Why does literally everything do acid damage

[Derakon]

Or make it really gamey. If all my armour is acid resistant do I carry around some junk armour to switch to when defending against acid attacks? In the example above soft leather is good for a -80 damage reduction on acid if I switch. I suspect this solution would cause more problems then it solves.

That is a fair point, though I question whether people would really do this considering acid hits random equipment slots. My main goal was to make it so that acid was devastating to armor when applied in mass quantities (and correspondingly less nasty when applied 1 point at a time), instead of merely a gradual degradation that happened to the same degree regardless of how much damage was mitigated. Do you have any suggestions that would accomplish that goal without being gamey?

[Philip]

Well, since the issue would be mostly that equipment resistant to acid would cause you to take more damage, the simple solution is to do AC damage to armor according to damage soaked up, without making armor that is immune to acid soak up less. I doubt people would actually exploit this, since it costs as many slots as you use, is unreliable and makes you weaker for the time you use it (taking off Isildur to avoid a bit of acid damage would be completely stupid).

[wobbly]

So it has to randomly hit a slot of acid vulnerable equipment? I guess that's a little better & harder to game. It's still creating a situation where acid resistance on equipment is a dangerous thing, which feels a little artifical. Surely acid resistance is good? Realistically (& yes I know realism is a problematic argument, but still) it's going to provide better protection. If acid creatures became dangerous you would have to consider how much acid resistant gear you can safely wear & even there it would be playing the odds (whoops it breathed on my cloak, now I'm dead. If only it had breathed on the armour underneath the cloak!!)

& yeah I don't have a better idea at the moment. Actually the 1st half of your solution I can agree with (armour has hp vs acid damage). It's the 2nd half, acid resistant gear makes you highly acid vulnerable, that doesn't sit so well.

Edit: Second problem. I'm wearing 20 AC body armour, 1 AC cloak. So 1 in 6 I absorb 200, 1 in 6 I absorb 10. Seems a little large a spread to leave to chance. If you divided large blocks in to multiple small blocks it would be better (So 100 might be 4x25 or 1 in 6x6x6x6 to all hit the vulnerable pt). Makes more sense for splash damage any way.

Edit2: Agree with debo below.

[debo]

Sure make acid more dangerous, that's actually a good idea. But the variety of monsters in the early game is awful, and that is actually what I'm calling out as the problem. Giving some of them (water hounds and vortices eg) a mild chance to stun, for example, could be neat.

None of this changes the fact that a huge number of early game monsters hit to shoot acid, despite the fact that they are all thematically different. It seems very uninspired to me. Hit to hunger, hit to drain stats, hit to confuse, hit to blind, hit for mega damage, hit to teleport! Any of those could potentially be used as more frequent replacements, because right now the variety in the first fifth of the game is pretty terrible imo

I specifically think melee attacks that cause combat stat drain are especially underutilized in the early game, as they would provide early setbacks that can be potentially large but that can also be quickly corrected (by leveling up)

It's like someone went through the monster list once and every time they couldn't think of how to make an early game monster both "interesting" and manageable, they just gave it acid melee.

[Deadguy]

+1 for less acid critters.

[fizzix]

Sure make acid more dangerous, that's actually a good idea. But the variety of monsters in the early game is awful, and that is actually what I'm calling out as the problem. Giving some of them (water hounds and vortices eg) a mild chance to stun, for example, could be neat.

None of this changes the fact that a huge number of early game monsters hit to shoot acid, despite the fact that they are all thematically different. It seems very uninspired to me. Hit to hunger, hit to drain stats, hit to confuse, hit to blind, hit for mega damage, hit to teleport! Any of those could potentially be used as more frequent replacements, because right now the variety in the first fifth of the game is pretty terrible imo

I specifically think melee attacks that cause combat stat drain are especially underutilized in the early game, as they would provide early setbacks that can be potentially large but that can also be quickly corrected (by leveling up)

It's like someone went through the monster list once and every time they couldn't think of how to make an early game monster both "interesting" and manageable, they just gave it acid melee.

Normally when going through the monster list I've restricted myself to minor changes (the group monsters being the biggest major change). However I certainly am not opposed to shaking things up considerably.

I actually have considerably less of a problem with acid and more of a problem with the tons of monsters that feel exactly the same. There definitely is room for some better effects. We could even make something like a rod of curing a useful item if we buffed cuts and poison.

[Derakon]

We could also add an "acid burn" status effect that deals damage over time. Similar to poison, except there's no way to cure the condition except waiting it out. Conversely, its duration would be significantly reduced compared to poison, while it would deal more damage per turn.

