Status ailments

[Derakon]

It's a common problem, in RPGs of all stripes, that offensive status effects are worthless. The only monsters they actually work on are the ones where you can kill the monster in a round or two anyway, so why would you ever bother applying them?

Angband has this problem too -- monster resistance to status ailments rises so quickly that it quickly becomes pointless to try to confuse, sleep, or slow a monster. Confuse and Slow almost never stick once you're out of the early game, and even if Sleep does work the monster almost always wakes up the next turn anyway, so you've basically traded one of your turns for one of a single monster's turn.

Of course, if these abilities did work reliably, they'd be overpowered. A confused monster is essentially helpless; a slowed monster is literally half as dangerous as usual. A slept monster...ehh, still seems pretty marginal to me. But anyway, it seems clear that fixing this problem is not simply a matter of tweaking saving throws. We need to change what the status ailments do. So here's my proposal.

In all cases, the spell should work all of the time, except against monsters that are immune to the effect. However, they should not stack. The idea is that applying the status ailment is already costing the player a turn they could be using to damage the monster directly; if that doesn't pay off over the course of the fight in at least one turn's worth of benefit, then the spell is not worth using.

1) Confuse: replace it with Stun. And change how "stunned" monsters behave. Instead of being paralyzed, a stunned monster has a greatly increased failure rate on spells (50% seems reasonable), reduced melee accuracy, and reduced melee damage, but they can still move (and move in the right direction reliably) and try to cast spells. Stunning should significantly reduce a monster's offense for several turns.

2) Slow: instead of subtracting 10 from the monster's speed, just subtract 2. This is still worthwhile against large targets where the occasional free turn is very much welcome; even against small targets, slowing a single orc can give you time to run away down a long corridor, as his friends get jammed up behind him. The duration has to be 10 turns at bare minimum, giving 1 free turn to make up for the turn spent slowing, and 1 free turn to benefit from taking the slowing action, at normal speed. Ideally Slow Monster would reduce the monster's speed by 20% instead, but that's hard to do with Vanilla's nonlinear speed system.

3) Sleep: this one's tricky. It might be sufficient to simply max out the monster's sleep timer, or at least greatly increase how long monsters sleep when magically slept. It may be necessary to modify their alertness though. A monster that is put to sleep should stay asleep unless the player is aggravating. Maybe we could make this be a paralysis effect that lasts for N turns but wears off if the monster takes any damage?

4) Stun: this is currently only accessible from a couple of arcane attack spells that deal sound or ice damage. I don't have a problem with effectively merging them with the modified Confuse Monster, so that they all deal stunning.

[debo]

Side note: I've found the RPGs that have useful status effects also have the opposite problem -- you always have to inflict curses / ailments on monsters if you want to have a hope in hell of surviving. This leads to sort of formulaic gameplay ("apply buffs, apply nerfs, kill"). See: Etrian Odyssey

[buzzkill]

I like your take on slowness, it could even be cumulative, which I think you also mentioned.

Confusion doesn't have to go away. It could just make the monster slightly erratic for starters, then mildly erratic, somewhat erratic, etc. in movement as well as targeting spells. One charge from a wand might buy you a turn or two over the course of the duration, emptying the whole wand would have your enemy walking into walls until you put it out of it's misery.

or (I think I like this better and is a better fit for Angband)... confusion could greatly affect casting while having little or no effect melee/movement, and stunning would greatly affect melee with little or no effect on casting/movement. Slowness affects movement only. In this way the effects are segregated, confusion affects spells, stunning affects melee, slowness affects movement. You would need the proper solution depending on the problem.

[Derakon]

Side note: I've found the RPGs that have useful status effects also have the opposite problem -- you always have to inflict curses / ailments on monsters if you want to have a hope in hell of surviving. This leads to sort of formulaic gameplay ("apply buffs, apply nerfs, kill"). See: Etrian Odyssey

Yes, this is also a potential pitfall. Hitting the "sweet spot" where debuffs are worth using but not required is a bit tricky especially since half the classes have poor access to them, requiring the use of magical devices.

or (I think I like this better and is a better fit for Angband)... confusion could greatly affect casting while having little or no effect melee/movement, and stunning would greatly affect melee with little or no effect on casting/movement. Slowness affects movement only. In this way the effects are segregated, confusion affects spells, stunning affects melee, slowness affects movement. You would need the proper solution depending on the problem.

This is also definitely a way we could go. I liked replacing confusion with stunning because it mirrors the effects of stunning on the player (increased failure rates, reduced combat capability). I think it'd be a bit weird to have a monster confusion effect that only does some of what happens to the player when they get confused, but that's not an insurmountable problem.

I definitely think that monsters that are suffering from confusion shouldn't be able to perfectly target their spells.

[ekolis]

Yes, this is also a potential pitfall. Hitting the "sweet spot" where debuffs are worth using but not required is a bit tricky especially since half the classes have poor access to them, requiring the use of magical devices.

I was thinking that perhaps one way to make this happen would be to make them have only a percentage chance of taking effect, so as to force players to make a decision - spend time trying to get the status effect on the enemy, or cut straight to fighting. But I suppose that might frustrate players. Perhaps a better option would be to make them non-binary - that is, "status effect meters". We already have this for poison and cuts for the player - you can be mildly poisoned/cut, or moderately poisoned/cut, or severely poisoned/cut, and the more severely you are affected, the more HP you lose per turn. Perhaps extending this mechanic to the other status effects in the game would make them more useful? Even uniques could be affected by status effects if you did this - you'd just give them a bigger meter, meaning it takes more points of status effect to get the same result!

