High element reform

**Ingwe Ingweron** · December 10, 2015, 14:20

Originally posted by Nick

Here are a few common complaints about resistable high elements:

Some resistances being variable down to 1/7 makes them really only useful for preventing side effects
RNether is not really very useful (related to the previous one)
Nexus stat scramble ruins your character
Disenchantment permanently damaging artifacts is no fun

Here are some suggested solutions:

Make high resists cut a bit more damage, and be a bit more predictable
Make artifacts immune to disenchantment; make the "damage gear" effect only one of a number of possibilities for what a given disenchantment attack will do, with others including remove buffs, charge drain, mana drain
Make nexus stat scramble a timed effect; additionally, while the timer is running, every turn there is a chance for the stats to rescramble
(Favourite, left until last) Replace the XP drain from nether (and probably undead life-draining melee) by a timed "damage increase" effect; this would make attacks taken by the player while the timer is running do extra damage, proportional to the current size of the timer

I would be inclined to also throw this last one into the mix for the higher level cause wounds spells.

The general idea here is to replace long-term annoyance with short-term dangerous nastiness. Thoughts?

Ugh, I mean really ugh, and maybe ick.

I really don't like the timed effect idea at all. What, did @ just get a stomach flu and in 24 hours everything will be just fine?

I far prefer Estie's idea regarding nexus stat swap, and imagine it could be applicable to other high elements as well.

Originally posted by Estie

...replace full swap with partial swap where the amount of points exchanged is proportional to the damage received; so a weak vortex breath might do +1, while a strong dracolisk breath can do up to +15 or so.
This way swap effectively remains in the game, but only the most powerfull nexus monsters can deliver the full effect.

This seems reasonable to me. It avoids the "gotcha" effect of a low-level nexus vortex screwing up an unaware @, while not defanging the higher level monsters. It has the added benefit of following the Angband philosophy used with most other monsters of introducing an effect when it is relatively harmless, thereby making a player aware of its existence, before it is encountered full-force later in the game.

Regarding disenchantment of artifacts being no fun. Well, yeah, it's not "fun", but to me only in a small sense of the word. Lot's of events in the game aren't "fun" in the moment they happen, but my question is: Will removing these "danger" elements make the game less fun overall? My sense, at least for me, is that it would. It's not fun when @ dies and has to start all the way at the beginning, but I don't want to have an option for restarting where I left off. Removing the danger makes the game less fun.

**Derakon** · December 10, 2015, 15:39

I'd be fine with disenchantment also being able to remove buffs, drain SP, etc., in addition to damaging gear, and even with it picking one of those effects at random the way nexus does, but artifacts should not be immune to it. They already get a saving throw; that's enough.

For nether, I suggested awhile back that it temporarily drain levels -- say, one level per 50 damage dealt. That kind of effect doesn't need to last long to be very nasty indeed, and I think it's easier to comprehend / do the math on than an effect that makes you take more damage from other sources: "okay, I have 500 HP, so I'd ordinarily be safe from that shards breath, but now I'm taking 25% more damage, so...what?"

**Timo Pietilä** · December 10, 2015, 15:41

Originally posted by Nick

Here are a few common complaints about resistable high elements:

(Favourite, left until last) Replace the XP drain from nether (and probably undead life-draining melee) by a timed "damage increase" effect; this would make attacks taken by the player while the timer is running do extra damage, proportional to the current size of the timer

I would be inclined to also throw this last one into the mix for the higher level cause wounds spells.

I don't like this. Undeads with high-damage nether-attacks are dangerous already, but making that attack type increase danger from all the rest of the monsters too is really bad. You fight Morgoth which summons weakling with nether bolt, get the nether damage and suddenly Morgoth melee is insta-kill -capable.

Or ignore <weakling> for one turn and get killed by something else with non-lethal damage unless you get cause wounds from that said <weakling>.

You would need to estimate every single combat again in case there is something capable of making nether or cause wounds attack nearby.

With that change you move rNether to same category with Free Action.

-------

How about making high-element resists work so that they completely block some amount of the damage and rest is randomized. That would give you partial immunity to low-damage attacks of the type in question.

I would also like to add some importance to AC so that it not only makes you harder to hit, but also cuts damage from all elemental attacks. Like 1% / 10 points of AC.

**Timo Pietilä** · December 10, 2015, 15:52

Originally posted by Derakon

For nether, I suggested awhile back that it temporarily drain levels -- say, one level per 50 damage dealt.

That would be too harsh. Losing 10 clvls from 500 point nether breath would cause very serious problems and be potentially insta-death for weak mages. Maybe one level / 100 points dealt.

