Tactically interesting obstacles

[Grotug]

?????

Mages are in no way forced to disarm traps while monsters are in LoS. What are you talking about?

Can you post a youtube video of you playing? Would be fun to see.

[Derakon]

Nobody's forced to "not step on a trap." The claim was made that mages are equal to rogues in terms of traps, I was pointing out that they must spend (small cost, to be sure) mana on disarming them (actually my point may be slightly less valid if the rogue still must spend a turn disarming, I realized). So the rogue at 100% disarming is already in a (slightly) superior position than mages WRT traps.

How soon do you expect a rogue to achieve 100% disarm rates? How early is the mage given their disarming spell? Remember that disarming can take multiple turns even if it is safe (i.e. without risk of triggering the trap).

In any event, I don't think people are opposed to red-book casters; the goal is merely to not give them a free pass from having to deal with an obstacle that everyone else must cope with. Of course ideally different classes deal with traps in different ways, but nobody should be able to ignore them outright except for certain limited cases in the late game (a rogue with 18/220 DEX should be able to walk freely through traps without them ever triggering).

[Bogatyr]

How soon do you expect a rogue to achieve 100% disarm rates? How early is the mage given their disarming spell? Remember that disarming can take multiple turns even if it is safe (i.e. without risk of triggering the trap).

In any event, I don't think people are opposed to red-book casters; the goal is merely to not give them a free pass from having to deal with an obstacle that everyone else must cope with. Of course ideally different classes deal with traps in different ways, but nobody should be able to ignore them outright except for certain limited cases in the late game (a rogue with 18/220 DEX should be able to walk freely through traps without them ever triggering).

In what universe is "having to cast disarm every step" equivalent to "able to ignore them outright?"

[Nick]

Are there still going to be secret doors? If there are, is this another perception check?

No, no more secret doors. Or, if you like, doors are secret until you get LOS on them.

[Nick]

No magical detection of doors. No magical dealing with traps. Seems there's a large anti-red-book sentiment hereabouts.

Don't worry, everyone else will be punished too

[Derakon]

In what universe is "having to cast disarm every step" equivalent to "able to ignore them outright?"

Sorry, poor phrasing on my part. I do not consider "having to cast disarm every step" to be an interesting tradeoff for dealing with traps, for two reasons. First, while, there are situations in which the time and spellpoints required to cast the spell are significant, in most cases (at least in current Angband) I would expect the player to be able to do this in relative safety, in which case the disarm spell becomes a no-brainer creator of tedium. Second, the spell itself doesn't do anything interesting; it just turns any trap into a safe tile. So you have the same response to every situation: just disarm it and it goes away.

Ideally traps should provoke varied reactions from the player, depending on the trap and on circumstance. We can do better than having a range-1 automatic-disarm spell.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

No, no more secret doors. Or, if you like, doors are secret until you get LOS on them.

Ok, so you're solving all the tediousness problems related to perception and traps, like I did in Halls of Mist. Cool!

I did it all differently in Halls of Mist. I opted for making Perception interesting. All places where you can use Perception are marked clearly, and there's always only one try. I find the various Perception checks make the dungeon more flavourful and let characters of different classes with high/low Wisdom have a very different dungeoneering experience.

Here's the documentation on the Perception skill. (Checks are always a 1d100 roll under Perception, there's never any modifiers.)

=== Perception ===

Perception generally works automatically as you walk next to something
interesting. In all cases you only have one try!

You make Perception skill checks to:

- notice a trap
- notice a warding rune in a wall (see below)
- find a hidden item in a closet, in a bookshelf, or in a weapon rack
- find a hidden torch, mushroom or faery portal in an "interesting" (purple)
  vegetation square
- identify a fountain
- disarm a non-magical trap
- master a lock on a door (try opening the door). Once you have mastered the
  lock, you may open and close the door as you like, but most monsters will
  have great difficulties following you through the locked door. Besides,
  there's often a small treasure room behind a locked door! Cunning characters
  may lock monsters in a treasure room and Phase Door away. Treasure doors are
  teleport-proof, so you cannot teleport into them.

A note for Angband veterans: There isn't any need to press 's' to search
anymore. Repeated searching is useless.

You don't need to make any Perception checks to find a secret door. As soon as
you walk next to the secret door, it is automatically revealed. Secret doors
can only exist in special walls: cave paintings, closets, bookshelves, and
weapon racks. Don't waste time looking for secret doors where there isn't any!


