new player - mystic - unconscious mechanic

[Max Stats]

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.

We used to call those marbles.

[Timo Pietilä]

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?

D*mn, now I just have to get Möbius die from somewhere to add my collection off odd-sided dices. I and few of my friends played many different RPG:s a while a back and I have some dices that could be used as jewelry if there were no numbers on the sides.

[Zikke]

In my opinion, the Mystic class of monsters should not be able to insta-knockout at all; it's a "random" death, especially to new players, and doesn't really fit in the rest of the game. They are dangerous enough with regular stuns and with their crazy sumnons. There aren't really (m)any other "unique" abilities of other monsters; this one never really made sense to me.

[Thraalbee]

I like Mystics. Eh, No! But I like them being in the game just as they are.
At a certain level of powerfulness I am actually happy to find a Q summoning hoards of demons or great wyrms every once in a while, and at that point I find it refreshing to know that there are not just Unique's but also foes such as the Grand Master Mystic that I would never want to meet en masse.

I can't recall when last I lost a game to a Mystic but I can definitely remember fleeing from fights going badly just as I can recall the satisfaction of killing them off when I have what it takes.

Most players will realize rather quickly that you need high speed and lot's of healing capacity to fight any type of Mystic, and all should have escapes available when they turn up. Also, when the first Grand Master Mystic appears you will hardly be surprised to find it even more deadly than it's lesser siblings.

[Max Stats]

I like Mystics. Eh, No! But I like them being in the game just as they are.
At a certain level of powerfulness I am actually happy to find a Q summoning hoards of demons or great wyrms every once in a while, and at that point I find it refreshing to know that there are not just Unique's but also foes such as the Grand Master Mystic that I would never want to meet en masse.

Hmmm. We sometimes see suggestions to make the game harder. How about giving Grand Master Mystics the "breeds explosively" flag?

[SSK]

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.

So just for the heck of it I decided to take on a GM Mystic just now. Given advice here, I first decided to try to OoD him and arrow him to death, but I was getting nowhere because he kept healing and summoning nasty hounds and I either had to TO him and kill the hounds, or banish the hounds blah blah blah.

Anyway I finally decided even though I **really** don't want to lose this character with Aule, Dal-i-thalion, Dor-Lomin, Gondor, ring of speed, and Rod of speed, that this dungeon wasn't big enough for the both of us and I meleed him.

I got to +28 speed with Gondor and the rod, and hit him several times with Aule. I killed him easily. At first when I went to write this, I was about to ask if the code RE: stunning had changed because he didn't even stun me once, and neither did the vibration hounds he summoned. However, carefully reviewing the fight blow-by-blow I realized that was because he swung at me a total of 12 times and landed a kick precisely **once**. And then I noticed Gondor has sound resistance LOL, which was fortunate since there were endless vibration hounds.

So looks like I got really lucky (well I did have AC 175 so mot sure how this affects his ability to land on me).

Not sure I will try this again but at least I was rewarded with a scroll of *destruction*--trying to build those endgame consumables... of course finding something like Thorin, Feanor, Elessar, Trickery, or a ring of power would be nice too :-)

BTW why are we fighting Huan anyway? He's a good doggie... If we are paring down uniques I wouldn't mind starting with him--he's on our side.

p.s. Derakon I just found another Elvenkind shield (with Nether) but it's less useful to me at the moment than Celegorm. Still trying to work out telepathy while wearing Gondor--can't do it at the moment.

[Philip]

Hmmm. We sometimes see suggestions to make the game harder. How about giving Grand Master Mystics the "breeds explosively" flag?

Um, you forgot about pack monster and always awake. Also, give them a new flag, nobanish, which you can probably guess what it does. Maybe also nodetect and no telepathy and make them native to dlevel 1.

[Zyphyr]

Um, you forgot about pack monster and always awake. Also, give them a new flag, nobanish, which you can probably guess what it does. Maybe also nodetect and no telepathy and make them native to dlevel 1.

Why DL1? Stick em in town.

[Derakon]

Around 1985 I started sending out source to other universities. Just before a OU / Texas football clash, I was asked to send a copy to the Univeristy of Texas... I couldn't resist... I modified it so that the begger on the town level was 'An OU football fan' and they moved at maximum rate. They also multiplied at maximum rate... So the first step you took and woke one up, it crossed the floor increasing to hundreds of them and pounded you into oblivion... I soon received a call and provided instructions on how to 'de-enhance' the game!

