Rings of escaping affect spell failure??

[Magnate]

Inspecting my ring of escaping says:

+4 speed.
Makes you unable to hit foes.

... I understand that latter sentence to mean -20 to-hit. It turns out that it also affects my spell failure rates quite dramatically: book 1 goes from 6/6/6/9/17/6/32 to 6/15/26/29/37/13/50!

Is this intentional? If it is, please can we have it noted in the item description!

[Magnate]

Hup. Takkaria?

[PowerDiver]

Hup. Takkaria?

He's kind of busy these days, but it's an obvious improvement. Those rings were way too powerful. They need to have some kind of a penalty for a pure spellcaster. That kind of change could only be intentional. I wonder if it applies to monster induced fear as well.

BTW - the -20 is to missiles. You cannot melee at all.

Doc, which includes descriptions, is often out of touch in an ongoing project.

[Magnate]

He's kind of busy these days, but it's an obvious improvement. Those rings were way too powerful. They need to have some kind of a penalty for a pure spellcaster. That kind of change could only be intentional. I wonder if it applies to monster induced fear as well.

BTW - the -20 is to missiles. You cannot melee at all.

Doc, which includes descriptions, is often out of touch in an ongoing project.

That's fine - I'm happy to update the description.

If you can't melee at all, the character display should show something other than your normal melee to-hit bonus minus 20 ...

[PowerDiver]

That's fine - I'm happy to update the description.

If you can't melee at all, the character display should show something other than your normal melee to-hit bonus minus 20 ...

I haven't looked, but I assume it is a part of "status of magical fear". So in principle it should be enough to say "makes you *afraid*". OH - I agree something should change on the 'C' screen.

OTOH, I think the penalties should be additive, rather than flags. You shouldn't get to wield the second escape ring for free. Instead of failure rate increase from fear status, I'd rather see a "no melee" flag and -20 to hit in conjunction with -4 to spellstats and get rid of "fear" on the ring.

That's more flags, but there are still a few unused flag slots, and some time in the not too distant future the codebase should become robust enough to add more flags with ease.

[Magnate]

I haven't looked, but I assume it is a part of "status of magical fear". So in principle it should be enough to say "makes you *afraid*". OH - I agree something should change on the 'C' screen.

OTOH, I think the penalties should be additive, rather than flags. You shouldn't get to wield the second escape ring for free. Instead of failure rate increase from fear status, I'd rather see a "no melee" flag and -20 to hit in conjunction with -4 to spellstats and get rid of "fear" on the ring.

That's more flags, but there are still a few unused flag slots, and some time in the not too distant future the codebase should become robust enough to add more flags with ease.

I agree with you. An interim fix is in r1414.

[buzzkill]

As a added disincentive to abuse such an item, you could make the fear persist for a period of time even after the ring was removed. That would turn it into something that you wouldn't casually play around with.

[Atarlost]

I suspect that would cross the line from "useful in certain situations" to "not worth it". When you really want to escape you don't run. You teleport. The niche for the ring of escaping is therefore not escape but avoidance. It's the sort of item you wear by default so if you detect something nasty you can hightail it out of there before it wakes up without taking the risk of teleport landing you in the fire. It's therefore the type of item that's worthless if you can't pull it off, put on your +dam ring and start fighting. If you wear the +dam by default you need to take an action to switch to the escaping ring and that first turn of running away is the most dangerous because you're closest to the scary monster.

[Magnate]

Plus they are already overly gimped anyway, and we need to make them better, not worse. The best one of these I've yet seen was +4 speed, and I would have worn it with any two of no melee, -20 to archery and +20 to spell failure. But with all three I never wore it.

[buzzkill]

I suspect that would cross the line from "useful in certain situations" to "not worth it".

Once Teleport is common and/or affordable it should be used, before then you have the less effective but still very useful Phase Door. I fear this ring may become an "early ring of speed" which really isn't necessary.

I guess I missed the whole point of it. I was really thinking of it as "useful for escaping" (monsters of normal speed), not a tactical tool. It appears fairly early, before fast movers are common, and provides a bit of permanent speed, something that normally (outside of potions) isn't found until much, much deeper. Maybe the name could use a tweak.

[PowerDiver]

Once Teleport is common and/or affordable it should be used, before then you have the less effective but still very useful Phase Door. I fear this ring may become an "early ring of speed" which really isn't necessary.

I've been playing mostly melee ironman priests, in that long phase prior to finding ?PB3 in the dungeon, and have found two uses for this ring, despite having cheap portal.

(1) To run to go snatch an item when monsters are near, prior to portal.

(2) When in a room with things I want to kill threatening to surround me, to get out to a corridor so I can fight one-on-one. Then portal takes me too far away, particularly on a level with hounds, and even if I had a supply of ?phase I'd rather use =escaping.

[PaulBlay]

(1) To run to go snatch an item when monsters are near, prior to portal.

(2) When in a room with things I want to kill threatening to surround me, to get out to a corridor so I can fight one-on-one. Then portal takes me too far away, particularly on a level with hounds, and even if I had a supply of ?phase I'd rather use =escaping.

Both sound reasons if you ask me, but I have a general dislike of worn / wielded items that need to be frequently swapped in and out. (Tunnelling items being one such annoyance) I prefer the idea of allowing movement modes - as seen in some other roguelikes.

[Pete Mack]

Plus they are already overly gimped anyway, and we need to make them better, not worse. The best one of these I've yet seen was +4 speed, and I would have worn it with any two of no melee, -20 to archery and +20 to spell failure. But with all three I never wore it.

Wearing two of them gives you +8 speed. This is a huge increase in power, even with -20 on the bow. (For a ranger, you will hardly notice.)

Moving around at 3500' with speed +8 is much, much easier. And at that depth, you can look for speed rings and Tenser's on the floor.

[buzzkill]

Everyone seems to be making my point for me. You've all come up with many useful ideas for this ring, but few if any involve simply fleeing (escaping), which is my point. Does Angband really need low level characters running around at +8 speed while having to swap a ring or two being the only real penalty.

How about a temporary sticky curse (lasting 5d10 turns or so), then you can remove curse or portal if a dire situation arises?