new player - mystic - unconscious mechanic

[dve82]

hey guys.
i started playing angband 2 weeks ago. lost 2 chars so far, the 1st death was my fault, but the 2nd one i have questions about.

1st death: dunadan rogue, clvl~34, dlvl~45: i died to hounds who ported me around and breathed me to death.
no problem with that one, because i had 2 or 3 actions to scroll of teleport level, but i was just too cocky.

2nd death: high-elf rogue, clvl~38, dlvl~58: gm mystic immobilized me somehow.....
i had ALL resistances covered, also stun resistance/free action, and i've never had a problem with stuns so far.
i just wanna understand the mechanic behind it, i'm no big fan of spoilers, but understanding the mechanics like how resistances work for example, i dont consider spoilers.

i've read how resistances for dmg spells work (perma+temp possible), and that binary spells like fear, confusion, (and stun???) you resist totally if you got this particular resistance covered.
i've no problem with high dmg breaths, since i prioritized getting resistances, and being cautious.
i've no problem with those nasty hounds, or summoning mechanics, or uniques that might have special abilities, BUT..

meeting this mystic who perma-stunned and tickled me to death *despite* having stun resistance made me a bit frustrated^^.

i mean, am i supposed to not melee ANY mob, because it could render me unconscious??? despite FA?


so, my questions:
* are all stuns capable of making you unconcious?
* or is this just a very special mechanic for the mystic?
* if yes, are there other monsters with unique mechanics that dont apply anywhere else or are exceptions?

dont get me wrong, as i mentioned, i'm no fan of spoilers or cheating, i just want to understand the mechanics, i've always loved reading game manuals too
[and yes, i know, every1 has another opition about the grey-zone cheating/spoilers :x]


i would appreciate your response

[EpicMan]

Welcome!

The general answer is that Mystics (and the stronger versions of Mystics, not sure if they are included in standard or 'Vanilla' Angband or not) have special melee attacks that are very likely to stun and then paralyze you, and there is no resistance in the game that can save you from it. You should generally run away from mystics or kill them with arrows/bolts/shots/wands/magic if needed. Even a max-level character with endgame-quality gear can be killed easily by these guys.

There are many monsters at any given stage of the game you should avoid, but Mystics are on the short list of monsters that you must flee no matter how strong you become.

The technical answer is that most monster attacks have a chance to stun you, but the weird way the chance is calculated means that Mystics can quickly stun/heavy stun/paralyze you while monsters have a microscopic chance of stunning you (not paralyzing, just stunning).

While Free Action does protect against attacks that directly paralyze you (Floating Eyes, Carrior Crawlers) it does not prevent stunning, so that doesn't help either.

[Derakon]

Stunning is tracked by a counter which has two thresholds: below the first, you're merely stunned; below the second, you're heavily stunned; anything else and you're knocked out.

To my knowledge, protection from stunning is not currently available in the game. There is protection from sound, which will prevent sound-based attacks from stunning you (and may also protect you from plasma-based stunning), but if I recall correctly it doesn't protect against melee-based stunning. It used to, but the devs are trying to split that stuff out so that elemental protection only protects against the element and doesn't implicitly give secondary benefits.

Monsters can stun you when they roll well on their damage dice. I looked this up awhile back and it's pretty horribly arcane stuff, but the bottom line is that if the monster deals more than a minimum amount of damage and does near the maximum damage it is capable of dealing with a given blow, then that blow will stun you. Grand master mystics have melee attacks that deal enough damage to pass the first test and that are all rolling 1-sided dice (e.g. 20d1, 30d1), which means that they always deal 100% of the damage they are capable of dealing. Basically that means that if they hit you with those special attacks (as opposed to their other attacks which IIRC are d2s) they stun you.

If you are stunned, pretty much for any reason, you should make it a priority to get un-stunned. A potion of cure critical wounds will do the trick. Stunning bumps your minimum spell failure rate to 20%, makes you worse at using wands, staves, and rods, and destroys your to-hit and to-damage bonuses -- and of course, future stuns could push you into heavy-stun and then knockout.

Unfortunately there's no good way to learn this without dying. Knockouts are pretty much guaranteed to be lethal, so the first time you find out about them you'll die. Up to then you have no way of knowing that there's a worse status beyond heavy stun -- and with grand master mystics you may not even get a turn between normal stun and knocked out.

[EpicMan]

Perhaps we should remove the weird calculations and make it a flat 1-in-X roll for attacks to stun. We would want to add a new blow type that always stuns and have mystics and the like use it for their attacks.

That would approximate the current situation with much more understandable mechanics, and monster memory would indicate the monsters that stun.

Or we could just drop the stun calculations and make Mystics do 10K damage a blow, it's pretty much the same thing

[Max Stats]

There are many monsters at any given stage of the game you should avoid, but Mystics are on the short list of monsters that you must flee no matter how strong you become.

Absolutely correct, especially the Master and Grand Master variety. To add to this, their drops are completely boring, so there is no reason to want to kill them, other than to avenge other characters' prior deaths. Mostly they exist as a trap to players who are either too cocky or too ignorant to know better.

