simple question on paralyzing

[luneya]

If a monster you can't detect can insta-kill you on dlvl 1 because of a game element you have no chance to resist, I'd say that the definition of a design flaw.

I don't think there's an issue with how paralysis works, btw. I think there's an issue with torches.

Basically if you willingly get close to a 'e' and die, it's live and learn (or die and learn, if you prefer). If the game throws you against a 'e' and it means guaranteed death, it's a design flaw.

This being said I think there are other things to think about than the first couple of levels when you die after having invested 5 minutes of playing time.

Yep. That's the reasoning behind the classic Angband joke, "To do: 1. Buy lantern, 2. Kill Morgoth." With the old paralysis system, exploring the dungeon with a torch was a huge gamble. The general store often had lanterns; if it didn't, plenty of people would just suicide their character and start over. The problem could have been fixed either by nerfing paralysis or by giving all light sources radius 2 or better. In fact the devs chose the paralysis nerf, but a case could certainly be made that the other route would have been preferable. It's probably not worth rehashing that debate now; we have more interesting change proposals to discuss.

[Werbaer]

If a monster you can't detect can insta-kill you on dlvl 1 because of a game element you have no chance to resist, I'd say that the definition of a design flaw.

I don't know the current code; but back in 3.0.5, a floating eye only had a 5% chance to hit you if you had at least AC 8. And since hits while you're paralysed didn't increase the counter, you had to be very unlucky (1 in 400) to be in any danger.

Floating eyes told you the importance of AC. But in this days, it seems to be usual to go into the dungeon naked.

[Pete Mack]

@Will--
The thing is, dying to a floating eye almost never happened, unless you advanced slowly--even if you were stuck with a torch for the first few levels. You had to go very slowly to die that way. Same for a Mage character dying in a trap: it was possible. But it didn't happen very often--and the faster you got to dl 2, the less likely it was to happen.

[Will]

Actually scrolls of Deep Descent in ironman (forced descent) are way worse than floating eyes

Damn that was a rough way to die.

[AnonymousHero]

@Will--
The thing is, dying to a floating eye almost never happened, unless you advanced slowly--even if you were stuck with a torch for the first few levels. You had to go very slowly to die that way. Same for a Mage character dying in a trap: it was possible. But it didn't happen very often--and the faster you got to dl 2, the less likely it was to happen.

Right, so what's the point of such a "gotcha"? To anyone unfamiliar it is/was just a random "oops, you died!" moment with no warning. If one didn't experience this gotcha, there's no lesson to be learned other than "FA is more important than almost anything else, even speed". (Which, in fact, it isn't IIRC. It's only really melee paralyzers that, in practice, perma-paralyze a character, right?)

I haven't played vanilla in a while, but at least in T2-ah -- where I adopted the same basic idea of never incrementing the paralysis counter -- you at least have some chance to escape a melee paralyzer even at level 20, say, as long as you have decent AC. If you're much slower you'll still die almost every time. You could argue the mechanic it's a bit opaque (at least without some hint-message), but at least this should hint at AC, and (especially) FA+speed being valuable.

[PowerDiver]

Right, so what's the point of such a "gotcha"? To anyone unfamiliar it is/was just a random "oops, you died!" moment with no warning

That used to be the point. A newbie loses a char on DL1, no big loss, to learn the lesson that lack of FA can be deadly.

After that, it is something that if blocking a corridor requires you to spend ammo. If you make ammo [I include oil] more expensive, even this can be made relevant to an early char.

OTOH, I don't like radius-1-light torches, so I play them as radius-2 as they were intended. That might make my opinions meaningless here.

[AnonymousHero]

That used to be the point. A newbie loses a char on DL1, no big loss, to learn the lesson that lack of FA can be deadly.

After that, it is something that if blocking a corridor requires you to spend ammo. If you make ammo [I include oil] more expensive, even this can be made relevant to an early char.

OTOH, I don't like radius-1-light torches, so I play them as radius-2 as they were intended. That might make my opinions meaningless here.

Yeah, if torches has 2 light radius, then I'd probably agree, actually. I could at least imagine players reasoning "Ok, I stepped to close to $THING without knowing about it's attacks, etc.". (... and eventually coming to understand the importance of FA.)

EDIT: With Torch-1: You take one wrong diagonal step and you're just dead to a thing you had no way to prevent. (Other than being of the Gnome race.)

[Pete Mack]

Not really *that* bad. Unless you are a human or Dunedin, the only really lethal monster that way is the Ghast--fast, cold blooded, and hits to paralyze. If you are below dl25 without Free Action, you need at least detect evil.