Morgoth is not a "giant?"

[AnonymousHero]

He has all of the most powerful abilities, save ones that would make him unfun to fight (like healing or teleportation). His spell list has very few duds in it and plenty of whoppers. His melee is incredibly powerful. He's about as strong as you can reasonably make an enemy without going to ridiculous extremes (+80 speed and breathes mana every turn, etc.). The "problem" (to the extent that it even is one) is that it's very hard for any single fight to stop a player who's willing to burn consumables.

... and he's dumb as a brick!

The chase across level and tunnel through walls thing is completely self-defeating in that it makes certain tactics completely trivial whereas they'd be wildly annoying to do to a different monster.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Why would acid brand help?

I find that around 450-500 average damage/round, with decent to-hit (like warrior with +20 to-hit weapon, with berserker + chant spells), makes a pretty fast job of Morgoth, with a reasonable amount of consumables.

What are people's favorite standart/ego weapons to melee Morgoth with?

Favorite weapon to melee Morgoth, well, Aule, Deathwreaker, Ringil, Glaive of Pain, those are all really great. But, my favorite has to be bare fists just because it was cool to pull it off. http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=17057

[Bogatyr]

Sauron doesn't have IM_ACID.

Ah I usually don't give Sauron much thought -- he doesn't eat/pass walls so he can be pillar danced without trouble. I'm definitely thinking of playing a "no pillar dance" character soon since all but a handful of uniques and non-unique wall-eat/passers can be beaten with almost no effort this way. I found that with my BamBam human warrior win from yesterday that I didn't need in fact to pillar dance a number of the higher uniques. Those that summon, though, or have incredibly annoying attacks like disenchant (didn't have the R for that on my main fighting kit) will require some thinking about how to approach.

[Derakon]

What are people's favorite standart/ego weapons to melee Morgoth with?

My characters that melee Morgoth tend to end up using big weapons with Slay Evil brands, like Holy Avenger Maces of Disruption or the like. I did have one with with a Scythe of Slicing of Extra Attacks <+2>, too.

I usually play randarts, though.

[Bogatyr]

My characters that melee Morgoth tend to end up using big weapons with Slay Evil brands, like Holy Avenger Maces of Disruption or the like. I did have one with with a Scythe of Slicing of Extra Attacks <+2>, too.

I usually play randarts, though.

Ah, in a standart game where I have both the Glaive of Pain and the Trident of Wrath, I just found a Scythe of Slicing (Holy Avenger), and for my rogue with 5 attacks/round, the GoP still beats the SoS(HA). The GoP beats the ToW vs. evil, but ToW is slightly better than GoP vs non-poison-resistants, and the ToW kicks ass vs. Undead).

[Timo Pietilä]

... and he's dumb as a brick!

The chase across level and tunnel through walls thing is completely self-defeating in that it makes certain tactics completely trivial whereas they'd be wildly annoying to do to a different monster.

Tunneling to player servers as "there is no escape" for the player. Unfortunately Morgoth is vulnerable to TO, which makes that kind of moot point.

Maybe we should have teleport immunity for some monsters, so that in order to get away it would need to be you that teleports, not the monster.

[Timo Pietilä]

Ah, in a standart game where I have both the Glaive of Pain and the Trident of Wrath, I just found a Scythe of Slicing (Holy Avenger), and for my rogue with 5 attacks/round, the GoP still beats the SoS(HA). The GoP beats the ToW vs. evil, but ToW is slightly better than GoP vs non-poison-resistants, and the ToW kicks ass vs. Undead).

MoD of extra attacks <+2> makes short work against undeads, so Vecna et.co. need to worry.

[quarague]

Maybe we should have teleport immunity for some monsters, so that in order to get away it would need to be you that teleports, not the monster.

I really like that idea. It would also take some of the power out of TO without making it totally pointless. It would prevent you from cleaning out a late game vault with zero risk if there are one or two uniques in there that are TO immune. Question is which monsters should get TO-immunity. Maybe the smarter/spell casting late game uniques and all 'A' or something like that.

[Thraalbee]

This is already in PosChengband and allows for some interesting moments. I recently triggered a summoning trap on a chest within a vault. I was on the last position in a long corridor feeling "safe". The trap summoned some nasties including "Julian, Master of Arden Forest", 19 levels OOD, who resists teleport. I was nearly out of mana so I phased after taking one surprise round of damage. Only to realize that ?Phase does not work within vaults in PosCheng, at least not in that vault. -tele other? Nope, the bastard was resistant to that. Dig? Nope, permanent walls only. Change places? Nope, it is in the game but not for my character. So I had to fight until the end, and to my surprise actually made it although barely.

