learning not to underestimate monster breath

[will_asher]

Not underestimating monster breath is one thing I learned in my best game ever which just ended. I was thinking logically: fire does damage, so does acid, cold, lightning, etc. But confusion? it just confuses, right? Things like confusion, light and dark wouldn't do much damage. I shouldn't expect the game to be that logical..

After some research in the monster blow spoiler, I found I was quite wrong.
I didn't have confusion resistance, but according to my calculations and what it says in the monster blow spoiler, confusion breath can do a maximum of 286 damage EVEN WITH RESISTANCE. Which seems rediculous, but looking at this spoiler gives me a new fear for high HP monsters which breathe stuff.

I made a couple tables: The first one is a shortened form of the breathing part of the monster spoiler. The second table is max damage with resistance. Another table is common breathers and their breath damage at full HPS.
So here's my monster breath spoiler (made mainly for myself, but others will likely find it useful):

http://www.geocities.com/will_asher/MonsterDictionary/mbreath.txt

Do you think I should upload this to the spoiler site?

[Nick]

Do you think I should upload this to the spoiler site?

It seems useful. A couple of points - you have drolems doing more poison damage than the cap; and I had the impression that RFire/RElec helped with resisting plasma, but that may be a variant thing.

[will_asher]

oops ..fixed the drolem thing.
The monster blow spoiler doesn't say anything about Rfire and Relec helping with plasma.

Also, it seems strange that the powerful flag doesn't change anything except the radius of the breath, but that's the only thing the monster blow spoiler says about the powerful flag- is the spoiler missing something there?

(When I'm creating monsters for my modified monster.txt, I'd be nice to be able to make low-hp monsters with higher damage breath than their hps would indicate, and I thought the powerful flag would do that.)

[zaimoni]

.... I had the impression that RFire/RElec helped with resisting plasma, but that may be a variant thing.

Per spells1.c, in V3.0.9, nothing reduces plasma damage for the player; sound resistance will prevent stunning from plasma. Monsters that breathe plasma.

[Paffa]

But Plasma's not a big threat anyway, not many high-hp enemies brearth it in the first place.

[Djabanete]

Aside from Greater Balrogs, there's nothing too scary that uses plasma attacks. (I'm guessing that Sauron and Morgoth can, but if they shoot plasma bolts at you, that means they're not doing worse things.)

So yeah, even if you could resist plasma, it wouldn't be a terribly important resist.