Or something less deadly like keep the XP drain and add amnesia-effect to nether. (and gain immunity to amnesia with resist). Amnesia-effect increases spell failure rates and increases device activation failure rates IIRC, so that would not be as harmless as it sounds (unless you are warrior that just melees everything).

**wobbly** · December 10, 2015, 15:57

Re Rnether: I currently have a half-troll mage sitting on dlevel 97 who would of been dead to a dracolich's breath 35 dlevels or so ago if he hadn't happened to be wearing Hthlor (misspelt I know). For some reason I'm less convinced then others that the damage reduction is not worthwhile.

Apart from that I don't have much of an opinion either way. I don't mind the old way things work, but would also be interested in trying new ideas anyways.

**Therem Harth** · December 10, 2015, 16:00

Originally posted by Nick

Here are a few common complaints about resistable high elements:

Some resistances being variable down to 1/7 makes them really only useful for preventing side effects
RNether is not really very useful (related to the previous one)
Nexus stat scramble ruins your character
Disenchantment permanently damaging artifacts is no fun

Nexus stat scramble, yes, get rid of it.

Artifact disenchantment is nasty, but I'm not opposed to it.

... Actually I kind of like the idea; it adds more of a survival angle to the game, and more impetus for equipment management.

Here are some suggested solutions:

Make high resists cut a bit more damage, and be a bit more predictable

Sounds good
Make artifacts immune to disenchantment; make the "damage gear" effect only one of a number of possibilities for what a given disenchantment attack will do, with others including remove buffs, charge drain, mana drain

**Derakon** · December 10, 2015, 17:10

Originally posted by Timo Pietilä

That would be too harsh. Losing 10 clvls from 500 point nether breath would cause very serious problems and be potentially insta-death for weak mages. Maybe one level / 100 points dealt.

Of course the precise scaling factor will need to be determined by experimentation. My impulse on these things is to start with what seems like clearly "too much" and try it, then scale it back bit by bit until it becomes tolerable. I'd rather have an effect that's a bit nastier than it should be, as opposed to an effect that could stand to be nastier than it is.

And I expect that in practice, 1 level per 50 damage would be really nasty but not unsurvivable. You might want to carry some Restore Life Levels potions, though.

**AnonymousHero** · December 10, 2015, 18:33

Originally posted by Ingwe Ingweron

This seems reasonable to me. It avoids the "gotcha" effect of a low-level nexus vortex screwing up an unaware @, while not defanging the higher level monsters. It has the added benefit of following the Angband philosophy used with most other monsters of introducing an effect when it is relatively harmless, thereby making a player aware of its existence, before it is encountered full-force later in the game.

I don't understand this reasoning. Late-game nexus breathers are already completely and utterly defanged by rNexus. At least for me, not having rNexus by late game is extremely rare. (I never play iron man, though, so YMMV.)

**Gram** · December 10, 2015, 19:08

I wasn't necessarily arguing against having artifacts disenchanted; I was arguing against it being utterly irreversible (the only thing in the entire game except death that's irreversible).

Permanent artifact disenchantment is not a balanced danger.

Permanent artifact AC damage is almost entirely a cosmetic effect. Defending this as "part of the challenge" is absurd; the only armor items with a high enough AC bonus that reducing it to +14/+15 could make a notable long term gameplay difference have rDisenchant anyways (e.g. Bladeturner). So it's not too hard to get the item back to where it's functionally almost identical to how it started out. It just has the effect of ruining the fun. You toiled and toiled to get that nice item, something that is distinctive and utterly irreplaceable; it was a joy to achieve this little bit of perfection. Then the game vomited on it and tells you it can't be wiped off, just to spite you. Now the joy is drained and you're stuck wielding armor of Smells Like Vomit And Reminds You Constantly That You're Having A Sucky Game.

Exactly the same applies to to-hit.

Permanent to-dam losses, on the other hand, do have a gameplay effect but it's unbalanced. Artifacts and other weapons are relatively well-balanced without this factor. There are only 20 items in the game that can permanently and irreplaceably lose more than two points of to-dam, and this has a disproportionate effect on a paltry few (Ringil, Doomcaller, Pain, Aiglos).

I agree that the trouble is that disenchantment is too much a long-term annoyance rather than a short-term danger. One solution could be to have things more heavily disenchanted and make them harder to quickly restore to decent working order but easier to restore to perfect condition over the long term. Say, for instance, the enchant armor success rate on artifacts were fixed at 25% (the current chance for enchanting a +7 artifact) all the way from wherever they're disenchanted to until they've returned to perfect condition. This would make it seriously difficult to get your drastically disenchanted artifact armor which was [20,+20] and is now [20,-20] back to any kind of working order to help you finish the current level, but if you survive your present fights you would have good hopes of restoring it to perfect order in the long run.

