Why do you folks think it is that warrior armor gives you penalties to your roguishness and wizardry, but rogue and wizard gear doesn't penalize your warriorness?
Because warrior gear tends to have the highest defensive stats, so it discourages rogues/ wizards to use it.. but a warrior shouldn't want to use rogue/ wizard gear, since those don't tend to buff what a warrior would want, so rogue/ wizard gear shouldn't need a penalty. Thats how I have been thinking about it at least.
Falvoristiclly, warrior gear is very heavy and difficult to move in, so it affects your nimbleness. Contrarywise, rogues need freedom of movement so they tend to wear very light gear that is either flowing or form fitting. Similaristically, iron and most other metals are depicted in fantasy as something that resists or inhibits magic, so wearing it makes your magic weaker, if not impossible to use. (This logic suggests metal armor should also grant a magic resist although alas, it frequently does not.) Also, most fantasy games consider very precise, measured movements to be an important part of casting a spell, so armor will interfere with magic for much the same reasons it interferes with rogues- it's hard to move in. Balancewise, Wisp has pretty much hit the nail on the head. Warriors are in melee all the time, so they need the tank benefits. However rogues and mages have viable alternatives to melee combat, namely archery and damage spells. They shouldn't be able to tank also, so the better warrior gear penalizes their abilities. Even the best rogue and wizard gear just flat out doesn't have the damage resisting, blocking and elemental resisting properties that something like Imperial Boilerplate does, which is enough of a drawback to make a warrior think long and hard before wearing it. People trying to balance two roles thus have some important decisions to make. Also, I'm pretty sure I've invented some new English words here. I'm not sure how that happened, but I have an English degree so it's OK. :{
Wearing stuff that barely scales to the damage that monsters have later game IS penalizing your warriorness. The bigger problem is that magic power scales with everything and that gearing for a billion different resistances can be hard. The real culprit however is crit.
Not sure I understand what you're saying, JR. In full Imp. Boilerplate with some decent armored pants/gloves I was able to slog through the entire 15th floor taking little to no mundane damage and that was without the Master of Arms tree. I then went toe to toe with Dredmor and beat him silly while taking only about a third of my HP in damage (granted, I had the Diggle God of War buff at the time, so I had a lot of HP.) The only damage type I wasn't really well defended against was Radiance, so those freaking fish were hitting me for about 10 damage a pop. Uncomfortable but not fatal, particularly since I had the Diggle God of Fertility buff for most of the level (I only found the War statue a few rooms before Dredmor.) You just have to manage your gear well and buy resistance equipment/potions whenever you can. As for crits, yes they're kinda bad. But as Essence pointed out somewhere (can't remember where) they don't double the whole attack damage. They double the Melee Power bonus to mundane damage. The key, again, is tank power. Have enough DA and even crits won't hurt you too bad. I found about six Boilerplate helms and three Boilerplate suits as loot, not to mention all the other good gear that I wound up selling, so it's definitely possible to build a massive tank on a good run. Sure, sometimes you get screwed, but that's the hard rogue's life, isn't it?
The OP discusses the unfairness in warrior gear penalizing mage stats. My argument is that wearing mage/rogue gear doesn't exactly make you effective as a warrior either. Are you playing on GR? Crits hurt my old warrior a crapton and he had Imperial Boilerplate. Certain floors have monsters that are particularly hard to gear against unless you get a specific drop. Those cube slimes on DL5 hit VERY hard until you get a Plague Doctor's Mask or similar gear.
Ah, my misunderstanding then. To answer your question: the difficulty on the run I mentioned was Dwarvish. However monster damages don't change between difficulties, except for named monsters which get better stats at higher difficulties. (Link to the full list of differences between difficulties: http://www.dredmorwiki.com/wiki/Difficulty. As far as I know that list is accurate.) I am in the middle of a Warrior run on GR though, and I just cleared DL 5. Yes, the cube slimes did hit pretty hard, and I spent my fair share of ranged weaponry keeping them back. However they, along with the tone of piercing damage dealt by witchies, were the only things that could deal actual damage outside of crits, so I feel it evened out. Last DLI could take crits from some creatures and still take no damage. Edit: Should I survive the uttercold of DL 7 I'll let you know how I fare on floors 10+.
Can someone that has gotten far on both GR and DM (with similar builds on both playthroughs perhaps) say whether there is a big experience difference end game? According to that list there are a bit more traps, and monsters, so I wouldn't be surprised if you could get an extra level on GR with a trap build. There also appears to be more higher level/ named monsters worth more exp, and more locked chests/ doors.. from my own experience on GR.
DL7 is easy with a Toque of Kanada. The only thing you'll have to worry about are Snow Baals that can crit for a ton of damage. IIRC those are the first mobs you'll have to start worrying about crit->counter crits on. In my experience things usually get tough around DL9.
Sadly, no Toques this run, which is too bad, but I made it OK. Starting level 8, no problems there so far...
