base resistances in early game

[quarague]

If you look at the 4 base resistances, they first start popping up around d-level 10 individually and by around d-level 30 you start seeing items that give all 4 at once. Before d10 you don't really need any of them and after d30 you are essentially expected to have them. But inbetween there is some room where the typical character will have some of them but not all.
This situation can be made interesting gameplay wise if you find monsters that are relatively harmless with the resistance and rather dangerous without. Hounds seem to me the obvious candidates for this. But the way they are implemented now, they are just melee creatures that occasionally breath their element. A cold hound does 3d3+3d3+2d6 melee damage and a 1 in 10 chance for 11 cold damage. Which means, if you see a bunch of them, having cold resistance is pretty irrelevant, the question is whether you can take on that much in melee or have a way to kill them quick enough at distance. I would suggest something more like 1 in 4 for 30 cold breath and only 2d6 freeze melee. Ie fairly nasty without cold res but not that dangerous with. Similarly for fire, water and energy hounds. That would also make the early rings of fire res etc actually useful. Probably make the same change for the other hounds so they all follow the same scheme: dangerous without the appropriate res and good xp with the res.

[MattB]

Hell yeah! Let's make hounds more lethal!
We've been crying out for this change for ages!

[quarague]

I just think hounds should be more in tune with their element, currently they just feel like clever orcs. Mainly a danger in melee, with occasional breath/ arrow shots, key difference is that the hounds have swarm intelligence and the orcs don't. When you encounter them it never seems to make any difference whether they are cold hounds or fire hounds.

[LostTemplar]

Well, hounds are expected to be melee fighters after all, as for pure elemental stuff vortex will be better, just give all of them 1_in_1 breath chance.

[Timo Pietilä]

If you look at the 4 base resistances, they first start popping up around d-level 10 individually and by around d-level 30 you start seeing items that give all 4 at once. Before d10 you don't really need any of them

Actually you don't absolutely need any of the basic four before about 2000' which is where AMHD appears, and then you need them all. So dlvl 40 is the level where you should have them all. Before that, if you have a resist fine, if not it is not that big deal. Still resist count more than plain AC, so usually you end up with most if not all of them way before dlvl 40.

Similarly for fire, water and energy hounds. That would also make the early rings of fire res etc actually useful. Probably make the same change for the other hounds so they all follow the same scheme: dangerous without the appropriate res and good xp with the res.

You should check water hound HP again. Those are quite a bit tougher than fire, elec or cold hounds.

Anyway, the damage those early hounds do is not as much HP loss than it is inventory/equipment damage. Pack of fire hounds burn your books and scrolls, cold hounds destroy your potions and elec hounds ruin your rods and wands. Acid destroys all kinds of stuff and in top of that damages your gear. That's why they are "dangerous", not because of pure damage, but because they make your adventuring harder.

[Estie]

What Timo says. You avoid them for the inventory damage anyway, so increasing breath damage doesnt change that. Also, the real danger is when you stair down into a big room with a pack of hounds out of sight. When many breath at the same time, the damage is huge; with higher hounds, its almost guaranteed death for even the toughest characters. If you increase their ranged damage, you create more potential for such death traps.