Resist system

[Timo Pietilä]

You complain that I want to change the game too much but you suggest doubling the effectiveness of basic resists. You complain about high resists not being effective but complain when someone suggests chaging them.

With the change you suggest the average max damage fireball would be 233!!

Average damage is not the same as max damage. Maximum damage is still high, same as it was previously in fact, and that is what really counts. When you have less HP than max damage you might receive you either bail out or heal.

I didn't complain that high resist are ineffective, I complained that someone wanted to change them to be fixed and effective. Big difference.

[Jungle_Boy]

Average damage is not the same as max damage. Maximum damage is still high, same as it was previously in fact, and that is what really counts. When you have less HP than max damage you might receive you either bail out or heal.

I know this but what about the situation where you have 900 hp, currently you can take one fireball, then you have to bail or heal. In your system that one fireball is over 70% likely to only hit for 320 points or less meaning you will not have to heal or bail after the first fireball. You may not even need to heal after the second fireball. The max damage is still possible so yes, you need to maintain at least 533 hp but the ability of monsters to get you down to that point is drastically lowered in your system.

[Antoine]

You complain that I want to change the game too much but you suggest doubling the effectiveness of basic resists. You complain about high resists not being effective but complain when someone suggests chaging them.

Ha yes even Timo can't resist tinkering

Bring on Timoband

A.

[buzzkill]

I like this idea, but it may be difficult to implement without big monster changes. For example, Ancalagon currently breathes the cap until he's down below half hitpoints. A formula without a cap would AFAICS mean either making him considerably more dangerous at the start, or start losing power immediately. But maybe the latter is OK, come to think of it.

Yeah, I hadn't put much thought into it, but despite that, came to the same conclusion. Initially, breathers would have to be more powerful in order to maintain balance (not make them weaker).

If I knew more about HP numbers and Native Depth numbers I throw together a spreadsheet and plug in some numbers, but I don't (and I've got full faith is your ability to do a better job than I).

[Timo Pietilä]

I know this but what about the situation where you have 900 hp, currently you can take one fireball, then you have to bail or heal. In your system that one fireball is over 70% likely to only hit for 320 points or less meaning you will not have to heal or bail after the first fireball. You may not even need to heal after the second fireball. The max damage is still possible so yes, you need to maintain at least 533 hp but the ability of monsters to get you down to that point is drastically lowered in your system.

There are only few monsters that are anywhere near dangerous with basic four elements once you have resist, so this doesn't actually change that much.

I made double-resist weaker. With double resist max you can get currently is 177 points of damage, everyone except warriors get the double-resist against fire and cold, and all arcane magic users get it for everything. That is what really changes there.

With my system there is a flat change of 2/6 that you get more than that (266 and 228) and 1/6 that is is just slightly less (160). So what really changes is warriors, which now have better survival against things with single resist and things that breathe lightning at full strength (Ancalagon only?) or near full strength (GStormW, GWoMC) for priests and paladins because acid gets halved by armor and poison has smaller cap anyway, so once you have the resist for those two they become irrelevant.

Basic 4 is more like a aggravation for most cases. If you haven't got it you are toast. If you have it (the element) it became irrelevant for adventuring.

If you want to make that a bit less powerful change we can change the way monster breaths are calculated, maybe divide HP by two instead of three to get max breath power.

Then maybe basic four as a resist becomes relevant before you meet AMHD, that is the first monster that is truly dangerous with all basic element breaths, and it still isn't getting max even for poison. With current way of handling basic 4 & poison are the problematic elements, not the high elements.

Problem as I see it is that basic four are pretty much like free action, a binary system. If you have them the thing it affects becomes irrelevant, if you don't that thing kills you. High elements stay interesting with resists and are survivable without, so there is no problem.

[Timo Pietilä]

Ha yes even Timo can't resist tinkering

Bring on Timoband

I'm not really doing tinkering, but if I would be doing something to resist, I would be doing it like that. Current way of things works, there is no real reason to change it, and it affects too many things to be actually changed anyway unless you do it in a variant that can throw everything away and do them from scratch. That is just not acceptable for vanilla angband.

I could do a "timoband" if I had some time. Problem with that is that I tend to get too ambitious with my plans and get stuck in some problem I can't solve without serious tinkering with the code, and then I don't have time to actually do anything.

[Jungle_Boy]

Probably the easiest way to do this would be to have a page that shows the player's current damage reductions from all sources, e.g.

You take only 11% normal damage from fire attacks (max 177).
You take only 33% normal damage from cold, lightning, and acid attacks (max  533).
You take only 50% normal damage from light and darkness attacks (max 200).
...
Due to armor class, you take only 72% normal damage from standard melee attacks.

Obviously this is trickier with variable resists, but the overall idea would be that a new player would find their second source of permanent resistance, equip it, look at this screen, and realize that nothing had changed.

More generally, this would be ideal information to display on another 'C' screen stats page.

I like this idea, especially the part about armor class since I am never sure how much it actually helps to have high armor.

[Jungle_Boy]

There are only few monsters that are anywhere near dangerous with basic four elements once you have resist, so this doesn't actually change that much.

Maybe I'm just unlucky in who I meet/fight but there seem to be plenty of them to me.