**Raccoon** · December 10, 2015, 19:39

I feel like you could mitigate a lot of these problems, and also make gold more useful, by having a shop that can restore you from permanent stat/exp drains and fix damaged artifacts at a heavy price.

Kinda like in a lot of the variants.

Low level characters are unlikely to suffer enough stat/exp drain or disenchantment for it to really be an issue. They'll gain new levels and find new gear soon enough. But eventually you're in dungeon level 90+, you've got 500,000 gold, and nothing to spend it on. This is where re-enchantment shops and stat-de-scrambling shops can come in to soak up that excess cash.

**fizzix** · December 10, 2015, 20:06

I would really like disenchantment to be replaced by a complete debuff. I like it a lot more than the other options especially from a tactical sense. I'd also like to see paladins and priests get more buff options, but that's ancillary.

I'm honestly not that gung-ho on xp draining of any sort. I don't think it's that interesting of a mechanic. You can have nether drain stats instead. I'm not sure that has been suggested. But stat drain in the late game is dangerous since it's hard to level up to correct it. You could even consider a high (5 point) temporary stat drain. We'd have to see how this plays out though.

I would just get rid of stat scramble altogether. Don't replace it with anything. The other random effects of rnexus are already interesting.

Poison, the effect and the resist, need work as well, so don't leave them out. As does shards.

I would like high level resists (nether, nexus, poison, sound, shards, chaos) to give a much larger damage reduction (let's say flat 1/2) but only an increased chance to save against the effect. Right now there is no saving through against these effects, but maybe with the resist you get 2 saving throws. Or, you can do what DJAngband did and allow some monsters to breathe/cast powerfully which gives them a chance to bypass resistance.

Because let's be honest here, sometimes having a temporary debuff that endangers the player is interesting.

**Derakon** · December 10, 2015, 20:20

Originally posted by fizzix

I would just get rid of stat scramble altogether. Don't replace it with anything. The other random effects of rnexus are already interesting.

I admit I've always felt like the stat scramble made more sense for chaos rather than nexus. Chaos attacks already do a million other things, but what if it was confusion + coinflip between hallucination and stat scrambling? Of course personally I'd suggest making the scrambling temporary.

It's been suggested that disenchantment be able to temporarily nullify pluses on gear. I think that's worth trying, though I don't want to be the one to try to implement it. It sounds like there's a reasonably broad consensus that we should experiment with having it remove buffs, drain SP, drain charges, etc. as well?

I don't find experience drain to be an interesting mechanic. It doesn't do anything to your character beyond make it take longer to achieve your next level. You have to lose an awful lot of experience for it to be relevant in the immediate moment. That's why I'd like to see some experimentation with temporary level drain instead. I'm not so thrilled by stat drain (temporary or not), chiefly because we already have the time element for that, but also because characters typically try to sustain their important stats anyway.

I am all in favor of having more attacks that make the immediate moment more dangerous rather than imposing some kind of long-term penalty on the player.

**wobbly** · December 10, 2015, 20:36

Originally posted by Derakon

I don't find experience drain to be an interesting mechanic. It doesn't do anything to your character beyond make it take longer to achieve your next level.

I can tell you what the XP drain effect does for me. I look how drained I am & I say, can I be bothered to recall & buy that !restore life from the alchemist or will the next several things I kill put me back in the positives anyway? It's possibly interesting if you're playing iron man or forced decent. Otherwise, just annoying.

**Raccoon** · December 10, 2015, 20:40

Might I suggest taking a look at Tales of Maj'Eyal's various debuffs, then?

To sort of borrow a few ideas:Time could make characters 'unstable' and vulnerable to further time-related status effects, or even cause them to be put in temporary stasis*. Light could cause characters to become 'illuminated', making them easier to hit in melee, and vulnerable to blindness. Nether could give characters a 'deathly aura' that sharply reduces the effectiveness of healing for a few rounds. Even the lower elements could have statuses that make you more vulnerable to further instances of the same element (e.g. 'shocked', 'badly shocked', 'electrocuted' increasing further electrical attacks by 10%, 20%, 30%, relatively).

Of course, the more status effects you put in the game, the more important it would become to make saving throws relevant, IMO. And diversifying saving throws into willpower, evasion, and fortitude or some similar mechanic would be awesome. Like, priests and mages should not be so vulnerable to mental attacks, but should be vulnerable to stuns and poisons. Warriors should resist stuns and poisons and whatnot, but be easier to confuse.

*Stasis: Player is unable to take any action for X rounds, but is effectively 'removed from play' and cannot be harmed, or become hungry, or anything in that time. The game continues on, though, with monsters moving about as normal, which the player will have to deal with upon their return.

High element reform

High element reform

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