[dve82]

thx for the detailed explanations.
those mystics are really badass, i mean, generally to dodge melee fighting is not too hard with high speed/phasing+shooting.. but there is also their ability to summon

another thing: i stumbled over the term "trample" in another post.. and that some monsters can trample others..
probably a stupid question, but can i be trampled :> ? or do those probably have a higher chance to stun me?
..i guess i got a bit paranoid about getting immobilized and not being able to do anything, since that mystic encounter :x

thx in advance

[EpicMan]

No, fortunately you can't be trampled, just non-unique monsters. That would truly be evil. ):-)

Another (probable) instadeath to watch out for is the Drolem (unless you have poison resistance).

[Roch]

I had a "knocked out" death in the current competition, from plasma hounds (the character is number two on the comp ladder right now). I was doing o.k., but I was ignoring the normal "you are stunned" messages. I don't recall ever seeing a "you are heavily stunned" message, but I was hitting the buttons pretty fast. Then I was knocked out and then dead. I will be avoiding plasma hounds from now on. It would be nice to be able to get a heavy stun warning similar to a low hit point warning, if that's possible.

[Timo Pietilä]

2nd death: high-elf rogue, clvl~38, dlvl~58: gm mystic immobilized me somehow.....
i had ALL resistances covered, also stun resistance/free action, and i've never had a problem with stuns so far.

You probably didn't have speed covered. One double-move from GMMystic can knock you out. I don't think there is any protection against melee-stunning in angband. In dev versions there is no stun protection at all. Some old versions sound resist made you completely immune to all kinds of stunning but at some point melee (and earthquake) stunning was removed from it. Not sure what the dev-team is planning for that, because they don't talk about those much in here.

[SSK]

Absolutely correct, especially the Master and Grand Master variety. To add to this, their drops are completely boring, so there is no reason to want to kill them, other than to avenge other characters' prior deaths. Mostly they exist as a trap to players who are either too cocky or too ignorant to know better.

Ya no sheit. I had a recent character killed by a master mystic that didn't even touch me--i was slowed by some inertia hounds and teleported a few times on level: got to full HP no problem but still slowed and along wanders this master mystic all by himself--I had 1 turn to TO him, and I didn't think of it (thinking very stupidly I could melee him) and the next turn he summoned some number of time hounds among others (I can't tell exactly because I was RIP before I knew it).

My avoid list now includes:
Gravity hounds
Inertia hounds
Time hounds
Plasma Hounds
Aether hounds
Master and GM Mystics
Titans can be VERY nasty to melee with their stunning too. I don't like facing them.

I guess this is the contemporary equivalent of avoiding AMHDs in old old Moria/Umoria where there was no such thing as poison resistance and they could typically insta-death you with their poison breath. Now and then you could fight them if you had +4 speed I think (or was it +3?)

I think mages and those with Celeborn would be wise to banish "Z" on every level they play.

[zaimoni]

so, my questions:
* are all stuns capable of making you unconcious?

If you let them build up. CON is useful for bleeding off the counter faster, but you probably want appropriate cure potions on hand.

* or is this just a very special mechanic for the mystic?

The mystics do not have any special mechanics; it just is that it's very hard to get less than 95% of maximum damage with one-sided dice, so their hits always do enough damage to trigger stun checks. (E.g., a monster that attacks for 2d8 will trigger a stun check on a natural sixteen. 2d10 will trigger a stun check on natural 19 or natural 20.]

The second saving throw to avoid stun is for weak hits, and has 0% success when the incoming damage is 20 or higher.

[Derakon]

Plasma hounds aren't usually a big deal, but you do need to avoid getting large numbers in LOS at the same time. My avoid list, off the top of my head:

* Anything that drains charges (beholders, liches, balrogs). Sure I could ditch my wands and staves, but it's generally too much bother.
* Mystics
* Time/gravity/inertia whatevers
* Bone and bronze golems -- just too tough to be worth wearing down, generally.
* Anything that hits to confuse (night mares, titans, Thuringwethil), since my randart games are pretty much always going without pConf
* Upper-tier quylthulgs
* Temporarily, vampire lords and elder vampires. Just generally annoying when in-depth. Vampire lords are also frustratingly common.
* Top-tier uniques: Huan, Charcharoth, Tarrasque, Ungoliant, Ancalagon, Maeglin, Gabriel, Azriel, Gorlim, Kavlax, Lorgan, Mim and his sons. Maeglin on down I'll eventually kill if I see them before ending the game, but I generally leave the rest alone. If they get summoned during the final fight, well, that's why I fight in destructed zones.

This is almost certainly incomplete, but it should give you some idea of how I approach things.

[Max Stats]

The mystics do not have any special mechanics; it just is that it's very hard to get less than 95% of maximum damage with one-sided dice

Which makes me wonder: How do you throw a one-sided die? How do you even make one? Is this some sort of Möbius die?

[Tobias]

Which makes me wonder: How do you throw a one-sided die? How do you even make one? Is this some sort of Möbius die?

I think the ones they sell look almost the same as d100. Only with the edges filed down a bit.

[PowerWyrm]

I don't think there is any protection against melee-stunning in angband.

A higher AC?