Question about breath

[Wraitheist]

When a monster breathes fire, poison, or whatever, how does this work? Does the distance from the monster affect damage? Also, I think I read somewhere that breath weapons do less damage when the monster in question is low on health...is that accurate?

[Timo Pietilä]

When a monster breathes fire, poison, or whatever, how does this work? Does the distance from the monster affect damage? Also, I think I read somewhere that breath weapons do less damage when the monster in question is low on health...is that accurate?

Damage doesn't get smaller by distance in vanilla, in other variants maybe, depending of the variant in question.

Monster HP does affect damage, but there are caps. Basic four are capped at 1600 points, poison at 800, nether at 550 and rest 500-150 depending which element is in question (the big ones, chaos, shard, sound and disenchantment are all 500).

All basic element, including poison, damages are 1/3 of monster HP, for high elements it varies from 1/3 to 1/6 IIRC.

[Derakon]

That's 1/3rd of current monster HP, so yes, a nearly-dead dragon's breath is nowhere near as dangerous as that of a healthy dragon.

[Wraitheist]

I see. Does your distance to the monster determine its chance of breathing? Or is that also irrelevant?

[Derakon]

Breathing is just a type of spell attack. Each monster has a frequency with which they use spell attacks; if they choose not to use a spell, then they'll move closer to you, or attack in melee if they're already adjacent. That's it. Vanilla monsters aren't very bright, though some variants have a more advanced AI.

[Wraitheist]

Gotcha, thanks!

[nppangband]

I see. Does your distance to the monster determine its chance of breathing? Or is that also irrelevant?

In variants with 4gai, such as NPP, Oangband, FAngband, Sangband, spellcasters and breathers have distances they prefer to be from the player, and they are more likely to cast at that distance. Also, the damage from the cone shaped breaths do decrease with distance. Standard 4gai I think the damage starts dropping at a range of about 6. In NPP damage starts dropping about 8 squares away.