Monster list edits

**Derakon** · November 16, 2010, 05:00

My only complaints are making Gothmog immune to cold (balrogs are stereotypically fire-oriented) and giving Morgoth breath weapons. Morgoth's a spellcaster with a gigantic hammer, not a dragon.

That said, I'd be fine with adding gravity ball, sound ball, etc. spells that he could cast. It's mostly a thematic tweak, though spells also have more favorable damage calculations than breath weapons do since they aren't based on current HP.

**Timo Pietilä** · November 16, 2010, 05:42

I rather don't like Morgoth breathing. He is tough enough as he is, only thing that makes him "easy" to kill is preparation everybody makes before the last fight. If you add those breaths you actually make him easier, because then he does less summoning, melee and mana storms. If you want to make him worse remove BA_NETH and/or BO_MANA and S_MONSTERS.

Nothing else than gravity hounds, aether things and Kavlax should breathe gravity, definitely not Gothmog. That makes anything that deep too dangerous to deal with. You are basically forcing people to have +30 speed before facing Gothmog with this change, and it is not enough, because summons Gothmog does and blink effect of the Gravity + stunning (unless you have sound resistance). Add hit to blind and darkness storm to his arsenal instead: balrogs are creatures of fire and shadow. Remove blindness and confuse spells. Keep the cold resistance hole, but add acid resistance.

One thing I would hate in late demons is high element breaths that don't fit the description. BR_SHARD definitely don't fit the description of Balrog. Add darkness storm to Lungorthin too, one hit to blind and remove blindness and confuse spells.

Change that hit to confuse to UN_POWER for Pazuzu. Make your wands/staves in danger.

I like those unique monsters in your list to move deeper to stay where they are now. Azriel hardly is too tough for his depth (scary, yes, but deadly?) and Tarrasque 86 to 91 does it really matter? It still kills you if you are not aware of what it can do.

Drolem is rare enough that it doesn't matter that it is where it is as long as it is 2000+' deep. It is one of those "be careful" monsters, which are spice of the game. IMO it could be more shallow, not deeper monster.

**LostTemplar** · November 16, 2010, 07:45

Change Morgoth's casting rate form 1_in_3 to 1_in_2, this will help.

**ewert** · November 16, 2010, 11:42

I'm not in favor of those breath changes as well, especially not for Morgoth... Mostly what Timo said.

I've myself said it as well that monsters that are pure "avoid this crap" at the moment due to danger/reward ratio should be walking xp boosts ... dangerous ones. =P You should prolly go through the hounds xp values and change them a bit, I think some of the more dangerous hounds are not worth enough xp and some not so dangerous are, don't remember offhand which ones were off in the xp amounts.

**Timo Pietilä** · November 16, 2010, 12:00

Originally posted by ewert

You should prolly go through the hounds xp values and change them a bit, I think some of the more dangerous hounds are not worth enough xp and some not so dangerous are, don't remember offhand which ones were off in the xp amounts.

Multi-hued comes to mind. Those are relatively deep and have only basic4+poison breath which means you resist everything they breathe and damage is small. Maybe Air hound (poison breath) and Inertia (unlike gravity only slows you down).

**fizzix** · November 16, 2010, 16:24

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

I rather don't like Morgoth breathing. He is tough enough as he is, only thing that makes him "easy" to kill is preparation everybody makes before the last fight. If you add those breaths you actually make him easier, because then he does less summoning, melee and mana storms. If you want to make him worse remove BA_NETH and/or BO_MANA and S_MONSTERS.

See, I don't agree. These breaths, even resisted will do between 200-500 damage, which is pretty hefty. Unresisted they will do 550 a pop. Honestly, I don't like that summoning is Morgoth's best attack. I think that should be more of a Sauron thing. I meant to remove S_MONSTERS but forgot. I was debating removing BA_NETH too. I really don't want to make Morgoth just a summoner. I want him to be doing tons of damage. Increasing number of spells do not take away from melee chance either.

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

Nothing else than gravity hounds, aether things and Kavlax should breathe gravity, definitely not Gothmog. That makes anything that deep too dangerous to deal with. You are basically forcing people to have +30 speed before facing Gothmog with this change, and it is not enough, because summons Gothmog does and blink effect of the Gravity + stunning (unless you have sound resistance). Add hit to blind and darkness storm to his arsenal instead: balrogs are creatures of fire and shadow. Remove blindness and confuse spells. Keep the cold resistance hole, but add acid resistance.

