Teleport Other, too powerful?

[buzzkill]

Just wondering if anyone else felt the way way that I do, that Teleport Other is too powerful, given it's low price and availability. I'd rate it as more valuable than speed in almost any situation.

I like it to only affect only a single monster, still useful, but not the vault clearing machine it is now. Wand (or rods) of TO + vault = artifacts, with very little actual 'work'.

[Zikke]

I think they are find how they are. I do like in FA where they only teleport one target instead of a line of them. Makes it more balanced, and sometimes you want all the trash to stay there but TO away just one nasty.

[Donald Jonker]

Maybe not too powerful, since I don't think there's anything wrong with Angband's difficulty level, though it's certainly an uninteresting solution, since there aren't any drawbacks. Raising the price, adjusting the rarity, or the failure rate is just putting a band-aid on it.

Perhaps a more interesting way to handle it would be to have monsters teleport to somewhere inconvenient: put them to sleep next to the stairs or in a corridor, for example. Or make teleported monsters faster and increase their detection radius... perhaps to include the entire level.

[PaulBlay]

Perhaps a more interesting way to handle it would be to have monsters teleport to somewhere inconvenient: put them to sleep next to the stairs or in a corridor, for example. Or make teleported monsters faster and increase their detection radius... perhaps to include the entire level.

That seems a bit forced. How about just having teleport other teleport objects as well? You can still get them by the old method but you have to hunt them down over the whole level (filled with monster teleported out of the vault).

[Atarlost]

Perhaps monsters should save against TO at the difference between their level and your level. That way you'd have to risk standing up to a nasty monster for a few turns to send it away.

[RogerN]

Perhaps monsters should save against TO at the difference between their level and your level. That way you'd have to risk standing up to a nasty monster for a few turns to send it away.

Please no... the last thing this game needs is more spells which consistently fail to work (e.g. sleep, confuse).

[buzzkill]

Perhaps a more interesting way to handle it would be to have monsters teleport to somewhere inconvenient: put them to sleep next to the stairs or in a corridor, for example. Or make teleported monsters faster and increase their detection radius... perhaps to include the entire level.

There are too many sets of stairs, and they are bypassable entirely, but I think we're in agreement. After my initial post, I came up with a better solution. Since hostile teleportation is, well, hostile, monsters capable of such feelings would find it aggravating. So... aggravate them. Give them haste, unlimited detection, and maybe even a dark blessing, so they can quickly reunite with the player and.... likely be TO'ed again. Hmmm... maybe that second TO should be resistible.

[Donald Jonker]

I'm down w/ that. You saw that was my 2nd suggestion, right?

[etaomyx]

I would like to disagree. I think making TO'd monsters more aggressive would be far too confusing - might it not be unclear why an orc you encounter later on is so much faster than the others (indeed, why teleportation should "irritate" a monster any more than a conventional attack)? I don't think teleporting items solve the problem, either. It is still far too easy to separate a unique from his minions, vault monsters from their treasure, etc. The central problem is that it's just too consistent.

I agree with Atarlost: the best (and simplest) solution is to be consistent with sleep and confusion and raise the save rate, and possibly make uniques impervious to TO. (But it could fail in interesting ways: rather than teleporting monsters away, it might deliberately place them around the player! )

[Atarlost]

I don't think uniques should be impervious to anything just because they're unique. It's okay if they're impervious to sleep because they're undead, but not because they're unique. There is absolute canonical evidence that sleep works on Morgoth and strong implication that it works on Balrogs including Gothmog. I think the save for sleep and confuse is way too high in general in the late game.

[Pete Mack]

Most of these changes would be unbalancing. It would make diving next to impossible for noisy classes, and would thus favor the High-elf/Kobold Rogue even more. The only ones I might tolerate is the suggestion to have teleport other work on single monsters (with a shorter recharge time and more charges), or work on objects on the floor to make it somewhat harder to loot vaults.

But, my usual response to an angband 'exploit' is to dive faster. Suddenly the game is balanced again.

[etaomyx]

Fair enough, I certainly agree with others that sleep, confusion and fear are all next-to-useless later in the game. I just think the discrepancies should be removed: if you want to delay direct combat with a monster, it should depend on the situation whether sleep, confusion, fear, or teleport away is the best option, not teleport away simply because it is the only possibility (as is currently the case, for example, with uniques).

[Garrie]

my main thought is, HELL NO TO is not too powerful.

We haven't all won you know! If you think it's too powerful mod your game.

Indeed a staff of TO would be great, dunno what radius tho (certainly not "all visible monsters" but maybe r3 - r5 centred on player?)

[Fenrir]

Oh no, no!

Next Banishment will remove only one monster, and Mass Banishment only one letter... When (okay, IF) our characters get old, they'll be at the general store telling the mean-looking mercenaries: "In my times, sonny, TeleOther worked with a whole row of monsters and not just one of them. But now these magical things are just not what they were."

I have noticed in my games that TeleOther does appear to be a little too common, but there are always the energy hounds.... and the nice Lich/Balrog/Unique willing to drain all the charges for hp.... and then the fireworks display whenever my warrior character attempts to recharge them....

Or maybe that's just me.

Perhaps they should be made rarer and add a new one that teleports only one monster?

[Donald Jonker]

Most of these changes would be unbalancing. It would make diving next to impossible for noisy classes, and would thus favor the High-elf/Kobold Rogue even more.

Not if sleep/confuse/slow monster were made to work. There are two ways of interpreting the state of affairs:

1. Nothing is broken: TelOther is godly and should be. Sleep/confuse/slow are useless except as sources of cash, and that's okay.

2. Everything's broken: TelOther's too powerful and is simply compensation for the fact that sleep/confuse/slow don't work on anything.

If we fix (2) so that each works reliably on monsters, but each has a unique drawback, then instead of relying on one single godly and boring solution, we suddenly have a full set of resources for dealing with vaults, diving and escapes. The game's overall difficulty need not change at all. I really don't see what can possibly be controversial about this.

Increasing the fail rate for/save rate against TelOther in order to group it with sleep/confuse/slow has to be the worst possible thing you can do to anything in the game. These measures have the power to make just about anything useless. And we don't need MORE devices when the ones we already have aren't doing their job.