Finding a solution to ID

[Derakon]

Angband is a jumbled mess of poor balance. That's part of it's (ahem) charm. +1/-1 seems like it would take all the bite out of nexus hounds and other breathers unless it triggered with each and every attack, and I don't think that's the case. Is nexus particularly nasty aside from the rare possibility of catastrophic stat swap???

Uncontrolled teleport is potentially a problem, especially if it knocks you off the level entirely, but the stat-swap effect is vastly more dangerous (and vastly more rare) than any of the other options.

Making the stat-swap less extreme but compensating by making it more common would be fine by me. Right now, if you aren't careful when you fight nexus hounds, something like 5% of the time your character will be ruined. That's not good game design. Making it be more like "25% of the time your character will be weakened a bit" (tossing a point of INT into CON, for example) is simultaneously more interesting (players are more likely to continue playing that character) and also a warning of sorts about interacting with strange hounds.

[AnonymousHero]

Angband is a jumbled mess of poor balance. That's part of it's (ahem) charm. +1/-1 seems like it would take all the bite out of nexus hounds and other breathers unless it triggered with each and every attack, and I don't think that's the case. Is nexus particularly nasty aside from the rare possibility of catastrophic stat swap???

Yeah, uncontrolled teleport can be catastrophic (deadly) in itself and the beauty of it is that it scales with the dungeon level you're on, i.e. Nexus hounds get more dangerous the deeper you are (without rNexus) -- IMO exactly how it should be. The "5% chance to ruin character" mechanic does not scale with dlvl.

[Timo Pietilä]

Nexus stat-swap needs nerfing anyway; it should either not exist or should only do a random +1/-1 effect or something like that.

Nexus stat swap isn't that bad if you have your affected stats over 18 and you get saving throw against it, so it wont affect you at all most of the time (first attack needs to select that effect, then it needs to pass saving throw).

I hate nexus level teleport more than stat swap. OTOH I have been around long enough to know to avoid those things like plague until I have my stats high enough that swap doesn't hurt me so much or I have nexus resist. I think nexus is a bit newbie-trap.

Maybe we only need to make nexus attacks deeper. Or introduce something shallow with nexus resist in early game less important slot. Amulet perhaps. Amulets of searching are currently completely useless, replace them with nexus resist amulet. Amulet-version of Stability boots?

[buzzkill]

Maybe we only need to make nexus attacks deeper. Or introduce something shallow with nexus resist in early game less important slot. Amulet perhaps. Amulets of searching are currently completely useless, replace them with nexus resist amulet. Amulet-version of Stability boots?

Cute and cuddly, this lovable furball emanates a unusual aura. The nexus pup lick your face. You suddenly feel stupider. You suddenly feel stronger-er.

+1/-1 nexus pups can appear early. Then nexus hound can hang deeper with the time hounds with their full scale non-nerfed character ruining abilities.

[Zireael]

Actually expanding on this:

The range of above "runes" is incidentally 1-6 (up to +10 possible, but rarely going past 6), which is also the range of typical pvals. So how about assigning a power value and a rune to each magical item.

To hit, to dam and AC bonuses are determined by this power value PV (avoiding the shortcut pval for it to not cause confusion); which of the 3 it applies to is determined by context (+th, +td) [+AC] as usual, there is no rune here.
In addition, magic items with other properties (like stat bonuses) will have a PV and a rune; for example, a ring of strength would have PV str. The rune needs to be learned as planned; the PV can either be known automatically, or also be learned, not sure which is better.

Naturally, PV would be weighted by depth. It might be possible to use this scheme, with only one weighing function, for all items. Sofar it includes to hit, to dam, AC, stats; infravision and searching should also be in range.

The big thing thats not included yet is speed. If we map speed values onto these PV values by halving them, it should result in familiar numbers. The highest "common" speed rings would be +6 (formerly +12), which is about what you typically find in the endgame, and highest possible +10 (corresponding to a ros +20).

In fact I very much like the distribution of speed values for rings. Most of the games you end up with something in a small range (+10 to +14 or so), but very rarely it can go higher (causing alarmed posts of disbelief from newbies when they find a ros +18 ).

So mold the probabilities for the PV function like the current speed ring function:
Mean value of +1,1 at dlvl 1, +4 or so at dlvl 50, and variance similar to speed rings at lvl 50, with a maximum of +10. This cap doesnt exist for speed rings, but may be useful to introduce if PVs have to be learned like runes.

I hope I have expressed my ideas clearly.

I like this solution.

[debo]

I have nothing to add but everyone was using bold and I felt left out

[MattB]

I actually really liked the OP...