Early game Unangband

[Napsterbater]

Why are so many race/class combos in Unangband virtually unplayable? I tried playing a Hobbit Bard and couldn't hit anything without Bless/Guided Blow. I don't expect to be as powerful as a warrior, but this is ridiculous. My Fighting is listed as Very Bad, but this isn't reflected in the ToHit/Damage, which says I'm swinging +6/+0. Pretty good right? Even at clev 7 I still needed Bless to hit anything reliably that wasn't a centipede.

[Napsterbater]

To even kill anything at clev 1 required me to carry a sling and sling 4-8 stones at each centipede. It's unbelievably tedious.

[jens]

In vanilla a big part of your ability to hit comes from race/class skill settings. I guess it's just balanced a bit tighter...

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by Napsterbater

Why are so many race/class combos in Unangband virtually unplayable? I tried playing a Hobbit Bard and couldn't hit anything without Bless/Guided Blow. I don't expect to be as powerful as a warrior, but this is ridiculous. My Fighting is listed as Very Bad, but this isn't reflected in the ToHit/Damage, which says I'm swinging +6/+0. Pretty good right? Even at clev 7 I still needed Bless to hit anything reliably that wasn't a centipede.

Hobbits are much better at thrown weapons than melee to start with, so use that. Bards never get very good at shooting, because their bow slot should be filled with an instrument instead.

FYI - The last winner on the ladder was a bard: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11417

[Napsterbater]

Originally Posted by andrewdoull

Hobbits are much better at thrown weapons than melee to start with, so use that. Bards never get very good at shooting, because their bow slot should be filled with an instrument instead.

FYI - The last winner on the ladder was a bard: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11417

OK, went into the dungeon with a stack of 14 daggers. The first fruit bat I met killed me. I had yet to hit it once. Also, I'm tired of my ring specialists getting cursed rings of teleport to start out with. It would be nice if that ring was identified, too. Aren't they supposed to auto-id rings?

[Napsterbater]

Couldn't kill a shrieker mushroom with darts, this time I started with thrown weapon specialty.

[Napsterbater]

Ah well, back to Vanilla. It seems I just don't have the patience for Unangband.

[Therem Harth]

Did you encounter any traps? Last time I played Un, I was instakilled by a gas trap on level 1...

[LostTemplar]

Unangband is somewhat fun. Last time I played it I got bored by constantly being throwed into nowhere when taking stairs, just was unable to go anywhere. Maybe this was fixed, and it is worth another try.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I didn't encounter any glitches like that with Croaker. Some of my summons got ignored by uniques but that was about it.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to getting a hobbit bard off the ground would be getting your stats distributed in a satisfactory way. I would rank the 5 stats you need like this: Con, Siz, Dex, Str, Cha and put enough in agility for a non-penalty. I have been playing with some hobbit thieves lately and find that loading up on con and siz is pretty much required for survival.

You boost 2 stats every few clevels and 5 every 10th level. For experimentation purposes, I would highly recommend going into debug-mode (ctrl+a) and giving (ctrl+c) a brand new hobbit bard 99 (ctrl+o) potions of experience. Drink them and play with different stat choices to see what kind of character you can expect to have at different clevels. I didn't bother doing that with my troll bard since he only needed to focus on dex and cha, but with a hobbit it's going to be much more of a juggling act to get what you want.

I was able to go the fighter route, but I imagine a hobbit bard would have to rely on sneaking, throwing and finding items in rooms to get by for quite a while.