Drops to benefit monsters before they die?

[Chud]

This is probably an impractical and difficult idea, but...

As I understand it now (from what people have said; I have not looked at the code for this myself), item drops are generated at the time a monster is killed, correct?

How difficult would it be to change that so that drops are generated at the time the monster is generated, and then at least certain benefits of whatever it's carrying might apply to it?

Thus, for example, you're wondering why your fire bolt has no effect on that Swordsman, and then he drops Firestar and it makes sense... or, Boldor is moving faster than you know he's supposed to, and he drops a whatever of speed.

I have a hunch that this would be a major re-write to implement, and perhaps difficult to balance also, but it would add some fun realism and unpredictability. Although I know why this happens, I've still thought on occasion "the novice priest was carrying *that*?? And he didn't think to use it against me???"

Of course, certain possibilities could make already-difficult monsters much more dangerous than they already are, too...

:-)

[Derakon]

NetHack has this, which leads to the infamous "Gnome with a Wand of Death" issue. Angband of course doesn't have wands of death, but it does have players with far fewer hitpoints than monsters do; a monster with a wand of firebolt is far more dangerous than a player with same. There's also the question of sorting out what creatures can use what items. Can dragons wear helms? What about crowns? How many amulets could a hydra wear? (Ignoring for the moment that hydas only carry cash)

That said, I'm not opposed to the concept on principle. I just think it'd be a loooot of work, and almost certainly variant territory. But if you implement it, let us know so we can try it out!

(A notional object-oriented implementation of Angband would probably be better-suited to this as presumably both the player and all monsters would be descended from a root Creature class with an inventory and equipment slots)

[Atarlost]

You can also look forward to never ever finding healing potions because the monsters you've been fighting drank them all.

[Adley]

You can also look forward to never ever finding healing potions because the monsters you've been fighting drank them all.

You don't need healing potions. Morgoth will have 10 rods of *healing* and 10 of speed

[Timo Pietilä]

You don't need healing potions. Morgoth will have 10 rods of *healing* and 10 of speed

I'm thinking more likely he will have scrolls of banishments and rods of teleport other. *destruction* for emergency.

[NotMorgoth]

And what if Sauron has the One Ring?

[Derakon]

Oddly enough, the One Ring won't make Sauron that much stronger. His speed would increase by 17%, his melee attacks would do ~25% more damage on average, and he'd patch his acid resistance hole, but that's about it.

[Atarlost]

But patching his acid resistance hole is almost like increasing his hitpoints by 50%. Possibly more if you've got a big non-slay weapon like the Glaive of Pain or a dearth of high level slay evil weapons in your randart set since slay evil isn't available in rings like acid brand is.

[EpicMan]

I think it would be a lot easier to code (add pointer to item array, give monsters powers of carried gear) than it would be to balance.

It would also require additional AI to use activations, devices and the like.

Angband as-is is probably too long a game for "the uruk reads a scroll of *destruction* - more - you die"

I think a monster-uses-drops variant would either need a shorter dungeon or be balanced around an ironman-style "don't go back to the previous floor" so that total play time is shorter.


Such a game would be brutal, but crazy fun. Kind of like the earlier versions of Zangband.

Hmm, maybe I need to download Git and try this out...

[Adley]

You die?
Uniques don't die by destruction. they get WOR.

[Derakon]

But patching his acid resistance hole is almost like increasing his hitpoints by 50%. Possibly more if you've got a big non-slay weapon like the Glaive of Pain or a dearth of high level slay evil weapons in your randart set since slay evil isn't available in rings like acid brand is.

Sauron is a cakewalk if you take advantage of his resistance hole. He's meant to be balanced without the use of acid-branded equipment. On the assumption that you aren't using that exploit, the other modifiers to his base abilities that the One Ring would grant aren't that significant.

[Timo Pietilä]

Sauron is a cakewalk if you take advantage of his resistance hole. He's meant to be balanced without the use of acid-branded equipment.

I think the whole reason Sauron has that resistance hole is way back in time when acid brand didn't exist at all and most effective rod was acid ball and mages didn't have same spells as they do now and acid bolt was actually one of the most damaging one.

Easy fix is to give Sauron that resist. A bit less agreeable fix would be to remove acid brand completely and/or branding rings and ammo branding spells.

In old days when everything was not quite as smoothed out "for balance" and game had a bit more variation there was no acid (or poison) brand and elec brand was actually *5 brand like kill-slays. To compensate change some of the weapons that did have *5 elec brand did get upgraded weapon base damage Taratol was 2d4, Aule was 5d5 and so on.

[Derakon]

I think the whole reason Sauron has that resistance hole is way back in time when acid brand didn't exist at all and most effective rod was acid ball and mages didn't have same spells as they do now and acid bolt was actually one of the most damaging one.

You're probably right, though IIRC Rift is the only new mage spell. The main thing is that Raal's used to be the rarest mage spellbook, so there was no guarantee you'd have it by the time you faced Sauron. Oldschool mages really were all about melee + Globe.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

When is the monster's drop actually *created*? There's no great reason right now to do it before the critter gets killed...and good reason not to. That's even before trying to deal with the issue of monster item use.

[Derakon]

Yes, currently, monster drops are created on death. You can verify this by save scumming, though you'll have to change the RNG state to get a different drop. Obviously any system where monsters use the items they have (or where players can steal from monsters, etc.) would have to generate those items when the monster is created.