Demon Blade or Demon Whip?

In Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, I've begun to prefer demonspawn to all other races because of their wonderful propensity for beneficial mutations.

There's another, hidden benefit to demonspawn, as well. Hell-forged weapons are among the best that can be found in the dungeon, and a demonspawn gains racial bonuses for using a demon blade, whip, or trident. The question arises--which is better? The demon blade, demon whip, or demon trident? This is no trivial matter, because a demonspawn must choose which weapon class to study. A demonspawn that has achieved level fifteen in long swords is loathe to switch to Maces & Flails just because he discovers a demon whip.

Demon whips are, however, the most common class of hell-forged weapon, and I suggest that all demonspawn specialize in Maces & Flails for this reason alone. Balrugs almost always wield demon whips, for one thing. The second most common infernal weapon is the demon trident, and rarest is the demon blade.

I give demon tridents short shrift, because they receive a slight penalty (three points?) for one-handed use, and I prefer to equip all my demonspawn with shields. I only considered the one-handed weapons. The question then becomes, which is better--demon blade or demon whip?

The demon whip is faster:



But the demon blade causes more damage:



If speed is represented by 150 for the demon blade, then the demon whip is 20/150 faster, or 2/15. Fifteen goes into one hundred 6.6 times. Multiply 6.6 by 2, and the speed difference equals 13.2% in favor of the whip.

If damage is represented by 13/13 for the demon blade, then the demon whip causes only 10/13 damage, or 3/13 less damage. Thirteen goes into one hundred about 7.7 times. Multiply 7.7 by 3, and the damage difference equals 23.1% in favor of the blade.

Although the demon blade causes more damage, it is slower, but whether 13.2% is a factor worthy of note depends upon what I term your weapon philosophy. In my opinion, speed wins the day. This could be proven one way or the other by writing a computer program to simulate successive attacks with each weapon, but that's a bit further than I am prepared to go at this time. Instead, I rely upon intuition formed by experience.

I haven't even brought up the fact that demon whips enjoy a one-point bonus in accuracy, whereas demon blades incur a one-point penalty. Also, demon whips are as light as a feather, an important point for players lugging tons of junk. Finally, demon whips are plentiful, whereas the other weapons are difficult to find. The choice is clear for a demonspawn. The corollary to this general rule is that a demonspawn thus equipped had better carry a knife for slaughtering monsters.

Speaking of beneficial mutations, take a look at my character's list:



The mutations in bold red are permanent and arise as a demonspawn advances in levels. The mutations in gray text resulted from my character quaffing potions of mutation. Of course, sometimes harmful mutations arose, but I drank a potion of cure mutation to cure those. In general, mutations are helpful in the extreme, and every character should attempt to mutate, especially if a potion of cure mutation is available in case of an experiment that backfires.