Least exciting uniques

[Timo Pietilä]

Personally, I'd hate see any of the uniques in Fizzix's list go. They have been a part of Angband for so long. So, not having them would make it Angband, less.

Perhaps, they could be made more interesting.

I too find most of the Ringwraiths uninteresting, but if they could be combined as single group as Fizzix suggests appearing rather late in game it would make them a lot more interesting. They would not even have to be tuned down, because by the time you are dealing with Witch King rest of them are less scary than worst of normal Greater Undeads.

The idea of group uniques is very good one. There are quite a few uniques that could appear as groups of monsters. Perhaps with some sort of pack monster AI.

I would also like to see tele-other resistance for some of the uniques, it feels a bit cheesy to be able to just tell monster "go away" and away it goes. Maybe some clvl vs mlvl thing (with boost to pure spellcaster spells maybe).

[donalde]

We need some maia from Mandos folk to properly replace Azriel (nether/death), but unfortunately I don't know any.

If I recall my Tolkien correctly, Mandos was a place, Ainur called Namo. Could that solve this issue?

[ramela]

As for Arien, that's something that came in the game with Radagast. I think you are thinking about Ariel which is unique E (and still is). Ariel sounds like angel BTW, Uriel, Azriel (or Azrael), Gabriel, Michael ...iel or ...ael all of them.

Hah. This is what I get for commenting on stuff I did like 4 years ago. I just remembered that I myself replaced the Angels from Judeo-Christian myth with Unique Maiar, because I wanted to add more regular fantasy/tolkien monsters and adding Ainur allowed an easy way to make more mid- to late-game mosters that Jeff had asked for.

Either way, the point about good monsters being normal in *bands stands. Also not having "good" monsters shuts out a lot of design space.

[fizzix]

The idea of group uniques is very good one. There are quite a few uniques that could appear as groups of monsters. Perhaps with some sort of pack monster AI.

Yeah, the group uniques is something I've already started working on. I think that might be ok for V. I guess the rest is more for how I want to play the game, which isn't appropriate at all for V.

I wanted to work on it more this weekend, but other things came up...

[Timo Pietilä]

Hah. This is what I get for commenting on stuff I did like 4 years ago. I just remembered that I myself replaced the Angels from Judeo-Christian myth with Unique Maiar, because I wanted to add more regular fantasy/tolkien monsters and adding Ainur allowed an easy way to make more mid- to late-game mosters that Jeff had asked for.

Either way, the point about good monsters being normal in *bands stands. Also not having "good" monsters shuts out a lot of design space.

Who says Angels are good? Ever watched Supernatural ? Anyway, I don't think Radagast is proper char to put in Angband, just like Gandalf would not be. For that same reason I feel "blue wizards" are out of place as well. OTOH I don't like killing Maggot, Grip or Fang either, but for game they have function which should not go away either.

Vanilla doesn't have good-flag. Only evil. My supernatural interpretation to that is that evil monsters "draw" part of their power from Morgoth, which is/was Valar and way, way more powerful than any of them. Any non-evil is just either violent by nature (predatory animals) or "a road to hell is paved with good intentions" -type creatures.

As for our hero, it isn't actually good either. For the actions game makes it to do it would be the biggest monster in the game, rebellious monster trying to get angband to himself. The king is dead, all hail the king!

[Pete Mack]

@Timo--I agree, @ is anything but "good." In some variants, @ kills unicorns, and maybe purple plush ponies, too! That said, I suspect that ramela means by "good" something along the lines of Tome Piety points, not some existential goodness.

[ramela]

I think you are overcomplicating good/evil, when I say good in terms of *bands, I mean monsters that don't have the EVIL flag...

[ThunderToads]

@ kills unicorns

You mean those savagely aggressive breeds that lurk in dungeons and will attack @ relentlessly until one of them is dead?

It's a matter of self-defence for good old bro-tier @

[kaypy]

No matter how many orphans you murder in town, you still don't get intrinsic Resist Nether 8-(

(As opposed to, say, every thief type npc in middle earth- apparently all the rogues and mercenaries in town are also ardent followers of Morgoth.)