Gothmog is the 3rd most dangerous monster in the game by level. Only Sauron and Morgoth should be harder. Right now he's too easy and a joke if you have fire immunity.

Why should gravity only be attributed to those specific monsters? You say he'd be too hard with BR_GRAV and you may be right, but it's worth finding out.

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

One thing I would hate in late demons is high element breaths that don't fit the description. BR_SHARD definitely don't fit the description of Balrog. Add darkness storm to Lungorthin too, one hit to blind and remove blindness and confuse spells.

I wouldn't be opposed to this. Although, I don't know why shards breath doesn't fit a Balrog. The definition of a balrog is very different depending on whether you use the Silmarillian or LoTR as your source. Silmarillian balrogs probably shouldn't be breathing at all. Is it specifically Shard that's a problem, would Sound breath be better?

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

Change that hit to confuse to UN_POWER for Pazuzu. Make your wands/staves in danger.

I specifically did not do this for a reason. Let UN_POWER be the domain of Balrogs. I didn't necessarily want Pazuzu to be stronger, just not completely inept to a character with lightning immunity.

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

I like those unique monsters in your list to move deeper to stay where they are now. Azriel hardly is too tough for his depth (scary, yes, but deadly?) and Tarrasque 86 to 91 does it really matter? It still kills you if you are not aware of what it can do.

We have a fundamental disagreement on this. I still am of the opinion that monster depth should accurately reflect their level as well as possible with a greater chance of OoD monsters spawning. Azriel has killed more of my characters than any monster besides drolems.

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

Drolem is rare enough that it doesn't matter that it is where it is as long as it is 2000+' deep. It is one of those "be careful" monsters, which are spice of the game. IMO it could be more shallow, not deeper monster.

See the above comment. moving drolems back a bit gives a character more chances to come across a rod of detection which is the only method of drolem detection for half the classes. (classes that are likely to have low stealth to boot) It's a 'be careful' monster that is impossible to be careful of, because you can't see it. However, the main reason was to keep it a level or two deeper than AMHDs. Those had to move back because the Ancient Dragons are now twice as powerful.

**Timo Pietilä** · November 16, 2010, 17:59

Originally posted by fizzix

Gothmog is the 3rd most dangerous monster in the game by level. Only Sauron and Morgoth should be harder. Right now he's too easy and a joke if you have fire immunity.

Why should gravity only be attributed to those specific monsters? You say he'd be too hard with BR_GRAV and you may be right, but it's worth finding out.

Gravity has damage cap of 200 which is around same as most unresistable elements, but with one difference, it has HP/3 not HP/6 divider, which means that as long as Gothmog has HP over 600 you get max damage from it. It hurts, slows, blinks and stuns. That's probably the most dangerous breath weapon in entire game. Time is another bad one because it can reduce stats through sustains.

Originally posted by fizzix

I wouldn't be opposed to this. Although, I don't know why shards breath doesn't fit a Balrog. The definition of a balrog is very different depending on whether you use the Silmarillian or LoTR as your source. Silmarillian balrogs probably shouldn't be breathing at all. Is it specifically Shard that's a problem, would Sound breath be better?

Sound is even worse. It is arguable that did the Balrogs use voice at all. Neither source mention anything about breathing fire like dragons even that they are spirits of fire. They do have and use spells, which was obvious in the LoTR book (but not in the movie). If we had a monster auras then Balrogs should have fire aura, burning you when you attack them. Powerful spells, maybe even manastorms do fit the theme.

IMO for each breath we should have equally damaging spell in form of "storm". Like mana and darkness storms mlvl is the deciding factor, not HP. Something like 15*mlvl + 10d10 for basic 4 and so on. Leave breaths to dragons, hydras and hounds.

**fizzix** · November 16, 2010, 19:18

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

Gravity has damage cap of 200 which is around same as most unresistable elements, but with one difference, it has HP/3 not HP/6 divider, which means that as long as Gothmog has HP over 600 you get max damage from it. It hurts, slows, blinks and stuns. That's probably the most dangerous breath weapon in entire game. Time is another bad one because it can reduce stats through sustains.

I agree it's the most dangerous breath weapon. And frankly, Gothmog needs a dangerous breath weapon. I don't think we'll agree on that gravity is inappropriate for him. Mana storm and darkness storm are possibilities, but frankly, they're boring. Gravity at least has interesting effects.

