Things I don't like about current V (long-ish)

[Derakon]

I've just gotten used to getting armor damaged by acid and having potions get blown up by cold attacks, so it stopped bothering me ages ago...but it's clearly a big deal for other players. Do we want to rethink acid damage somehow? Currently every acid attack will damage something (assuming you have acid-vulnerable armor in every slot). And this is in addition to destroying a wide range of inventory items. We could nerf this:

* Only have a chance of damaging armor at all (say, 50%, or 75% without resistance, 25% with, or whatever)
* Only ever destroy inventory items or armor, but not both

Or something else?

As for disenchantment, I'm afraid this is Working As Intended. Monsters that disenchant gear are rare, and you're usually best-served by avoiding them. You said you couldn't run away; why not? Because he's faster than you? That's why you should be carrying a Staff of Teleportation (or casting Portal, but as a paladin you're probably not very good at that). Angband is always going to have monsters that are not worth fighting at your current power level, and Mim is definitely one of those. Come back later when you have one of resistance to disenchantment, a speed advantage, or strong ranged attacks.

And look at it this way: at least he (presumably) didn't badly drain your melee weapon!

As for holy spells, there's rather a lot of redundancy in them and the paladin spell difficulties and costs haven't been seriously examined in awhile. That said, holy spells are far and away better than arcane spells; they're only missing Haste Self, Resistance, and a high-DPS attack spell (Orb is great but a bit slow). If you're going to make more holy spells viable, then you'll need to take away something else to compensate. There've been plenty of discussions on ways to better-differentiate the different spell types and the different caster classes.

[Grotug]

Curse the RNG to high heaven. I go for hours having few potions being destroyed from cold damage. Then I start to wonder about it. Then I forget about it. Then I suddenly lose potions like I didn't posses an iota of cold protection, despite having rCold armor and temporary cold resist. Woosh! there go all your hard earned potions! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr



But more on topic: the number one thing I'd like to see changed is the severity of "roll your progress backward" attacks in all their forms especially if you have multiple resistances *cough* (see above image). Why do I bother with an amulet of resist acid if I'm still going to have my gear rendered useless from dragonflies and little lower case v's anyway?

Disenchantment is the worst, and even on dl27 Mim the traitor destroyed my sling of extra might: he brought it from (+11, +17) down to (+1, +8) because I might as well try to defeat him since I can't run from him, but then he heals himself and pummels me until I'm out of speed potions, phase doors and iron shots, and so have to quit the fight anyway . Many hours later I'm still slinging my sling of extra might because I haven't found anything better. I'm running around with [2, -2] helmet but I have to keep it because it has some special quality that I need (like pBlindness). I'm actually not so upset about this, since I have a plan for defeating him when I see him again (I have encountered him like 4 times, and each time there has been some reason why I couldn't fight him). But next time our paths cross he is dying.

Anyway, many hours of grinding the 20s (hardly grinding if I'm constantly brought to danger hp and running out of health potions) and I'm making very slow, if any, progress. The risks far outweigh the rewards of lower, more dangerous dungeon levels.

Oh, regarding the Paladin's spell book, it is mystifying to me why cure serious, critical and mortal wounds are so expensive and cure light wounds and healing are not (relative to how much they heal). Why can't these be better balanced so it's cost effective to use the other healings instead of just cure light wounds and 'healing'?

I needed to vent since I can't get beyond dl30 without being killed (force quit before it actually happens) or nearly killed regularly and I've been playing for many, many hours, trolling the dl20s.

[Therem Harth]

Everything boiling down to speed is the status quo, though, and IMO a boring status quo at that...

[nppangband]

Regarding monster mana: I've played NPP a decent bit and I found uniques to be intensely frustrating in that game, because you almost literally cannot make progress in fighting them until they run out of mana, and there's no realistic way to hasten that process. In the meantime, you just have to eat their most powerful spells over and over again (necessitating a gigantic amount of healing) while dealing as much damage as possible (in the hopes that they spend their mana on self-heal spells instead of attack spells).

Fights in Vanilla aren't exactly tactical puzzles, but they are unpredictable, and that has value. Fights in NPP almost universally followed a two-phase pattern: in the first phase, the monster blows all their mana on hitting the player, who has to tank the attacks as best they can; in the second phase, the monster is out of mana and thus has no effective offense, so the player can beat on them with impunity.

