Should totally innevitalbe deaths be in the game or not?

[Nemesis]

Well, as Angband is a very random game, it might be hard to predict if it will be possible to die regardless of precautions, but should the developers do their best to make every death avoidable by being careful and well-prepared, or is the game more fun if you can't escape every death no matter how prepared you are?

• I'm not talking about the possibility of landing in a really bad spot after teleporting (if you don't want to take that risk you can always escape with Teleport Level or *Destruction* instead!)
• Nor am I talking about out of death monsters that you can detect and just stay away from
• Nor am I talking about potions of Detonations (no one's forcing you to drink unidentified potions)
• Nor am I talking about traps early in the game (you can always search for traps, and besides you haven't really got anything to lose in the beginning)
• Nor am I talking about Nexus stat-swap (sure, it might make you want to kill yourself, but if you found some really, really great artifact in that game, you will find a way to recover)

• I am talking about things like OOD monsters that you can't do anything about, like fast monsters with pass_wall
• Borderline cases are starting in dark rooms filled with monsters capable of killing you in one turn, when you've just recalled or is playing with disconnected stairs, but then again, disconnected stairs is a bit like Iron Man, it's there to challange the best)
• Another borderline case is OOD monsters that can't pass/kill wall, but still are capable of one shotting players, appearing before the Rod of Detection

Personally, I think the developers should do their best to hinder the RNG from handing out death sentences to helpless players. As the occasional OOD monster makes the game exciting, I guess it's very hard to hinder the game from killing off low level-characters really early into the adventure, but the further you get in the game, the more I am against deaths that can't be avoided. After stat gain depth there should be no depths that aren't the players' fault, as you're likely to find your first really great artifacts there, as well as spending lots of time maxing your stats. But of course, I don't like inavoidable deaths anywhere in the game, it's just that I think they are even more unfair the farther your game progresses.

As I've said somewhere before, if there's going to be deaths that you can't do a thing to avoid, why roll for a slight chance of "rocks fall, everyone dies" each turn?

However, I've seen lots of other people writing that they actually like to be completely at RNG's mercy, constantly risking inescapable death. That's why I started this poll!

[miyazaki]

I haven't voted because I can't agree with the way you have set up the question. I will agree that all the things you have listed are extremely dangerous, but NONE of them are unavoidable.

There was only one unavoidable death situation: going down stairs and being insta-killed before getting a chance to move on the new level. I am thankful that the maintainers have removed this.

My vote is for unavoidable deaths to be removed from the game, but I believe that this has already been done. And that the game could be made more difficult, including increasing the chance of OOD monsters, while keeping the status quo.

(I'd like to see a death that a player considers unavoidable--a real example, with a character dump--so we could discuss that. Personally, I can't remember a single one in my own experience of several hundred deaths.)

[fizzix]

With enough precautions every death is avoidable (except in the *very* early game) Although it's not necessarily fun to have all the precautions. Assuming a character at dlevel 40 has the following in their kit:

Detection (at least Detect Evil + Detect Invisible staves)
Teleport level/Deep Descent/Destruction

Furthermore, a character at this level has the choice to also scum for:
Full detection (in rod form, if they can't get it through spells)
Telepathy

I'm hard pressed to come up with a situation where death is unavoidable. However there are plenty of bad beat deaths, many of which you mentioned. (Just had a character who teleported into a room full of gravity hounds to escape a nether wraith, oops. How many breaths does it take to kill a level 32 gnome rogue at full health?)

The worst beat death I can think of is the 'landing in a dark room'. (Most classes get create doors to deal with this)

The only monster that really can instakill that won't show up with the Detect Evil/Invis staves is the drolem. And yes, I think drolems should be moved to dlevel 60 or so. So you can add poison breath by a drolem on a priest/paladin/warrior to bad beat deaths. What else is there? What other monster fits your criteria that provides unavoidable deaths at dlevels 30-100 to a reasonably well prepared character?

