Separating telepathy and ESP

[fizzix]

As Eddie noted. Warriors only have two options for reliable monster detection: ESP and Rods of Detection. And the latter recharge so slowly as to be completely impractical for general use (though they are still important for the warrior's kit). Thus if you take away ESP then the warrior has no effective means to figure out what monsters are around him, which makes him far more prone to surprise instadeaths than any other class.

rods of detection are much more common in the current code after ewert's changes. In the last warrior game I played, I stopped picking them up because I already had 7 and found that to be sufficient.

Warriors also have _detect evil, which is as good as priests have until they find PB6. That covers most of the big breathers, leaving only a couple animals, azriel and the tarrasque.

[Timo Pietilä]

rods of detection are much more common in the current code after ewert's changes. In the last warrior game I played, I stopped picking them up because I already had 7 and found that to be sufficient.

Warriors also have _detect evil, which is as good as priests have until they find PB6. That covers most of the big breathers, leaving only a couple animals, azriel and the tarrasque.

Warriors and priests main concern is at and very close to stat-gain, where warriors and priests can't see hounds. Danger is not so much single big breathers, but groups of non-evil monsters. Rods of Detection are deep items, so either you dive in suicide rate which gets boring and annoying very fast, or very very slowly which also gets boring, but for other reason, to survive long enough to get that detection. Priests get PB6 before warriors get Rod of Detection.

Both are in many cases saved by telepathy.

Telepathy also allows you to lure monsters out of places so that you know all of time where they are, which is big tactical advantage. That is one thing none of the spells can offer and what I would miss a lot.

Of course with my change to ESP you could use low level Rings of searching and amulets of searching to get big enough PVAL that you can use it like telepathy until you find actual telepathy or other gear that allows you to survive.

Spells and devices are not as good as telepathy even if you could use them every single turn.

[PowerDiver]

The question is not whether warriors can manage with the proposed changes. The question is whether to choose yet another mechanic that further penalizes warriors in comparison to other classes.

Of the skills currently in the game, I'd say perception is most closely tied to archery. Not closely tied, but aiming and looking are sort of related. Certainly moreso than to spellcasting. It would be much better IMO to tie any changes to either a skill warriors are good at or to a stat such as DEX that warriors tend to emphasize from the beginning.

In the fantasy novels I read, it is the vanilla characters who are much more perceptive of loose floorboards, not the spellcasters who use spells instead.

[Derakon]

Mm, yes. I'd peg mages as generally be introspective and oblivious, and priests as generally being more concerned with people than things. It falls to the people who have to interact directly with the real world on a regular basis to actually directly notice things about it.

Buzzkill: warriors have slightly more HP than other classes, but not that much. Here's how HP breaks down:

Warrior: +2 CON / +9 hitdie
Paladin: +2 CON / +7 hitdie
Rogue: +1 CON / +6 hitdie
Ranger: +1 CON / +4 hitdie
Priest: +0 CON / +2 hitdie
Mage: -2 CON / +0 hitdie

A level-35 human (d10 hitdie base) warrior would have on average 359 hitpoints from hitdice (d19 hitdie; guaranteed 19 on first roll +34 additional rolls at average result of 10), while a ranger would have 269. A difference of 90 hitpoints -- decent, but not enough to make a serious difference against major breath weapons. Dunadan and high-elves also have a d10 base hitdie; half-trolls have a d12 base, elves have a d9 base, hobbits a d7, dwarves a d11. All pretty minor variations.

The CON bonus is harder to quantify. Per tables.c, increasing your CON from 18/100 to 18/120 gives you an extra 1 hitpoint per level, so at level 35 the warrior would get an extra 35 hitpoints compared to a priest, and significantly more than the mage would have -- but the difference is much less for the other melee-oriented classes which all also have CON bonuses. A warrior might have an easier time maxing his CON since he doesn't have to worry so much about spellcasting stats (though they do affect saving throw and device activation success, two things he does care deeply about). However, there's no guarantee that he'll end up with convenient CON-boosting gear that other classes wouldn't also choose to wield. Most artifacts in Angband are very class-agnostic; good for everyone (except the helms, which are often biased towards spellcasters, i.e. a bit away from warriors).

Incidentally, CON bonuses top out at 12.5 HP/level, at 18/200, for a final bonus of 625 HP. Our human warrior would have, on average, 509 HP from hitdice at level 50, meaning he ends up with 1134 HP once he maxes his CON. The human ranger gets 382 HP from hitdice for 1007 HP.

All in all, there's no way a warrior is going to be so much more durable than other classes that he can afford to be surprised by an enemy he didn't know about. Especially if he's going to play the same diving game that the other classes can -- which they can only manage through religious use of monster detection. And yeah, in my experience PB6 shows up before -Detection, especially since you only need 1 PB6 to provide all the monster detection you need, while you need lots of -Detection to make it a reliable way to keep track of monsters.

EDIT: this is the kind of post you write when you're sitting around on a Friday night waiting for an email to arrive before you go to bed...

[Timo Pietilä]

Of the skills currently in the game, I'd say perception is most closely tied to archery. Not closely tied, but aiming and looking are sort of related. Certainly moreso than to spellcasting. It would be much better IMO to tie any changes to either a skill warriors are good at or to a stat such as DEX that warriors tend to emphasize from the beginning..

