No kidding. +12 stealth in item that aggravates. Cursed indeed. I wish you could remove that kind of curses with remove curse.

BTW FAangband have special remove_contradictory () function to avoid such stuff.

I wonder where Nick got that from :-)

the Steel Helm of Carfin [9,+16]: Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold


Havent had any of these before.

IMO that is borderlining a bug. Artifacts should have something to make them special. This does not have anything.

Well there are bad artifacts, too; so having zero value ones isnt horrible, as long as they are rare enough.

I wonder how much value the generator gives AC. Its probably impossible to get right, because the value of AC changes during the game, and similarly, of weight. Maybe assigning weight a negative value would be a good idea.

This helmet was junk for me when I found it: early in the game and already at speed -1 from weight, I wasnt going to add more load for a bit of AC. If it had been a leather cap +16, I might have equipped it till something better turned up (like a hat of infravision).

For the lategame weight is all but irrelevant (you go from speed 23 to 22 or so, who cares), but a small negative value adjustment shouldnt break the system there.

Another option is to assign AC a value of zero. As long as the distribution of AC for the artifacts remains the same, youll end up with between 200 and 300 AC for the end kit anyway and the difference between the 2 is negligable.

IMO in order to become an artifact object needs to have something special. Something that makes people of the realm remember and recognize the thing.

And having high AC isn´t special in this sense, I take it, while having, say, fire resistance is. That means assigning no value to AC like suggested above would solve.
One could also require "at least 2 properties for each artifact"; I wonder if it would still be possible to get an AC only helm with extra weight or so.

Well, there is Glaive of Pain which has nothing but insane damage (and now later pFear). Maybe if AC bonus would be higher than +20 which is unattainable with enchant item scrolls/spells it could qualify. At +16 however it is just barely better than ordinary steel helmet which someone had enchanted a lot. Only special features that thing had was ignore acid and immune to manastorm destruction (automatic from being artifact). Not even AC was exceptional.

BTW we need mithril helmets. Guards of the Citadel in Denethors court had those, so they should be rather common item (or at least possible base item meaning rarer than shallow helmets items, but more common than egos later).

Helmets are now:

Hard Leather Cap
Metal Cap
Iron Helm
and
Steel Helm

None of those ignore elements (acid).
(+ four crowns with base 0 AC)

Yeah, the Glaive of pain only has lots and lots of damage, but higher damage dice count for a lot, and honestly, +30 is insane. Damage is useful, unlike AC, which is not useful for much. It is handy against mobs of monsters with attacks that do HP damage, as opposed to inventory damage or character damage. Actually, the subsection of those monsters you fight hand-to-hand.

For an objects AC to be interesting, it would have to give at least 50 more AC than I would reasonably expect, since the Glaive has about 10 or so more damage than I would reasonably expect on an artifact. If the helm gave 60-80 AC or so, it would be an interesting object.

I agree about mithril helms, feels fairly natural. I can't think of anything else that is mentioned to be mithril, but gauntlets would qualify, too.

I have already reported this (artifacts with only extra tohit/todam/toac), and the problem is that many artifacts have a really low power. In that case, there's usually not much room for anything else than a weak ability or extra tohit/todam/toac. The same helm with +6 toac instead of +16 and feather falling would not have been much more special...

But it would be special. I wonder, which item from original set has so low value that it generates randart without any value?

I think the root problem here is that randart calc values AC way too high. 9+16 is next to nothing, it's immediate junk unless it is dlvl1 item with rarity "found always", and even then it was in item that is heavy so I would probably still not use it. +10 AC less with FF should be about ten times more valuable at those shallow levels that +16AC could have some value.

In randart generation anything less than +20 AC (as bonus, not whole) should count nothing at all.

The Paur* gauntlets leap to mind (especially Paurnen), as do Beruthiel and Camlost, who have so many penalties that their values are frankly negative IMO. I don't know the variance on object power, but I suppose it's possible that an exceptionally poor roll for the *thancs or Thengel could also result in a powerless artifact. Gorlim is pretty terrible too, though at least it has +to-dam which ought to boost its perceived power significantly.

