New monsters

[Derakon]

I've mentioned a few times that I'd like to expand the Vanilla monster set a bit. So here's my attempt.

I haven't tested these beyond inserting them into monster.txt and verifying that they can be used properly (via wizard-mode summon). Generally-speaking their stats are based on monsters of similar level/difficulty.

Vents: think stationary ungrouped Zephyr hounds. They provide an early introduction to the effects of various exotic breath weapons so players are more likely to know what a given Zephyr hound's threat level is. Generally speaking, I took each Zephyr hound entry and made the following modifications:
* Graphic changed from 'Z' to '.' (color unchanged)
* Depth reduced by 5 (shows up 5 levels earlier)
* HP reduced by 50%
* Breath frequency reduced from 1 in 5 to 1 in 4, or from 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 for the basic elemental vents, or to 1 in 1 for the aether vent.
* Added EMPTY_MIND, NEVER_MOVE, NEVER_BLOW.
* Added NO_CONF, NO_SLEEP where it was missing
* Removed FRIENDS

And of course, I rewrote the descriptions and tweaked the names (mostly "hound" => "vent", but also "Earth hound" => "Crystalline vent", etc.). I was very tempted to leave some of the descriptions alone save for the word swap (e.g. "A locus of conflicting points coalesce to form the vague shape of a huge vent. Or is it just your imagination?") but decided to avoid being too derivative.

I actually got killed by an aether vent in testing. Whoops!

Will add the next set in a bit. This post's getting a bit long and I may as well break things up by group. To add vents to the game, copy the contents of vents.txt to the end of monster.txt, then modify limits.txt so the maximum number of monsters is 638.

[fizzix]

Isn't this purpose already mostly accomplished by vortices? These just seem like non-moving vortices.

I can try test-playing them for you if you want, but I think I'll consider them to be another annoyance monster. (vortices are pretty much the definition of annoyance monster)

[Derakon]

Vortices are, at least in my opinion, largely annoying because they seek you out from across the dungeon and keep disturbing you by breaking down doors. Also they move erratically, so the ones you do want to take out carefully can be annoying to lure around corners. Vents don't move, so you can generally go around them if you have to. They also cover more breath weapons than vortices do -- there's no inertia vortex or gravity vortex.

Here's centaurs. Centaurs are basically brutes. They come in the following flavors: vanilla, archer, knight, shaman, lord. The archer shoots missiles very quickly, the shaman casts a few nasty spells, and the other three just hit you in melee, very hard. Knights and lords can stun and KO you, like mystics.

[fizzix]

these look interesting. Have you thought about putting an ESCORT tag on the centaur lords?

[Timo Pietilä]

these look interesting. Have you thought about putting an ESCORT tag on the centaur lords?

Say what now? Vanilla doesn't have centaurs.

I think those vents should definitely have breeder ability and be weaker than they are now.

...though I have a vague memory that stunning didn't count the damage of the hit so even 1d1 sound breaths times 10 breathers could lead to KO.

[Derakon]

I did think about adding escorts to the centaur lords, but the problem is that they'd end up being escorted by chimaerae and manticores and minotaurs and so on. Or jabberwocks. You want a centaur lord surrounded by jabberwocks? 'Cause I don't.

A few more miscellaneous monsters:

* Unicorn. Basically spams angels at you.
* Vampiric ooze: like ochre jellies, but drains experience.
* Distortion vortex: vortex that breathes chaos, gravity, inertia, and force.
* Solar fiend: greater demon with fire/electricity/plasma melee and breath attacks. I made this guy yellow; I recommend making mariliths blue to compensate.
* Diamond golem: mindless melee automaton, drops money.

Timo: fizzix was referring to the "Centaur lord" monster in the attachment to my second post in this thread. As for breeding vents, that sounds...nasty. They'd probably need even lower HP and reduced breath frequency if you went that route.

Also, remember that these guys are as-yet completely untested. They may be unbalanced! I'm just making up numbers that sound good compared to other creatures at these depths.

[Timo Pietilä]

Timo: fizzix was referring to the "Centaur lord" monster in the attachment to my second post in this thread. As for breeding vents, that sounds...nasty. They'd probably need even lower HP and reduced breath frequency if you went that route.

Somehow I missed that second post last part completely. I remember reading the part where you explain why you don't like vortices. I need coffee, haven't had my fix yet this morning...

[andrewdoull]

Isn't this purpose already mostly accomplished by vortices? These just seem like non-moving vortices.

Maybe make them deeper 'j'ellies?

Andrew

[buzzkill]

Can we have gravity vents that fiction like little black holes, casting spells at you that drag you closer to it until you're dragged into the vent and get dumped hard (big damage, stunning, KO) on the next deepest level. Ya know, highly aggressive trap doors.

