for lances (since they have their own skill); that seems
like a bug to me.

I always thought of lances as blunt tournament weapons that deal
damage by the push impact. While I'd associate "kebapable" with
a pointy sharp weapon (like spears and the like). I suppose that
without body armor and shields lances will also impale the target.
The verb "lance", OTOH, seems to be translated also to "impale"
and the noun to also to spears, so there seems to be some fuzziness
inherent to that word?
Janis

Lances were originally sharp. They were a form of spear used in war. But in the middle ages people hosted tournaments where the spears were made blunt. This was so you could have a sport contest between knights and no one would get killed. They would get "unhorsed", or knocked off, as you have seen in jousting competitions. This would sort of "symbolize" them being killed, without causing too much harm. There are also jousting/lance competitions where you try to pierce a small ring.

But I would imagine in the world of nethack that these are the sharp form of lances as they are made for killing monsters, not a sport competition.

In other word, a lance can be two ways: blunt for sport competition, or sharp for war/killing.

Jousting is actually the state sport of Maryland, in the USA where I live. We see it all the time at festivals and horse events (especially renaissance/fantasy festivals, it's very fun to watch).

With the sharp lance, a "kebab" action makes sense. Again the use of "Kebab" and a lance is a very, very, rarely used term in English.

-Chris

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by Chris Bowers
But I would imagine in the world of nethack that these are the sharp
form of lances as they are made for killing monsters, not a sport
competition.

I never used lances while riding (instead drop them immediately on
dlvl:1), but I seem to have heard that in Nethack they implemented
a push-back effect (which would probably indicate no sharp weapon),
or am I misremembering?

Janis

[Chris Bowers]

Post by Janis Papanagnou

Post by Chris Bowers
But I would imagine in the world of nethack that these are the sharp
form of lances as they are made for killing monsters, not a sport
competition.

I never used lances while riding (instead drop them immediately on
dlvl:1), but I seem to have heard that in Nethack they implemented
a push-back effect (which would probably indicate no sharp weapon),
or am I misremembering?
Janis

Hah! Interesting, I do the same thing.

Riding is a complicated affair. I've just avoided it. You're a knight so you have great armor and an automatic artifact weapon. Who needs a horse and to joust when you have a legendary sword?

-Chris

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by Chris Bowers

Post by Janis Papanagnou

Post by Chris Bowers
But I would imagine in the world of nethack that these are the sharp
form of lances as they are made for killing monsters, not a sport
competition.

I never used lances while riding (instead drop them immediately on
dlvl:1), but I seem to have heard that in Nethack they implemented
a push-back effect (which would probably indicate no sharp weapon),
or am I misremembering?

Hah! Interesting, I do the same thing.

Oh, I mentioned that just to indicate that I've no expertise in
lances or jousting. Here I was more aiming at the question what
sort of lance we have in NH given its (assumed) push-back effect.

Post by Chris Bowers
Riding is a complicated affair. I've just avoided it.

Recently I don't. Especially early game riding is quite nice and
useful; it has a couple interesting side effects, like increasing
carrying capacity to max, in addition to it's base effects. Having
your pet with you (no leash, no magic whistle necessary), fighting
and defending opponents is a fine property. But later I abandon it.
I forgot whether it's in Nethack as useful as it's in Slashem, but
it's nothing I'd despise.

Post by Chris Bowers
You're a knight
so you have great armor and an automatic artifact weapon. Who needs a
horse and to joust when you have a legendary sword?

Because of the other positive effects of riding you become a killer
machine when riding and swinging your Excalibur. (In Slashem even
two-weaponing artifacts.) Once your steed becomes a warhorse yet
better. My desinterest is just the lance, which is ridiculous heavy
to carry it around. In Slashem there's also the Reaper, an artifact
that does +20 damage but as heavy as a lance, too heavy to take it
as a souvenir to the Bar as well.

Janis

[Pat Rankin]

[...] in Nethack they implemented a push-back effect (which would
probably indicate no sharp weapon), or am I misremembering?

A melee hit with a lance while mounted has a chance to be a
joust hit (depends on skill with lance; a knight starting with
basic skill has a 40% chance in 3.6.x; 80% at expert skill),
which gets a damage bonus and knocks the target back a
step so that it's no longer within reach to counterattack.
That also has a chance to break the lance.

But deducing that that means the lance is blunt seems silly.
You might as well ask how the mount managed to stop on a
dime when you delivered the hit, or even how you managed
a joust hit when starting adjacent to the target instead of
charging at it from a distance. NetHack is not real life.

Jousting was already present in 3.4.3 and it is present in
slash'em too. Some of the details were tweaked a bit for
3.6.x though; it was too powerful and got toned down a little.
I think that the chance of the lance breaking was increased.
For an individual hit that chance is small, but when you hit
things hundreds of times breaking will eventually happen.
That wasn't necessarily the case for the original
implementation if you had positive in-game Luck.

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by Pat Rankin
But deducing that that means the lance is blunt seems silly.
[...] NetHack is not real life.

"NHINRL" is a triviality; I wonder why you decided to mention
it. - The point is that we have to deduce some game mechanics
and functional details if we want to understand (or use) NH.
You can assume many things (by Real Life analogy) and that
works pretty well; Nethack implicitly relies a lot on Real
Life comprehension and deductions from Real Life. Other things
are only arbitrary decisions (for game-play or other reasons)
or just plain fantasy.

We can agree that, whether pointy or blunt, it's irrelevant;
maybe.

But if we discuss it and see some push-back I wouldn't assume
a pointy weapon; because the push-back has *explicitly* been
programmed into the game and would imply a specific Real Life
analogy.

Janis

[B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson]

On Fri, 5 Aug 2022 11:07:02 +0200, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

[lance]

Post by Janis Papanagnou
But if we discuss it and see some push-back I wouldn't assume
a pointy weapon

Pushback from lance hit occurs in fights with sturdy pointy war lances,
whenever the forward-momentum of the attacker exceeds that of the one
being hit. Depending on the hardness of the armor and the combined force
of both movements (and attack angle, deformation of the lance tip etc.)
the throwback may be combined with (partial or complete) impaling the
armor and body of the one being hit. The necessary energy for this has
to be subtracted from the differential momentum. If the overall balance
of the momentum isn't positive, /no/ throwback will happen.

Lots of factors are still omitted here, like breaking lances, throwback
of the attacker and so on... ;-)

BeAr

[B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson]

Post by Janis Papanagnou
I always thought of lances as blunt tournament weapons that deal
damage by the push impact.

Jousting (originally) was just an exercise for lancer cavalry units.
The latter carried hard pointed, sometimes sharp (very dangerous)
lances. When hitting perfectly, such lance tips went right through
any type of armor, including plate ones. (High speed combined with
very small impact area leads to incredible force.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancer

BeAr