Actually, there's a point -- how are "bad" standarts handled by the randart generator? It should try to make an equivalent "bad" randart, not just a randart with equivalent total power. In other words, when evaluating standarts, the power of both the benefits of the item, and the penalties on it, should both be determined; then the randart should try for equal power on both. So e.g. Beruthiel might have a positive power of 50 and a negative power of 75; I wouldn't be surprised if currently the game tries to make a randart with power -25, when it should try to make a randart with positive power 50 and negative power -75 (with some variance of course).

I thought of that and I think many of those "bad" artifacts are actually quite close to zero power if you combine bad and good qualities. Beruthiel could be the one that one was based on. None of the purely good ones are close to zero power.

Weakest "good" artifact I can think of is Thorongil, but even that is quite a lot better than steel helmet with mediocre bonus to AC.

I checked the helm, it was based on one of the paur gauntlets.

Remember that there's a decent bit of variance between the power of a standart and the power of the randart it's based on. A low roll based on a low-power artifact can produce "uninteresting" randarts too.

Then that counts as bug.

Man, people need to stop using this thread to discuss randarts.

Anyway, yes, there's always been a problem with weak randarts, because there's often no room for interesting abilities after choosing the base item and initial plusses. There's also a separate problem with "bad" randarts because there are so few acceptable "bad" mods in the game. The generator originally used Derakon's approach of +25 and -50 (or thereabouts), but everything ended up aggravating and being junk. Maybe that doesn't matter - but if you want more interesting bad randarts, we need more interesting bad mods.

It would definitely be possible to solve the first problem and start the generation of a weak randart with an 'interesting' ability and then find a suitable base item.

Btw, the generator doesn't over-value AC per se, it calculates AC per unit weight and values that. You may still think some AC values end up too high.

Thats interesting. I suspect that the weight/AC ratio of that helm is actually decent when compared to a heavy mail. Of course a heavy mail is basically out of the question before a substantial amount of str adders has been found.

I think that giving weapons more realistic weights (around 2lbs) would mitigate the armor-weight issue.

(For the record, no, I dont mind zero value randarts at all, I am very happy with them as is, but yes, I am still in the wrong thread.)

Does that mean that +1 in ethereal cloak gets infinite value? Or that ethereal cloak can never have bonus to AC?

Maybe the code over-generalizes things in this case. AC has pretty much fixed value regardless of the item it is found and it should not count anything less than +15 as any value, because you can enchant item with spells and scrolls to that point.

Enchantment hasn't been available in unlimited quantity (via townscumming) for years, and I'm pretty sure only priests and paladins get access to enchanting spells. If you just use the items you find in the dungeon, and spend them all on a single piece of non-artifact (ergo, easier to enchant) armor, realistically you're never going to get it above +12 or maybe +13, and that's over an entire game's worth of effort. The odds are simply far too low. When was the last time you got a pair of Boots of Speed up to +15 on AC?

Realistically, an early piece of armor that does nothing except boost your AC by 20-30 is still going to make a difference. It's hard to quantify, sure, but that doesn't make it worthless. Of course it will be obsoleted as soon as you find a hat that does something more important, but it still has its window of usefulness.

In other words, you're being overly reductionist.

Rogue and Ranger get those too (in Tensers). For some reason mage doesn't (IMO that's wrong way around BTW). So it's mage and warrior that can't enchant at will at higher levels.

That is unless this has been changed in 3.5. Haven't played mage-types yet in 3.5.

Compared to the usual degree of off-topicness around here, I think discussing randarts in a thread about randarts is remarkably restrained. :)

What about penalties to stats or combat abilities? Thorin has -1 stealth, Wormtongue makes your combat slightly worse; we could easily have randarts that reduce your STR or whatever.

Yes, we could, couldn't we? :)

That's not my problem (as you well know!). I find this forum's UI phenomenally irritating when a thread passes a certain length. Big threads are also much more painful to search (manually, I mean).
We could indeed (it was me who put most of them on the standarts), but it's not as simple as you think:

1. When is it ok to have a malus on an otherwise good randart? Splattering them everywhere will soon pall.

2. How much of a malus is acceptable? -2 STR on an uber-randart would be easily tolerable, but you can imagine it making weak randarts instant junk.

3. How many tries are we going to allow? Adding maluses to the main generator (note that 'bad' randarts use a completely separate function) would exponentially increase the generation time, which is already noticeable on modern systems (especially if the whole set fails the minima test).

I'm not against it by any means, but you can see why even minor gimping never made it to the top of my to-do list.

