First, let me assure you, that everything I wrote or write on that matter was/is meant "tongue-in-cheek". ;-) The game is, as the dev-team
decides it to be. I deal with it, just the way it is. If everything was optimized /exactly/ to my liking, I probably wouldn't be fond of the game, anymore. Irritating game mechanics and less-than-ideal ways to prepare
(for the dangers to come) are - for me - part of the fun.
This preface out of the way, lets have a look at your reply:
On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 13:20:04 -0700 (PDT), Pat Rankin wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:53 AM UTC-7, B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson wrote:
You say "coincidence". I think otherwise. Probably, nobody else in
the Dev-team told you the /real/ reason for the proposed change.
They most likely just argued, like you wrote:
Since I made the change myself, I really doubt that someone
else conspired to not to tell me why I was doing it.... The old cvs
commit is still present in the publicly accessible git repository: https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/commit/5b9c037
Cited from this commit:
| This also addresses an earlier complaint that monks are no better in
| martial arts than samurai even though the latter have lots of choices for
| good weapon skills.
I read this as you acting on behalf on somebody else, who (strongly) "suggested" the change. ;-)
The primary reason for the martial arts change was to address
complaints that monks were far worse off than samurai: besides
not being able to become expert in any type of weapon, they take
a substantial to-hit penalty for martial arts if wearing anything in
the suit slot. It was ridiculous for samurai to outperform them in
martial arts.
Trained with armor, martial arts moves just adapt to the more limited
range of movements, but hits are no less deadly. A hit rather carries
even more impact, because of the additional weight behind each hit and
because weak parts of the human body get additional stabilization, which enables to hit with less restraint reserved for self-preservation.
What's more: With worn armor, fighters can concentrate on offense,
while armorless fighters have to use a high portion of all movements
just for basic defence. Therefore, the attack-to-moves ratio of
armorless fighters is considerably lower than the one of adequately
protected ones.
And to address the matter of in-game (in)consistency: Monks who /carry/
but not wear armor (without being burdened) get no penalty for this
armor, although carrying things is much more of a hindrance in martial
arts combat, than wearing those items. ;-)
For me, monk armor restriction in Nethack was always a religious (or
political, if historical causes for armor- and weaponless Shaolin monk
fighting is taken as a basis) matter. No need to boost up this role in
any way. It is /meant/ to be a difficult one. And (compared to samurai)
monks do not gain any fighting advantage by restricting samurai to master:
A well-trained samurai two-weaponing his well-enchanted 2 long swords at
expert will always outperform any grandmaster monk of the same strength
and agility. ;-)
For me, playing grandmaster samurai (with the backup safety-net of
switching to weapon combat if matters grew to dire) was training for successfully playing monk, later on. This way I got an impression, what
a grandmaster can achieve and what moves are dangerous. And of course,
what difference certain levels of strength and dexterity make.
Therefore, restricting samurai martial arts was, IMHO, reducing possible in-game training capabilities /and/ removing a (for me important) source
of fun... <Sigh> ;-)
BeAr
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