Status ailments

[bio_hazard]

Can we talk about blindness here too? It's always annoyed me that wands of light don't temporarily blind monsters even if they don't do damage. Light attacks both damage and blind the player, and I don't like that asymmetry.

[Storch]

FAAngband

FAAngband already has it :-) It is possible to slow and stun even the most dangerous foes and it is FUN.

[bio_hazard]

One thing that could make status ailments more exciting would be to increase the stretch of the game over which they have some chance to take action on monsters, but if the monster makes it's save, then the player has to make a save (or save once out of two chances or something) or the effect turns around on the player for some number of turns.

[fizzix]

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.

Yes, I was thinking that paralysis means you get to bash it for free until the paralysis ends.

Letting the monster move on the turn it becomes unparalyzed, but not on the "waking up" turn also helps differentiate. a 2 turn paralysis is equivalent to a slow that you need to re-cast every other turn. It's marginally useful, but slow is better. A 3 turn paralysis is far better than a slow though. So we'd have to keep useful paralysis effects between 2 and about 3.5 turns.

[ekolis]

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

No, it's pretty much the same thing. Just wanted to flesh out the idea of "cumulative" status effects as buzzkill mentioned a bit more. I see in your original post you said you didn't want status effects to stack. What's your reasoning on that? I think making them all-or-nothing just makes the problem of them being either overpowered or worthless worse - they're either useful or they're not at whatever strength they're set at, and there's no shades of gray enabling different players to make different choices as to how much to use them.

[Derakon]

No, it's pretty much the same thing. Just wanted to flesh out the idea of "cumulative" status effects as buzzkill mentioned a bit more. I see in your original post you said you didn't want status effects to stack. What's your reasoning on that? I think making them all-or-nothing just makes the problem of them being either overpowered or worthless worse - they're either useful or they're not at whatever strength they're set at, and there's no shades of gray enabling different players to make different choices as to how much to use them.

My main concern is that I don't want the player to have a win button. A status ailment that locks the monster down for a few turns is okay so long as they get a chance to break free, but if you can pile the things on top of each other, then you make it potentially possible to completely lock down a monster into helplessness.

Basically, I suspect that the utility of most status ailments has increasing returns (i.e. the second application is worth more than the first one), which makes stacking potentially unbalancing. Certainly I know that Wands of Slow Monster used to stack, and being able to fight a unique when they're at -20 speed and you're at +0 wasn't really all that interesting.

Hence the goal was to have ailments that are useful but not overpowering when applied once.

[buzzkill]

Hence the goal was to have ailments that are useful but not overpowering when applied once.

I believe you're working on the assumption that the player has limitless access to cause said aliments (which may well be the case and if it is, then it's a problem unto itself). If that's the case, then you'll never have a balance that's interesting. If it's not the case, which is how I prefer to envision it, cumulative effects make sense because they reward a player for a) risking resources and b) risking time/turns in order to c) produce a desired outcome.

[Estie]

The main reason why debuffs (lets call it that ? its shorter) are worthless is that monsters get a saving throw. I remember trying to use them in desperate situations: mage in trouble because a fast critter approaches ? try slow *it is not affected* try sleep that orc ? *its immune* (wtf its a lousy uruk!) etc.

These days in the early game I sometimes carry a slow wand instead of squelching it immediately to slow uniques. Nothing else is worth the trouble.
But other than that, I dont bother; I dont even learn the debuffing spells with my mages anymore.

Wouldnt it be better to remove the saving throw (i.e. make the effect automatic; theres still the usual chance to fail the wand application or spell casting) and make uniques immune to all debuffs ?

[emulord]

Stacking debuffs is fine if the resistance goes UP every time, so that more than a reasonable number of debuffs stops being a good use of time because they'll make their save too often.

Or just having a adding duration or resetting duration

[Derakon]

The main reason why debuffs (lets call it that ? its shorter) are worthless is that monsters get a saving throw. I remember trying to use them in desperate situations: mage in trouble because a fast critter approaches ? try slow *it is not affected* try sleep that orc ? *its immune* (wtf its a lousy uruk!) etc.

This was exactly my point in my OP, though I may not have said it so clearly. Status ailments that can be resisted are basically worthless -- why would I spend a turn to maybe debuff a monster when I could spend that turn more profitably on hurting them, guaranteed? IMO all resistances should either be 0% or 100%, excepting maybe for the mage attack spells that also deal damage, where the debuff is only secondary. You're already spending a turn trying to use the debuff; if the monster has any remotely significant chance of resisting then that action is too risky to be worthwhile.

In the current game, Slowing early uniques is pretty much the only exception I'm aware of. This only works because early uniques have few if any ranged attack options, and the same goes for the player, so the player can afford to dump 5-10 turns on trying to slow the unique because what else are they going to do with their time?

[Patashu]

Stacking debuffs is fine if the resistance goes UP every time, so that more than a reasonable number of debuffs stops being a good use of time because they'll make their save too often.

Or just having a adding duration or resetting duration

Yes, this kind of thing. Stacking a debuff over and over should not result in eternally growing benefit (unless of course the game was balanced around it!), the more it's stacked the more it should be resisted/the less additional effect it should have/the quicker the enemy should shrug off levels of it/whatever makes the balance work

[quarague]

the eternally growing benefit of stacking debuffs could also be resolved if the times does not increase with additional stacks. Say you apply slow, apply once gives -5 speed for 3 turns. If you apply it again, it goes down to -10 speed but you have already used one of the 3 turns, so it will only be -10 for 2 turns. The first application of a debuff sets the total time, if you stack the debuff the effect will be stronger but you are using part of the debuff time to apply more of it instead of actually doing damage or running away.

[Patashu]

the eternally growing benefit of stacking debuffs could also be resolved if the times does not increase with additional stacks. Say you apply slow, apply once gives -5 speed for 3 turns. If you apply it again, it goes down to -10 speed but you have already used one of the 3 turns, so it will only be -10 for 2 turns. The first application of a debuff sets the total time, if you stack the debuff the effect will be stronger but you are using part of the debuff time to apply more of it instead of actually doing damage or running away.

This is a pretty cool idea. In fact, it's the kind of idea that could be stolen for new roguelikes/other games...

[quarague]

currently the debuffs on the player are the same as on the monsters and I feel that causes at least some of the issues we have with making them useful to apply to monsters. If one drops this restriction, I think one can create debuffs that are useful in some situations without being mandatory or overpowered. For example:
Bind legs: the monster can only walk at half its usual speed but is not restricted in its melee or spell casting ability, 100% sucess rate for 5 to 10 turns
Bind hands: reduces melee damage by say 25% for 5 to 10 turns
Bind mind: sets spell failure rate to 50% for all spells for 5 to 10 turns
Bind mouth: cuts breath damage in half for 5 to 10 turns
If they all have durations like that you can't just apply all of them to any monster you see because the first one will have almost run out of time when you are done, but keeping one or maybe two applied while fighting the monster could be useful for some monsters.

[Derakon]

Well said, and I like your suggestions. Making them clearly distinct from the player's debuffs is helpful for setting expectations properly, which I admit was a problem with my original set of suggestions (especially for Slow Monster).