breath is overpowered. yes.

[Sky]

i died AGAIN to a bunch of plasma hounds who stunned/KO me. this on the same level where an offscreen ancalong managed to bring me down to 60hp.
how about nerfing this a bit?

a bit less ragey now; breath weapons are fine except that, they reach way too far, i understand in the same room, but from another room entirely, 20+ blocks of corridor? surely a dragon breath would have less reach than an arrow, and maybe a distance modifier ?

as for Z breaths, the stun / paralize (afaik the only "fail save and die" attacks in the game) are a bit too OP, knocked out lasts forever, and paralized still means you can get more paralized. I dont know HOW i managed this time to avoid dying to a bunch of centipede (teleported when down to 20hp from 250), but it's generally a rule that KO/paralized = dead.

How about, both effects give a temp immunity to their own status?

I mean, paralized isn't even that bad since free action is everywhere, but there is .. one? One single item which has stun protection, a crown IIRC, and no major artifacts cover it.

Sorry but im honestly upset, 20-30 hours into the game, level 47, a ton of great gear, epic early drops, then a single step into the wrong direction and BAM! dead, because of a failed save. I was actually on my way to DL99 to close the deal as i had all resists EXCEPT STUN covered and 20+ *healing*.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Breath has been nerfed in that with the new cone breath, damage effects decline with distance. That said, Angalcon and Plasma Hounds remain appropriately dangerous. Learn the lesson about stunning effects, the danger of those monsters, and the need to detect for them. No nerfing will then be required. You'll be ready for them next time. Nothing KO's instantly. You can only experience KO after being stunned. CCW or rods/staves of curing will remove the stun effect. If you've put yourself in a position to be double-moved with stunning, well, that's a deserved demise.

In addition to occurring on some ego crowns, pStun is also available on some ego cloaks and bows. Artifacts with pStun are the crowns of Numenor and Gondor.

EDIT: Also, note that pStun is definitely not necessary to win.

[Pete Mack]

Breath has been nerfed in that with the new cone breath, damage effects decline with distance. That said, Angalcon and Plasma Hounds remain appropriately dangerous. Learn the lesson about stunning effects, the danger of those monsters, and the need to detect for them. No nerfing will then be required. You'll be ready for them next time. Nothing KO's instantly. You can only experience KO after being stunned. CCW or rods/staves of curing will remove the stun effect. If you've put yourself in a position to be double-moved with stunning, well, that's a deserved demise.

In addition to occurring on some ego crowns, pStun is also available on some ego cloaks and bows. Artifacts with pStun are the crowns of Numenor and Gondor.

EDIT: Also, note that pStun is definitely not necessary to win.

You have to respect plasma hounds to either leave the area or get them in a place where you can pick them off one at a time. Some monsters you just cannot take lightly. I don't know what class you were playing, but ancalagon is another unless you have the Mage resistance spell. Focus less on fighting and more on searching and evading. Try playing a Rogue class--that and mage are the best for the strategy.

[Egavactip]

Plasma hounds can kill even a very powerful character. I learned that the hard way.

[Mudd]

Plasma hounds can kill even a very powerful character. I learned that the hard way.

Even Impact and gravity hounds are worthy of respect.
The most annoying thing about them is the fact that they are hard to lure out of rooms to battle one on one. And as soon as you step into the room you are overwhelmed.

[Nick]

breath weapons are fine except that, they reach way too far, i understand in the same room, but from another room entirely, 20+ blocks of corridor?

In the newest development version, breaths are no longer like ball spells, but rather cone-shaped from the monster.

[Pete Mack]

Lure then into a different room like so:

[FONT="Courier New"]
########
###
###@
###[COLOR="red"]Z[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Red"]ZZZ[/COLOR]
###
#######
[/font]

If they don't follow, all the better. And one other thing: Dying to plasma hounds isn't because breath attacks are dangerous. It's because stunning attacks are lethal when combined.

[krazyhades]

Remember, this is a game with abundantly available powerful detection and disengagement items combined with infinite dungeon floors. There are very few ways to suddenly die to a gank without it being directly caused by player error.

Of course, I still die too, but I realize it's my fault and not some hound pack's.