(@Timo: AC per unit weight has a maximum value, and anything with zero weight is automatically allocated that value. It's not terribly large, in the greater scheme of things - something like +10 damage or so. And no, the generator does not attempt to adjust for any other equipment or spell the finder might have - as I have said consistently, that way lies madness.)

+10 damage? How does that work? Or was that a typo and you mean +10 AC?

I agree, I would just want to get AC bonuses have no value unless it is beyond certain threshold, like +15. Otherwise randart generator makes just those completely useless junk-items. Other way to tackle that problem would be to not give AC any value at all while generating and give it normal ego-type AC boost after or before generation.

No I think he means exactly that - the cap for AC value is somewhere in the range of the value of +10 damage.



I have suggested exactly that for AC evaluation - its simple and fits the current situation with AC being a) thrown at you anyway and b) being rather meaningless.
Increasing the base AC of armors, while going in the right direction, hasnt changed the greater picture. I am still dreaming of Angband where AC matters, but to achieve that, the task isnt so much "make AC more useful", its rather "crush anyone (engaging in melee combat) without sufficient AC".

Diablo I is a game where AC is vital; Diablo II is more like Angband in that regard.

So, something like +75 AC?

Its AC/weight times a gauging factor, capped at some value since, as you observed, the quotient can become infinite for zero weight items like ethereal cloaks. That max value is simiar to that of a dam +10 item.

So its something like 75AC/lb (probably less).

It's much less. Most body armours offer less than 2AC/lb, and other armour pieces rarely more than 4/lb. I think the cap is something like six or ten.

It's interesting that people *still* think that AC is useless. Back in 3.1.x I lengthened the scale and recalibrated the values to try and address this - there is now a material difference in the damage taken between AC 0 and 50, or 100 and 150 - but clearly it still isn't enough.

Personally I don't think much more is possible until the combat system is changed fundamentally (like in v4/Pyrel, for example), but interested in other views. In a new thread, perhaps ;-)

What's the difference between AC in poscheng and AC in vanilla? You die and you die in poscheng unless you have big AC or can avoid meleeing things.

AC isn't useless, problem is that in order to make any difference you need to have *really* big bonus to AC. Armor comes from at least six, potentially ten slots (weapon, rings, amulet), so in order to one of them making any difference is much less than in weapons having damage bonus.

Also malus and bonus in AC are quite a different values. -75AC would be very nasty, while +75 doesn't make much difference, because it's just fractional improvement over your other equipment.

If you have 5 * 25 AC (average) then that one having +75 instead of another +25 is just 200/150 = 33% improvement. And +75 is huge bonus.

OTOH in that same scenario -75 would be same as 125-75/150 = 66% drop in AC.

Just found the Whip of Galdor off Azog, king of the Uruk-Hai, dlvl 35.
The stuff I know it has:
4 INT, tunneling, no other immediate things
1d3 dice, +5 +28(+28 to_dam is pretty high in the upper regions of standart stuff, at dlvl 35 on a whip it is hilarious)
slay evil (as if it were necessary)

Certainly remarkable, considering the Glaive of Painish damage bonus, and on a whip it will be beautiful all through statgain.

EDIT: Of course, slay evil only adds ten damage, but it's fun. Total damage output is 180 against normal creatures on my gnome warrior.

EDIT2: It was incredibly handy in killing Bolg :)

Make that two points (with five blows it is ten). Pretty insignificant bonus.

I prefer playing with randarts but in the current comp it's the standard set. But fortunately, ego items are finally almost as interesting as randarts. I mean, I've always wanted to find Doomcaller or Ringil but never did and now when I find Doomcaller I used it only once to kill a Wyrm just for the sake of it. Look at
.v.s.
or
.v.s.

I can do you one better.:

Cursed ones arent that rare. They are just bad and noone bothers with them, but "good" ones that arent really any good are very uncommon.

Ah, I didn't realize. Because I don't preserve my randarts from game to game, I usually generate and peruse artifact.spo after death/victory. I feel like my games generate cursed artifacts with no drawback beyond negative to-hit/dam/AC less often than plain "good" (but functionally merely magical) artifacts.

Edit: Also, I've noticed that most games randart sets contain at least one (and often two or more) "artifact" boots of speed that, aside from having a purple name, differ not at all from the ego boots.