[Bogatyr]

I really like that idea. It would also take some of the power out of TO without making it totally pointless. It would prevent you from cleaning out a late game vault with zero risk if there are one or two uniques in there that are TO immune. Question is which monsters should get TO-immunity. Maybe the smarter/spell casting late game uniques and all 'A' or something like that.

It is never zero risk, they can wake up themselves, or get woken up by a screamer or a breather. It's happened plenty of times to me. And if you get surrounded and have to teleport away, your prior TOs are bombs all over the level so potentially no place is safe. This also just happened to me. So there are already mechanisms in the game to make TO very much not "zero risk."

[AnonymousHero]

It is never zero risk, they can wake up themselves, or get woken up by a screamer or a breather. It's happened plenty of times to me. And if you get surrounded and have to teleport away, your prior TOs are bombs all over the level so potentially no place is safe. This also just happened to me. So there are already mechanisms in the game to make TO very much not "zero risk."

Exactly. The only thing you can "reasonably" count on in a vault is ?PhaseDoor. It'll be so close to the vault that ?TeleportOther is unlikely to have placed the monster there.

(Ridiculous metagaming, I know, but it works.)

[quarague]

It is never zero risk, they can wake up themselves, or get woken up by a screamer or a breather. It's happened plenty of times to me. And if you get surrounded and have to teleport away, your prior TOs are bombs all over the level so potentially no place is safe. This also just happened to me. So there are already mechanisms in the game to make TO very much not "zero risk."

It probably never is zero risk, but for an advanced spellcaster who can cast infinite TO's with zero failure the risk/reward ratio for cleaning out a major vault on dlevel 98 is seriously off. You get way to many nice things relative to the danger you take. Even for a non-advanced spell caster who only gets infinite 5% fail TO's I think the big vaults on dlevel 90+ are two easy relative to the rewards they give.

[Bogatyr]

It probably never is zero risk, but for an advanced spellcaster who can cast infinite TO's with zero failure the risk/reward ratio for cleaning out a major vault on dlevel 98 is seriously off. You get way to many nice things relative to the danger you take. Even for a non-advanced spell caster who only gets infinite 5% fail TO's I think the big vaults on dlevel 90+ are two easy relative to the rewards they give.

The risk is insta-death at every turn of the game getting to that point. It is not easy sailing surviving up to 18/200 INT for a mage, it's either a terrifying fast dive or a boring long grind (still with moments of terror). It's not easy even navigating to all the downstairs to get to level 98 in the first place. A warrior can just sail through, absorbing unresisted full breath attacks at times and simply saying "oops! That smarts a bit!" Live the risk during the beginning/mid, reap the rewards at the end. I don't think it's out of whack at all, it's the "contract" the game enters into with the player when s/he choses mage, which his basically this: "Mage, huh? Dude, you're *dead*. There are so many ways I'm going to kill you, it's not even funny. In the eeny weeny tiny possibility you survive to 0% fail spells and find Kelek's, all of Angband is your oyster. And then you'll get overconfident, make a mistake, and die."

edit: I have a clev 37 gnome mage with 18/*** INT on dlev 98 right now trying to get goodies from vaults, and let me tell you it's no cakewalk. Almost got fried by the Veccna behind the Queen Ant who summoned a bunch, blocking all TO opportunities, and I hadn't yet found Mordinkanen's so it was a nervous walk around the corner getting blasted by Veccnas distance attacks. So *definitely* not a "zero risk" endeavor. More like, "considerable risk," even with 0% TO

[bio_hazard]

Back to the OP's original thought (about giants)... Any thoughts on having Slay Giant not be a racial slay, but slay anything that is very very large. So P, but also D, maybe some Us, big worms, giant rocs...

[Derakon]

Back to the OP's original thought (about giants)... Any thoughts on having Slay Giant not be a racial slay, but slay anything that is very very large. So P, but also D, maybe some Us, big worms, giant rocs...

On the one hand, you'd probably have to bring it down to an x2 slay if you did that. On the other hand, the current Slay Giant is borderline useless, so who cares if we change it?