V 3.5 now in feature freeze

[Timo Pietilä]

It would require big changes and new game mechanics to make Charisma equally good with physical stats. There isn't any consensus among Angbanders about what those effects should be. I guess removing Charisma was the easier option, and perhaps the best one.

On the other hand, I like pretty much all the wildly different takes on Charisma introduced in variants. (At least Un, Iron, PosCheng, and HoM come to mind.)

OTOH, one "junk" stat wasn't that bad. Every time lose one -gain one hit CHR that was free stat boost, nexus scramble hit when CHR was already max could give you sudden huge boost to one stat.

In old days shops also were affected by CHR as well as race quite a bit.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

It would require big changes and new game mechanics to make Charisma equally good with physical stats. There isn't any consensus among Angbanders about what those effects should be. I guess removing Charisma was the easier option, and perhaps the best one.

On the other hand, I like pretty much all the wildly different takes on Charisma introduced in variants. (At least Un, Iron, PosCheng, and HoM come to mind.)

[MattB]

why not add more usefulness to charisma instead?

Why indeed. But equally, why?

[Beirlis]

My plan for Pyrel is for Teleport Other to be able to land you any distance up to the maximum distance, rather than for it to try to force you to be at least some minimum distance away.

I wouldn't want to see that spell (and effect) become so unreliable. I would prefer to see it weighted towards teleporting you far away. So something like distance = max - rand_range(0, max * max - 1) / max where the median distance is 75% of your max distance. So basically if your max distance is 100, you'll have a 30% chance to be at least 90 spaces away, 50% chance to be at least 75 spaces away and only a 10% chance of being less than 20 spaces away. It doesn't have to be weighted that heavily, but I would hate to have it become highly unreliable.

Also, why are they removing charisma? I know that it had limited utility and I'm sure this part has been discussed elsewhere, but why not add more usefulness to charisma instead? (perhaps affecting the chance of spells like slow, confusion, sleep, etc.)?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Well, this was an intentional change. But maybe it shouldn't have been. Someone wanted it to be the case that if they targeted a grid with a monster on, it targeted the monster and that seemed like a good idea to me because sometimes you want to target a monster the game won't let you, so you have to target the square instead. But, I can change it back. Seems most people were happy with the previous behaviour.

Thank you! I know I was happier when it was my choice whether to target monster or location. Besides, didn't the original behavior target the monster by default and only if you pressed "o" or "p" did the targeting change to location (starting at last monster target position "o" or at player position "p"? I know I liked having the choice.

[takkaria]

Is it a bug that if you choose location targeting, but a monster happens to be on the location, the targeting reverts back to monster targeting? It seems to me that when I choose to target a location rather than a monster, that I really mean to target the location. As it currently stands, if a monster happens to be there when I target the location, the targeting reverts to targeting the monster and when I kill it, I have to retarget the space. Anyone else find this frustrating?

Well, this was an intentional change. But maybe it shouldn't have been. Someone wanted it to be the case that if they targeted a grid with a monster on, it targeted the monster and that seemed like a good idea to me because sometimes you want to target a monster the game won't let you, so you have to target the square instead. But, I can change it back. Seems most people were happy with the previous behaviour.

[Timo Pietilä]

Is it a bug that if you choose location targeting, but a monster happens to be on the location, the targeting reverts back to monster targeting? It seems to me that when I choose to target a location rather than a monster, that I really mean to target the location. As it currently stands, if a monster happens to be there when I target the location, the targeting reverts to targeting the monster and when I kill it, I have to retarget the space. Anyone else find this frustrating?

+1 from here. Location targeting should remain location targeting. It isn't player error to target location instead of monster if the monster is in that space.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Is it a bug that if you choose location targeting, but a monster happens to be on the location, the targeting reverts back to monster targeting? It seems to me that when I choose to target a location rather than a monster, that I really mean to target the location. As it currently stands, if a monster happens to be there when I target the location, the targeting reverts to targeting the monster and when I kill it, I have to retarget the space. Anyone else find this frustrating?

[Timo Pietilä]

The new RNG really shouldn't be biased, because it's meant to be a very good PRNG... I wonder if there's any way to reduce this effect without adding explicit checks against it.

RNG isn't biased, human mind is. You remember extraordinary things much better than ordinary things, and bad extraordinary even better than good extraordinary.

For stair creation you never see series of positive outcomes because you take the first stairs that match your preference. So you only see those kind of series only for negative outcome. You would need to remember all the cases where you got the positive outcome at first try in order to find out that there are similar series of luck in other direction as well. Unfortunately getting positive outcome at first try isn't extraordinary so you forget.

[Timo Pietilä]

The problem with Teleport Other is more down to how the spell is coded than how random the RNG is. The spell aims for plunking you down within a certain distance range from your current position, and unfortunately given Angband's dungeon topography, that tends to mean there's only a small handful of possible locations where you can land up. And if you teleport from your new location, your old location is a valid target.

(Teleport self, not other). It used to be much worse. Teleport had so long range at the high levels that you basically found acceptable positions only at the furthest away corner of the dungeon. Priest portal was much better. Now teleport has lower minimum range for acceptable positions so it isn't quite that bad but it still tends to jump you between two corners.

[Derakon]

The problem with Teleport Other is more down to how the spell is coded than how random the RNG is. The spell aims for plunking you down within a certain distance range from your current position, and unfortunately given Angband's dungeon topography, that tends to mean there's only a small handful of possible locations where you can land up. And if you teleport from your new location, your old location is a valid target.

My plan for Pyrel is for Teleport Other to be able to land you any distance up to the maximum distance, rather than for it to try to force you to be at least some minimum distance away. Which means that sometimes you'd cast the spell and it would have an effect like Phase Door, but I suspect it will also be much more reliable as an escape. It could well be worth trying in Angband proper.

[MattB]

The new RNG really shouldn't be biased, because it's meant to be a very good PRNG... I wonder if there's any way to reduce this effect without adding explicit checks against it.

I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but couldn't it be set up so that in genuine 50/50 situations it has a 60% chance to offer the opposite outcome after the first event?

Although I'm struggling to think of any other genuine 50/50 chances...
Teleport level, I suppose, but you're unlikely to cast it successive times.

[takkaria]

Concerning stair creation, the RNG is known to be seriously biased (same problem with teleport: when you use teleport twice, you almost always end up very close to where you were). When you create stairs deep in the dungeon, it's really common to generate 7-8 consecutive up stairs. That's why for my variant I added a little bit of code to ensure you'll never get more than 5 consecutive up or down staircases (and also ensure that double teleport will never bring you back on the same spot).

The new RNG really shouldn't be biased, because it's meant to be a very good PRNG... I wonder if there's any way to reduce this effect without adding explicit checks against it.

[Timo Pietilä]

Err... I just checked and this has been changed 6 years ago (Jun 06, 2007)! This sounds like this is the normal behavior since 3.0.8...

New for me. Anything starting with 3 is new

[PowerWyrm]

It's new. I didn't know that either, and old versions definitely used light even when you didn't need it if you had lightsource equipped. I have no idea when that was changed.

Err... I just checked and this has been changed 6 years ago (Jun 06, 2007)! This sounds like this is the normal behavior since 3.0.8...