Some thoughts on Beginner Adventurers

[damienhurrell]

I always liked the idea that beginners adventures should be for actual beginner characters, and I'm with the Knight Marshall and Ranger Flabbergibungander that experienced characters shouldn't be allowed to just repeatedly play beginner's adventures to build up their attributes and money pouch.

However, I think it's true that making their way through a beginner adventure once doesn't make a character any sort of expert. I think that a beginner should at least be allowed to play each of the five beginner's adventures once each then be forced to go out into the big wide world.

I assume there was in the original code a flag that recorded if a player was a beginner or not. There obviously still is something of the sort because the Marshall and Flabber don't get offended if you play their adventures as the very first outing for a new character.

So could you expand the flag coding so that a character is allowed to play each of the beginner's adventures once but is barred after that?

Or perhaps change the flag to a counter so that a player could be considered a beginner until they've completed five adventures, then barred from the beginner's cave etc after that?

[eburggraaf]

I tend to play beginner''s cave first, then magic kingdom. Magic Kingdom isn' t a beginner adventure, but the puzzles aren't difficult, there is a good balance of friends and enemies, and the loot is fantastic, including an attribute raising cup of coffee. Can I really be classed as a beginner after only two adventures? I usually have both heal and power spells, chain armor, and a couple of high impact weapons along withhhh the ability to use them. My next stop is tipically escape from the ork lair where I get a terrific sword upgrade, followed by the moleman adventures where I upgrade my projectile weapons. So I think we need some more wholistic cryteria for determining beginners. Best, Erik On April 22, 2020 11:05:11 PM damienhurrell <[email protected]> wrote: I always liked the idea that beginners adventures should be for actual beginner characters, and I'm with the Knight Marshall and Ranger Flabbergibungander that experienced characters shouldn't be allowed to just repeatedly play beginner's adventures to build up their attributes and money pouch. However, I think it's true that making their way through a beginner adventure once doesn't make a character any sort of expert. I think that a beginner should at least be allowed to play each of the five beginner's adventures once each then be forced to go out into the big wide world. I assume there was in the original code a flag that recorded if a player was a beginner or not. There obviously still is something of the sort because the Marshall and Flabber don't get offended if you play their adventures as the very first outing for a new character. So could you expand the flag coding so that a character is allowed to play each of the beginner's adventures once but is barred after that? Or perhaps change the flag to a counter so that a player could be considered a beginner until they've completed five adventures, then barred from the beginner's cave etc after that?

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[damienhurrell]

Depends how you define beginner I suppose. I think a player who is still building up armour class and weapon abilities is still at the beginning of their career, so yes, your two adventure character is still a beginner. Once or twice I've broken my only weapon early in the beginner's cave and had to run out of there to save my skin: I'd like to have some latitude to get a new weapon and try again. We also have to consider novice adventurers who won't know the optimal path to gain super weapons and loot, too. All that said, I'm happy to accept the umpire's decision.

I picked five as a kinda arbitrary number of adventures to graduate from beginner because that's how many adventures are currently tagged beginner. I wouldn't want to bar completists from running their character through all five if they desire, but after five adventures (either the five beginners or any other combo, like the one you suggest) I'm satisfied that a character is no longer a beginner, and there's no need for them to avail themselves of the beginner's adventures

We could have a more holistic definition of a beginner but it would be more complex. I vote for an number of adventures limit because it's simple, easily understood by novices and close to the original concept that Don Brown had.

[eburggraaf]

What weapon do you start out with? In the days of Apple 2EE, I always baught a mace from Markos, because I already had %20 proficiency and didn't understand the weapon complexities as an 8-year-old. Back then, you could chhhoose a good, fair, or kinda shabby rendition of each weapon. I broke a few maces in the remastered beginner's cave, but recently I switched strategies. You get what you get from Markos now unless you have money for his designer weapons. I noticed that the Markos mace has a complexity of 1d4, while the Markos bow has a complexity of 1d6 and the sword 1d8. I've had good success with both. You'll get a pretty sweet designer sword from beginner's cave. So, you can start with the Markos sword and become an all out fenser, or you can start out with the Markos bow and become a two pronged fighter. The mace is an advantage in beginner's cave, but the best designer weapons you will find during your adventures are swords and projectile weapons. It's worth building capacity here. I've fumbled a lot of bows and swords lately, dropped a few, but not broken one yet. Best, Erik On April 23, 2020 10:05:44 PM damienhurrell <[email protected]> wrote: Depends how you define beginner I suppose. I think a player who is still building up armour class and weapon abilities is still at the beginning of their career, so yes, your two adventure character is still a beginner. Once or twice I've broken my only weapon early in the beginner's cave and had to run out of there to save my skin: I'd like to have some latitude to get a new weapon and try again. I'm happy to accept the umpire's decision though. I picked five as a kinda arbitrary number of adventures to graduate from beginner because that's how many adventures are currently tagged beginner. I wouldn't want to bar completists from running their character through all five if they desire, but after five adventures (either the five beginners or any other combo, like the one you suggest) I'm satisfied that a character is no longer a beginner, and there's no need for them to avail themselves of the beginner's cave We could have a more holistic definition of a beginner but it would be more complex. I vote for an number of adventures limit because it's simple, easily understood by novices and close to the original concept that Don Brown had.

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[kdechant]

Weapon type doesn't matter when it comes to fumbling and breaking weapons. However, whether or not it's a magic weapon does matter. Normal weapons can be damaged or destroyed; magic weapons just show a "sparks fly from..." message and are not damaged. Note that some powerful weapons might not actually be magic (e.g., a large battle axe, halberd, two-handed sword, gun, etc.)

On every attack, there's a 4% chance of fumbling. (Similar to D&D, where rolling 1 on a d20 is a critical miss.) For every fumble, the following can occur:

• Fumble recovered - 40% chance
• Drop weapon - 40% chance
• Weapon hits user, but doesn't break - 5% chance
• Weapon damaged - 10% chance (unless weapon is magic, or weapon "sides" is < 2)
• Weapon broken - 5% chance (unless weapon is magic)
• If a weapon breaks, there's a 50% chance it will hurt the user.

The exception is for monsters that use natural weapons. If they would fumble based on the above logic, the game just shows a regular "miss" instead.

IIRC, there was custom logic in the original Apple II version of Beginners' Cave that prevented you from breaking your weapon. This makes sense because you were only allowed to bring one weapon. That seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the way. I'll have to look into bringing that back.