They have enough pool to get the speed (otherwise they would be junk compared to ego speed boots), but not much allowance for anything on top.
Thats why those boots above get created: 12 speed (awesome), 12 stealth (big bonus on top), aggravating (malus without which they would break the limit and not get created at all).

The best ones I have seen had something like +8 speed and +8 to a stat.
I wonder what Deathwreaker created on boot base would look like (afaik, impossible to happen with current randart algorithm).

Feanor-based boots? Would those be even close to Feanor?

I believe Feanor has less power than Deathwreaker (but dont quote me on that); 12 speed and 12 stealth should be more valuable than what Feanor has, no ?
Last version I recall they had 15 speed and featherfall or somesuch.
I know of no reason why Feanor boots couldnt get rolled as boots; I assume they can (and become 8 speed 8 stat in the process or so).

Feanor has +15 speed, resistance to nexus, and activation for Haste Self. That activation is pretty powerful, especially since the recharge time isn't that unreasonable (200 turns).

That said, it's usually just an extra +5 speed over what you'd be wearing otherwise, which is great, but not the kind of game-changer that Deathwreaker is.

Deathwreaker used to be too heavy to get full blows with it. It also aggravates, so it isn't that useful, and it also isn't that big game changer unless you manage to get it early. MoD of Extra Attacks +2 can be very close to be as good as D is, or if you get lucky with bonuses even better if you play mage or priest (50% more blows).

That +5 to speed from body gear is actually quite big deal. It is usually enough to tip the scale to make new choices for rest of your gear. That is one of the reasons why +3 from Thalkettoth and +3 or +2 from few of the artifact cloaks and Trickery amulet also are big deals. They stack up freeing up a ring slot, and that is why even small speed boosts outside rings are big deal.

I wonder what the blows formula used to be; "too heavy for full blows" these days translates to "only the warrior wont get his last blow, everyone else is fine even without maxed str/dex".

Notice anything these have in common?

(and, yes, these are all in the same game... which I'm re-playing right now. I just have to see how powerful this will make a Priest. Of course even if I find both rings, one of them will probably have to be swapped with a speed ring.)

Been there done that :P

Its fun, and none of these are based on a super-rare like Feanor. This is when other artifacts with ~10 speed become interesting; body-armour or shield.

Also, is there a good weapon that beats a MoD of slay evil ? (with 6 off-weapon attacks, another +2 from weapon isnt best option, rather take the slay).

Not sure about the weapons -- there isn't anything that stands out particularly, but there a few weapons with big +to-dam.

Holy Avenger MoD would be good, plus it's possible your randart set has an item with "causes your attacks to slay XYZ" or "brands your melee attacks with XYZ," which would be worth stacking with your extra blows.

Random thought that I don't know where to put: Maybe instead of the power of a randart being how much stuff is on it, it should be how much BETTER it is than the typical ego you would have put in that slot otherwise (so for example artifact boots with +10 speed will have a very low power level, due to +10 boots of speed, but artifact hat with +10 speed would be comparatively very valuable)

Do you mean before fractional blows? Or even earlier? It used to be that some of the five-blow classes did get only four out of them. IIRC Rogue and priests didn't get five with it (now priests get four anyways, so that's "fixed").

With fractional blows IIRC even warrior gets max blows with MoD. Unless that has been revised somewhat DEX affect to blow calcs doesn't stop in 18/150 like it used to be.

From memory, currently non-warriors get maxblows with MoD at 160 dex; warriors get 5,2 at 220 str/ 220 dex. Possibly 5,2 is reached at lower stats, but not much lower.

If MoD is too heavy for maxblows, imo it should give the same percentage of attacks at the same stat breaks for everyone (modulo rounding deviations of course).

5,2/6 =~ 87% =~ 4,3/5 ~= 3,5/4

If warriors get 5,2 with stats at cap, then paladins should get 4,3 and mages 3,5, and only at maxed str/dex.

j) the Metal Cap of Rainwe [3,+16] <+3, +1>
Found lying on the floor at 900 feet (level 18).

