Heretic Wand vs Doom Pistol

[dsm]

printz said:

The pistol, because I live in a world full of real ammo.

Would be hilarious if it turns out that none of it is compatible with the pistol, because it's a future weapon that perhaps uses a different ammo type than anything available today.
Like living in the 18th century and getting a Desert Eagle, but since you live in the time of musket balls and there are no bullet cartridges around in that time, it would be useless.

But that's down to individual interpretation of course.

...

I'd go with the pistol, because weak as it is, it sounds cooler than the wimpy "pew-pew" of the wand and I like handguns.

[Gez]

People who want pistols can get one from a gun store.

[scifista42]

The wand fires faster than the pistol and also has a powered-up mode, so I'd choose the wand.

[shotfan]

I would take anything over Doom's pistol. And Corvus' Wand is not really that bad of a weapon by itself.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

The mage's wand is op as shit of course the heretic wand and doom's pistol can't be compared to it!

Elven wand for me because that thing can stunlock at least unlike the stupid pistol.

[sesq]

I'd use the pistol, as it's based off of a real-world model (Berreta 92FS) and has ammunition and people who know how to use it (It was, and still is, the standard service pistol of the US miltary.) . The wand however, feels more pea-shootery in-game and who knows how it works. If you have to be magical to use it, I'm bum out of luck. But let's look at numbers here. The pistol does 5-15 damage, and in terms of frequency tends towards higher-end performance, as shown in this graph.



The Elven Wand, as I believe it is called, does 7-14 damage. For damage spread I have not found a chart, nor do I have the skills to figure it out myself, but I'd estimate it to be the same as the doom pistol, so I'm gonna math it.

With the chart, it looks like the pistol has a damage range of
36.33%: 15 dmg
34.33%: 10 dmg
29.33%: 5 dmg

Let's convert percentages into solid numbers. Since we have to go into thirds of percents, we'll divide everything up so that there are 300... parts, I guess. With that in mind, we have

109/300: 15 dmg
103/300: 10 dmg
88/300: 5 dmg

We'll also apply this to Corvus' wand, assuming the same range.

109/300: 14 dmg
103/300: 10.5 dmg (it's in the middle of 14 and 7)
88/300: 7 dmg

But we'll save this for later. I want to calculate the pistol's first. What we do is multiply the damage by the fraction, so we'll add 109*15 (which is 1635), 103*10 (1030), and 88*5 (440), and 1635 + 1030 + 440 totals to 3105, which will then be divided by 300 to get the average of: 10.35. Let's get corvus' now:

109*14 = 1526, 103*10.5 = 1081.5, 88*7 = 616, 1526 + 1081.5 + 616 = 3223.5, divided by 300 equals 10.745. So actually, on average, if corvus' wand goes by the pistol's damage output averages, does more damage. Also, if powered up, it does a spready shotgun thing which can be helpful.

Histograms (finally using correct vocabulary!) for Corvus' wand would be greatly appreciated if someone knows how to get it. Also ones for the powered up wand would be nice.

[Gez]

Doom's pistol deals 5x 1d3 damage. As in, roll a random number between 1 and 3 inclusive, and multiply it by 5. So you can get 5, 10, or 15 damage. In a perfect RNG, each result would have a similar likelihood of happening, which would make the average damage 10, but Doom's RNG isn't perfect so we have this uneven spread that favors 15 and 10 and disfavors 5.

Heretic's wand, on the other hand, deals 1d8 + 6 damage. So you can get 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 damage. The likelihood of each result depends on the RNG used, though. In a perfect RNG (equal likelihood for each number) you'd get an average roll of 4.5, meaning an average damage of 10.5. With a perfect RNG, the wand has a 0.5 damage advantage over the pistol.

Also the powered-up wand deals 7d8 damage in total. In a perfect RNG that's an average of 31.5 damage.


Now, since I've got a spreadsheet for this kind of stuff, let's take a look at the distribution of the results for 1d8 (computed as random number between 0 and 255, & 7, +1) with the Doom RNG table, which I don't believe was modified for Heretic. (In fact I believe I actually took its values from Strife.)

1 32
2 30
3 38
4 27
5 34
6 34
7 30
8 31

The most likely results are 3, followed by a tie between 5 and 6. Then 1 gets a normal probability (in a perfect RNG, every result would have a 32/256 chance of happening), and every other result has a less than normal probability. So apparently the average result is just below the statistical average for a perfect RNG, at 4.4765625. That means that the wand's average damage is 10.4765625; and when powered up, 31.3359375.

