New pit types

[Max Stats]

However if we decide that banishing entire pits is undesirable, it could be remedied by making the HP damage per monster banished rise with each monster after a the first few. If it doubled every time a threshold of, say, ten monsters was crossed, then banishing an entire angel pit could be lethal, or at least devastating; similarly with using Mass Banishment against large vaults.

Personally, I agree with Derakon in that I don't see any particular need to alter the mechanics of Banishment; however, if others do, this is yet another suggestion for how it could be accomplished.

[fizzix]

However if we decide that banishing entire pits is undesirable, it could be remedied by making the HP damage per monster banished rise with each monster after a the first few. If it doubled every time a threshold of, say, ten monsters was crossed, then banishing an entire angel pit could be lethal, or at least devastating; similarly with using Mass Banishment against large vaults.

This suggestion comes up before, and I don't really like it. I agree with Derakon that the limit on banishment should be availability and not other mitigating factors. If people decide that the reworked summoning currently in 3.4 is an improvement, and it remains in, I think we can certainly get away with removing _banishment and leaving the scrolls. In 3.3, it's too difficult to take on Ancalagon withough _banish unless you use an ASC.

I would even propose that we disallow groups in vaults, we enforce minimum levels in vaults, and we lower maximum group size to something like 15-16.

[Philip]

I continue to maintain that banishment abuse is not a problem -- or if it is a problem, the solution is to remove staffs of banishment or make them next-to-impossible to recharge. If deep mages want to troll for pit loot, then fine; they've had a hard enough problem getting that far. Everyone else, if they want to burn a difficult-to-acquire banishment charge, then that's their decision.

Is anyone actually currently running around using banishment for the purpose of easily acquiring loot? I mean, sure, if there's a pit I don't want to deal with as a high-level mage, then I'll banish the monsters in it; it's preferable to having to dodge around them. And if there's loot on the floor that's unguarded after said banishment, then I'll head on over and pick it up. But it's not like I set out to do this as a routine thing -- nor that I'll be getting a noticeable amount of useful stuff from doing this, either.

I would prefer the situation to be that a mage who wants to avoid a pit just destructs, moves five spaces, destructs, moves five spaces, destructs and there is no loot on the floor, but no pit either.

A mage who wants the loot from a pit will have to get the monsters out, then destruct, or just lure them across the map and jump into the pit.

I would prefer if banishment didn't affect anything from a bit. Destruction still would.

Now, should vaults be dealt with? A few mass banishment mean that you have a few uniques who are either going to be tele-awayed or killed and a lot of loot. Both of these problems are specific to the mage though, so I understand if you don't view it as serious.

[Derakon]

I would prefer the situation to be that a mage who wants to avoid a pit just destructs, moves five spaces, destructs, moves five spaces, destructs and there is no loot on the floor, but no pit either.

But why is this preferable? Just because otherwise they're getting loot off of the floor that they didn't earn? Lemme tell you, they earned that loot by making it to a high enough level to get Kelek's and learn the spell.

Now, should vaults be dealt with? A few mass banishment mean that you have a few uniques who are either going to be tele-awayed or killed and a lot of loot. Both of these problems are specific to the mage though, so I understand if you don't view it as serious.

As I said, the reward for surviving as a young mage (one of the hardest classes) is getting these spells which make dungeon exploration so much less painful. I really don't think it's a huge balance problem to let the mage take it easy for the last few dungeon levels before he takes on Morgoth. Remember, in most cases Kelek's doesn't show up until very shortly before the final fight anyway; there's a miniscule window for abuse unless the player feels like scumming dlvl 98 for awhile.

[Timo Pietilä]

This suggestion comes up before, and I don't really like it. I agree with Derakon that the limit on banishment should be availability and not other mitigating factors.

Availability brought my mind an idea that I think could be worth thinking for spellcasters: percentile manacosts for certain spells. Banishments would always use near max mana, something like manabolts or similar that grow on strength with the caster use non-fixed portion of the mana etc. Their effectiveness would be determinated by the mana available, and not the level of the caster.

[d_m]

Availability brought my mind an idea that I think could be worth thinking for spellcasters: percentile manacosts for certain spells. Banishments would always use near max mana, something like manabolts or similar that grow on strength with the caster use non-fixed portion of the mana etc. Their effectiveness would be determinated by the mana available, and not the level of the caster.

I really like this idea!

[PowerWyrm]

Pits #18 (spellcasters), #19 (archers) and #29 (wizards) lack variety. There should be more monster races to choose from.