rethinking summoning

[emulord]

I think the main reason TO is broken is because it doesnt teleport items. It allows underlevelled characters to trivially clear vaults and get all or most of the loot. If the items teleported with the enemies, it would still be tough to get the items, but the more powerful you are, the less you'd need to TO and therefore the more items you could keep in the vault.

[Derakon]

I really liked the idea of creating easier battles by clearing a level, just like you can create an easier final battle by clearing out the more dangerous uniques.

Well, I don't like it -- or at least, I don't think that this "added benefit" is actually a benefit. Clearing the level is a fairly tedious process, as a general rule, and the game should not reward tedium.

[shawnosullivan]

Early 3.0.x under Robert Ruehlmann, ~2004. I'd have to look in more detail to be precise.

haha wow, i guess it's been quite a while since i've played much vanilla. it seems seem like all the interesting development is happening in v these days, tho.

[Lord Tom]

I agree that summoning at present is a bit out of control, especially with the addition of so many additional U monster races, whenever that happened. It can really make battles with the D and U uniques & escorts more tedious than anything. I like the idea of limiting the total power of what can be summoned in some way, e.g. a monster of level x can only summon monsters whose levels add to x (or 2*x with no single monster level >x, or whatever).

ASC's are certainly abusive, but there's a lot to be said about using terrain to your advantage, and disallowing tunneling or having summoned monsters replace walls seems a bit drastic. Either or both of these might be simpler:
1. limit tunneling to the 4 cardinal directions (impossible to fully avoid summoning)
2. let all summoners "command you to return," whatever that spell's called

I don't think PowerDiver's suggestion about having summoners not enter ASC's would work on its own...one could dig an ASC, melee at the entrance until badly hurt, run inside, rest while the summoner waits patiently outside, run back out, etc.

[will_asher]

I don't think PowerDiver's suggestion about having summoners not enter ASC's would work on its own...one could dig an ASC, melee at the entrance until badly hurt, run inside, rest while the summoner waits patiently outside, run back out, etc.

There's an easy solution to that: let the summoner keep summoning from out of line of sight and send his minions into the ASC to get you.

personally, I don't think using an ASC is abuse at all. It's just tactics. Then again, I've never actually used one but that because I've never gotten far enough to fight any of the really nasty summoners.

[bron]

> let the summoner keep summoning from out of line of sight

I think this is the right thing to do in order to cut down on pillar dancing: Allow a summoner to summon a monster into a space that is in LOS and that was just occupied by @, whether or not @ itself is currently in LOS. The comments in the source complain that attacking or breathing into an empty space has problems, but I would think that summoning should not cause the same sorts of problems. In particular, it is already the case that multiplying monsters can breed while out of LOS of @, which is already sort of like a summoning.

[bron]

when was it changed so that summoners only summon onto their own surrounding squares?

I don't think that's right (?) I've has occasions where I'm meleeing a monster in a straight corridor, and it summons something into the corridor behind me. So its not just adjacent spaces.

[fizzix]

I don't think that's right (?) I've has occasions where I'm meleeing a monster in a straight corridor, and it summons something into the corridor behind me. So its not just adjacent spaces.

What you've encountered is the issue of the FRIENDS tag. If a monster with the FRIENDS tag is summoned then they tend to fill up all the surrounding spaces, the same way they do on level generation. This is how you can get surrounded by hounds, and there can be 50 of them on a single summon. In any case at least one of the monsters will be next to the summoner. That is the summoned monster. The rest are his friends who came along for the ride.

Monsters without the friends tag should always appear on a space next to the summoner.

[buzzkill]

The 'real' solution is to give summoners the 'stone to mud' spell, and have them use it intelligently.

[miyazaki]

The 'real' solution is to give summoners the 'stone to mud' spell, and have them use it intelligently.

What if monsters could push the @, like they can push past other monsters? Then that greater balrog could push the @ out of his/her ASC and back into a room.

[shawnosullivan]

i think one of the easiest solutions is new monsters - if there were more types of ancient dragons and type of greater demons that were sumoned with some frequency and could tunnel (or had passwall), that would pretty seriously impact the usefulness of ASCs. wouldn't even necessarily require creating new monsters, just modifying existing ones.
a lot less complicated and probably a little more balanced than creating new monster AI or totally new monster abilities (a pack of 20 gnome mages swiss-cheesing the dungeon w/ stone to mud at DL 15 does not sound reasonable)

[Derakon]

Random thought: what if summoners could summon monsters with passwall / wall destroyer into wall spaces? So your ASC would protect you from great wyrms, but not from ethereal dragons or elder vampires. Still better than nothing, but far from foolproof, especially if the summoning routine made multiple attempts if the creatures it selects couldn't be placed.