(the answer is apparently, 6 breaths. I thought it was higher too)

[Derakon]

How far back do you push the "unavoidability"? You can say that an avoidable death would be using Teleport Level instead of Teleport Self when in a bad spot in a fight, but most of the time the correct way to avoid that death is to avoid the fight in the first place! My priest would still be alive if he'd fled the level as soon as he saw that Xaren, but he thought he could avoid it by teleporting, which landed him first next to Adunaphel and then a pack of Gravity hounds. Push it back further, and the death would have been avoidable if I'd waited a bit longer before going to that depth. Ultimately, you know how to avoid death? Don't be born.

The only game I've ever heard of that featured what I feel to be a completely unavoidable death was Omega (which isn't even related to Angband in the roguelike genealogy). As I heard it, there's a small chance when you're outside of being struck by a cosmic ray, which deals a small amount of damage. This can happen on your first turn, which occurs before you provide any input (the player is spawned right next to a town, where he'd be safe from cosmic rays). So you could roll up your character and watch him die right off the bat. That's a bug that deserves fixing. Everything else is arguing about how hard you want the game to be.

[Pete Mack]

The only systematic "unavoidable" death is coming downstairs in a room-full of hounds outside of visibility, especially at speed +0. I've lost a handful of characters to this. I've had other unavoidable deaths, but they were really random, a result of a completely unpredictable set of circumstances on going down stairs.
It's not worth changing the game for.
Otherwise, detect often, use ESP/Infravision/Rods of Light to help see enemies from a distance, and get your stealth up.

[Atarlost]

There are two solutions. Either remove the possibility of monsters being generated awake, or change dungeon generation in such a way that you never (or very rarely) wind up in a dark room. Kludgiest way would be to apply a light room effect on dungeon entry, but placing stairs only in blind hallways (and making non-stair entry always happen at a location that passes the stairway tests) would work well too.

[Zikke]

I haven't figured out the pattern of when the room gets auto lit up when you come down the stairs and when it gives you a dark room. It even happens both ways at lower levels...

[ewert]

I voted no, because there should not be.

I also think that there are none at the moment ... Unavoidable deaths that is. Lots of avoidable ways to die of course. Mostly it's unpreparedness or player stupidity that kills (I almost died multiple times with my druid at 98 because boredom was hitting me, meleeing wyrms too fast so often I did a turn or two of melee at <400hp after a big breath before healing =P).

[Zikke]

The only way I am aware of that is instant death was fortunately removed from Vanilla, which was not getting the first turn when taking the stairs. I'm glad that that got fixed.

[Derakon]

I haven't figured out the pattern of when the room gets auto lit up when you come down the stairs and when it gives you a dark room. It even happens both ways at lower levels...

Assuming this hasn't changed in the last decade or so, it's just a percentage chance for each room to be lit, that starts at 100% at 50' and drops to 0% by...it's either 500' or 1000', I forget which. Has nothing to do with when you enter the level; just what depth you're at.

[Nemesis]

I think much of the discussion in this thread have been about unavoidable deaths that are currently in the game (and as stated in my post, those are few), but I've also seen some people bringing up the idea that unavoidable deahts should be added (in the form of crazier OOD monster possibilities). Therefore, I think unavoidable deahts are a valid topic to discuss, even though they aren't common at the moment.

[Nick]

With that clarification, I've voted no. I believe there are currently no unavoidable deaths (with the possible exception of Maggot's dogs).

[Ycombinator]

With that clarification, I've voted no. I believe there are currently no unavoidable deaths (with the possible exception of Maggot's dogs).

They can be unavoidable, but not unbeatable. I once managed to kill Fang right off the stairs, jumping to clvl 3 immediately.

[buzzkill]

The primary push here seems to be against OoD monsters which I don't think is a problem, even if variability were increased. It's the players job to avoid risk, not the RNG's. I agree with most of the opinions already posted that unavoidable death doesn't really happen. NO VOTE CAST.

[fizzix]

With that clarification, I've voted no. I believe there are currently no unavoidable deaths (with the possible exception of Maggot's dogs).

Buy 4 or more flasks of oil before descending.