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 ;-)