IMHO the 4GAI monster mana in NPP is slightly better than the Vanilla AI (in that they are smarter about running away, or realizing that a spell is ineffective, and not casting it any more), but I definitely agree there is much room for improvement. I like the idea of each monster spell just preventing the monster for casting for X number of turns. The more powerful the spell, the longer they have to wait to cast again. The other thing I was pondering is each spell in the monsters' spellset having a likelihood of being cast, and that likelihood is decreased each time they cast it. That way, Sauron can't teleport away forever, Morgoth can't bombard the player with mana storm indefinitely, etc.

I have found the key in NPP 4gai is being slightly faster than the monster. It seems that in the battles either the player or monster is healing while the other one is attacking. Being faster makes it so much easier to force the monster to be defensive while the player attacks.

[buzzkill]

What about cooldowns that aren't really cooldowns, not that I advocate anything but unlimited mana for V. In theory, Monster spells would use a lot of mana. Monster mana would regenerate very quickly. The projected result would be, after casting a high mana spell, the monster would be unable to spam the same spell (a functional cooldown) for a while, or several lesser spells could be cast in sucession. Adjust max-mana and regen rate till balanced.

How about randomness but with intelligent discarding of unsuitable options? e.g. If a caster has full health, they will discard healing or escape spells as options and choose randomly from among their other possible actions; if they're injured, healing and escape go back in the pool of possibilities, but there's still only a random chance that they'll choose one of those spells, rather than a guarantee that they'll spam cast healing any time you hurt them. Maybe summoning only goes in the choice pool after all previous summons are dead, or when the monster is scared, etc.

This bit from Nomad is golden and probably suitable for V.

[Estie]

Regarding monster mana: I've played NPP a decent bit and I found uniques to be intensely frustrating in that game, because you almost literally cannot make progress in fighting them until they run out of mana, and there's no realistic way to hasten that process. In the meantime, you just have to eat their most powerful spells over and over again (necessitating a gigantic amount of healing) while dealing as much damage as possible (in the hopes that they spend their mana on self-heal spells instead of attack spells).

Fights in Vanilla aren't exactly tactical puzzles, but they are unpredictable, and that has value. Fights in NPP almost universally followed a two-phase pattern: in the first phase, the monster blows all their mana on hitting the player, who has to tank the attacks as best they can; in the second phase, the monster is out of mana and thus has no effective offense, so the player can beat on them with impunity.

I'm oversimplifying, but not by a whole lot.

It seems like our problem is that monster spells are very powerful, with the unintended consequence that intelligent spellcasters are horrifically dangerous. To me, that says we need to do one of three things:

1) Not have intelligent spellcasters (current Vanilla)
2) Not have very powerful monster spells (casting a spell is roughly as dangerous as any other action they could take)
3) Put hard limits on how frequently monster spells can be cast (i.e. cooldowns)

Monster mana does none of these things.

Hmmm I see. In vanilla, there is no burst mechanics on the player side that I can think of (unless you count a stack of good arrows a burst till they deplete), everything @ does he can do indefinitely provided the (ample) potions are at hand.
So if monsters get a burst phase that seriously endangers the @ (if it doesnt, its meaningless in the first place), the only option for the player is to wait out the burst defensively before killing the monster.

Changing mechanics to give bursts to all classes would be on a greater scope than anything suggested so far.

So if monster burst is somehow introduced (by mana or limited archery or otherwise), the only option for the player would be the defensive one that you find frustrating.

Would you still find it frustrating if the burst phase was short enough ?
Currently, if you survive a green D breath, you can kill green D, more or less easily depending on your offense. If you do not survive a breath, you have to run period.

Suppose the green D had only 3 breaths, and each would do 90% of your max hp of damage. Would that be better than current situation ?
You still have all the options a non-poison resistant char of current vanilla has, OR you can tackle it by eating its burst defensively and kill it afterwards.

(breath weapon is bad example according to my previous post, but nm that for the moment).

I _think_ making uniques more challenging this way would be good, provided the fight doesnt take too long. I never played NPP, but it sounds to me like the issue is too much monster mana rather than the concept itself.

