Resist slowing but not speeding :(

[Nightmarjoo]

Just some random thoughts and a somewhat unfortunate tale:

So I was fighting Wormtongue with a low level kobold warrior who had a 2 blow per turn slay evil shortsword, and no ranged attacks to speak of. I found wormtongue at the end of a hallway and wanted to do somethign other than run towards him letting him cast spells instead of coming to me, so I tried my wand of wonder. After battling wormtongue for a while, with him stealing my gold and vanishing, and me finding him again, I had managed to speed him 3 times with my wand of wonder. He wasn't strong enough to kill me, but I couldn't kill him either because with 3x speed he would almost definitely succeed in stealing gold and poofing in one turn. I tried a wand of slow monster on him, but it didn't work.

So I was thinking that maybe monsters who resist slowing should either also resist speeding, or atleast be able to have their speed reduced to normal. I can't really think of many times this would be important since there are only two ways you could speed your opponent, and never on purpose, but it would certainly be nice for those two occasions. Though, 3.1.1.w/e has a lot more give and take items, like potions that increase str but reduce int, amulet of teleport of +2 speed, ring of the dog which gives resist fear but does other bad stuff to you, etc, maybe there could be more wands/staves that have similar double-edged-sword abilities, maybe scares monster but also speeds them up, etc, things that could make this change more useful.

[Ghen]

Maybe go halfway to your suggestion and make monsters with resist slowing have a reduced time that they are sped up. I don't think getting rid of the effect all together is a good thing though. The few times it happens is just bad luck and part of the difficulty of the game.

[Atriel]

1. Haste Monster isn't cumulative, it's on or off

2. The idea of Slow Monster removing Haste effect (maybe with a chance to fail) on monsters is very good, and would give a reason to use or carry it more often.

[Pete Mack]

1. Haste Monster isn't cumulative, it's on or off

That's what I thought, too, until I checked the code.

        case GF_OLD_SPEED:
        {
            if (seen) obvious = TRUE;

            /* Speed up */
            if (m_ptr->mspeed < 150) m_ptr->mspeed += 10;

You are right that Haste monster isn't fully cumulative, but that's only fully true for Death Molds, Horned Reapers, and Morgoth.