I was one shotted by Kavlax. What just happened?

[Derakon]

Current Angband miss tactical combat, maybe worth adding.

???

Angband has plenty of tactical combat. But there's a huge difference between a monster that can literally one-shot any character in the game and, say, the Tarrasque. The latter is theoretically killable, even if most characters won't want to. The former is not, at least not realistically.

"Tactical combat" does not require instant death monsters, and frankly I think that adding more monsters that are more dangerous than Morgoth is not a good idea.

[LostTemplar]

You mean a monster that would never be worth fighting

Exactly. Why everything is to be killed ?

I'm totally against moving, mana-breathing walls of death though.

How about not moving ones, 10k HP mana breathing mold

Also maybe something really dangerous in melee, without any ranged attacks, probably slow, like moloch in ADOM.

Current Angband miss tactical combat, maybe worth adding.

[Therem Harth]

While I'm generally against guaranteed instakill attacks by monsters, I think it might be interesting to have a low-HP monster (mana elemental?) that casts damaging spells with great frequency, maybe at high speed. A monster that would not be hard to kill, but would require killing within one or two turns once it appeared on the scene. That might make for some interesting situations.

I'm totally against moving, mana-breathing walls of death though.

[Philip]

Wouldn't that be unnecessarily cruel to those who don't have detection and monster removal abilities? Not denying that it would be fun, but warriors sort of get the short end of the stick in a lot already.

[Derakon]

Some monster should. It is piti that Angband have no single allways kill attack.

You mean a monster that would never be worth fighting by anyone without abusing LOS shenanigans? Remember that in order to hit that damage cap the monster would have to have enough HP to survive many rounds of attacks from the player (unless you made the "divisor" for mana attacks be something like .25 so that a 400HP monster could hit the cap).

I'm fine with having monsters that most classes don't want to deal with, but a monster that's literally "if you try to fight this thing you are risking instant death every turn, no matter who you are, no matter what level you are, no matter what gear you have" does strike me as a design flaw.

[LostTemplar]

None, but the option is there - I have no idea why.

Some monster should. It is piti that Angband have no single allways kill attack.

[Magnate]

None, but the option is there - I have no idea why.

It's the stuff of magic missile and manastorm. You can give it as a breath to monsters if you want ... it's unresistable, of course

[Mondkalb]

Well, don't!
They still don't tell you everything, but at least something which would make you careful.
In general, the game has some mechanics you can't know about whithout experiencing dangerous situations or death. Nothing tells you about how much damage certain spells or breaths can do and how resistances work.

[Amnekian]

Since nobody cared to mention it: There are staffs and rods of probing. You can use them to get full monster info of monsters in line of sight.
It's the only way to acquire full knowledge (besides dying very often ) without cheating.

And now I feel silly.

[Mondkalb]

So how do I know what monsters ditch these insane amounts of damage? Or should I back off from uniques around DL30 until I have a lot of resists?

Since nobody cared to mention it: There are staffs and rods of probing. You can use them to get full monster info of monsters in line of sight.
It's the only way to acquire full knowledge (besides dying very often ) without cheating.

[Nick]

Which monster breaths raw magic?

None, but the option is there - I have no idea why.

[donalde]

raw: magic 1600

Which monster breaths raw magic?

[Derakon]

Looking at the source (in monster/list-mon-spells.c), the damage cap for nexus is 400. More generally,

acid: 1600
lightning: 1600
fire: 1600
frost: 1600
poison: 800
nether: 550
light: 400
darkness: 400
confusion: 0
sound: 500
chaos: 500
disenchantment: 500
nexus: 400
time: 150
inertia: 200
gravity: 200
shards: 500
plasma: 150
force: 200
raw: magic 1600

Not all of these can be resisted, and resistance for the high elements tends to be variable. Note that this applies only to breath attacks; spells don't have damage caps. On the flipside, spells don't tend to hit for anywhere near as much damage as breaths do. Late-game manastorms, darkness storms, and nether storms can do several hundred damage, but I'm pretty sure they never hit for more than 600.

[Amnekian]

So for exemple, fire can deal, at most 1600 damage while nexus can dish out 250-550 damage?

[Derakon]

Actually it's this for acid, cold, lightning, fire, poison and (oddly) time. For all other things it's min(damage cap, monster HP / 6).

Okay, we seriously need to simplify element handling because this is ridiculous.

After the refactor.