Offhand attack information

[Tamryn]

It would be nice if combat messages would indicate offhand attacks, for example "Your offhand pierce tears a gaping wound into a hobgoblin warrior's head." At the moment, if you wield two weapons that do the same type of attack (e.g. a rapier and short sword, or short sword and dagger, all of which are "piercing" weapons) it's impossible to know which weapon you hit with.

[Alexan]

I'm in total agreement with this, especially for those who use same weapons as well.

[Nylo]

This would be useful for some weapons, yes, but I'm inclined to think the difficulty in coding it would outweigh any practical benefit.

[Tamryn]

This would be useful for some weapons, yes, but I'm inclined to think the difficulty in coding it would outweigh any practical benefit.

Well, I wouldn't know about the difficult of coding it (I assume this is a hard code problem), but at the moment it's basically impossible to know if the dual wield skill is actually doing anything at all, which is a bit... disheartening.

I know some people get around this by using a different type of weapon (like a double-edged blade and a short blade) but I'm not really inclined to change weapons just for that (apart from anything, if Tamryn used a double-edged blade she would be pretty much unable to hit anything).

[Athon]

It's pretty easy to tell if dual-wield works: if you get 6 attacks in a round (fighter), dual-wield worked.

[Tamryn]

It's pretty easy to tell if dual-wield works: if you get 6 attacks in a round (fighter), dual-wield worked.

Well, I only have fourth attack learned, so if I get five attacks I know it worked. But what if I get four attacks -- did I get four attacks with my primary weapon, or three attacks and one offhand attack?

[Athon]

It's been some time since I used my fighter, but the order of attacks used to go 1st/offhand/2nd/3rd/4th/5th. In terms of your attack bonus, you have a -4 penalty compared to your mainhand (-10 vs - 6), so it's going to hit as often as your 2nd attack does pretty much (since it has a -5 penalty compared to your 1st attack). I'm not sure how the different ranks of dual wield affect this.

I can see the value in knowing when your offhand attacks. If I had to take a guess, I'd say the code wouldn't be overly difficult. But it's fairly easy to figure it out on your own.

[Nylo]

Athon: That method only works if all attacks consistently trigger every round, which is only possible at GM. Dual wield works similar to the attacks - at inept, it triggers only rarely, while at GM, it triggers every round. Thus, at journeyman, you can expect to see an offhand attack about every other round.

Basically my question, is there enough use/demand for this feature, that we want Mask to spend time implementing it that could be used for other enhancements or bugfixes? I'd certainly like this feature, but there are few enough dual-wielders, and many other suggestions that would help the whole MUD.

[Gwain]

Used to happen a very long time ago, well sort of, when you attacked with your off hand you recieved an indicator, same as if you beat someone with your weapon or took attacks with your shield. Its probably different than this though and may have only been an indicator for item damage.