Sil : Suggestions

[Psi]

If enough people think this issue with pits is a problem, we could implement something like your solution. We already have situational bonuses/penalties and number of attempts so far could be one. It would require savefile changes and would make pits/webs quite a lot less bad for low evasion players (perhaps too easy?). I'm not sure. I generally like it if playstyle leads to different things being big challenges and requiring different adaptations (e.g. a source of Freedom for low-evn characters) so am reluctant to over-smooth things out. Another simple option could be to start pits occurring a little deeper.

I think the only times I've had real trouble with pits was fighting Morgoth and falling in one at the gates in front of the big red C whilst surrounded...

[HallucinationMushroom]

I think the only times I've had real trouble with pits was fighting Morgoth and falling in one at the gates in front of the big red C whilst surrounded...

Same here. I pretty much played exclusively heavy protection low evasion and the only times I ever noticed any pain from pits was trying to kill Morgy and getting annoyed, and your same exact scenario of being surrounded at the gates... The gate pits are really horrific, as there is usually no place to attempt to move to since you are swarmed. I luckily had enough consumables to eventually kill something & get an open space. I suppose exchange places would work while you were in a pit?

[debo]

At the gates it might even be worth exchanging some of your excess XP for song of freedom

[HallucinationMushroom]

Huh, I wouldn't of thought of that. I'll have to go look up that song now.

[Scatha]

I absolutely agree with half that it's good to have some challenges in the dungeon be differentially difficult by build. I think webs do this very well (as do some monster types). However from HM's comments it's not clear that pits are functioning properly in this role. Something is up if even heavy armour builds find that the main constraint on getting out of pits is being surrounded.

I speculate that a big part of what seems odd about pits is that, being based on an Evasion roll, it's hard to balance across several stages of the game.

Very approximately, Evasion varies:
- A little with equipment (mostly this is good flavour, but the parry bonus on swords is bad)
- A little with consumables
- A medium amount with build
- A lot with time through the game

In contrast, Strength (used against webs) varies:
- A little with equipment
- A lot with consumables
- A lot with build
- A little with time through the game

This makes webs scale better across many different depths (the increased response to consumables is also a pretty neat behaviour -- potions of Strength are a much more tempting escape from webs than potions of Dex from pits). The requirement for pits to be manageable early or even half way through the game means it's hard to make them a challenge late on. It's a bit like demanding that you have to hit a cat warrior in melee to escape -- impossible early, trivial late.

To contrast this to some other challenges in the game: monsters do compare to Evasion and Melee, but we balance this by making them appear over a relatively tight set of depths. Bad herbs and potions compare to Will scores, which are a skill so scale, so we'd expect more problems here. However:
- Will doesn't scale as much through the game as Evasion;
- By the depths we're happy to assume that players have identified the bad consumables, so it's not problematic if they don't have ill effects.

One approach would be to make the escape roll for pits depend on something which doesn't scale as much through the game. Two possibilities would be Dex and encumbrance, but I don't think either of those is ever used in any opposed rolls, so it's a stretch to the system (I'm also not sure Evasion is ever used elsewhere for a noncombat roll).

I wonder if Free Action is having an exacerbating effect here. It's often held by the late game, but it's not clear to me that it makes so much sense to have FA help against physical constraints on moving (I love the picture of your Longsword of Final Rest preventing the Grave Wight from slowing you; helping you escape from pits veers too abstract). You could remove this bonus to flatten the field a little, while still letting the Freedom effects help you out.

[debo]

It never occurred to me in the first place that free action would help against pits or webs, or basically anything that wasn't entrancement. I only found out by reading threads.

I'd be happy to see free action's effects removed from non-entrancement things, especially if it means you can balance things a bit better.

[taptap]

Imo, the song of freedom / freedom staff effect isn't known sufficiently by players and the dependence of song of freedom on elbereth (if I recall correctly) doesn't help. I would change this, if anything, but nothing else.

Encumbrance would be a nice value to use, if it would exist other than a binary normal / slow distinction. Say if there were a dexterity penalty for every 50 lb equipment or whatever (but I guess this would be unpopular ). It wouldn't help bluefishs heavily armoured dwarves anyway.

[Psi]

...and I thought escaping from pits was based on strength

[wobbly]

It never occurred to me in the first place that free action would help against pits or webs, or basically anything that wasn't entrancement. I only found out by reading threads.

Which is funny, because to me it makes intuitive sense for free action to work for a web & I wouldn't of realized it works for entrancement if I hadn't read it in the forums.

Is the image of your sword helping you escape from a pit, actually worse then your boots protecting you from entrancement? In the end I don't care which way the mechanic goes, as long as it clear what free action does/doesn't work for. Preferably without too many of my characters dying to find out.

Oh, almost forgot. Have never lost a character to a pit. Though lost a few to webs, though that's probably more to do with the spider that comes with them.

[debo]

...and I thought escaping from pits was based on strength

I think typing HAAAADDDDDOOOOORRRRRRR into the notes also gives you a bonus to escape

[Scatha]

Thanks, some really interesting comments and ideas there.

It's unclear to me whether the Free Action effect should be changed, split in two, renamed. It's obvious that its effects (whatever those are) should be more transparent.

Psi: interesting that you thought Strength to escape pits! Certainly it makes some sense. Perhaps makes the argument that it doesn't matter too much what the mechanic is flavourwise (among reasonable options), so long as it's transparent and gives good gameplay.

taptap: The idea of encumbrance giving other penalties is certainly interesting, and we've discussed this before. However it would be both odd and unbalancing to have this as well as the existing penalties on heavy armour types, so it would essentially require a redesign and rebalance of armour types. Not impossible, but I don't think it's a priority for the game, particularly when armour is actually pretty carefully balanced and it's unclear that what you'd get at the end of this process would be an improvement.

[debo]

So, if you remove the "trap escapey" aspect of free action, there are still some "clear" escapes from the two constriction-type traps.

Webs = !Str

Pits = _freedom or song of freedom

Isn't this good enough? Given that these mechanics are clear, you can take the risk of not pooling !str or _freedom and balance it against how bad those traps are going to be for your build.

It could be nice to remove elbereth as a prereq for song of freedom so that you can more easily panic-buy it if you need to, I guess. That prereq never made sense to me in the first place.

[wobbly]

There would still be some strangeness in parry+defender weapon = +4 evasion = +4 to escape pits.

[taptap]

So, if you remove the "trap escapey" aspect of free action, there are still some "clear" escapes from the two constriction-type traps.

Webs = !Str

Pits = _freedom or song of freedom

Isn't this good enough? Given that these mechanics are clear, you can take the risk of not pooling !str or _freedom and balance it against how bad those traps are going to be for your build.

It could be nice to remove elbereth as a prereq for song of freedom so that you can more easily panic-buy it if you need to, I guess. That prereq never made sense to me in the first place.

Song or Staff of Freedom works against webs as well, I thought. It really is underused.

Evasion is the closest to encumbrance you get in the game. Armour already reduces the damage you receive when falling into a pit, it should at least make it harder to escape.

[Scatha]

Evasion is the closest to encumbrance you get in the game.

I find this statement very odd. We have an actual encumbrance number (which admittedly doesn't do much), and we also have the Stealth penalty for every 10lb of armour worn, which seems to me a much closer mechanical modelling of encumbrance than Evasion is. Could you explain your reasoning?