Sil 1.1

[Psi]

It works just like it would against the player, except better -- they take all of the damage instantly rather than over time. Letting monsters have their own internal poison clocks is a change we'd like in the future, but isn't likely to happen soon.

Does that mean that poison arrows with flaming arrows gives 2 extra dice? Similarly if I dual-branded a weapon would I get two extra dice?

[Scatha]

Hmm, so poison doesn't stack like it would against the player : (

It works just like it would against the player, except better -- they take all of the damage instantly rather than over time. Letting monsters have their own internal poison clocks is a change we'd like in the future, but isn't likely to happen soon.

[Fendell Orcbane]

I think you just get another die of damage. (Same idea as using flaming arrows.)

Hmm, so poison doesn't stack like it would against the player : (

[debo]

If you want to make Sauron harder to kill why not give him a powerful fear effect after you knock his crown off? Yeah a high will character will be able to attack him...but he would be harder to kill...

Also how do poison arrows affect enemies?

I think you just get another die of damage. (Same idea as using flaming arrows.)

[HugoVirtuoso]

Also how do poison arrows affect enemies?

They work against Giants, thought I'm not clear why.

[Fendell Orcbane]

If you want to make Sauron harder to kill why not give him a powerful fear effect after you knock his crown off? Yeah a high will character will be able to attack him...but he would be harder to kill...

Also how do poison arrows affect enemies?

[Derakon]

I suspect the way you'd want to balance that is to make the costs of smithing enough that most players will want to self-limit themselves to no more than what's naturally available at most -- the ability to get extra uses would then only be valuable in extreme situations.

[Scatha]

I'm no smith player, but I've often thought that maybe you could add some sort of ability on the smithing tree which would equivocate to, wrest-an-extra-use.

Interesting. Something like this would certainly be a natural ability. An alternative would be to reduce it to two uses needed for an artefact. I think we didn't consider this when planning the Smithing abilities because at that point charges on forges weren't limited!

I'd need to think more to work out whether the gameplay impacts of such an ability would be good.

[debo]

I'm no smith player, but I've often thought that maybe you could add some sort of ability on the smithing tree which would equivocate to, wrest-an-extra-use.
Economical engineering? Or, perhaps tack that on to artistry, since artistry sort of dead-ends on the smithing tree... I can't imagine a long-term smith would take artistry since it doesn't lead to artifice or masterpiece or even grace, but perhaps it would become attractive, but costly, to take? Random ideas flung into the ether.

5-use forges? Hells yaaaa

[HallucinationMushroom]

I'm no smith player, but I've often thought that maybe you could add some sort of ability on the smithing tree which would equivocate to, wrest-an-extra-use.
Economical engineering? Or, perhaps tack that on to artistry, since artistry sort of dead-ends on the smithing tree... I can't imagine a long-term smith would take artistry since it doesn't lead to artifice or masterpiece or even grace, but perhaps it would become attractive, but costly, to take? Random ideas flung into the ether.

[Psi]

Just be careful not to complicate Sil too much. Part of its beauty is how simple, transparent and balanced it is. Sure, there are a few things that could be ironed out, but that does not require big changes.

The one thing in Sil that is currently 'forced' is the throne room and you spend the entire rest of the game making sure you have healing, buffs, a way to knock off the crown and a way to steal a Silmaril or three ready for that one experience. Personally I wouldn't want to see it become even more of a special case.

Sure, some people may fell the big guy, but that is why you have turncount as a major factor in the score. It is a big challenge to kill him, grab all three silmarils and get out quickly. By all means make him a bit tougher, but don't balance the game against those who's eternal mission it is to rid the world of Morgoth. What you don't see are the countless dead characters who didn't make it - just the glorious few who stumbled across just what they needed.

As a complete aside, is there any chance of getting a certain amount of forges guaranteed to be 3 charges? Now that forges are rare in the depths, it is heart-breaking for an artificer to only find 2 charge forges... thanks

[sethos]

I wouldn't worry too much about previous ladder entries getting pushed down.

If sil continues to get harder / better balanced, then why shouldn't the scores in new games be higher?

Personally, I think that someone who gets three silmarils, takes out all the deep uniques, wounds/ maims / kills Morgoth, and manages a really nice turn count should have an insanely high score.

heck, maybe even throw in a bonus for carrying out Grond / the crown as trophies.

[Scatha]

Perhaps uniques shouldn't be territorial, or have a diminished form. This is something that counts against Ungoliant and Glaurung. It's sort of cheap how easy it is to avoid them or fight them in a position of taking one step back and being completely safe. This sort of goes for regular enemies too, though spiders and drakes especially would be massively more dangerous without that behaviour.

I'm not sure that ease of avoiding is a problem, even for uniques. I think generally having the territorial flag on some (dangerous) monsters does a good job of keeping enemies feeling different from each other. Particular for those with treasure (dragons and wights) this helps give interesting choices to the player.

In the case of Glaurung and Ungoliant you can only meet them in the Throne Room or in their vaults, and in both cases there are plenty of reasons you might want to go near them.

I have mixed feelings about the ability to fight from a position where you can take one step back for safety, though. On the one hand it's a cute consequence of the very natural rule used for territorial monsters. On the other hand it does feel a bit abusive. If we wanted to change this, perhaps they should break territorial behaviour when sufficiently wounded?

[Scatha]

I think debo is right that seven is too many stages of wounding for Morgoth. It feels a little bit farcical, and a bit too obviously like a scoring system.

Perhaps "Injured" and "Maimed" would be an appropriate division? With the idea that Fingolfin maimed Morgoth (and he did this with seven wounds).

We don't want to distract people from actually stealing a Silmaril though, so this would probably just be for tie-breaking among the people with the same number of Silmarils who escaped.

If this factored into the score (and particularly if we're thinking of complicating the score further, for instance by adding a bonus for defeating the level 24 uniques, or something for playing in nightmare mode) I think it would be complicated enough that it might be better to drop the lexicographic approach and present a more normal score. Tiebreaks are a very elegant rule when there are relatively few components of score and ties are fairly frequent, but they feel a bit unwieldy when there are too many components to be checked through. On the other hand any significant changes to the scoring would play badly with the existing ladder entries.

[Fendell Orcbane]

You'll no doubt be excited to know that the (only?) other enemy we were thinking of giving songs to is Gorthaur (since he memorably sings/chants some in the Lay of Leithian).




I think his current hammer pits and earthquakes is in the right direction and feels dramatic, though Kemenraukar somewhat spoil things by having the same style of melee attack (they don't do it at range 2 like Morgoth does though).

Morgoth can actually trap you with his attack as well if you don't have a Mattock or horn of blasting. I can't wait to see super Morgoth! And to see how long it takes someone to kill him : )