Staff of confuse monster

[RogerN]

Just found my first staff of confuse monster. I assume this is a new item, since I've never seen one before? Anyway, I had high hopes that this item would be more useful than its poor wand counterpart, which never seems to work when you need it to.

I first tried it out in a hallway full of Cave Ogres. Ogres are dumb, slow, and notoriously susceptible to magic, right?

The Cave Ogre is unaffected.
The Cave Ogre is unaffected.
The Cave Ogre is unaffected.
The Cave Ogre is unaffected.
The Cave Ogre is unaffected.
The Cave Ogre is unaffected.
The Cave Ogre is unaffected.
The Cave Ogre is unaffected.

Wow... and I thought the wand was bad. What a waste of an inventory slot. Are there plans to make this staff actually useful?

[Mondkalb]

The staff of confuse monster is no new item.
Some monsters just can't be confused. I think it is the same with orcs - some of them are vulnerable to confusion, some are not.

[PowerDiver]

The staff of confuse monster is no new item.
Some monsters just can't be confused. I think it is the same with orcs - some of them are vulnerable to confusion, some are not.

The cutoff is 550'. Don't even consider trying to sleep/slow/confuse any monster with a base depth of 600'. These spells are only useful when they make the difference in killing baby dragons, or on a wimp blocking a corridor.

[saarn]

only time I've actually found staff of confuse monster useful, I had it in my inventory to sell in town (price is way out of proportion to the utility), and got surrounded by boldor's minions. There was another thread recently about making sleep/confuse (and maybe slow monster?) more useful. I think this would definitely be an improvement, but until then, just another item to hoard for cash in until excellent weapons start becoming common.

[PaulBlay]

There was another thread recently about making sleep/confuse (and maybe slow monster?) more useful.

I would suggest making area affect sleep/confuse/slow always work for at least 1 turn for at least 50% of monsters hit. Single-hit sleep/confuse/slow could work 100% of the time for at least one turn. [Except completely unaffected monsters like skeletons, jellies].

I would also remove '100% unique immunity' (but probably leave them harder to affect than equivalent non-unique monsters).