+3 strength, intelligence.
Provides resistance to acid.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Sustains wisdom.
Prevents paralysis.
Radius 1 light.

my first randart ever.

i thought that randarts were generated at dlvl30 below. this was found in the same kind of room you would see at dlvl1.:confused:

The only hard-and-fast rule of item generation is that you can't get artifacts in the town. Well, okay, and that you can only get Morgoth's Crown and Hammer by killing him. Everything else -- if you get lucky enough, you can find it anywhere. You could theoretically enter the dungeon on level 1 and find the One Ring in the same room you entered on. It's probably a trillions-to-one against odds, but it could happen.

Started to calc what that would be for The One and from code I found this:

The One has rarity of exactly 100. Doesn't that mean that it can't be created at all?

Anyway it looks like for the One at dlvl 1 it would be 1/495 * 1/198 * 1/100 = teeny weeny bit less than 1/million. And that's *after* game has already chosen to create The One if I understand that correctly.

From that code I learned that artifact have strict max depth. That means that several things stop being generated at very deep levels, some of them surprisingly early. Like Forasgil which max depth is 50 (2500').

I'm pretty sure randint1 is an inclusive random number generator from 1 to the specified cap. It's like rolling a 1d(whatever); 1d100 in this case. In other words, the One Ring has exactly a 1% chance of passing that particular check.

My point was that there is ">" not ">=" which would indicate that that roll should be greater than rarity to pass the check. Max from 1d100 roll is equal to The One rarity which would mean that it can't pass the check ever.

If that is something like 1-100 +1 (IE. 2-101)then it's 1/100 chance and anything with rarity 1 are guaranteed to pass (which actually makes sense, Grond has rarity 1). Don't know what that randint1 actually does.

Oh, good catch. That is strange.

Seems correct to me: randint1(100) = 1d100, so if 1-100 > 1 (allocation for rarest items), which happens 99 times out of 100, the item is not generated.

The thing is (as PowerWyrm was indicating) it is if it doesn't pass this that the One has a chance of being generated. Its alloc_prob is 1, so if the randint1(100) roll is 1 (a 1 in 100 chance), it goes on to the next stage; in the other 99 out of 100, it has already failed.

That's other way around. Rarest items have highest rarity rating, most common have lowest. The One rarity rating is 100.

Or does that "continue" mean that it fails, which means I have understood this wrong way around?

[edit]... can't be like that. It clearly makes comparison to 1d100 > alloc_prob which will never be true. Unless alloc_prob is calculated somewhere else so that it reverses the value of artifact.txt.

[edit edit]

That clearly makes same kind of comparison for item level and allows continue only if alloc_max is less than depth.

[edit, edit, edit] This makes less and less sense to me. God, I need coffee.

if item max depth is 50 and depth is 51 continue (meaning stop creation). Makes sense.

if 1d100 is greater than artifact rarity 100 continue (never, so create always). Doesn't make sense.

You are right, it should be small number, not high. But in artifact.txt that's other way around.

I just checked, and here's the One Ring's entry in artifact.txt:

Specifically, note the A: line. Rarity of 1. Meanwhile, Grond has a rarity of zero because it's never supposed to be generated "naturally", only by being forced into Morgoth's drop.

Ah, too old, I used old info.

Phew. I started to think that I don't understand angband code at all. Good to know that this is just having wrong initial assumption.

Which btw reminds me conversation with Magnate. I think this should go other way around, most common item should have lowest number and rarest arbitrary high number.

Maybe something like

Would be better. Then you could make insanely rare "game breaking" artifacts. Now the whole range is 1-100 and that's it.

It's 1-1000 in v4, which is a lot better, but you can't really have arbitrary rarity while you're limited by integers. Pyrel has infinite rarity gradations because alloc_prob can go down to .0000001 etc.

I don't think I understand the need to have rare items have a high number though; alloc_proc seems equally if not more intuitive to me (number of occurrences on the number line).

I also don't understand why people won't let this bloody thread die. Ho hum. Perhaps pav could lock it :-)

"Night of the living thread"

Nooooo dont you lock my favourite thread. I love what Magnate has done to the randarts and all, but regardless, swinging the thread-close hammer when the topic is unpleasant isnt fair! Dont go there!

Of course I mostly hope to see awesome randarts posted here.

Keep in mind that the only reason Magnate doesn't want to see this thread closed is because reading it is unpleasant using the threaded view. He has nothing against the thread content.

...is anyone else on the forums using the threaded view?

