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Just an idea, but...
Add a Resurrection spell which allows him to summon uniques that have previously been killed.
Add a Resurrection spell which allows him to summon uniques that have previously been killed.
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On the one hand, this would completely invalidate the "kill certain uniques so Morgoth can't summon them" strategy. On the other hand, it certainly would make the final fight more difficult. Hm.
I think it'd have to be its own spell distinct from S_UNIQUE, to make it clear why he's able to call uniques that are dead.Comment
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I don't like it. There's be absolutely no reason to kill the uniques.
I would propose removing S_MONSTER and limiting S_UNIQUE to uniques deeper than summoner level/2
The next obvious thing to remove is Nether Balls
I also wanted breath attacks but everyone else thought that was a terrible idea.Comment
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What if his HP optionally scaled with the number of uniques, or number of some subset of uniques (e.g. those native to DL>60), that were killed, say 2% increase per unique?Comment
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One crazy idea, which possibly involves much more coding than one wants to do for such an arguable change, but what about giving Morgoth an area wall destruction spell? Well, what about making all mana storms wall-disintegrating? No additional damage, but a challenge for LoS control?Comment
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In other words, give Morgoth a disintegration attack? Takes out walls, rubble, doors, and items, radius 3 ball, base 200 damage, and this damage DOES carry through. Morgoth's allowed to target this attack WITHOUT LOS being present; its point of origin becomes the first solid thing it encounters (not counting items or traps.)Comment
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Well, we probably don't want to take it to extremes, but that's the spirit.
Attack without direct LoS I didn't think of, but it's very interesting too.Comment
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Probably requires 4GAI, which for example NPP has. Also IIRC NPP has that disintegration attack (or manastorm acts like it).
4GAI is so big change in monster behavior that it requires a lot of work, so probably not going to happen anytime soon with all the other stuff going on right now.Comment
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There isn't quite a disintegration attack. But with our implementation of the UNAngband terrain, floors and walls are affected by spells. For example, if you are in a puddle of water, and an ancient white dragon breathes frost, the floor is likely to freeze. Or an ice wall can be melted by a powerful fireball attack.
The NPP 4gai does allow for, if the player is slightly out of sight of the monster, for monster ball spells to be cast on the square next to the player, so the player gets splash damage. But this is mostly to foil the pillar dance tactic.NPPAngband current home page: http://nppangband.bitshepherd.net/
Source code repository:
https://github.com/nppangband/NPPAngband_QT
Downloads:
https://app.box.com/s/1x7k65ghsmc31usmj329pb8415n1ux57Comment
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The reason Morgoth is not so dangerous is because you can prep to face him.
If you really want to make Morgoth dangerous, give him a ranged instakill attack he uses 0.1% of the time. Anything else just means more scumming for !Life and !*Heal before you fight him.Comment
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I don't think your argument really works. As long as you're willing to scum for Life and *Heal* then nothing (including Morgoth) is dangerous because you can always use escapes and scumming until you have "enough" healing/escapes/equipment to face enemy X. But in fact, lots of things do end up being dangerous because either people are lazy, or don't pay attention, or don't know their danger, or are trying to get a low turncount, or are playing ironman, etc, etc.
Even for those players who are careful and obsessively prepare for the final battle I can think of lots of things that would make Morgoth more dangerous other than an instakill spell:
1. A spell Morgoth can cast that permanently prevents the player from leaving dungeon until the player or Morgoth is dead (there are a couple ways you could handle *Destruction* under this scheme--the most obvious would be that either the effect fails or that Morgoth would be unaffected). This would mean that you couldn't bail on the fight and just scum for more potions... once you'd committed you had to see it through. Even if the chances of it being cast were low, it would pose a serious risk.
2. Once Morgoth sees the player, letting Morgoth follow the player to all future levels (e.g. town, dungeon level 1, etc). This way, the player can still teleport around and try to escape, but can't actually use level changing resets. Again, *Destruction* might need to be handled in a special way (although having to cast *Destruction* once per level would be kind of hilarious, and *Destruction* also doesn't work in town).
3. Giving Morgoth the ability to destroy items and/or equipment with attacks (regardless of resistance/immunity) possibly destroying an entire stack (or just far more than a normal attack). Getting all your teleport level scrolls destroyed could be pretty bad for a Warrior, obviously. Same for magic books. This would remove many of the assurances players normally have of escapes. Again, the chances of this happening might be small, but it would still be something to plan around (and the idea that there's a infinitesimal chance that one hit from Morgoth destroys all of a player's inventory/equipment is both terrifying and kind of cool in a sick way). Destroying equipment is something nothing else in the game can do currently (except for ?Curse Weapon/Armor).
4. Making teleport spells (or maybe all spells) less reliable when being cast in Morgoth's dread presence. Maybe this just means capping success rates for spells at 95%. Maybe this goes for scrolls/staves/wands/rods/potions also.
I think your point is that with so much preparation, anything that doesn't kill the player in one turn is useless with 100% reliable single-turn escapes/healing. I would propose that rather than giving instakill attacks, a better solution is to make things less reliable. I think we can agree that anything other than this just changes the kinds of preparation players have to make (rather than adding new serious risks to the fight).
Anyway, I'm not saying I plan to implement these drastic changes (although I'm not saying I won't either) just that I think they are other valid approaches to making Morgoth harder/more dangerous.Comment
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