Duel of the Uniques

[Oramin]

I was just wondering if anybody has ever tweaked the game so you can set Unique monsters into mutual hostility. I was curious which Uniques would have the best shot of killing Morgoth out a hundred runs.

Morgoth V. The Tarrasque

Fight!

[Philip]

Morgoth has IMMFIRE and IMMCOLD, that would never work. Huan, maybe? He'd never win, but he'd probably have an okay duel.

[OOD Town drunk]

I would think you would need to disable summoning or you may just end up with a level wall to wall with monsters

[Derakon]

Morgoth is sufficiently powerful that I don't think any other unique on their own would stand a chance. He has 20k HP (next closest Ungoliant at 13k, then Sauron and Ancalagon at 10.5k and 10k respectively); he has greater speed than practically anyone (+30, tied with Cantoras), his melee attacks are hilariously powerful, he's immune to all basic elements and poison, and most damning, his spell list has no duds; the least dangerous spell he has is "summon lots of generic monsters", or possibly brain smash, depending on how you look at things.

I could believe that e.g. Qlzqqlzuup could win by summoning enough other uniques and powerful monsters that their combined force eventually wore Morgoth down, but that'd in part require Morgoth himself to not be very lucky with summons. (It'd also require the fight to start in an open space because if Morgoth closes with Qlzqqlzuup then the fight would end very quickly -- ol' Q has only 5k HP and an AC of 1...).

Once Pyrel gets a proper creature AI it'd be fun to run a tournament bracket -- players could draft a small army and then pit them against each other in an arena to see who comes out on top. There'd need to be some fairly restrictive rules though, mostly dealing with summoning and with deciding which creatures exactly are eligible for drafting. And maybe some HP/AC rescaling so that shallow creatures are still relevant against deep ones....hm.

[Oramin]

Well, that's why I suggested 100 runs. Sauron has an outside chance to Mana Storm Morgoth to death with a little bit of luck. Hmm, I don't recall, does Sauron Haste Self? That would put him at the same speed as the Big 'M'.

[LostTemplar]

Morgoth is too strong to be defeated by just monsters, at least when I have done something similar in modded Unangband (it have proper monster vs monster fighting AI, and player's ability to summon friendly monsters, just mod summoning spell to summon what you want). It seems, that hordes of monsters are just crushed being unable to seriously hurt him.
Morgoth definitely win any summoning battle due to his earthquakes blocking line of fire.
Ranged attacks are also not effective due to earthquakes, and his melee has overhelming power and AOE.

[Starhawk]

I could believe that e.g. Qlzqqlzuup could win by summoning enough other uniques and powerful monsters that their combined force eventually wore Morgoth down, but that'd in part require Morgoth himself to not be very lucky with summons.

Can Morgoth (or any monster) see invisibility? Because if not, Morgy is going to have trouble even locating Qlzqqlzuup.

Stalemate!

I'm assuming no monsters have SEE_INVIS since the player can't go invisible in this game...

[Derakon]

I'm assuming no monsters have SEE_INVIS since the player can't go invisible in this game...

You're kind of right -- there's no such thing as a SEE_INVIS flag for monsters, but that's because every monster always knows where the player is, and monsters never care where other monsters are, so there's no point to having a flag. In any hypothetical monster-vs.-monster matchup, you'd presumably all all monsters to detect each other rather than make the moderately extensive AI changes needed to allow them to sensibly deal with foes they can't see.

[LostTemplar]

Monsters dont see, they just know where thier enemy is.