Plans for 4.1 - 4.3

[Derakon]

I have, in conjunction with my creative consultant, had some thoughts on this, but they have suffered from scope creep, so I'll start another new thread at some point to discuss.

A less-formal maintainer might admit that they just went and got drunk.

[debo]

"Bazooker" sounds like a pretty distinct class. Just sayin'

[HallucinationMushroom]

I vote for rocketeer. Or, failing that, noob toob masta.

[HallucinationMushroom]

A less-formal maintainer might admit that they just went and got drunk.

But, what do maintainers drink? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Nick]

But, what do maintainers drink? Inquiring minds want to know.

Human blood, caffeinated

[Carnivean]

While we're mentioning warriors I'm going to throw in the idea of giving them their racial stealth bonus/penalty ( or half there race stealth bonus/penalty) so that hobbit warriors become more like non-magic hobbit rogues & elf warriors have better stealth to make up for being such scrawny warriors. The actual numbers would take a bit of fidding, but I thought I'd throw the idea out there.

Edit: Looking at the current no.'s the human priest is as stealthy as an elven warrior which doesn't sit quite right for me.

I think there should be a race/class combination bonus/malus for most combinations. This could give rise to some real challenge combinations.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think this is largely a consequence of the fact that Angband depends so heavily on equipment for the character's power.

For that may I suggest that we get HP a bit more clvl dependent than CON dependent. CON is now far too important stat IMO.

[wobbly]

Regarding the 3 archer thing I'm pretty sure there already is. At least I never play the warrior or rogue without using a bow or sling a lot.

[AnonymousHero]

(talking about monsters...) and potential for (limited) conflict between monsters.

Please don't do this if you allow summoning and/or are not very careful about what this implies (as knock-on effects). It's one of the few things that was unbelievably annoying in Entroband. Every few levels, you'd get (through no fault of your own) absolutely ridiculously huge armies of monsters because random unique "evil" dragon A had spawned next to random unique "good" dragon B. Of course, they'd start summoning and their summons started to summon and within a few turns you'd have to leave the level. Flavorful, but ultimately just annoying. (If there was some cap on summons it might work, but this really requires very careful gameplay testing... because it's such a seductive idea.)

EDIT: Now that I think about it, it actually happens in T2 too, but not quite to the same degree (since "friendly" monsters are much rarer). It's compounded by the fact that summons cannot kill unique monsters (except through roundabout mechanisms that don't kick in very often), so in our example Dragon A and Dragon B would effectively be immortal and would just keep summoning...

[AnonymousHero]

Re: Monks. (As I think Ingwe mentioned...?)

I think generally monks are pretty uninteresting if you're just saying "unarmed fighter". Instead I think we could combine two ideas from the thread here: What if monks were actually unarmed fighters that used Qi (as opposed to Arcane) to power their combat and could actually use Qi to suppress Arcane magic? Effectively this would be like the Ascetic in T2/Theme where you cannot wield a weapon, but you can suppress all magic around you (not breaths) if you get to a high-enough level. (This includes summons, btw.) Your unarmed attacks of course get a few bonuses as you level, but it's not ridiculous.

(This is a sort-of-response to the T2 situation where you can actually get Antimagic which will suppress all magic and, yet, can still wield an absurdly powerful weapon -- which levels up regularly. It's kind of fun, but I don't think it'd fit within Angband.)

[Derakon]

Shaolin-style combat monks clash with Angband's otherwise-mostly-European fantasy style. I don't object to making unarmed combat more viable, but couldn't it just be a conduct for the warrior class?

[Tarrasque]

This took a while since my first draft was lost. I haven't read the other responses yet.

4.1
Traps - basic principle is less traps, less dangerous, harder to avoid. No more specific trap locations in vaults. Magical trap detection and specific searching for traps to be removed. The player will have one chance to detect nearby traps, dependent only on perception/searching skill. The player will also get a saving throw against the effects of traps. Consider allowing objects in trapped grids and/or trapped objects.

Approve. Maybe have the chance to detect traps on chests be when you try opening them. Trap destruction might need to be removed or made to only work on seen traps or else I'd be trying it on every chest. If trap creation is too strong it could just create a single trap nearby. Deep in the dungeon traps should still be problematic for a newly made character.

ID - ID for consumables will work as currently. For wearables, each potential property (“rune”) will be immediately recognised once it has been seen once in any game (similar to how flavours are learned). How exactly this works for artifacts, ego items, jewellery, and to-hit/to/dam/to-ac bonuses is still to be fully worked out.

Certain race/class combos could still be slightly better or worse at IDing runes and bonuses. e.g. an elf could always know whether an item is of elvish make.

Dungeon generation - lots more vaults and room types. New (fairly rare) level types in the same vein as caverns and labyrinths. More use of areas (from rooms to whole levels) containing monsters all fitting some theme. Consider reduction in size of levels, but making them more dense and interesting.

It's kinda "Angbandy" to have big levels. Levels could be denser without being small.

Monster AI - monster pathfinding will be improved, so they’re not as easy to trick. Maybe some of the stuff under 4.2 gets done here.

As long as the pathfinding isn't perfect. I like when I'm just on the other side of an obstacle from something dangerous, while still being safe. I'd like an occasional bit of variation in monster AI. e.g. zombies would have stupid pathfinding and never run away.

Monster breaths - to become cone shaped spreading out from the monster, as in Oangband.

I haven't played Oangband. I wonder how easy it is to figure out the shape of the cone when aimed between a diagonal and a cardinal direction. Maybe breath damage could fall off some with distance so that it does 1/2 as much at max range.

Terrain - all rubble to become passable, but blocking line of sight. Lava will probably at some point become passable, but damaging to walk through.

There could be a speed penalty when entering a rubble square, "You climb onto the rubble." (4.2?).

Theme - look at being a little more thematically consistent (along the lines of Angels -> Ainur).

Sure for common generic stuff like Angels, not for things like Quylthulgs (I actually spelled it right without looking lol) or Zephyr Hounds. Angband has always been a tad "impure" thematically.

4.2

• Terrain

Yes if each terrain type is distinct.

Everything else seems pretty cool.

EDIT: Digging is pretty handy. With the change to rubble digging could be a bit more difficult, but easier for dwarves. Dwarves could have a bonus to attacking with diggers too.

[tumbleweed]

And ideally all this would be sufficiently detached from the actual game core so players can go back to vanilla Vanilla with the flip of a switch.

[AnonymousHero]

And ideally all this would be sufficiently detached from the actual game core so players can go back to vanilla Vanilla with the flip of a switch.

Did I miss something or are we not discussing what Vanilla should become? If you don't like it, you can always keep playing an old version.

[tumbleweed]

Did I miss something or are we not discussing what Vanilla should become?

We are, and I think it should be sufficiently modular to make what I suggested trivial to implement.

(I hope this makes sense to you. It's hot and I'm kind of on the run right now, but I'll throw in more of my $0.02 later.)