[Derakon]

All of this good advice notwithstanding, I do agree that breath attacks are something of an outlier in terms of lethality compared to most of the rest of the game. Only very powerful spellcasters with the Mana Storm, Darkness Storm, Nether Storm, and maybe Hand of Doom come close to the damage a moderately-powerful dragon halfway through the game can put out. However, the game is balanced around breath attacks being powerful, so if they got nerfed, much of the rest of the game would likely need to be rebalanced to suit.

As far as plasma is concerned, as others have stated, you need to be certain that you aren't setting yourself up to take multiple breaths at once. Know what's around you, especially when you're near the "edge" of the screen. If you get stunned, make it a priority to clear the stunning, which you can do easily by drinking a Cure Critical Wounds potion. Getting knocked out without getting a turn at some lesser stun level means that you took multiple plasma breaths in the same round, which means an exceptionally large pack of Plasma Hounds and/or you not being near speed parity.

Paralysis does not stack; if you are paralyzed then further attempts to paralyze you take no effect. However I believe it is possible, albeit rare, to be paralyzed, recover from paralysis, and then get paralyzed again before you get a turn. In practice paralysis is still a death sentence in the majority of cases simply due to the number of turns it gives enemies to beat on you with impunity.

[Sky]

i had just steamrolled the Valar of the sun, and then a spirit dog rips me to shred. i understand that angband is meant to be hard, but come on ..

im not sure how i walked into the hounds. i might have accidentally teleported there, i was so pissed off i ragequit and deleted the save.

the thing is, teleporting into a graveyard would have been less harmful. teleporting right next to morgoth would have been less harmful. +30 speed, tons of resists, trident of wrath, cloak or resist everything, ring of power +5 / heal 1k, and several *heal*. i cannot think of ANY other circumstance in the game which would have instakilled me except the plasma stun, 3-4 bolts: stun, heavy stun, KO. out of maybe 6 Z in sight, 4 breathed on me.

ok, it's unlikely to happen again ... i still lost the game, that i had been super-careful in.

[Derakon]

I understand you're angry, but, I hate to say it -- if you were teleporting around at the kind of depths where you encounter unique maiar and Plasma Hounds, then you weren't being super-careful. Teleport Self is a decidedly risky move outside of the early game, as the dungeon gets more densely-populated, and so many monsters possess dangerous ranged abilities. If you need an escape at this depth, you should be popping Teleport Level instead. Sure, it abandons the entire level, but it's also much safer as you always get the first turn on new levels. With Teleport Self, it's really only a matter of time before you teleport from a bad situation to a worse one.

If you didn't teleport into the hounds, then you probably still weren't being careful as you should have known they were in the area. About the only case I can think of where you could plausibly "no-fault" run into a pack is if you lack ESP and generic monster-detection (e.g. from a Rod of Detection) and walk into a dark corridor that happens to have the hounds in it. Which should be a very rare situation indeed. And it's still not really no-fault because then you're simply exploring at depths that are more dangerous than you have the gear to safely tackle...not that this stops people from doing it anyway.

Bottom line is, you try to only take risks that a) you know you're taking, and b) are worth whatever potential payoff you anticipate.

[A Magical Lamp]

out of maybe 6 Z in sight, 4 breathed on me.

It's suicidal to have that many plasma hounds in your line of sight at once. Learn from the mistake, it's not bad luck that got you killed. Pretty much every character would die to that without resistance to stunning and if you didn't already know teleportation was risky now you do.

[debo]

The best thing that ever happened to angband was reducing hound pack size. I'm still waiting for the change that reduces them to 0

(I do like plasma hounds though. At least they're dangerous. The rest of them are just incredibly annoying.)

[Pete Mack]

The answer is: Don't go into a room full of plasma hounds, which pretty much means don't teleport much below dl 40 as a matter of course. If your only escape is teleport, then don't get near let alone fight monsters you may need to escape. It is a *very different game* below level 40. If you are losing all your characters there, I recommend making a backup save file at dl 40 and start from there until you reach dl 70. Once you get there, you have a feel for the rest of the game. (I don't recommend true save scumming where you always keep a recent backup. That teaches bad habits. But starting from 40 is a good way to break the habits you learn in the early levels.)