[LostTemplar]

Cooldowns seem artificial

Less artificial then mana. Basically it may be just a separate mana (ammo) bar for every spell with different regeneration rules.

There are two problems with monster mana (also apply to player's mana which is not so good in Angband also):
it is the same for all spells, and it does not really regenerate (in one fight).

So if it is really important to use mana insetad of cooldowns for roleplay reason, do something like 10 mana with 1 per turn regen and spells cost in 1--10 range, so it do really matter tactically, not just fight for 100 turns until It run out of healing, then kill (as in FA, O, NPP). Currently mana is just an extra HP for monsters, who heal really good, or just nothing (never run out) for others.

[Derakon]

Regarding monster mana: I've played NPP a decent bit and I found uniques to be intensely frustrating in that game, because you almost literally cannot make progress in fighting them until they run out of mana, and there's no realistic way to hasten that process. In the meantime, you just have to eat their most powerful spells over and over again (necessitating a gigantic amount of healing) while dealing as much damage as possible (in the hopes that they spend their mana on self-heal spells instead of attack spells).

Fights in Vanilla aren't exactly tactical puzzles, but they are unpredictable, and that has value. Fights in NPP almost universally followed a two-phase pattern: in the first phase, the monster blows all their mana on hitting the player, who has to tank the attacks as best they can; in the second phase, the monster is out of mana and thus has no effective offense, so the player can beat on them with impunity.

I'm oversimplifying, but not by a whole lot.

It seems like our problem is that monster spells are very powerful, with the unintended consequence that intelligent spellcasters are horrifically dangerous. To me, that says we need to do one of three things:

1) Not have intelligent spellcasters (current Vanilla)
2) Not have very powerful monster spells (casting a spell is roughly as dangerous as any other action they could take)
3) Put hard limits on how frequently monster spells can be cast (i.e. cooldowns)

Monster mana does none of these things.

[clouded]

Not sure why people think stacking resistances changes anything about equipment choices and strategy, it is pretty much the exact same thing except temporary resistance sources are far less important. It's not as if items are suddenly going to start giving 10-15% of 6 or 7 resists and such.

[Nomad]

I am happy to disagree with you on this (), but I feel very strongly about it.
I found the FA system wholly unsatisfactory because there was no goal in sight. Current Vanilla has a nominally achievable goal, however personally speaking I have only achieved full resists maybe twice, so it is still an aspirational goal for me, and the situation you describe (i.e. 'ended' optimisation) rarely occurs. This is even more the case if you consider 'solved' to include 18/*** sustained on all stats (which I've never managed). I thus find the V system far more interesting than the FA system. Obviously, if the majority disagree with me then go for it, make the change and I'll grin and bear it (through gritted teeth).

I'm with MattB and Derakon on this. Covering as many resistances, abilities and immunities as possible with the highest possible stat boosts is a fun and satisfying optimisation puzzle, especially with randarts. But endless optimisation of stacking gear for diminishing returns lacks that "Ah-ha!" moment of triumph of having achieved something concrete with your new kit. If juggling gear after my latest find allows me to gain Nether resistance without losing anything else, I'm smugly triumphant. If it just gives me 20% more Nether resistance at the cost of losing 10% of my Chaos and 5% of my Sound resistance, well, I don't feel like I've achieved much and it's hard to even judge if my new kit is any better than the old one.

I think stacking with diminishing returns can work well for a relatively small pool of resistances like the base four, but not with the truckload of things you have to cover in Angband. (And I consider that sheer volume of different things to cover to be an important part of Angband's flavour and appeal, so count me in with the people who would be happy to have some monster attacks renamed for clarity, but wouldn't want to see any of them merged or removed.)

ETA some thoughts on spellcasting:

This is really quite a difficult problem:

• Randomness tends to make the monsters look stupid
• Monster mana leads to dull damage/mana races
• Cooldowns seem artificial

Maybe some combination would be best - or something else. More thought required.

