Drain experience => temporary level drain

[Derakon]

Miyazaki: I say, if the player's willing to spend a turn to ID something even though there are monsters in LOS, then let him. We allow players to chow down on rations and learn spells while in the middle of combat; why not ID things too?

Nullfame: the goal, or at least the intent of the suggestion, is to take a current game mechanic that I don't find particularly interesting and make it into one that is. Undead monsters that drain your "energy" in various ways are a staple trope of fantasy, so I don't think hold life should be done away with entirely, but I find the current system underwhelming. Let's take a look at the risk/reward on fighting drainers right now:

Risk: you only get 10% of the normal amount of experience for awhile after fighting the enemy.
Reward: you get some experience (mostly canceled out by being drained) and maybe some items.

This doesn't strike me as very interesting, and is why I teleport away the vast majority of high undead as it stands (exception: wraiths and ghosts, which are fragile). I think it's possible to change things so that drainers are more dangerous in the short term, in exchange for removing the long-term consequences of fighting them. That would make fighting undead more tempting from an experience perspective. Whether or not they're worth enough experience to fight given their threat levels is a different matter, of course.

[miyazaki]

Miyazaki: I say, if the player's willing to spend a turn to ID something even though there are monsters in LOS, then let him. We allow players to chow down on rations and learn spells while in the middle of combat; why not ID things too?

Currently, to ID something, say a shield, by use, it takes 2 turns (2.1 actually): pick-up, wield, re-wield original. There is one turn when the player is vulnerable. If I have Thorin, I would lose acid immunity during that process, something potentially fatal. Also, if your backpack is full, you have to drop something to wield another. These are reasons for limiting "ID mode" while monsters are around. If they want to ID in the middle of a fire-fight, all conventional methods are still available.

[nullfame]

I don't think hold life should be done away with entirely

I meant the ability, not experience drain altogether. For me Angband has always been a perfect balance of enough elements that the game is interesting to play, but not so many that it is overwhelming. If something is worthless get rid of it.

I almost never fight golems and druj. I don't think they should DROP_GREAT to entice me. We don't need a constant risk/reward ratio across all enemies. High risk low reward is okay. It means I avoid that area of the dungeon. Having things we always avoid is okay. There's no shortage of monsters to kill. Even so, if a monster to be avoided is guarding something I want it becomes an interesting choice. Wands of teleport other are consumables, rods take time to charge.

Having said all of that I think I disagree with the timed aspect of it. Why should resting in the town make a drain go away? I like that it goes away with kills.

To abstract PowerDiver's equations on killing when drained:

max_exp += exp * MAX_MODIFIER;
curr_exp += exp * CURR_MODIFIER;
curr_exp = min(max_exp, curr_exp);

Today MAX_MODIFIER is 0.1 (IMO this should be 0) and CURR_MODIFIER is 1. I think the best way to turn life draining in to a bigger problem for a shorter duration is to adjust these values and multiply the power of the drain attack (let's call this DRAIN_MODIFIER). Of course balance is all about finding the right values here, but for example...

DRAIN_MODIFIER = 5;
MAX_MODIFIER = 1;
CURR_MODIFIER = 3;

Here you get drained a bunch more and are more likely to lose levels. On the other hand you add to your max_exp at the normal rate, you are just temporarily handicapped, but the effect goes away 3 times faster.

I just don't think drains should be on a timer. Blind, poison, confusion, chaos... sure, but those are debilitating side effects. Drains aren't. I think the current mechanic is not busted. If I have space I pack !lifeLevels because I think it is worth it, though I don't buyout to get them. If I don't have them I plow ahead anyway.

[fyonn]

I think the best mechanic is to have a "identify mode" that you active with cntl-i and gives you ID info on walk-over. Two conditions for this would be: (1) no mosters can be in LOS and (2) it uses a player-turn for each item.

I really dislike the idea of ID on walkover when there are enemies nearby. It should take your character a moment to properly look at an item and figure out characteristics. This shouldn't be done with a greater balrog towering over you inside a greater vault.

Having this ID mode would require just a single keystroke before checking out all the loot left from clearing a troll pit or vault.

hmm.. why not tie ID into perception and searching like we have for traps and hidden doors?

the character will have a variable ability to either ID an item, or perhaps work out characteristics of items. they'd get a certain ability to see stuff just by walking over them, but they could also press 's' to keep looking and looking at a stack of un-ID'd loot. the more senior a character, the faster it would work.

I guess a risk is a character just holding down the 's' key to keep searching to ID kit...

back on topic. someone said that this 'entire level' drain thing would hit high level pure spell-casters the hardest. is this a problem? don't they have the easiest end-game as it is? the fact that a high level warrior might well be a bit more 'proof' against XP/level drain as they are more propped up by equipment seems perhaps appropriate?

I think that idea of affecting the max_hp counter isn't the answer as that's what we're affecting by hitting XP/level, except that by hitting level we're also getting SP as well which I think is right.

I like the idea of losing entire levels to undead rather than just XP and I could go with slowly "remembering" the lost XP, thus making it a temporary effect. I would mean that you can escape and "heal" up though you'd be quite vulnerable while you rest up, esp at deep levels.

I wonder if it could be done without a cap though. these guys are supposed to be dangerous and if you're not tough enough you need to get out. Also, if you've hit your 'cap' then you become immune? seems odd. I do think that a crowd of greater undead would risk being very dangerous here, so perhaps making it harder and harder to lose levels. justified perhaps by thinking that recent experience is easier to get, but longer held experience has sunk in deeper and would be harder to remove?

dave