suggestion: better early game melee damage

[marvalis]

At the beginning of the game, when you start a melee class, damage is pathetic. This makes the early game go to a crawl until you can find a decent weapon. Farming for a weapon at level 3 is kinda dumb. The stores offer some kind of sollution, but having to backtrack out of trolshaw without the rod of return is kinda dull. Giving all melee classes 10 more damage at the start (while keeping the damage later the same) should make the early game much more enjoyable.

[TheRani]

Usually the first thing I do with any character is leave Bill's forest to go shopping. If Derth doesn't have anything, I'll check the shops in the other towns until I can find a better weapon to buy with my starting money. Then I go back to the forest.

[Sirrocco]

Alternate thought - make it a character creation question.

"Would you prefer to start with..."
- A shiny new weapon?
- 10 gp?
- Some starting armor?
- One particularly nice piece of starting armor?
- A shielding rune?

The thing that you'd get would be somewhat random, cost more than 10 to buy and sell for less than 10, and appear in your inventory. Weapons and armor would be tuned to the race and class. Classes that start out with the heavy armor skill would get heavy armor, classes that start out as casters would get cloth, and everyone else would get leather. likewise, berserkers would get two-handed weapons, Cursed would get axes, and so forth. Granted gear would not be guaranteed to be instantly wearable, but should be low enough level (nothing higher than tier 2) that a character would be able to wield it after leveling a couple of times.

This also makes things a touch easier for folks like the undead, who start with no access to shops.