Resist system

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, MY warriors have a problem with basic four, maybe I need to start carrying !rFire and !rCold. Also part of my problem is I don't know if I can handle a monster until after I have engaged it and I think a lot of players are this way.

Live and learn. That's what makes angband tough. You should not be able to win until many tries. If game gets too easy it loses its replayability. You lose the sensation of achievement.

Basic rules apply to basic four, you look at monster and figure the max damage it can make. If you don't know it assume it can kill you. Be faster than it is. Have high HP.

3.2 is way too easy. 3.3 is not much better, but it is a step to right direction.

[Timo Pietilä]

I'd be careful, there are many more nether-based attacks than there are nexus, chaos, or disenchantment. Even sound, which is probably the second most common of the higher elements, is rare compared to nether. Nether comes in bolt, ball, or breath form. ANd then there are all the monsters that hit to drain XP. If you made XP-drain count something, then there are a lot of monsters that you avoid.

Hit to drain XP is not affected by nether resist. Hold Life is the only thing that affects that.

Nether bolt and ball are pretty weak except in very early when your char is still weakling. Breath is way more dangerous, but there are very few that breathe nether: Dracolich, Nightwalker or -crawler, can't remember which, Azriel and Carcharoth. I think that's the whole set.

IMO the nether high resist should give decent (or at least consistent) damage reduction, but shouldn't stop XP-drain. Hold-life is for that. I'm not so much attached to the unwritten rule that all high-level resists must work the same.

I disagree with that "consistent" statement. You need to keep it dangerous and variable. I prefer making basic four variable as well to make those things consistent with high resists so that newbies do not get confused.

If you make it constant damage reduction it needs to be very close to what is max damage now from resisted nether. That's the point. Otherwise you turn those scary things that are worth avoiding weaklings.

All high elements negate all their side-effects from that particular source. Chaos prevents confusion from Chaos, but not from Umber Hulk melee. Nexus teleportation from nexus, but not from spell etc. That's consistent (except for disenchantment that does protect your stuff from element and from disenchanting hits, but OTOH, I don't think that is something we should change).

[Jungle_Boy]

IMO 1 and 3 are not something that needs to be done, 2 is.

Warriors have no problem with basic four. Acid and Poison have too low damage cap to be any danger, fire and cold you can get double-resist and heavy elec-breathers are very rare. IMO max damage should be higher rather than lower. 600 would be good number. If you can't handle monster with that high damage, don't fight it. Also immunities are pretty easy to get in current vanilla.

Well, MY warriors have a problem with basic four, maybe I need to start carrying !rFire and !rCold. Also part of my problem is I don't know if I can handle a monster until after I have engaged it and I think a lot of players are this way.

[fizzix]

High resists are already valuable, nexus you need to prevent stat-scrambling, chaos to prevent hallucination, sound to prevent stunning, disenchantment to prevent disenchantment, light & dark to prevent blindness. Only high resist that does not have bad side-effect is nether. Make the XP-drain count something and you have that fixed too.

I'd be careful, there are many more nether-based attacks than there are nexus, chaos, or disenchantment. Even sound, which is probably the second most common of the higher elements, is rare compared to nether. Nether comes in bolt, ball, or breath form. ANd then there are all the monsters that hit to drain XP. If you made XP-drain count something, then there are a lot of monsters that you avoid.

IMO the nether high resist should give decent (or at least consistent) damage reduction, but shouldn't stop XP-drain. Hold-life is for that. I'm not so much attached to the unwritten rule that all high-level resists must work the same.

[fizzix]

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?

IMO this is a problem with knowing the game and the monsters too well. I have the same issue, I rarely ever need to bail on a fight. When I do it's because of a brutal summon. This, however, does not invalidate Derakon's point of combat stamina mattering. It just doesn't matter to us.

It's really hard to try to put yourself back into the 'playing for the first time' mindset. But it's a very useful exercise.

[Timo Pietilä]

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

IMO 1 and 3 are not something that needs to be done, 2 is.

Warriors have no problem with basic four. Acid and Poison have too low damage cap to be any danger, fire and cold you can get double-resist and heavy elec-breathers are very rare. IMO max damage should be higher rather than lower. 600 would be good number. If you can't handle monster with that high damage, don't fight it. Also immunities are pretty easy to get in current vanilla.

Double-resist makes every basic element practically harmless.

High resists are already valuable, nexus you need to prevent stat-scrambling, chaos to prevent hallucination, sound to prevent stunning, disenchantment to prevent disenchantment, light & dark to prevent blindness. Only high resist that does not have bad side-effect is nether. Make the XP-drain count something and you have that fixed too.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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]

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]

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.

[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.

[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.