[Adley]

And be very ready for a quick death with a great wyrm of Power just waiting for ya down there.

[fizzix]

I did think about adding escorts to the centaur lords, but the problem is that they'd end up being escorted by chimaerae and manticores and minotaurs and so on. Or jabberwocks. You want a centaur lord surrounded by jabberwocks? 'Cause I don't.

That's a good point. I thought of everything except for the jabberwock. (and I was even told to beware of it)

DaJ has centaur monsters as Ys I think. That letter is underused, but not terribly justified.

[Ycombinator]

One thing that bothers me about centaur archer is that missiles are pretty much harmless at that level, ARROW_3 is only 5d6 and ARROW_4 is 7d6. Can we actually make damage dependent on monster level? Consider the following table of all missile-firing monsters in the game:

Monster           Level   Damage dice
-------------------------------------
Novice ranger       4       1d6
Kobold archer       4       3d6
Black orc           13      3d6
Uruk                16      3d6
Orc captain         18      3d6
Ranger              20      3d6
Manticore           30      7d6
Master thief        34      3d6
Ranger cheiftain    41      up to 7d6
Drolem              44      5d6
Baphomet            58      7d6
Bile demon          61      7d6

Clearly something has to be done at deeper levels. I think that ranger chieftain should be firing arrows for ~100 damage and bile demon for ~150 (more than double resisted breath, but less than single resisted).

Solar fiend probably needs to be moved deeper from level 50. It's much more powerful than lesser balrog, and leser balrog is level 49. Lack of useless spells is great.

What about adding blind and/or confuse melee attack to Unicorn? Seems suitable for me.

[fizzix]

One thing that bothers me about centaur archer is that missiles are pretty much harmless at that level, ARROW_3 is only 5d6 and ARROW_4 is 7d6. Can we actually make damage dependent on monster level? Consider the following table of all missile-firing monsters in the game:

Not a bad idea. How about a simple linear scaling. Three missile values one is (dlevel/2) one is (dlevel/3) d6, one is (dlevel/5) d6.
The new options would be:

Monster           Level   Damage dice
-------------------------------------
Novice ranger       4       2d6/1d6/1d6  (was 1d6)
Kobold archer       4       2d6/1d6/1d6  (was 3d6)
Black orc           13      6d6/3d6 / 2d6 (was 3d6)
Uruk                16      8d6/5d6 / 3d6 (was 3d6)
Orc captain         18      9d6/6d6 /3d6 (was 3d6)
Ranger              20      10d6/6d6 / 4d6 (was 3d6)
Manticore           30      15d6/10d6 / 6d6 (was 7d6) 
Master thief        34      17d6/11d6 / 6d6 (was 3d6)
Ranger cheiftain    41     20d6/13d6 / 8d6  (was up to 7d6)
Drolem              44      22d6/14d6 / 8d6 (was 5d6)
Baphomet            58     29d6/19d6 / 11d6 (was 7d6)
Bile demon          61      30d6/20d6 / 12d6 (was 7d6)

[Derakon]

Andrew: you could make vents into jellies, I suppose. It seems a bit weird to me to have jellies that can breathe elements at you though.

Buzzkill: about the closest you can currently come to such a beast would be a monster with teleport-to and teleport-level spells. Not a very good facsimile. We could always add a new spell to teleport the player two spaces closer to the target, and a melee attack to teleport-level, though.

Fizzix: I was torn between 'q' and 'H' for centaurs, but given that they are, after all, half-human half-horse creatures, hybrid makes sense. And there aren't that many hybrids in their depth range; just minotaurs. That said, if you have ideas for better uses to put Y to, I don't think anyone would miss the yetis and sasquatches. They're very forgettable.

Ycombinator: the current arrow system is a bit odd, I'll grant. Thanks for making that table; it looks like currently the average ratio of max damage to monster level is 1.3. Bump that up to 2 and make a new spell ARROW_S (for "scaling") which deals (lvl / 3)d6 damage. Thus e.g. a black orc would shoot 4d6 arrows while a ranger chieftan would shoot 13d6.

We'd want to keep the existing fixed-damage arrows though; switching black orcs and uruks to this arrow would make them much more dangerous (uruks: 3d6 => 5d6), while kobold archers would get a big nerf (3d6 => 1d6).

EDIT: looks like fizzix covered this already with basically a similar approach.

[Ycombinator]

I agree that low-level monsters should remain where they are damage-wise, I was thinking about non-linear function, adding a new spell is probably a cleaner approach. But I think (lvl / 3)d6 is still not enough. Missile attack is rare and it should be taken into account when fighting a monster. 45 avg damage at dlvl 40 (ranger chieftain) and 70 avg at dlvl 60 (bile demon) is less than annoying, it's nothing.