Issues on current master

[Derakon]

I think the right take on the previous situation of having a large number of wands and such that effectively do nothing was not to try to make them do something, but instead to get rid of them so that you're not seeing so much junk in the dungeon. Giving the player even more types of powerful consumables doesn't improve the game. The player needs nerfs, not buffs.

What we want to do is to give the player more meaningful options. This can be accomplished both by giving them more tools, and by taking tools that are too dominant away. For example, I believe all this is leading up to the removal of Teleport Other and other cheap unlimited teleportation.

(That will, incidentally, probably require removing some tools from monsters as well; mass- and chain-summoning being the most obvious problems)

Replacing the wands with more equivalents to the Scroll of Monster Confusion gets my vote as a simple solution that we can probably do right now. The only problem with it is that now applying a status effect requires two turns -- one to read the scroll, one to hit the monster. But that can easily be handled by balancing the power of the status effects, which is something we're working on anyway. Maybe down the road we can add chuckable potions that apply a weaker (or shorter-duration) status effect but only require one turn to use.

[Sky]

i think we are looking into giving both player and also everything else buffs, in varying amounts.

[gameplay appreciator]

I think the right take on the previous situation of having a large number of wands and such that effectively do nothing was not to try to make them do something, but instead to get rid of them so that you're not seeing so much junk in the dungeon. Giving the player even more types of powerful consumables doesn't improve the game. The player needs nerfs, not buffs.

[Nomad]

As far as I'm aware we don't currently have any bolt-effect scrolls, since that was traditionally reserved for wands and rods. That feels kind of odd to me, though it could be worth trying for playtesting purposes if nothing else -- it'd replicate the gameplay impact of throwable potions without the infrastructural changes.

Maybe the equivalent of a scroll of Monster Confusion, where it affects the next monster you melee? Or an area effect scroll that only affects directly adjacent monsters?

[Derakon]

It doesn't have to be a throwing effect:
Potion of Hound's Breath (Vibration) for stunning
Potion of Hound's Breath (Inertia) for slowing
Potion of Dragon's breath (Bronze) for confusion

Though these would implicitly be conic area-of-effect, which would probably be too strong.

I am not super keen on adding the infrastructure to make potions have effects on hit, so I'd be more tempted to make them scrolls.

As far as I'm aware we don't currently have any bolt-effect scrolls, since that was traditionally reserved for wands and rods. That feels kind of odd to me, though it could be worth trying for playtesting purposes if nothing else -- it'd replicate the gameplay impact of throwable potions without the infrastructural changes.

I guess another workaround would be to add a NO_RECHARGE flag to wands that causes them to be destroyed when their last charge is used up. That might interact oddly with charge pooling (when wands are combined in stacks and their charges "merge") though.

[Pete Mack]

It doesn't have to be a throwing effect:
Potion of Hound's Breath (Vibration) for stunning
Potion of Hound's Breath (Inertia) for slowing
Potion of Dragon's breath (Bronze) for confusion

I am not super keen on adding the infrastructure to make potions have effects on hit, so I'd be more tempted to make them scrolls.

[takkaria]

What do you think about the idea, previously brought up, of replacing the status effect wands with throwable potions? Then they're inherently one-shot abilities that you aren't able to spam on every fight.

I am not super keen on adding the infrastructure to make potions have effects on hit, so I'd be more tempted to make them scrolls.

[Derakon]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to think on this a little bit more, and if I can't come up with anything else, I'll turn on saving throws for all monster status effects again. If that still doesn't play well, I'll back out the changes. And if the changes around status effects are broken by the time Nick wants to release 4.1, they won't go in that release - so please don't worry about 4.1 being broken because of this tinkering.

What do you think about the idea, previously brought up, of replacing the status effect wands with throwable potions? Then they're inherently one-shot abilities that you aren't able to spam on every fight.

[Sky]

Lets take a page out of rolemaster and use a similar formula.
The following are factors - actual values need to be playtested:
1. Inherent spell level
2. Caster level
3. Target level
4. Specific resistance
5. Random die roll

If the result is over a certain value, you get full spell effect. ( rm also had criticals..)
Below a minimum, no effect, and in a range, variable partial effect.

1 doesnt need to be exactly the casting level, it can be a modifier a specific spell has (e.g. "annihilate" +20).

Obviously, this approach requires a whole lot more coding...

This way, instead of having spells have no/rarely effect, or always effect and thus OP, you generally have a partial effect (e.g. light stun, 2 round confusion, slowed -3, etc) with occasionally either full status or none at all.

The stronger you are (and weaker the target) the more likely a full effect, with the opposite also true.

[PowerWyrm]

The initial problem was that saving throw formula was too restrictive, which was changed. So maybe just stick with the new formula for all effects and reintroduce the saving throws? Also removing the wands from shop 6 would help.

[takkaria]

I appreciate the efforts made toward rebalancing the status effects but there are still a lot of problems: [...]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to think on this a little bit more, and if I can't come up with anything else, I'll turn on saving throws for all monster status effects again. If that still doesn't play well, I'll back out the changes. And if the changes around status effects are broken by the time Nick wants to release 4.1, they won't go in that release - so please don't worry about 4.1 being broken because of this tinkering.

[Pete Mack]

Consider: One, probability is a factor which operates *within* natural forces. Two, probability is *not* operating as a factor. Three, we are now held within un-, sub- or super-natural forces. Discuss.

Did you increase the drop ratio? I found a steady stream of OOD gear. Westernesse from a DL2 kobold, PDSM craftsmanship DL32, dwarven mail, RoS +5 .. a whole bunch of 9-9 and 8-9 levels.

[Sky]

Did you increase the drop ratio? I found a steady stream of OOD gear. Westernesse from a DL2 kobold, PDSM craftsmanship DL32, dwarven mail, RoS +5 .. a whole bunch of 9-9 and 8-9 levels.

[Gwarl]

I guess what would balance status effects is if you had to decide on investing in status effects vs investing in other stuff. But having to dedicate an inventory slot to status effects isn't enough of a tradeoff, the drawback is always smaller than the benefit. If the tradeoff was like 'your melee attacks are worse, but you can reliably land confuse on enemies' then it would be more of a meaningful decision. (Maybe Crawl's design philosophy should be an inspiration here.)

Angband isn't crawl and with good reason.

The fix is to allow monsters a save. That's it.

[Nick]

OK, new builds up on the nightlies page. These probably will break your savefile.

Changes:

• Fix to repeated randart bug;
• A 4.0.5 lore file can now be used (although it will be rewritten so it can't be read by 4.0.5 any more);
• Experimental change to waking up which should fix the breeder issue, but please report how the balance of stealth compares to the pre-pathfinding-change setup.