[sesq]

Gez said:

Doom's pistol deals 5x 1d3 damage. As in, roll a random number between 1 and 3 inclusive, and multiply it by 5. So you can get 5, 10, or 15 damage. In a perfect RNG, each result would have a similar likelihood of happening, which would make the average damage 10, but Doom's RNG isn't perfect so we have this uneven spread that favors 15 and 10 and disfavors 5.

Heretic's wand, on the other hand, deals 1d8 + 6 damage. So you can get 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 damage. The likelihood of each result depends on the RNG used, though. In a perfect RNG (equal likelihood for each number) you'd get an average roll of 4.5, meaning an average damage of 10.5. With a perfect RNG, the wand has a 0.5 damage advantage over the pistol.

Also the powered-up wand deals 7d8 damage in total. In a perfect RNG that's an average of 31.5 damage.


Now, since I've got a spreadsheet for this kind of stuff, let's take a look at the distribution of the results for 1d8 (computed as random number between 0 and 255, & 7, +1) with the Doom RNG table, which I don't believe was modified for Heretic. (In fact I believe I actually took its values from Strife.)

1 32
2 30
3 38
4 27
5 34
6 34
7 30
8 31

The most likely results are 3, followed by a tie between 5 and 6. Then 1 gets a normal probability (in a perfect RNG, every result would have a 32/256 chance of happening), and every other result has a less than normal probability. So apparently the average result is just below the statistical average for a perfect RNG, at 4.4765625. That means that the wand's average damage is 10.4765625; and when powered up, 31.3359375.

I approve of this math. I'm wondering now how the imperfect RNG was extracted though...

[nxGangrel]

The Elven Wand. So many people have given the reason already...
But scifista explained the basic reason.

[Gez]

Well.

The RNG is a table of 256 values between 0 and 255. Not all values are represented, and some are represented several times. Apparently they changed it for Hexen; but Doom, Heretic, and Strife all use the same.

• Doom
  
• Heretic
  
• Hexen
  
• Strife
  

So what I did was put that list in an advanced text editor, remove the whitespace automatically, replace all commas with a new line, and paste the resulting column of numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. That gave me a the Doom/Heretic/Strife RNG table as the A column.

Then I used a bitwise AND formula I got, I believe, from here to get a second column full of rolled results.

Then it's just a question of using COUNTIF feature on that second column to get the number of time each result appears.

[Doomkid]

nxGangrel said:

The Elven Wand. So many people have given the reason already...
But scifista explained the basic reason.

Are you guys all assuming you don't have to know anything about magic/spellcasting to use this thing? Due to it's ability to deal a better DPS it's objectively more powerful but I'm just not convinced any ol' shmuck could pick this thing up and get anything out of it!

[Gez]

Worst case, it's still a pretty bauble.

[nxGangrel]

Doomkid said:

Are you guys all assuming you don't have to know anything about magic/spellcasting to use this thing? Due to it's ability to deal a better DPS it's objectively more powerful but I'm just not convinced any ol' shmuck could pick this thing up and get anything out of it!

Are you suggesting I don't know anything about magic?
Considering the LaVeyan Satanism, the copious amounts of the "evil" rpg-ing, and all my Pagan acquaintances, I think I would know a thing or two about magic.
Saying otherwise, sir, is a personal offense.

[Michael92]

Doomkid said:

Are you guys all assuming you don't have to know anything about magic/spellcasting to use this thing? Due to it's ability to deal a better DPS it's objectively more powerful but I'm just not convinced any ol' shmuck could pick this thing up and get anything out of it!

But there's nothing complicated about it! Just use

[Cruduxy Pegg]

What if I don't know how to use either anyway? Gimme a berserk pack!

[Doomkid]

Apologies for my rude comments, I wasn't aware so many among us were magicians

[Doominator2]

Pegg said:

What if I don't know how to use either anyway? Gimme a berserk pack!

Unless your Doomguy, you'll surly die trying to use a berserk pack :P

[MTF Sergeant]

Elven Wand + BERSERK.

What's gonna be the result?

[CARRiON]

Gez said:

The wand. Magic may startle my foe

This actually made me laugh from the mental imagery. I'll cast my vote to the wand now.