How about randomness but with intelligent discarding of unsuitable options? e.g. If a caster has full health, they will discard healing or escape spells as options and choose randomly from among their other possible actions; if they're injured, healing and escape go back in the pool of possibilities, but there's still only a random chance that they'll choose one of those spells, rather than a guarantee that they'll spam cast healing any time you hurt them. Maybe summoning only goes in the choice pool after all previous summons are dead, or when the monster is scared, etc.

[MattB]

Resists: I wholly disagree with Derakon(+MattB) that the "solved" kit is important - I think it's a positively bad thing for the game. Optimisation ought to be endless and with diminishing returns and stacking resists align with this.

I am happy to disagree with you on this (), but I feel very strongly about it.
I found the FA system wholly unsatisfactory because there was no goal in sight. Current Vanilla has a nominally achievable goal, however personally speaking I have only achieved full resists maybe twice, so it is still an aspirational goal for me, and the situation you describe (i.e. 'ended' optimisation) rarely occurs. This is even more the case if you consider 'solved' to include 18/*** sustained on all stats (which I've never managed). I thus find the V system far more interesting than the FA system. Obviously, if the majority disagree with me then go for it, make the change and I'll grin and bear it (through gritted teeth).

[MattB]

I'm not in principle opposed to this, but are we going to give them all to the arcane casters? Every single high-level mage spell is a different element already and many of them are more or less junk (c.f. Cloud Kill). If we're going to give them to holy casters, then which ones are holy?

I think Habbakkuk Chapter 3 has the answer to that one...

2 O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: [SCARE MONSTER]

4 And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power. [CALL LIGHT]

5 Before him went the pestilence [CLOUD KILL], and burning coals went forth at his feet. [METEOR STORM]

6 He stood, and measured the earth [SENSE SURROUNDINGS]: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; 
and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow [EARTHQUAKE]

9 Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes [DISENCHANT]. 
Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. [WATER BALL]

10 The mountains saw thee, and they trembled [EARTHQUAKE AGAIN]: 
the overflowing of the water passed by[ANOTHER WATER ATTACK]: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high.

11 The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, 
and at the shining of thy glittering spear [BLESS].

12 Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger [DISPEL EVIL].

14 Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his villages: they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me: 
their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly. 
[NOT SURE ABOUT THIS ONE, BUT CLEARLY SOME KIND OF ELEMENTAL WIND ATTACK]

16 When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, 
and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, 
he will invade them with his troops. [DRAIN CON + SCARE MONSTER]

17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; 
the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: [STARVATION]

18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

[mrrstark]

Lightning is a plasma. Whatever effects occur from plasma should occur from lightning as well

(btw, I'm a plasma physicist)

lol! Almost spit my coffee. I love the calibre of crowd roguelikes draw.

[Estie]

As for ranged attacks, my idea was that they be powerful, but limited, thus bursty.

For example, an orc archer would be assumed to have a number of arrows (maybe 5-10; the number should be random and adjusted for gameplay value, not realism). That way, archers can use an effective ai without making the game tedious.

A similar approach can be taken for spells. Rather than monster mana, npc casters come with a spell list and a counter for each spell which goes down when they use it, akin to old d&d wizards. It is simpler than the mana approach and sufficient to make for interesting tactical fights.

Unique casters like Saruman or Sauron could be given some randomness in their spell list (at the start of the game) to make these encounters more challenging.

Once a monsters ranged counter reaches zero, it behaves like other melee monsters.

Breath weapons can stay as they are - a monster gets a random chance each round to use it. If a ranged list like suggested above is being used, the priority should be breath weapon > spell > ranged physical attack > melee for monsters who have more than one option.

Wether such changes really make for a better game needs to be seen of course. It might be a good idea to halve the dungeon depth along with making individual encounters more intricate.

[Nick]

FAangband have this and it does not work well. IMHO it is the worst part of what FAangband have. (normally monsters don't run out of mana, and then they do, It is either very boring fight or unfair player's advantage)

If we want a simple solution, individual spell cooldowns or frequency may work, maybe try to add 1_IN_X flags for every spell as a start.

This is indeed very interesting - and, on some thought, I see the point. I'm not really a big fan of cooldowns, though.

This is really quite a difficult problem:

• Randomness tends to make the monsters look stupid
• Monster mana leads to dull damage/mana races
• Cooldowns seem artificial

Maybe some combination would be best - or something else. More thought required.