[Derakon]

I was thinking that perhaps one way to make this happen would be to make them have only a percentage chance of taking effect, so as to force players to make a decision - spend time trying to get the status effect on the enemy, or cut straight to fighting.

Much of the point of the suggestions I made was to do away with percentage success rates -- status ailments should either always work or never work, depending on the enemy (and the number of enemies on which they work ought to be expanded). The point is to have them be significant enough that it can be worth spending a turn not hurting your opponent, without being so significant that the optimal action is always to lead off by crippling your opponent with every status ailment in the game. Hence, subtle effects that pay off over time.

Your "meters" suggestion sounds like just making the effects stack. Is there a difference I'm not understanding?

[Patashu]

I was thinking that perhaps one way to make this happen would be to make them have only a percentage chance of taking effect, so as to force players to make a decision - spend time trying to get the status effect on the enemy, or cut straight to fighting. But I suppose that might frustrate players. Perhaps a better option would be to make them non-binary - that is, "status effect meters". We already have this for poison and cuts for the player - you can be mildly poisoned/cut, or moderately poisoned/cut, or severely poisoned/cut, and the more severely you are affected, the more HP you lose per turn. Perhaps extending this mechanic to the other status effects in the game would make them more useful? Even uniques could be affected by status effects if you did this - you'd just give them a bigger meter, meaning it takes more points of status effect to get the same result!

Yes, cumulatively applying effects/adding to duration is much more fun then a failure rate.

[Mark]

I think it maybe good to ask 'what are you trying to achieve with 'offensive status effects'' in the first place? Are they...

• ...covering a gap in a class's abilities?
• to help balance specific types of monster or encounters that are otherwise too hard?
• thematic?
• there 'just because we can'?

I am right that a wand of slow monster affects a single target, but the stave affects everyone in sight? Does that need to factor into this thread?

I figure the prime use for these status effects is to 'stem the tide' of the enemy, not as a replacement for firepower. So it makes less sense when the player is overwhelmed by numbers of incoming attacks, whether from

• a singular fast monster
• many monsters

So... ...just throwing out some ideas:

1) Have affects that target everyone in LOS or caught in an AoE, and stun/confuse/sleep them. Make it sufficiently hard to resist that a good portion of a group is affected. And set the duration mindful of the fact the player will be dealing with a group of monsters, which takes time.

2) Have a slowing affect that is more resistable the slower the monster is. Slowing from +30 to +20 is unresistable. Slowing from +20 to +10 is resistable 50% of the time. Slowing from +10 to 0 is resistable 75% of the time. You cannot slow from 0 to -10. BUT, uniques do not resist this affect. So you can remove some of the edge from a unique, but it's not the same as being hasted all the time when you're dealing with orcs or whatever...

3) (Probably mutually exclusive from above). Have one spell that combines these affects, scaling on clevel/skill/spell and monster level.

• Confuse Monster I - monster is stunned for X turns.
• Confuse Monster II- monster is slowed by -Y for X turns.
• Confuse Monster III - monster moves erratically for X turns.
• Confuse Monster IV - Monster is slowed and moves erratically for X turns.

Concerning the actual end result a monster suffers - for every spell level, go down the list; for every monster resist level (it resists a lot, it resists, it resists somewhat), go up the list.

[Timo Pietilä]

3) Sleep: this one's tricky. It might be sufficient to simply max out the monster's sleep timer

In current vanilla monster can act as soon as it wakes up. If that would not be the case then sleep could work in your favor. I vote for "waking up" taking one turn.

Instead of

sleep - wake up and move - sleep - wake up and move.

you get

sleep - wake up - sleep - wake up - sleep.

[PowerWyrm]

In current vanilla monster can act as soon as it wakes up. If that would not be the case then sleep could work in your favor. I vote for "waking up" taking one turn.

This is not the case anymore, at least in 3.5. Waking up takes a turn.

[Timo Pietilä]

This is not the case anymore, at least in 3.5. Waking up takes a turn.

As in waking up is one 100 energy action? Or that monster is at 0 energy when it wakes up?

Too tired to think. Need coffee...

How does this energy-based turn system work again? If player hits monster with successful sleep ray does that immediately zero that monster energy count? What actually happens with action like that?

[Derakon]

Even if the monster wastes a turn waking up, if that's always what happens on the turn after the player sleeps them, I don't think anyone will ever use Sleep Monster. It has to last for, at bare minimum, 2 turns, since otherwise you're trading one player turn for one monster turn, which will always be a bad trade. But honestly I'd rather make it be Hold Monster or something, where the monster is paralyzed until the timer runs out or they take damage. That way it's (potentially) useful to everyone, albeit in niche cases still.

[fizzix]

That way it's (potentially) useful to everyone, albeit in niche cases still.

We should have both.

Hold monster - paralyzes it for N turns, N is based on your device skill. For low device skill characters, N < 1. Note it *always* succeeds, except for immune monsters. There isn't a saving throw. You should be able to do the calculation in your head. Even a 2 turn paralysis is useful. Paralysis is an offensive spell, like slow monster.

Sleep monster - monster saves as normal (these need to be adjusted anyway). Monster goes to the highest level of sleep and wakes up when it takes damage. Sleep is an escaping spell, used to get everything off of your back.

[krazyhades]

I wouldn't mind having sleep etc. be a roll where the caster/[U]ser/etc can make some check to sleep monsters 0-3 turns or 0-2 turns.

[Derakon]

We should have both.

Are they strongly-enough differentiated? I mean, they're both "monster cannot do anything" effects; just, one as described has no save and doesn't last very long, while the other does have a save and lasts...how long? Or were you intending that Hold Monster not expire when the monster is damaged? That would definitely be a differentiator. But finding the sweet spot where it's useful without being overpowered would be difficult, I think.