Sil : Suggestions

[clouded]

I don't care about fleeing personally, it's (very) annoying but it does give value to having a ranged attack when you otherwise wouldn't bother, you run out of xp on most monsters anyway. Instead of giving the xp when they flee down stairs, it would be better to instead give this xp as you do damage to them, as happens in poscheng.

[andrey]

A bigger issue is that while Dex, Con, Gra scale up nicely with higher values, Strength doesn't.

I guess you are right, but high starting Str does not necessarily means that I'd buff it up a lot. It would be nice to start with a character strong and tough (Con). For example, if I had an ungraceful race that starts with (2,0,2,0), I'd make it (4,3,4,0). (Hope I did the math right). I don't really like using songs anyway, so every grace point is almost a waste for my characters.

Another interesting idea is to give bonuses to some skills based on strength - for example - "knockout". Also, if you'd remove a restriction from having N items only, no matter what their weight is, it would give a tremendous benefit to strength.

[andrey]

+1.
And what happens if I encounter an unique and it flees down the stairs? Does it count as killed or not? If yes, I am being robbed of their drops. If no, woo, an exploitable way to get lots of extra XP from uniques!

I think that unique monsters that escape should not leave items. That is the price for frightening and not killing. Otherwise you are shifting the balance too much for players that'd abuse staffs of majesty, auras of majesty ,etc.

In my opinion, a monster that flees should never be seen again, being too afraid of the PC. So its almost like killing (except the items), and gives you XP from the same pool.

[andrey]

But I *do* kind of like the idea mentioned upthread of playing as an orc.

You're a traitor dreaming of greatness... something like that.

+1, Orcs sound great. They could have melee mastery, archery penalty and perception penalty.

[half]

+ Give even more XP for some non-slaying actions:
- Making a monster flee down the stairs (To avoid unnecessary kills)

We decided to give out half the experience for monsters if you overcome them in a way that doesn't involve killing them. We would have preferred to allocate this when you overcome them, but it turned out to be very hard to work out when that had happened, so we implemented this by giving half the experience when you encounter them. If you kill them you get the other half. Thus we currently reward chasing a monster down the stairs just as much as stealthily avoiding it, or putting it to sleep, or any other way of non-lethally overcoming it.

In some cases, allowing them to flee down the stairs helps you win fights you might otherwise have lost. In other cases (e.g. uniques) you might really want to avoid them fleeing down the stairs, which leads to some quite interesting tactical decisions. Sure it is annoying if they get past and make it to the stairs, but having some stakes like this is what makes the tactical stuff fun (as well as adding to immersion etc).

[Starhawk]

+1, Orcs sound great. They could have melee mastery, archery penalty and perception penalty.

And of course, you could model the pesky orc archer with a second 'house' if you wanted...

[debo]

And of course, you could model the pesky orc archer with a second 'house' if you wanted...

If you're going to do this, you might as well go all the way and make a reverse-Sil variant, where Morgoth's minions are trying to invade Valinor or something Have maybe trolls, orcs, cats and werewolves as races w/ their own houses.

"You land on shining shores, bereft of all possessions." And go from there

Hmmn....

[Starhawk]

If you're going to do this, you might as well go all the way and make a reverse-Sil variant, where Morgoth's minions are trying to invade Valinor or something Have maybe trolls, orcs, cats and werewolves as races w/ their own houses.

"You land on shining shores, bereft of all possessions." And go from there

Hmmn....

Oh, to be an invisible cat assassin...

The hard part with that reverse variant would be coming up with enough kinds of "good guy" monsters, I think.

[taptap]

+1, Orcs sound great. They could have melee mastery, archery penalty and perception penalty.

It doesn't sound like Sil at all. Regarding Sil less is more - less items, less races, less monsters, less magic = best roguelike I have played so far.

You already can play with starting STR 4 (Naugrim or House of Hador) or if you are really extremely one-sided 5. Isn't that enough?

[andrey]

It doesn't sound like Sil at all. Regarding Sil less is more - less items, less races, less monsters, less magic = best roguelike I have played so far.

You already can play with starting STR 4 (Naugrim or House of Hador) or if you are really extremely one-sided 5. Isn't that enough?

Some two-handed swords weigh 7-10 lbs. And you can always get momentum.

[debo]

Some two-handed swords weigh 7-10 lbs. And you can always get momentum.

yeah, those weapon weights made a lot more sense when it was 1.5lb per point of str per damage side. Also I think knockback used to depend on weapon weight, I'm not sure if it still does?

[bron]

A very minor suggestion: I think Song of Slaying should always give at least a +1 bonus to hit. Right now, it starts at zero and doesn't have any effect until after you kill something. I think it should have an immediate +1 effect. I'm *not* saying that the bonus should be increased by one across the board, just that it not be zero. i.e. "bonus=max(bonus,1)"

[half]

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I'm busy enough at the moment that I don't have time to individually reply to many of them or to do any coding, but I do read them all and either note down the ideas I want to include or the links to the threads for when I have more coding time.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I'd like to request that a very small percentage of monsters be anomalies to their typical ai routines. Or, in other words, I would like to see the occasional hold-your-ground archer, cowardly troll, non-territorial spider, always-barge-in orc, etc...

[BlueFish]

Non-territorial sword spiders would be walking (er, make that sprinting) death machines...