BTW, Mondkalb, that picture looks familiar. Is that from 1st Edition AD&D somewhere?
A Few Questions/Observations From an Old Player
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Hehe, that is a crop form the cover of the amazing Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. When it hit the shelves in 1992 it changed computer role playing games forever. I needed to buy a new computer to play it and to enjoy the first real three-dimensional environment in a CRPG.
Of course I had played lots of other CRPGs before, both on the Amiga and later on the PC (btw Moria was among the first ). But Ultima Underworld really hit my heart.
I think the image is appropriate for Angband because of the glimpse of a maze of up and down staircases.
Last edited by Mondkalb; January 15, 2013, 10:34.Comment
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Is the double damage for Orb of Draining working for Paladins?
I just shot a Sorcerer with an average life of 457 with a 43 + 3d6 Orb. He only lost a single * from his life bar. According to the description he's Evil. Sorry, I don't want to take the time to Probe him since I'm severely short on Speed at the moment (only +3 base down on L37).Comment
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Well, the average is just that -- an average. The game uses a normal distribution to calculate actual monster HP, with a standard deviation of .125 * (average HP), rounded up.
Your minimum damage is 61, doubled against evil for 122; for that to take 1 star off the monster must have had 1220 HP, which is 13 standard deviations away from the average. Hm. That seems implausible, but then again stranger things have happened in Angband.Comment
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Well, the average is just that -- an average. The game uses a normal distribution to calculate actual monster HP, with a standard deviation of .125 * (average HP), rounded up.
Your minimum damage is 61, doubled against evil for 122; for that to take 1 star off the monster must have had 1220 HP, which is 13 standard deviations away from the average. Hm. That seems implausible, but then again stranger things have happened in Angband.Comment
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How exactly is monster HP calculated? For larger critters with breath weapons big deviation from average can cause rather nasty surprises. I think that was the reason for FORCE_MAXHP-flag in old versions for dragons and stuff. What about uniques: can't see any differences for those compared to normal in monster.txt, except the UNIQUE-flag, does that imply fixed HP? (I assume so)Comment
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Timo: uniques don't have varying HP. And I think if you're running the stats sufficiently heavily to rely on, say, an Ancient White Dragon doing no more than 211 damage with its breath attack, then you're trying too hard.Comment
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It is the first move that counts. If it doesn't use it's poison breath immediately I might be able to kill it. If it does, I bail out immediately. However, if that first breath is 700 points even after that attack I might be dead.
So how unlikely it is that AMHD could have, say 2300 HP instead of monster.txt indicated 1848? That's only 24% increase, and if that sorcerer had 610 instead of 457 it is 33% increase.Comment
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That's 1.95 standard deviations away; I don't remember how to do the relevant stats myself but a friend informs me it should be about 2.5%, i.e. 1 in 40 will have at least that much more health. (Odds of being at least two standard deviations away from the mean are 4.55%, but half of those are two SDs below the mean)Comment
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That's 1.95 standard deviations away; I don't remember how to do the relevant stats myself but a friend informs me it should be about 2.5%, i.e. 1 in 40 will have at least that much more health. (Odds of being at least two standard deviations away from the mean are 4.55%, but half of those are two SDs below the mean)Comment
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Wikipedia link
In layman's terms, the standard deviation measures how "scattered" a distribution is. For example, a 1d12 is more scattered (has a higher standard deviation) than a 2d6, which has a higher standard deviation than a 3d4. A low standard deviation means that you consistently get values close to the average / rarely get values far from the average. The standard deviation is also a value, though, so you can gauge how rare a given result is by measuring how many standard deviations away from the average you are. For example, in our example we use an SD of 1/8th of the monster's average HP.Code:1848 / 8 = 231 (the standard deviation is 231) 2300 - 1848 = 452 (finding how far we are from the average) 452 / 231 ~= 1.95 (that value in standard deviations)
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