=== A warning about Warding Runes ===

Watch out for cave paintings (red walls)! They often have hidden Runes which
shoot evil rays to all cardinal directions -- usually just one direction,
though, across the room. All Warding Runes affect both the player and monsters.

You find a Rune by making a Perception check while walking next to it, master
it with the 'D'isarm command, then Disarm it again to switch it on or off.
A successful Spell Save protects you completely from their effects.

Some Runes are off by default. If you find one with a Perception check, you may
then want to use your Alchemy skill to switch it on -- it's fun to let a
Warding Rune of Evil Eye curse a horde of orcs as they run past it!

With locked doors, there's only one try. Doesn't this lead to dead-ends? Never. Dungeon generation only places locked doors in places where there are also other routes to the same place. Often locked doors open to tiny treasure rooms.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I just wanted to add that it's super exciting to witness this kind of planning for Vanilla. My goals in HoM have been largely similar, but implementation ideas in this thread seem to be very different from mine, at some places directly opposed to where I went with the same goals (especially the role of perception checks). Fun! That might mean lots of things for me to steal in the future.

Antoine's ideas are very interesting, too: again the same goals, different implementation.

I'd advice implementing ideas fast and trying them out in actual play. It took a lot of iteration until I was satisfied with Mist's dungeon features.

[quarague]

I think the 'one try only' principle may be a good idea. It removes most of the tedium but still leaves traps effective. While a rogue will see all traps before running into them, a half-troll warrior will not. Meaning the half-troll warrior will have to adjust his play to the fact that he will occasionally trigger a trap while the rogue does not have to worry about that but in neither case the player has to constantly do some searching/ detecting.
If you did see a trap before running into it, you can try to disarm it, again one try only, and thus one trigger only as well. This should be much more difficult than detecting it but again high level rogues should have close to 100% success rate, others characters should not.
A spell for trap detection like now could easily result in the same tedium of perma casting it as now but a spell that temporarily improves disarming should be fine. Scarce dungeon-find only consumables that help with detecting or disarming also work well.
To make this interesting, traps need to be balanced so that they are never lethal as such, but potentially annoying, temporarily crippling and possibly lethal in combination with other dungeon features/ monsters.

[Carnivean]

I think the 'one try only' principle may be a good idea.

While it might be, I'm struggling to work out how it fits into a game with infinite levels and infinite monsters and infinite items.

[AnonymousHero]

While it might be, I'm struggling to work out how it fits into a game with infinite levels and infinite monsters and infinite items.

Along those lines... I think someone may need to invent a device called a Luciferometer which would be used to measure these things. (Sorry, hung over.)

[quarague]

While it might be, I'm struggling to work out how it fits into a game with infinite levels and infinite monsters and infinite items.

I don't think it is that much of an issue. If you character sucks at trap detection he will occasionally trigger a trap you didn't know about. Generating infinitely many levels doesn't change anything about that. If you explore a vault that you know is heavily trapped but your character didn't find them, you can ignore the vault and find another, but that is essentially the same as ignoring a vault after seeing some particularly nasty/ dangerous monsters in them.
It is the same principle as in most of Angband, you can in theory do infinite scumming to force favorable RNG outcomes but in practice rerolling the RNG over and over again just increases the chance of an exceptionally bad outcome that you can't avoid.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I think the 'one try only' principle may be a good idea. It removes most of the tedium but still leaves traps effective.

It reduces tedium but still leaves traps tactically boring. You need other changes to make traps tactically intereresting.

Letting the player know beforehand that this special area is trapped is a good start. Ideally tactical maneuvering and/or wise inventory management should help a lot with the problem at hand. It would probably be a good idea to offer a reward to go with the threat. Replayability is increased if different character classes have different options.

It's possible to build interesting puzzles whether you have 'one try only' detection and disarm in your toolkit or not. The puzzles will be different, of course.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In Angband, using spells to defeat traps isn't interesting resource-management-wise unless there's limited time for mana regeneration. Using spells may still be interesting in other ways, and there might be some interesting strategic choices in spells selection (especially if you won't learn all spells eventually).

Items offer more interesting resource management choices. Do I want to carry an item of this kind? Is this situation dangerous/profitable enough that I should use the item up? A trap disarming or trap detecting item shouldn't be so good that everybody wants it in his inventory.

If attributes (like INT or WIS) help with traps somehow, traps become a part of the choose-your-kit subgame, which is the meat of Angband. Already existing items become a bit more interesting. Perhaps you should carry that 'of Wisdom' equipment as a swap item?