I rather leave class/race completely out of the equation and go purely with equipment. No ties to stats and skills. That way warrior gets benefit from the change, not penalty from it. Where there was nothing previously is now ESP. Even just plain high PVAL helmet of seeing would be beneficial to warrior (no more trap detection needed).

I don't think that telepathy is overpowered either, especially if we restrict "looking" to monsters in LoS (monster list should just show the letter and general type for monsters out of LoS). Telepathy is game changing, but game needs things that change things. Same with Speed. It is not overpowered because game needs something that changes the situation to stay interesting. TY-era zangband was just crazy and "unbalanced", but it was also very fun which makes that "unbalancing" a balancing factor. If everything is same then game changes to boring grey mass, an assembly line work, where nothing really matters and everything is the same. Game is very badly balanced when it is boring. Balance is not synonym to equal power.

[buzzkill]

The question is not whether warriors can manage with the proposed changes. The question is whether to choose yet another mechanic that further penalizes warriors in comparison to other classes.

Are the classes supposed to be balanced? I seem to recall that maintaining balance-of-difficulty among classes wasn't all that important. It was OK for some classes to be easier or harder than others. Aside, with all the changes happening to V right now, do we need to worry about class balance after every change. Certainly fractional blows will tip the scale in the other direction.

[Magnate]

Are the classes supposed to be balanced? I seem to recall that maintaining balance-of-difficulty among classes wasn't all that important. It was OK for some classes to be easier or harder than others. Aside, with all the changes happening to V right now, do we need to worry about class balance after every change. Certainly fractional blows will tip the scale in the other direction.

Sadly not. When smoothing out the blows table I made a conscious effort not to make the game easier, so although the table is smoother (and the very early game is easier, with >1 blow obtainable earlier), the dex scale has been stretched (to max at 18/200 rather than 18/150). So this actually penalises warriors a bit more.

But your general point is valid: there's no point fretting about class balance in the midst of all this change. When we get close to releasing 3.2 we can, if class balance is important, make adjustments then in the absence of any further fundamental changes.

[Derakon]

There are degrees of difficulty, but requiring one of the classes to stumble about the dungeon half-blind while the others can actually see what's going on is too extreme.

Adding fractional blows will give all melee-reliant classes better crowd control, but that's in no way going to make up for the lack of information removing ESP would cause. I'd say, if you want to make up for that, you need warriors to have on average ~2000 hitpoints by the endgame. That might be enough. Of course, it renders fights where the warrior actually does know what's going on rather moot, which is why it hasn't happened.

[PowerDiver]

Are the classes supposed to be balanced? I seem to recall that maintaining balance-of-difficulty among classes wasn't all that important. It was OK for some classes to be easier or harder than others.

It's one thing to have harder classes. It is something else when every single choice penalizes the same class.

[Timo Pietilä]

It's one thing to have harder classes. It is something else when every single choice penalizes the same class.

Just to be clear: I don't see my change penalizing warriors, quite opposite. Which message are you referring to that you see as penalizing warriors, or if you see my change as penalizing warriors, why?

[PowerDiver]

Just to be clear: I don't see my change penalizing warriors, quite opposite. Which message are you referring to that you see as penalizing warriors, or if you see my change as penalizing warriors, why?

There are too many messages about different topics in this thread, and I think I have got things combined and confused in my mind.

I would prefer that perception or ESP or other observational things not be tied to stats or items preferred by spellcasters vs warriors. So IMO it would be bad to add bonuses to those skills to an amulet of wisdom or to an amulet of the magi. If you put them on a brand new amulet without int/wis boost, or on encumbering gloves, that would make me happier.

[Timo Pietilä]

There are too many messages about different topics in this thread, and I think I have got things combined and confused in my mind.

I would prefer that perception or ESP or other observational things not be tied to stats or items preferred by spellcasters vs warriors. So IMO it would be bad to add bonuses to those skills to an amulet of wisdom or to an amulet of the magi. If you put them on a brand new amulet without int/wis boost, or on encumbering gloves, that would make me happier.

That's easily arranged. With that change things would need some balancing anyway. Otherwise early amulets of searching and rings of searching would become a bit too powerful (wear three of those and have practically telepathy and detect everything as you walk).

Only thing that warriors and almost everybody will wear at some point is Helmet of Seeing, which could be perfect for this even without any kind of tweaking. Warriors could use Amulets of searching (ESP, but not current AoESP) very long when priests prefer WIS and mages Magi. Everybody prefers Trickery later. Especially at stat-gain warriors would benefit from this more than any other, because that amulet changes things for it more than it does for anybody else.

[Nomad]

the basic issue is that telepathy/esp should be incremental rather than binary

For a system we already have handy flags for, what about basing levels of ESP on the monster categories? If you run with the idea that the simpler the intelligence, the easier it is to pinpoint telepathically, then you could have something along the lines of:

ESP +1 - detects animals, orcs and trolls
ESP +2 - also detects giants
ESP +3 - also detects dragons
ESP +4 - detects everything with a brain

That way, even the lowest level of ESP remains useful for spotting packs of hounds, but higher levels will help you pick up a greater range of threats.