How broken exactly is birth_ai_smart?

[Therem Harth]

Under birth options, "Monsters behave more intelligently" is listed as broken. But just how broken?

At the moment I'm playing a (Neoband) Kobold Sapper with birth_ai_smart turned on. It does make the game more difficult - in particular, molds and mushroom patches seem deadlier, and I find myself on the run more often (which is good in my book). But so far I've not witnessed anything horribly unbalanced.

Could this option be playable, given a class (like the Sapper) that has consistently good offensive spells? Or will more serious breakage start to appear at high levels, e.g. with monsters that use breath attacks?

Edit: it also makes thieves more annoying - seems like they hit to steal every time with the option enabled. That's also good in my book.

[Derakon]

As far as I'm aware, the only effect of birth_ai_smart is that spellcasters select spells more intelligently. In particular, any monster with a self-heal spell becomes borderline immortal. Everything else is just you imagining effects that don't actually exist.

Given that you're writing a variant, you ought to be able to trace the effects of the option through the source code pretty easily. I'd tell you exactly what its effects are but it's been excised from 3.5 and I don't have earlier versions of the source code on hand.

[Therem Harth]

D'oh! Too bad. Thanks, though.

[buzzkill]

Enemies that can teleport you away also become a PITA. You can still kill these guys, and the self healers too, but you have to be super prepared and hit them with everything you've got... then chase them down and do it again... quick.

[PowerWyrm]

As far as I'm aware, the only effect of birth_ai_smart is that spellcasters select spells more intelligently. In particular, any monster with a self-heal spell becomes borderline immortal. Everything else is just you imagining effects that don't actually exist.

Given that you're writing a variant, you ought to be able to trace the effects of the option through the source code pretty easily. I'd tell you exactly what its effects are but it's been excised from 3.5 and I don't have earlier versions of the source code on hand.

I've removed the option in my variant just like Vanilla... but didn't excise the code. So here are the effects of setting ai_smart on:
- Smart monsters restrict their spell choices
- Monsters will find a safe spot when afraid (note: in 3.5, this has been left in the code -- so every monster is "smart" regarding fear status)
- Monsters that didn't do anything (casting or moving) during a turn will try to cast a spell again
- Stupid monsters will never fail casting spells (drain mana from jellies for example)