Monster list edits

[Whelk]

more powerful Balrogs are hotter. :P

Well, yeah - they can afford the cosmetic surgery.

[Derakon]

Touch to drain charges severely restricts your options and makes many fights more difficult than they otherwise would be. No staves of speed / destruction / healing / magi / etc unless you're willing to drop them out of the blast zone, and retrieve them whenever you want to use them. If anything should have this much power, it's Morgoth.

He also hits to drain all stats. It doesn't penetrate sustains, but if it did, melee would be completely unfeasible, as opposed to currently being the niche option for those with ridiculously burly melee and/or infinite cheap heals.

[Lord Fell]

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to give Morgoth a "Summon_Unique" ability... if there are any uniques left in the game, perhaps a scrap with Morgoth ought to finish the list.
...of course, if someone spent a lot of time and trouble avoiding some of the worse uniques out there, this wouldn't exactly reward that style of play.

Morgoth generally "worked alone," in The Silmarillian. As a rule, he just didn't need to rely on Underlings -who could assail the mightiest of the Valar? OK, well Fingolfin took a round or seven out of him, but still...

I still like the idea that Morgoth should be able to summon Balrogs and Dragons... they are his most thematic servitors. I would be OK with his summoning chances be reduced, so that he is relying primarily on his own badassness to defeat the player.

It seems to me that one of the problems is that "Balls" and "Storms" are auto-hits... but when creatures that summon groups of helpers ALSO cast Ball spells or Breathe elements, they tear up their own escort pretty good. I think that the obvious fix for this would be to switch to Bolts... but Bolts must not be auto-hit, if someone hasn't already done this...
Maybe one of the solutions would be to have Bolts become an auto-hit as well? Or, I guess (again) the problem is that the Bolt won't necessarily hit the player, it'll wind up in a summoned helpers back... so, the bolt needs to strike in Line of Sight, without actually having to pass through the intervening squares.

[d_m]

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to give Morgoth a "Summon_Unique" ability...

If you look in lib/edit/monster.txt for the Morgoth entry you'll notice the line "S:S_HI_DEMON | S_HI_DRAGON | S_HI_UNDEAD | S_MONSTERS | S_UNIQUE | S_WRAITH".

S stands for SUMMON in this context

[Derakon]

Lord Fell: in fact, it's not terribly uncommon for players to go out of their way to kill uniques off before fighting Morgoth so he can't summon them. There's also a minor semi-exploit of leaving weak uniques alive and killing all the others so that his summon-uniques spell pulls in a bunch of chump mooks instead of something actually threatening, though in practice, I don't think people usually bother with this.

Bolt spells auto-hit, but monsters won't use them if they don't have a clear path to hit the player.

Ball spells do a lot of damage to the player, but typically that's still chump change compared to a monster's hitpoints. A full-strength manastorm from Morgoth deals 500-600 damage, or about one melee round's worth of damage from the player if they have really good melee.

The problem with making Morgoth stand on his own is that you basically end up turning him into a clone of the Tarrasque. Single monsters aren't really capable of posing a threat unless they just stick to churning out damage as fast as possible, and that's not very interesting to fight. Morgoth's summons mean that you have to be careful to avoid getting lots of powerful monsters into LOS; they really open up the tactical decisions required.

[Nick]

Morgoth generally "worked alone," in The Silmarillian. As a rule, he just didn't need to rely on Underlings -who could assail the mightiest of the Valar? OK, well Fingolfin took a round or seven out of him, but still...

He only fought Fingolfin reluctantly, and apart from that never fought anyone (apart from Finwe, I guess, but he was unarmed). For example, in the War of Wrath:
"...seeing that his hosts were overthrown and his power dispersed, Morgoth quailed, and he dared not come forth himself. But he loosed upon his foes the last desperate assault that he had prepared, and out of the pits of Angband there issued the winged dragons..."

IMHO he is the archetypal summoner.

[fizzix]

He only fought Fingolfin reluctantly, and apart from that never fought anyone (apart from Finwe, I guess, but he was unarmed). For example, in the War of Wrath:
"...seeing that his hosts were overthrown and his power dispersed, Morgoth quailed, and he dared not come forth himself. But he loosed upon his foes the last desperate assault that he had prepared, and out of the pits of Angband there issued the winged dragons..."

IMHO he is the archetypal summoner.

I don't think you're suggesting he become a moving version of Qlzzqlzuup (or whatever he's called) Some balance is necessary for gameplay reasons. Right now, I think he summons a bit too much and attacks a bit too little. Even with summon hi-undead or summon demons you're bound to hit a summon that gets weaker monsters who will persist until he lands a blow or mana storms. I don't think I've ever had a summon ancient dragons that allowed me to stay in LoS. Maybe if I had the One...

Yes, getting rid of S_Monster or restricting S_Unique to monsters over dlevel 50 or so will help. And those are good ideas. But causing him to have more area of effect attacks that destroy his weaker summons also helps.