Then acid attacks could do something like: flip a coin. If heads, deal acid burn. If tails, try to damage armor. If damaging armor fails, deal direct HP damage.

For enemy variety, would it suffice to simply make molds, slimes, and oozes significantly less common? They're the top offenders for "everything deals acid damage", especially the latter two.

[Kilumanjaro]

We could also add an "acid burn" status effect that deals damage over time. Similar to poison, except there's no way to cure the condition except waiting it out. Conversely, its duration would be significantly reduced compared to poison, while it would deal more damage per turn.

Then acid attacks could do something like: flip a coin. If heads, deal acid burn. If tails, try to damage armor. If damaging armor fails, deal direct HP damage.

For enemy variety, would it suffice to simply make molds, slimes, and oozes significantly less common? They're the top offenders for "everything deals acid damage", especially the latter two.

Overall I concur... but how about rather than 50/50 chances to acid burn, make that the primary function so all acid damage burns over time, and has a 50/50 chance to damage the equipment it hits. Double damage for hitting an unprotected (or net-0 protection) slot is still a good thing, IMO.

[debo]

For enemy variety, would it suffice to simply make molds, slimes, and oozes significantly less common?

It's a start. Purple worm should also be changed. Or removed, really, it's totally superfluous and also misleading as a monster.

[krazyhades]

You mean because it's a w that's not weak? Wereworms are similar, for the time they show up. I don't have a huge problem with them.

[debo]

You mean because it's a w that's not weak? Wereworms are similar, for the time they show up. I don't have a huge problem with them.

Basically I think worms should just have the consistent theme of "breed explosively, hit with a low-damage annoying attack and ruin levels." I don't see any reason to have this other divergent family of worms that travel solo and shoot acid even though they're a totally different color than the other worms that shoot acid. Just put that monster profile in a different family at that point. In fact, we already have that monster, it's called "baby green dragon" and shows up just a tiny bit deeper.

[debo]

Also "acid unrelated" but I guess this thread is becoming more of "debo bitches about vanilla" -- one thing that might be a more fun change would be to make dragon breath act like a cone (as has been discussed), and then just make them breathe a lot more often. I know it's supposed to be "there's a very small chance that it might breathe and one-shot you", but now that they seem to come in tiny packs a lot more (?) it might be good to feel like "well if three of them breathe at this range, I'll be ok but if four of them do I'm toast".

Right now, 99% of ancient dragon fights I had went like this:
- I stack up on double-resist of what it breathes
- We walk towards each other. It doesn't breathe ever for some unfathomable reason
- I get it down to one star
- It runs away 10 steps, breathe ineffectually but somehow blows up half my stuff
- It then turns around and throws itself against me and dies, leading me to wonder why it even bothered fleeing in the first place

I may have just been lucky in point 1, but in the other two variants I play reasonably frequently (Sil and Poscheng), if you see a thing that breathes, you are _very_ sure that it is going to breathe at you if you don't get the hell out of dodge. I personally think that's a lot more fun Ż\_(ツ)_/Ż

[kaypy]

Basically I think worms should just have the consistent theme of "breed explosively, hit with a low-damage annoying attack and ruin levels." I don't see any reason to have this other divergent family of worms

The purple worm dates back through moria and rogue all the way to first edition D&D. You'd probably be more justified in removing all the other worms...

Hmm. I think if anything this is telling me we need more large worms so that folks stop complacently assuming that any w is a trivial breeder

[debo]

The purple worm dates back through moria and rogue all the way to first edition D&D. You'd probably be more justified in removing all the other worms...

Hmm. I think if anything this is telling me we need more large worms so that folks stop complacently assuming that any w is a trivial breeder

The large worms are more trivial than the breeders.

[wobbly]

The purple worm dates back through moria and rogue all the way to first edition D&D. You'd probably be more justified in removing all the other worms...

Hmm. I think if anything this is telling me we need more large worms so that folks stop complacently assuming that any w is a trivial breeder

You know the whole D&D reference with purple worms meant I avoided them on sight for a long time, just in case they could swallow me for a insta-kill. If you really wanted to make them distinct from green dragons, you could give them a swallow attack. A 1x1 room where you take large acid damage every round till you kill it from inside. Perhaps gimiky, but certainly unique.

I think the whole problem with them being different to worm masses is more they use the same symbol (At least I assume so, last I saw one was with a tile set rather then ascii). I actually like the flavour of a massive giant worm, seems if it looks to much like the little worms then maybe it just needs to be changed so it looks different.