I'm not sure if having staff skill is enough to call a caster a hybrid, since with any legitimately scary threats you are going to end up blowing it up with spells anyway. The way I see it, a hybrid is someone is either melee that augments themselves with some decently strong spells, or a caster who augments his defenses with melee-quality armor.
What is "melee-quality armour" supposed to mean? The game doesn't exactly force you to use heavy armour; dodging is more than adequate. I've done close-quarters combat with lots of characters wearing robes/leather. Also, I'm curious why any character wouldn't want to have the best quality armour they can get.
Also, "melee that augments themselves with decently strong spells" qualifies as most melee characters who don't use Trog, eventually. The exceptions would usually be those who go full-on heavy armour and use plate/CPM/GDA, and even a lot of those wind up casting some decent spells by the endgame.
Melee-quality armor is any armor you would wear if you go with AC instead of EV as your defense of choice. Usually plate/cpm/gda, but it can be anything with a decent AC value, even some of the shitty mid-tier armors can be useful if you can cast in them as well as gain their AC benefits.
Yes, almost all melee characters hybridize a bit in the very late game, but thats also the point where the definition of Hybrid and Pure becomes useless. The distinction changes to flexible and inflexible. Obviously, being flexible is better. You do, however, have the choice whether to be a hybrid or not in the early-mid game, where
not casting spells has huge benefits that might even overcome what spells you could use.
Some good hybrid races; Hill Orcs and High Elves. These races can actually cast decent spells and wear something other then nearly AC-less armor before lategame. They have the HP and they have the aptitudes, your DE does not. The closest your DE could come to being a Hybrid is training Dodging and grabbing some weapon skill, which is something any mage should do anyway.
I guess the question is what you define hybrid as, but yea, I don't really think having a few points in X weapon skill to kill popcorn is going to make you a hybrid.
Do executioners count as popcorn now? Seriously, enhancer staves can do a lot of damage. Also, my last win was a DEVM who mostly relied on conjurations and such, but also did a hell of a lot of melee due to finding a quick blade of distortion. That only needs something like 8 points of skill to reach minimum delay, but managed to kill/banish some of the biggest threats of the game.
By the point where your Deep Elf can feel safe meleeing Executioners with his enhancer staff (and yes, I know they are powerful melee weapons), they are indeed popcorn. If you thought they were a legitimate threat you would have bombed them before they even closed the gap.
I can understand why a lot of people, especially people who haven't gotten to the late game, might make such a huge distinction between "casters" and "melee characters", since that's how most games work, but in crawl, most melee-oriented characters are still going to cast spells, and most (smart) conjuration-type characters are most likely going to wind up whacking things in melee often enough to matter. In other words, most successful characters are "hybrids".
Yes, and I know how this stuff all works; I'm not new to the lategame by any means, and I've won before. You're going on about the fact that everyone is a hybrid eventually. You've stated it, I've stated it, and yes, it's a given that with the amount of XP the game gives you to play with you're going to be hybridizing regardless of your starting condition. But that's just it; a hybrid is someone who can hybridize before it's a given. Before a melee is expected to be casting spells. Before a caster is expected to wear that armor. They do things sooner, at the cost of not having the full effectiveness of either casters or melee chars.
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Topic: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Or: THAT DAMN SIGMUND. (Read 1601023 times)