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What I mean is that you don't have to let monsters breathe on you if you don't want to. In particular, you can make sure monsters don't breathe in a place where they'll kill things you want to pick up.Comment
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Theoretically, yes.
But I'm not the Borg!
I suppose my point here is that while I could play more mechanically (and win more often), I would enjoy the game less. Things that impact fun for real (at times illogical*) players are undesirable in my opinion.
*or tired or drunk or distracted or..Comment
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Already breath damage is based off of HP, so you don't know how much you're going to get. That's also not clear to the player. It's a lot more likely to assume that someone eating a cone breath from far away will get damaged less than someone close. So I don't think this is a good objection.
As far as "what is the point" there is a zero level point which is to make breaths and breathing monsters tactically different from ranged spellcasters. I think this is a great thing. There's a second added benefit in that breaths are the strongest attacks in the game, so that encountering multiple heavy breathing monsters is a death sentence. This removes tactical possibilities. If multiple breathers can be handled at the same time, then we gain tactical opportunities.Comment
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Slowing down combat resolution is fine as far as it goes. Are there plans to commensurately slow down escape effects, e.g. teleportation, as well?Comment
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I haven't played with cone breaths yet, but fading out the color of the breath as it spreads out would give a neat visual hint for how powerful it is at different distances. It would be ascii only, but so are other color effects.
If it looked OK all the time, the color of the breath at a square could be directly proportional to the damage dealt at that square. Maybe other magic spells could have a similar effect.
The biggest problem I notice, besides the time used to implement it, is making the color difference noticeable without making it ugly or fading so much that the AoE is hard to see.Comment
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The initial reason was to differentiate ball spells and breaths - cone breaths are already in O/FA, so I was familiar with it. As you comment, it increases the tactical depth, both just by adding a different type of attack, and by the fact that player position now became important rather than just copping a full strength attack wherever you were. One immediate positive side effect of this is the reduction in chance of dying from an offscreen breath. Also it just seems more like what a breath should be like.
The nerf to ranged attacks relative to melee I hadn't really thought through. It can be countered, though, by making the monster less likely to breathe when the player is in melee range. This is also in line with a general re-think of monster tactics, which currently go- Decide whether to cast a spell (based on random chance, whether the player is in view, and a little knowledge of the player for smart monsters) then
- Think about where the player is and how to move.
It is clearly better for the monster to think about distance from the player, and maybe difficulty of reaching them, before deciding to cast or move (or melee). There's also the concept of the monster having a preferred distance (introduced but not used yet).One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.Comment
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Spitballed idea: monsters have a failure rate for breaths that is based on how many times they have been hit in melee in the past 3 turns. I don't know what the scaling should be, but the basic idea is that a warrior or hybrid class engaged in melee with a dragon ought to be able to significantly reduce the odds of the dragon successfully getting a breath attack off. Meanwhile, characters that fight at range don't get that advantage, but they also don't eat full-strength breaths, so it evens out.
The gloss is that it's a lot more distracting to have a warrior right in your face than it is to be bombarded by spells or missiles, even if you're taking comparable damage either way.
Alternative: give an evasion save vs. breath weapons that is easier the closer you are to the enemy and that reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the damage you take. It's easier to dodge breaths before they've had a chance to spread out, after all.
And then once we've successfully brought melee and ranged back into line re: expected damage taken, we can make breath weapons more common to compensate.
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Personally I think this is as much an improvement for melee guys as ranged. As long as you're fast enough & have damage output you can deal with a breather by removing a big chunk of its hps, it's closing with a breather that's always being tricky for melee characters. Plus cone paths clear trash monsters from your path quicker.Comment
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Okay, so I've had a run through on this branch (well two actually, after dying of starvation on dlvl6 the first time
) and here are my opinions, for what they're worth.
The cone breath did not affect my gameplay in any way. This may be because:
1) I only made it to Gorlim before he killed me (again).
2) I was playing a Half-Troll warrior
or
3) I'm simply too dumb to take advantage of the tactical possibilities offered me.
Having said that, I quite like the idea of cone breaths because:
1) It does differentiate between cone breaths and ball spells
2) It seems more 'right'.
and
3) It does address 'The Drolem Problem'.
What I don't like is the significant nerf to monsters and the fact that it makes ranged attack even better (when I think we should be moving the other way).
Maybe the advantages could be kept, whilst removing most of the cons, by making breaths have a max range of, say, 5 squares and keeping it coned and full strength.
Of course, making LoS symmetrical would also address the Drolem Problem...Comment
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I'm inclined to think that changes to monster AI will help this, in particular monsters having a preferred range. Currently the monster blindly closes on the player, only stopping randomly to cast a spell. If instead they work out their best range and try to maintain that, the whole dance gets a bit more subtle.One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.Comment
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Some kind of archer AI for dragons and other breathers? At least there would be a strong incentive to use a ranged weapon for otherwise melee-oriented characters. Might want to look at ways to make wand damage track with monster hp progression better, though.Comment
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Yes, this might work. I was actually more concerned with making built versions of the feature branches available, and we're currently working out how best to do that.
Opinion seems to be divided on labeling of types of branches, and I have a really hard time caring
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.Comment
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Not a massive fan of these ideas.Spitballed idea: monsters have a failure rate for breaths that is based on how many times they have been hit in melee in the past 3 turns. I don't know what the scaling should be, but the basic idea is that a warrior or hybrid class engaged in melee with a dragon ought to be able to significantly reduce the odds of the dragon successfully getting a breath attack off. Meanwhile, characters that fight at range don't get that advantage, but they also don't eat full-strength breaths, so it evens out.
The gloss is that it's a lot more distracting to have a warrior right in your face than it is to be bombarded by spells or missiles, even if you're taking comparable damage either way.
Alternative: give an evasion save vs. breath weapons that is easier the closer you are to the enemy and that reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the damage you take. It's easier to dodge breaths before they've had a chance to spread out, after all.
And then once we've successfully brought melee and ranged back into line re: expected damage taken, we can make breath weapons more common to compensate.
Perhaps melee has a chance of stunning the target, it can depend on strength, weapon weight and possibly accuracy too. Monsters could have a stun meter that builds up, so good melee characters can stun most monsters after 2-3 rounds of melee.
Once stunned a monster cannot breath or perhaps has a fail chance (and perhaps can't cast spells, although that would affect the player too), so this gives melee characters an incentive to get in close.
It would also give melee characters a reason to use heavy weapons early on in the game against say orc uniques and so forth as when stunned it is harder for them to hit the player.
The only downside of this is that heavy breathers are normally larger monsters so you'd expect them to be harder to stun. Perhaps even if slightly stunned they cannot breath at full strength.
Another idea is that breathing takes a lot of energy so monsters have to wait a turn before to build up the breath and also after as they are exhausted for a turn. This would give melee characters an extra few rounds to deal damage for each breath (although I guess this would also help ranged characters just as much).
Of course these ideas make the game way easier so something would have to be done about that.Comment
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