Don't close the door on Uglúk, the uruk!

[artes]

A well-known trick to heal up during a fight with a monster capable of opening doors, e.g. an orc, is the following: Flee trough a door and close it. When the orc opens it, close it again in his face, and repeat this procedure until fully healed.

This is probably an unwanted exploit. In reality most monsters would be stronger than the player, and able to hold the door open. The exploit also makes iron spikes and locking doors with lock-picking unnecessary.

My suggestion is that the player should not be able to close a door if there is a monster adjacent to the door. I think I saw this in a variant, but I don't remember which one.

[Derakon]

It's been awhile since I used this tactic, but I seem to recall that the monster would eventually bash the door down, breaking it. Is that not the case?

[artes]

In the code it seems like it will not bash the door if it can open it. I just tested it with a Forest troll, and it did not try to bash the door even if I repeated the procedure for a long time. When I instead jammed the door with a spike, the troll bashed it immediately.

A monster that has a speed of more than 1 can move on top of the door after opening it when the monster gets a double move.

Anyway, I see the using the trick as an unwanted exploit, and I think it would be not so difficult to write a patch to disallow it.

[fizzix]

I've used this trick with Sauron. The (simplest) solution is to have a monster attempt to bash a door instead of opening it 1 in every 5 attempts.

[Timo Pietilä]

I've used this trick with Sauron. The (simplest) solution is to have a monster attempt to bash a door instead of opening it 1 in every 5 attempts.

How about making a counter for tries, and if it (successfully) opens a door in five turns a row then it bashes it instead. Any monster that can open a door should do it.

I would see monsters able to bash doors get at least slowed down by jammed door. One reason why nobody uses that is that it is completely ineffective against door-bashing monsters.

[bio_hazard]

If you wanted to change door behavior instead of monster behavior, you could give doors a chance to break every time they are opened or closed.

"You close the door. The door falls off its hinges!"

I don't see it as that abusive though, at least no more than endless pillar dancing. But I suppose any improvement to AI is welcome.

[fizzix]

How about making a counter for tries, and if it (successfully) opens a door in five turns a row then it bashes it instead. Any monster that can open a door should do it.

I would see monsters able to bash doors get at least slowed down by jammed door. One reason why nobody uses that is that it is completely ineffective against door-bashing monsters.

Yes that's better. But it's a bit more difficult. Yet another thing for the game to keep track of...

bio_hazard's solution is also ok.

I thought there were recent changes to door-jamming making it more effective. I still don't wind up using it because I dive through those levels...

[buzzkill]

I see two possible, easy solutions here, not that ones already mentioned wouldn't work.

1. Halt natural regeneration upon aggressive or non-restful actions. Active combat is the obvious one, but you could add opening and closing doors to the list assuming manipulating a heavy wooden dungeon-style door requires more effort than a gentle push.

Well, just one. As it turns out my other ideas were cumbersome and ineffective.

[Derakon]

I kinda feel like this doesn't need fixing. It's an exploit, yes, but it's not a huge exploit, and the punishment to the user for doing it (in terms of tedium) is enough to make it so that you'll usually want to just be better prepared rather than resort to it.

That said I wouldn't mind having monsters that can bash doors randomly decide to bash instead of open if they have both options available to them. And possibly making OPEN_DOOR imply BASH_DOOR.

[artes]

I would see monsters able to bash doors get at least slowed down by jammed door. One reason why nobody uses that is that it is completely ineffective against door-bashing monsters.

They are slowed (in the newest versions). For every spike that has been put into the door, it takes one extra successful bash to bring down the door. For the weakest monsters it can take a long time. I just tested it.

[Djabanete]

Easy fix, just randomize monster energy within a very narrow window. This circumvents other silly abuses like hack-n-back and pillardancing, as well as the door trick; and in general it keeps the player on his toes. It makes the game a little harder because your margin of error becomes greater, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Hengband uses this method quite successfully. When I suicide dive in Heng, I use the door trick whenever possible; but it's not abusive, because in only a few turns the monster double-moves me, opening the door and stepping through before I can react.

[Derakon]

I hate randomized monster energy, precisely because it means that monsters can randomly double-move you. Usually this doesn't matter, but in specific instances it can be huge. What's worse, the compensatory double moves the player gets aren't as big of a deal, because the player is always closer to death than the monsters he's fighting are.

While I don't mind the occasional "What the heck was that?" instadeath, I don't like the idea that in every single fight, I'm at the mercy of the RNG if the monster decides to get a double move and use that to use his strongest attack twice. You have to be at max health all the time if you want to be certain that a given monster won't just up and kill you.

Randomized energy is the #1 reason why I don't play Hengband. I'm sure it does a lot of nifty things but I just can't get past that.

[smileyy]

Theoretically speaking, a higher energy cost "open-and-move" action by a mob could also address the issue.

[Shockbolt]

Not sure how it's handled today, and I could be totally wrong, but I would think both strength and intelligence would be the way to go for this matter:

Based on the following facts:

-NPC is hostile/aggressive towards player and wants to kill him
-Player is using a door to prevent NPC from reaching him.

NPC Intelligence: the NPC would need to know that it's a door, and the fact that the door hinders the NPC in reaching the player on the other side. The higher the intelligence stat for the NPC, the faster it will try to bash down the door if it's either shut with spikes or simply closed.

NPC Strength: the stronger the NPC, the easier it is for it to bash down the door.

[Djabanete]

Without tinkering with the speed system, it makes sense for a monster that can bash doors to do so if the player is immediately on the other side. This is the behavior that raises the most tactical problems for the player, by opening up lines of sight; and even in a one-on-one fight perspective, it makes sense for the monster to do this because it places the monster in the door tile after the door has been bashed, so it closes the distance faster than merely opening.

If it seems like bad flavor for a monster to always bash a door instead of opening, think of it this way: the player is right on the other side, presumably bracing the door shut, and the only way for the monster to get through is to body slam the door. It actually makes a kind of sense.

It's a behavior that circumvents the door abuse, but also is "smart" for the monster even if door abuse is not part of the situation.