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

IMO for each breath we should have equally damaging spell in form of "storm". Like mana and darkness storms mlvl is the deciding factor, not HP. Something like 15*mlvl + 10d10 for basic 4 and so on. Leave breaths to dragons, hydras and hounds.

I agree with this completely. However, I'm not content to wait until these changes exist. I'd rather use the already existing breaths in the meantime, if only as an approximation.

**Derakon** · November 16, 2010, 19:39

Angband combat is all about controlling your position with respect to your enemies. Gravity attacks send that completely out the window, which is why they're so dangerous and so limited. Only four monsters in the entire game are even capable of hitting you with a gravity attack; one of them is a rare unique, and two of them have their spell lists so polluted with other breath weapons that they're incredibly unlikely to use gravity (1 in 108 chance on any given turn for the aether vortex; 1 in 95 chance on any given turn for the aether hound). The one monster that commonly uses gravity attacks is generally accepted to be one of the most dangerous monsters in the game, and remains so well after you get outside of its native depth.

Now imagine getting hit by a gravity breath and being dropped into the middle of a horde of angry greater demons. Are you going to survive that? Hell no. Especially not with your speed reduced. Even if you get Gothmog away from his escorts, he will summon more during the fight. In the late game, even spending a single turn in LOS of a group of powerful monsters is a huge risk; giving Gothmog gravity breath basically assures that that will happen when you fight him.

In other words, Gothmog with gravity breath = avoid, not worth killing.

**fizzix** · November 16, 2010, 20:03

Originally posted by Derakon

In other words, Gothmog with gravity breath = avoid, not worth killing.

You may be right. I'm sympathetic to this argument. But I'm not convinced until I try it.

**PowerDiver** · November 16, 2010, 20:35

Originally posted by fizzix

You may be right. I'm sympathetic to this argument. But I'm not convinced until I try it.

How would trying it help? Suppose it means a 5% chance you die in the battle. That is probably too dangerous to fight. It would not be so unlikely that you would fight and win 30 times and think fighting makes sense when it does not.

**Nick** · November 16, 2010, 20:53

How about BR_WALL for Gothmog?

**fizzix** · November 16, 2010, 20:54

Originally posted by PowerDiver

How would trying it help? Suppose it means a 5% chance you die in the battle. That is probably too dangerous to fight. It would not be so unlikely that you would fight and win 30 times and think fighting makes sense when it does not.

with save-scumming I could easily do 50 battles.

However, I don't need to die, I just need the gravity breath to put me in a situation where I can calculate the probability of dying.

Everyone is talking about the dread of gravity, however all our experience with gravity is from hounds which come in gigantic groups providing multiple breaths at once and kavlax, who you usually hold off fighting until he's a joke.

**Therem Harth** · November 16, 2010, 21:16

IIRC cold does not hurt Balrogs canonically. Gandalf mentions in The Two Towers that Durin's Bane became something slimy and hideously strong underwater, or something to that effect.

(This could lead to all kinds of interesting stuff, but it would take a lot of code unfortunately...)

Anyway let's see.

Gothmog:
- Hmm he already has plasma breath. And it doesn't do much damage.
- How about darkness breath? That does HP / 6 up to 400 damage last I checked.
- I'd say remove the fire breath and give him just plasma and darkness breaths, on the assumption that more powerful Balrogs are hotter. :P

Lungorthin:
- Maybe make him breath light? Yes, Balrogs are "fire and shadow" and canonically light is the stuff of the Valar, but Angband breaks canon plenty, and Lungorthin should be kind of unique IMO. So maybe remove the fire breath and give him light instead.

Pazuzu:
- Remove lightning bolts, he's got lightning balls already.
- Maybe give brain smash instead of mindblast?
- I concur regarding the earlier suggestion of UN_POWER.

Sauron:
- Yes, he's got way too many spells.
- I say remove mana, plasma, and ice bolts, and also terrify, blind, and fire balls. Sauron should not be stingy, he should start off with a bang.

Morgoth:
- Summon monsters is kind of lame, it should probably be removed.
- I want to say "remove mana bolt", but anything that further increases the likelihood of those mana storms might be a bad idea..
- Touch to drain charges feels wrong for Morgoth IMO. Maybe have him crush to invoke Time instead?

Monster list edits

Monster list edits

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