Source

[Timo Pietilä]

In my opinion, the Mystic class of monsters should not be able to insta-knockout at all; it's a "random" death, especially to new players, and doesn't really fit in the rest of the game.

They are not able to insta-KO. They can do that only with double-move, which is very bad and new players need to learn that fact. You need to be as fast or faster than your opponent. Many monsters can kill you with double-move.

[Derakon]

Your stun timer is increased by a variable amount depending on how much damage the monster deals, as well as a random supercharge if the attack dealt at least 20 damage. Grand master mystics have two guaranteed-critical attacks: a 20d1 poison hit and a 15d1 paralyze hit. Without the supercharging these will add on average d50+50 and d20+20 to your stun timer, respectively (with supercharging, the former could get up to 500, a 1 in 8 chance). You get knocked out when the stun timer hits 100.

...that seems wrong; is it really that easy to get knocked out? Anyone else care to look at the code and tell me if I'm misreading it? Stun timer additions are handled in monster/melee1.c, and the breakpoints are in set_stun() in player/timed.c

[myshkin]

Your stun timer is increased by a variable amount depending on how much damage the monster deals, as well as a random supercharge if the attack dealt at least 20 damage. Grand master mystics have two guaranteed-critical attacks: a 20d1 poison hit and a 15d1 paralyze hit. Without the supercharging these will add on average d50+50 and d20+20 to your stun timer, respectively (with supercharging, the former could get up to 500, a 1 in 8 chance). You get knocked out when the stun timer hits 100.

...that seems wrong; is it really that easy to get knocked out? Anyone else care to look at the code and tell me if I'm misreading it? Stun timer additions are handled in monster/melee1.c, and the breakpoints are in set_stun() in player/timed.c

A few things you're missing:

• The 15d1 hit only has a 15 percent chance of being critical and thus adding d20+20 to your stun timer.
• The 20d1 hit gets supercharged every time it passes a 2 percent chance, and so adding 500 to your stun timer only occurs once in 125000 times.
• You get knocked out when the stun timer goes over 100.

Still, grand master mystics will knock you out pretty easily, and sometimes in one hit.

[Derakon]

Ah, thanks for the corrections. For some reason I saw "supercharge" and assumed it worked identically to the Ring of Speed supercharging.

I feel like it should be worrisome that it's even possible for a single blow to take you from no stun to knocked out, but it's demonstrably not a problem or else we'd have heard of it before now. I guess the odds are just too low. Still feels weird that it's possible though.

[jens]

So basically Grand master mystics have a very small chance to instant kill you?

I like having the mystics in the game, they add some fright to some stages of the game, but being killed in one blow i do not like...

Suggestion:
1) remove the supercharge.

2) Or put a cap on the supercharge that is lower than the KO limit, in addition to only allowing one hit / mob / round be supercharged.

3) Or put a cap on how much a single mob can increase the stun counter in one round.

[myshkin]

I did some more investigation into this. Spoilers ahead!




Monsters with some small chance of a KO on a single successful attack: (such a hit must clear the 95 percent of maximum damage threshhold, and (a) do over 33 damage, or (b) do over 25 damage with one supercharge, or (c) do over 18 damage with two supercharges; a perfect damage roll adds a supercharge; in addition, HIT attacks have an additional one in two roll for cutting versus stunning)

• Master mystic+/Grand master mystic+: 1 in 100
• Night mare, Osyluth*, Thuringwethil*, Bone golem*, Dreadlord*: 1 in 13330
• Harowen*+: 1 in 17361
• Gabriel, Gorlim*, Black reaver*, The Mouth of Sauron*, Nightwing*, Saruman*: 1 in 18724
• The Witch-King of Angmar*: 1 in 45752
• Master thief: 1 in 62499
• Barbazu: 1 in 102400
• Uvatha*, Tselakus*: 1 in 120000
• Nightwalker*: 1 in 203360
• Vecna**: 1 in 217162
• Gelugon: 1 in 284090
• Azriel*: 1 in 295928
• Lesser titan**: 1 in 1083693
• Sauron*: 1 in 1737299
• Morgoth:1 in 15463877
• Greater titan**, Kronos**:1 in 353897771
• Atlas*: 1 in 2976805804

*: has two attacks at this probability
**: has four attacks at this probability
+: attack is POISON

It turns out that poison resistance doesn't currently mitigate damage against POISON attacks. I will be committing a change to make poison resistance behave like base4 resistances in this regard. To avoid nerfing mystics, I'll also change their POISON attacks to PARALYZE.