I'm using hybrid. I have tree in top of the screen and I see all the posts from starting point in that tree below it. That way I can see who answers to who and all the posts thereafter.

Well, as I said you could then make hyper rare insane things without having any limits (except length of the integer bitwise).

I don't see how this is intuitive: "how rare is the thing? One." One what? You need to know the source to understand the limit. If you have it other way around IE one time in <rarity> then that's very intuitive to use to me.

I like the way that in discussing why Magnate dislikes the thread, we are making it longer :)

Except that then you can't handle monster drops as "this monster drops up to N items". That is impossible to do if you want to specify rarity in terms of "this item has a 1 in X chance of dropping."

There's a large pool of items, and they all have different rarities relative to each other. Then the game picks from that pool. You don't really need to understand the source, but you do need to know what the total size of the pool is (i.e. the summation of all rarity values).

If there's only 1 droppable item, then it doesn't matter what its rarity is; it'll drop every time. If there's 2 droppable items, one has a rarity of 99, the other has a rarity of 1, then the latter will drop 1% of the time. Et cetera.

Evil, but awesome. And Estie, Derakon is right - I love discussing randarts, I just wish it wasn't all in the same thread!

If you want to know the exact rarity as it is right there at that moment. I have no clue about that pool size. I bet no player has. Reverse equation would still make that same. It would still be relative to each other.

With reverse rarity setting you can do no-limit scenario. Now there are limits. 100 is too small. 1000 is too small. One million....perhaps, but rarest item should not be insane just extremely powerful.

bump .

Now that was just evil :D

I had a "bump" message written out earlier but deleted the text and replaced it with "night of the living thread."

Ahem. Bump.

Also, I am working on generating a set of randarts that has a lategame kit giving at least 6 extra blows. If I can get 2 of the rings, the weapon, and the armor to do it, I'll be a happy man. And I'm pretty sure I remember generating a +blows light source one time. If/when I ever find what I'm looking for without cheating (beyond looking at artifact.spo), I'll post the savefile or something.

Good luck, but be aware that the randart generation code has gotten nerfed several times to make such things much less likely. Back in the 3.1.2 and 3.2 days extra blows, extra shots, off-weapon brands, etc. were relatively common, and were a big part of the reason why the game was so much easier back then. Nowadays the game puts a significantly bigger valuation on non-weapon enchantments that improve your melee/ranged damage.

Yup, I remember. I've gotten +4 blows many times, and I've seen another's character dump with +6. I would really prefer not to take the ultra-cheesy hand-editing route.

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos...&postcount=345

It's not that great -- I've pretty much stopped playing that priest character. I haven't found the second +2 attack speed ring, but as it turns out, chasing that "impossible" gear may not the most fun gameplay one can have. Go figure. Of course, YMMV, there are still people who play Alchemists in ToME 2.x, so... :).

I may still play the character to the end, but the thing is that you actually don't need +N attacks to win, so why bother?

Best bow I've ever seen...

the Long Bow 'Faladroth' (x5) (+25,+20) <+2>
--------------------------------------------
+2 strength, dexterity, shooting speed, shooting power.
+10% to searching.
Slays undead.
Provides immunity to acid.
Provides resistance to lightning, cold, poison, disenchantment.
Provides protection from blindness.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Slows your metabolism. Feather Falling. Speeds regeneration.

...or rather, not actually seen. Needless to say, I'm keeping randarts after the untimely demise of my Half-Troll rogue.

Clearly that +10% to to searching is what pushes it over the edge.

I think I've seen a similar Heavy Crossbow... Of course that's not quite as useful if you're playing a Ranger... unless perhaps the multiplier actually makes up for the "natural"extra shots? I haven't done the math. (Always seemed strange to me that rangers wouldn't at least gain some bonus wielding crossbows.)

I have been wondering...why not make the ranger bonus apply to a race specific shooter type ?

Hobbit, Gnome: sling
Elves: bow
Half elves: both bow and xbow (ha! finally a reason to play those)
Everyone else: xbow

I for one always dislike using slings, even very nice slings that I should like better, since their ammo is simply worse than arrows/bolts.

By that logic you should always use a crossbow over a longbow! I for one will always use a bow over Xbow/sling if I can possibly justify it and I simply don't understand why...

I quite like this.

