Status ailments

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In Halls of Mist, you can only get critical hits against sleeping, scared, confused or blind monsters. This makes offensive status spells really good. Mastering them is actually essential for your survival. The effects do work on tougher monsters quite reliably. I think I've got the balance right.

My new Sorcerer class (in the next version) is especially good at back-stabbing. Fun!

[T-Mick]

In which nothing is added to the discussion

Glad to hear that Halls of Mist is still alive. I was wondering about it just a few days ago.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Glad to hear that Halls of Mist is still alive. I was wondering about it just a few days ago.

It's alive, yes! I'm enjoying playing the development version very much myself. The next version will bring the biggest changes since FayAngband -> Halls of Mist happened.

[Bogatyr]

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;

Slow is unreliable enough that this makes it basically useless. It can take 3 or 4 or even more turns to get a slow cast to succeed against a particular monster. Against a high hitting opponent, that is a significant risk, and should be rewarded with a good solid slowing, -10 is good.

Or, make slow affect by a smaller amount instead, but lengthen the effect and make it almost impossible to resist, and make it cumulative. It would take 5 casts to get to -10 and that is again significant risk against high damage opponents.

[Derakon]

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.

I trust that adjusts your understanding.

[debo]

It's alive, yes! I'm enjoying playing the development version very much myself. The next version will bring the biggest changes since FayAngband -> Halls of Mist happened.

Hurry up, we could use a new variant release to spice up the competitions

[takkaria]

I started working on implementing these ideas in a branch off V master, which you can find on GitHub, and there are also macOS and Windows binaries. I've played with it enough to think it's not going to crash but not enough to balance it well.

Changes:

• Hold, Stun, Confuse and Slow ('new-style debuffs') don't have saving throws, so they will always work unless a monster is immune. Sleep and Fear still have saves. It made sense to separate sleep and hold because the game uses monster sleeping in a few different places, not all of which you'd want to behave as hold monster now does.
• There's a new effect, hold monster. No monsters resist this yet. Old 'sleep monster' effects are now hold monster, but 'sleep monsters' mass effects remain.
• New-style debuffs all have short durations. If you cast them twice, the highest duration will be used instead of being additive - so if the monster has a stun counter of 10 turns and you stun it again for 12 turns, it will only be stunned for 12 turns. Slowing stacks the old way, as do fear and haste monster.
• You can now find a wand of Stun Monster. It's available in the magic store for testing purposes. I haven't added it to spellbooks yet.

The full effects of the new-style debuffs are:

[B]Hold Monster[/B]:
  Paralyses a monster until you hit them
  Doubles chance of player getting a critical hit
  Normal duration 3-8 turns

[B]Stun Monster[/B]:
  Reduces the monster's melee accuracy and damage by 25%
  1 in 10 chance that the monster will miss the turn
  Doubles chance of player getting a critical hit
  Normal duration 5-10 turns

[B]Confuse Monster[/B]:
  Monster spells fail 50% more often
  Monster 25% more likely to miss target with spells/ranged attacks
  Monster ball spells sometimes go in the wrong direction
  1 in 5 chance of erratic movement
  Doubles chance of critical hit
  Normal duration 5-10 turns

[B]Slow Monster[/B]:
  -2 speed
  normal duration 10 or more turns; duration stacks

Any playing, fiddling etc would be appreciated! I think right now it's a bit overpowered, especially with doubling the chance of getting critical hits.

I might put some of the effects in edit files so it's easier to play with. I'm also considering changing things so that if you e.g. stun a monster twice, then the reduction in melee accuracy/damage and chance of turn missing increase, or if you confuse a monster twice then they're more likely to move erratically/mis-aim spells etc.

[Nick]

Any playing, fiddling etc would be appreciated! I think right now it's a bit overpowered, especially with doubling the chance of getting critical hits.

At first glance, these look great. Being overpowered could help to counteract the buffs I'm planning to monsters

I might put some of the effects in edit files so it's easier to play with.

That would be ideal.

[Derakon]

I started working on implementing these ideas in a branch off V master

Awesome! Thanks for taking the initiative on this. I'll definitely have to download and give it a shot next chance I get.