New Resistance Idea: Charge Drain Resistance

[EpicMan]

Right now there is no protection from monsters that drain charges, making melee with those monsters very undesirable if you have/use devices. Since Warriors always use devices these monsters are especially hard on warriors, since they don't have spells to replace drained devices.

So what if the amulet of magic device mastery also gave resistance to charge draining? Maybe like hold life it would usually block it or at least make it a very low drain. That would make those amulets more interesting, maybe even worthy of carrying as a swap item for those monsters. What do y'all think? Would you carry an item that protected your devices from draining?

[fizzix]

I've suggested before that charge drainers should drain the same amount of charges from a stack as a recharge spell adds. I think that would make meleeing charge drainers, while still undesirable, at least reasonable for warriors.

As is, all the charge drainers besides Vecna have an elemental vulnerability, so archery is certainly feasible for killing them, and is usually my approach. Well there's also the Mouth of Sauron but that guy shows up so rarely.

[Derakon]

I would be more inclined to fold this into disenchantment resistance, though that might make it overpowered. Charge drain seems to me to be the "inventory damage" to go with the equipment damage that disenchant attacks do.

We could combine that with disenchantment being able to reduce pluses on equipment carried in the inventory.

[Magnate]

I would be more inclined to fold this into disenchantment resistance, though that might make it overpowered. Charge drain seems to me to be the "inventory damage" to go with the equipment damage that disenchant attacks do.

We could combine that with disenchantment being able to reduce pluses on equipment carried in the inventory.

I like this idea - better to adapt existing resists than add new ones.

[TJS]

I'll recycle my idea from before of using higher AC to prevent charge draining and inventory destruction. Someone might like it this time.

[fyonn]

I'll recycle my idea from before of using higher AC to prevent charge draining and inventory destruction. Someone might like it this time.

well, I like it...

[konijn_]

I'll recycle my idea from before of using higher AC to prevent charge draining and inventory destruction. Someone might like it this time.

I like anything that stops charge draining

[PowerDiver]

I'll recycle my idea from before of using higher AC to prevent charge draining and inventory destruction. Someone might like it this time.

This, and the "armor reduces damage" thing, seem backward to me. Higher AC means you get "hit" less often, and that means less damage and inventory destruction. I put "hit" in quotes because you ought to be impacted *more* often when wearing heavy armor. The AC abstraction is that the times you are hit but they do no damage or less damage is counted as not hitting in the first place. Thus supreme dodging skill or enchanted plate mail might both give 50 AC, even though they prevent damage in entirely different ways.

I suggest that charge draining should only drain a single charge. You can only use one charge when you aim the wand. One might say that the definition of a charge on a device should be the maximum mana that can go through the device in a round.

[miyazaki]

I would be more inclined to fold this into disenchantment resistance, though that might make it overpowered. Charge drain seems to me to be the "inventory damage" to go with the equipment damage that disenchant attacks do.

We could combine that with disenchantment being able to reduce pluses on equipment carried in the inventory.

I'd like to see disenchantment resistance cut the draining in half. Round the draining up, so if you are at one charge, the last charge will never be drained.

[TJS]

This, and the "armor reduces damage" thing, seem backward to me. Higher AC means you get "hit" less often, and that means less damage and inventory destruction. I put "hit" in quotes because you ought to be impacted *more* often when wearing heavy armor. The AC abstraction is that the times you are hit but they do no damage or less damage is counted as not hitting in the first place. Thus supreme dodging skill or enchanted plate mail might both give 50 AC, even though they prevent damage in entirely different ways.

I suggest that charge draining should only drain a single charge. You can only use one charge when you aim the wand. One might say that the definition of a charge on a device should be the maximum mana that can go through the device in a round.

I think of AC that something that has a chance to reduce damage when you have actually been hit. It seems reasonable to me that things that drain or damage your inventory could be protected by armour, since it physically gets in the way of the attack.

Angband doesn't take notice of the way a character is facing (thank God I hate games that do that), so it is reasonable to assume that the character is always facing the attacker. So to get to the backpack the attack has to first go through the character's armour and things like shields or heavy armour prevent items being damaged. To me it seems really logical.

However I realise that Angband doesn't have a separate evasion stat so it is contained within AC which makes things more complicated.

[Pete Mack]

I don't see why charge draining should be nerfed, at least beyond what it is in NPP. If you don't want to take melee damage, use Rune of Protection.

Limiting the drained charges to 3-5 is a reasonable idea, so long as the amount healed is proportional to the charges drained. (Again, see NPP)

[PowerDiver]

I don't see why charge draining should be nerfed, at least beyond what it is in NPP. If you don't want to take melee damage, use Rune of Protection.

This discussion started because people disagreed with my statement that warriors need archery to deal with pack effects and should avoid melee with monsters that hurt the pack.

My warriors do not find enough ?rune in a game to deal with charge-draining uniques, much less any other pack affecting monsters. There is no way I'd use a ?rune to fight a generic lich or balrog playing a warrior.

I still think the "right" answer is to change warriors to be the class with the consummate missile skill, and accept that they will avoid melee to shoot at monsters that melee to hurt the pack.

[Pete Mack]

Got it. I don't fight generic liches or balrogs except with archery anyway.
Now I understand your reference to dodging skill.

Also, this kind of thing is why I am a fan of NPP Brigand. Superb stealth, traps, and high-power slinging makes for a much more interesting non-spell-caster.