I made double-resist weaker. With double resist max you can get currently is 177 points of damage, everyone except warriors get the double-resist against fire and cold, and all arcane magic users get it for everything. That is what really changes there.

With my system there is a flat change of 2/6 that you get more than that (266 and 228) and 1/6 that is is just slightly less (160). So what really changes is warriors, which now have better survival against things with single resist and things that breathe lightning at full strength (Ancalagon only?) or near full strength (GStormW, GWoMC) for priests and paladins because acid gets halved by armor and poison has smaller cap anyway, so once you have the resist for those two they become irrelevant.

5/7 chance of taking less damage then now is weaker?? I do agree that double resist is too strong though and I like the idea of making double resist actually double. I don't think there should be any situation though where having a double resist could be worse than having a single resist.

Basic 4 is more like a aggravation for most cases. If you haven't got it you are toast. If you have it (the element) it became irrelevant for adventuring.

I disagree with this, 500+ hp is definitely not irrelevant.

I also think you made the variance too big. Something like
dam/(1d3+2) for single and dam/(2*(1d3+2)) for double might be better though I still like the idea of adjusting the caps and a flat 50% resist across everything because it is so much simpler and easier to understand. If I could compile I'd make a personal version to try it out.

[Timo Pietilä]

I still like the idea of adjusting the caps and a flat 50% resist across everything because it is so much simpler and easier to understand. If I could compile I'd make a personal version to try it out.

If you do that make it so that every resist is very close to max what you can get with resists currently, otherwise you make every monster seriously weaker. Averages do not count, you choose your actions based on max damage you can get, even that average is much less (with flat distribution). Averages only affect few turns of combat, maybe amount of healing you use, but not the main things, avoidance and bailout-treshold.

[Derakon]

Averages affect your combat stamina, and absolutely do count. They don't affect your "flee this round or stick it out for one more" decisions, but that's far from the only thing you do in combat. Being able to last five rounds in melee against a burner instead of four, or being able to continue fighting for a bit when you get breathed on instead of being immediately put into the "next breath might kill me" zone, makes a big difference.

[Timo Pietilä]

Averages affect your combat stamina, and absolutely do count. They don't affect your "flee this round or stick it out for one more" decisions, but that's far from the only thing you do in combat. Being able to last five rounds in melee against a burner instead of four, or being able to continue fighting for a bit when you get breathed on instead of being immediately put into the "next breath might kill me" zone, makes a big difference.

To me combat itself is pretty pointless exercise, quite boring in most cases, what counts to me is do I choose to fight at all. Max damages affect that way more than averages. Even that nether resist does on average reduce damage quite a bit, I still think that it is mostly pointless resist to have because max damage without it and with it are so close to each other. Resist effect on choosing to fight is tiny.

Tell me which one would be more dangerous to you:
Monster that breathes fixed 373 points of damage or monster that breathes 471-275 points of damage?

[Derakon]

Tell me which one would be more dangerous to you:
Monster that breathes fixed 373 points of damage or monster that breathes 471-275 points of damage?

Obviously the latter has a more accessible "must run now" threshold. But you've been acting like the only number that's relevant at all is that 471 number, and I'm saying that's simply not the case. Say you have 800HP. The monster breathes nether (550 damage) on you. Without resists you're now down to 250HP and absolutely have to run. With resists, you're down to anywhere from 330HP (still have to run) to 525 (can stay in the fight). The resist thus has a chance of making a measurable difference in the fight. Given the risks inherent in the various non-Destruction escape methods (and the penalties associated with using Destruction), this is useful.

[Jungle_Boy]

Tell me which one would be more dangerous to you:
Monster that breathes fixed 373 points of damage or monster that breathes 471-275 points of damage?

It depends how long the fight is going to last. The longer a fight is going to last the more important average damage becomes.

[Timo Pietilä]

It depends how long the fight is going to last. The longer a fight is going to last the more important average damage becomes.

With average damage infinite rounds. With average damage being ~300 you only need heal whenever breath weapon is being used. Other system used two to infinite. With 471 used once, you don't gain enough with single healing to counter it. Second similar blow at next turn and you need to choose do you risk third turn or bail out now. Third same and you are toast.

[Jungle_Boy]

With average damage infinite rounds. With average damage being ~300 you only need heal whenever breath weapon is being used. Other system used two to infinite. With 471 used once, you don't gain enough with single healing to counter it. Second similar blow at next turn and you need to choose do you risk third turn or bail out now. Third same and you are toast.

but no fight lasts infinite rounds, I'm going to kill the monster sooner or later. If average damage is 300 and I have 1000 hp I do not need to heal until the third breath whereas with with the 471 breath I would need to heal after the second. If I have less hp, like 500 then it doesn't matter what model we use, if I have less than 500 then I hope it's the average breath one or I could be instakilled.

To try to get this topic a little bit back on track I will list what I think needs to be "fixed" in the current system.

1. warriors need easier access to double resist or max damage from single resist basic four should be less, or we could give warriors more hp but that creates more problems than it solves I'm sure.
2. double resist should be made less powerful
3. high resists sould be made more valuable

As a bonus if we could find a simpler easier to understand system for rookie players that would be nice.