Ammo is a big problem for slings early on, when damage dice are a significant part of launcher damage; later on the problem with slings is their lousy x2 multiplier. Slings of Buckland fix that, so if you find one, then slings become viable late-game weapons.

The question for bows vs. crossbows is basically "Are you a Ranger?" Other classes don't really care. Crossbows and their ammo are a bit heavier than bows, and deal very slightly more damage (x4 on a Heavy Crossbow is quite nice, mind). Their ammo also breaks a bit less often. So once you get your STR up enough to stop worrying about weight limits, they're generally the superior choice...but then again, many players end up treating their launcher slot as a "stat stick" (i.e. equipping artifacts to that slot for their bonuses, not their effectiveness as weapons).

Yes, that's in fact exactly what I do, until, as Derakon points out, I need the stats or resists of a particular rarely-to-be-used shooter.

Hobbits use bows. I don't know where that hobbits and slings originate from, but it definitely is not from Tolkien.

I am aware that they use bows. Everyone* does in Middle Earth (and I will throw out a guess that the author living in a country that adores the longbow for historical reasons might have something to do with this).
The hobbit-sling relationship I think stems from the passage where Tolkien describes them as quick to pick up stones and throw them with accuracy. If they are good with rocks, well, the step to giving them slings isnt a big one.

Also they are small, and Tolkien never describes how exactly their bows are supposed to look like. I find it hard to imagine a bow of 80 cm length being very effective. Maybe if it was a recurve, but that doesnt fit well with the more rustic Shire and Tolkien would surely have mentioned the fact had he envisioned the hobbits using recurves. Poisoned arrows also can be ruled out.

Anyway, with slings of the Buckland in the game, hobbits are married to slings at least in Angband.

*Edit: I should say everyone except rangers.

He does mention them using hunting bows, maybe those were recurves? It's old enough invention to fit in Tolkien world, but Tolkien doesn't describe most of the weapons used in detail. They could have been composite for all that we know. Being "rustic" lifestyle doesn't mean that their equipment were less "modern" than rest of the middle-earth.

Wow, just found this pair of Cesti, and wow...

The Set of Cesti of Super Speed (+4,+16) [5,+18] (+3 to stealth)
{SlSr;AcFiDkNtCaDi}

+16 Damage, stealth, acid, fire, dark, Nether, Chaos, and disenchantment. Activates for Acid Bolt. The nicest i have ever seen. I just found them on my Spectral Wyrm in Poschengband, so i can't wear them, no hands :)

+16 Dam, very nice! Er...do they actually give you any speed?

Nope, no speed. It seems randarts with speed or stealth in the name don't actually have those a lot of the time.

Ring of Power
 

the Ring of Power of Anargoth (+4, +4) <+14>

+14 Intelligence, speed.
Provides resistance to poison.

When aimed, it drains up to 120 hit points from a target creature.

I'm smert!!

Only if you were dumb to begin with. No outsmerting in Angband!

WOW!
How does the generator come up with that? I thought it kept the rings of power as is? But I've probably got that wrong, as usual!:confused:

Clearly not V. Some variants like ToME can generate stupidly OP randarts like rings <+15> to speed AND attack speed.

Its Vanilla all right, only the One Ring remains unchanged with randarts on.
Now 14 attacks would indeed be over the top, but 14 Int certainly isnt.
Theres the small issue of stat caps, and unless you play a Htroll mage and find a ring of power before your int is maxed, chances are that impressive looking amount of int is just going to waste.

It is V. 3.5. RandArts. I'm happy to post whatever to prove it if need be.

At first, I thought this had to be broken; but, then again, its not as broken as it seems. First, I already had 18/*** INT, as a mage, with other EQ bonuses. Adding 14 more does nothing, really. Second, the +14 speed is not entirely uncommon---I regularly find +11~12 speed rings. Haven't found anything above that yet, but +14 for a Ring of Power is not all that exceptional.

Other than the RPoison attribute, there really isn't a whole lot to this ring of power, other than the abnormally high +14 value. If I came across a +16 or better speed ring, I might be tempted to swap. I would have rather had an Immunity or a broader spectrum of attributes than the two listed.

:)

Yeah, this is functionally a Ring of Speed plus a Ring of Resist Poison plus a Ring of Intelligence (plus some minor damage bonuses). It's nice, but not remotely broken. If you had these abilities on a different slot (even on the boots) then it'd be a different story.