Even then, we can make educated guesses based on which skills are mastered, what sorts of things we're intending to do, what sorts of enemies we're likely to be upsetting and who's going to be with us when we do.
Like, consider the two options - +2/+0 and +1/+1. We have the following potential outcomes:
- We guess correctly as to which is better: advantage to +2/+0
This is true. If we guess right, advantage us. Obviously. But not really a super big one most of the time. Frankly, the extra damage up is usually gonna be overkill vs. most foes, not in the sense that it will kill enemies in one blow, but in the sense that it will very rarely change the number of blows required. Our damage is high enough with even a +1 that we are wrecking people, hitting an easy 4 at range and 5 in melee on basically every attack, with some going higher than that. Even vs. damage reduction, we just don't need higher damage than that the vast majority of the time, especially targeting people in areas they're weak in.
The lower starting damage is, the more a +1 means, and our numbers are high enough that the second +1 hits diminishing returns (especially on melee attacks, where we can easily do 6-7 damage per hit even with only +1...7-8 is not materially better than 6-7 nearly as often as 4 is materially better than 3).
- It doesn't actually matter: advantage to +2/+0, because we can choose to use the one that has the bonus more.
This is not necessarily correct. Being able to vary our combat style and surprise opponents due to it is always very handy and having to take serious damage penalty to do it makes it a lot harder to do. I'd say this is neutral, with both options having upsides and downsides depending on the exact situation. We have not won most of our fights by just piling on damage, but by outthinking our opponents, and that gets trickier if we've invested heavily in one specific strategy leaving others underdeveloped and less effective.
- We guess incorrectly, but it's only a marginal difference: advantage is still to the +2/+0, because a +2 with a marginal disadvantage still beats out a +1. (the level of difference that counts as "marginal" for this goes up sharply with enemy damage resistance)
This isn't correct. It would be in isolation, but we do enough damage that it just isn't. As I discuss above, the difference between 2 and 3 damage would be super relevant here, but our minimum damage has hit 3 without the use of shapeshifting. So we're talking going from damage 4 to 5 or 5 to 6, which isn't gonna usually be enough of a boost to make up for using a less relevant form of attack.
- We guess incorrectly, and it's significant: advantage to the +1/+1
Indeed.
...and, again, we have actual information available to us. Our guesses are going to be better than a coinflip.
Are they? I'm deeply doubtful of that given the sheer breadth of different capabilities we've run into from different Norsemen thus far to say nothing of dwarves, trolls, or other things we haven't even fought. Fighting two identical looking Norsemen might necessitate completely opposing strategies and we won't know that until the fight has already started.
Like, right now we have the potential to be attacked by Foemen, Bandits, Horra's Men, Trolls, Dwarves, and Troll-Men...and that's just the enemies we know of. With all those possibilities, I don't think we do have better than coin flip odds of picking 'right' if there even is a right answer (it might easily differ between foes even in the same battle).
We still have all the options we had before we got shapeshifting. We aren't losing those. The only downside is that the disfavored one hits a bit less hard, while the favored one hits harder. That's "shifting advantages", which is a very different thing than "cutting off options".
Worth noting here that the enemy won't even know which of our two attack styles does the most damage until they get hit by one of each.
It can, with tough fights, render the non-favored style a lot harder to actually use, or even impossible, and wind up completely invalidating the advantage provided by those shapeshifting slots in the first place. And with easy fights, the lower damage will generally be plenty.
Okay, but for the "default ambush build" is the +1/+1 really better? I mean, we know what tricks we have. We know what they do, and how much orthstirr they cost. We can build out a default "getting ambushed" strategy, and then shift it as we get new tricks or gain mastery.
There is no 'default strategy' because it depends on who and what ambushes us. If we're ambushed by archers, we want to close the distance and use melee. If we are ambushed by a troll we may want to stay back and attack at range. It all depends on who and what we're fighting.
Now... it's another thing to think about. it's another thing to juggle and make decisions on. You might not want to reconsider and remake the same decision again and again every round based on limited information. I can respect that... but honestly, even if we guess arbitrarily, and turn the "did you guess right" into an actual coinflip, we're still stronger overall. Flexibility is good. It is! Specialization (when it can be done without efficiency costs) is better.
Cognitive load aside, I'm not convinced that's really true on damage in this system. As I go into above, each additional point of damage on a specific attack type has diminishing returns on most foes. This is particularly true of melee given how high our melee damage is getting (5-7 per attack even with only +1 damage). If I were gonna walk around with +2 in something, it'd probably be ranged to make Kindle Spinner more viable without Odr, but honestly that has issues with people who are resistant or immune to fire, at least at the moment.
And if we do
really need that extra damage (like, there's a tough foe we specifically need huge numbers against), that's what Odr is for, but we'll generally need it a lot less often if the basic options are balanced, I think. Which means that specialization in this case does have an efficiency cost: Needing to burn more Odr over time. Like, with balanced damage bonuses, we'll almost never need to burn Odr on easy or middling fights...with a specialized one we'll need to do so sometimes on even middling fights where we picked the wrong one. We'll probably need to burn a bit either way on really tough fights, but the amount, in total, will likely not change. So less total Odr expenditure.
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Now, all of the above is entirely about 'walking around' load out. If we're going into a specific fight (or other situation) we should vary it significantly and often specializing for +2 damage in one category will indeed be correct (it
is an advantage if you're fighting the right kind of opponent), but for just walking around I think flexibility is better than specialization in an area that may not apply.
For anti-ambush I would get Enhanced Senses for the record. So it would be +1/+0
This would potentially make sense, but we've actually run into zero ambushes where we needed to roll to spot them (maybe one if you count the squire throwing a spear). Most of them are Norse style ambushes where they just find you alone and then attack. Which make Enhanced Senses a lot less necessary for this purpose and thus a lot less useful.
