Class/magic feature branch

[Voovus]

Got killed by acid breath while wearing a randart shield that gives acid immunity. In fact, it seems to have removed my acid resistance altogether, rather than added the immunity - took about 500 damage from an ancient multihued D. Was in fox form and had the poison resistance spell up at the time, in case they might be responsible for the bug.

I'm pretty sure I also had Thorin fail to protect from corrosion by acid in an earlier game.

[Nick]

Got killed by acid breath while wearing a randart shield that gives acid immunity. In fact, it seems to have removed my acid resistance altogether, rather than added the immunity - took about 500 damage from an ancient multihued D. Was in fox form and had the poison resistance spell up at the time, in case they might be responsible for the bug.

I'm pretty sure I also had Thorin fail to protect from corrosion by acid in an earlier game.

OK, that needs looking into.

[Nick]

Build page now has new builds for Windows and macOS.

The main change is a fix to the bug reported by jevansau, where things that breathed nexus or gravity at the player were blinked or teleported instead of that happening to the player. I couldn't reproduce the acid immunity bug. Tested with Water hounds and an AMHD wielding Thorin (that's me, not the dragon) and acid immunity held up fine. Voovus, let me know if you have a savefile with the behaviour (if it's a randart, I'll need the randart file too).

Other changes were some more tweaks to teleportation to make it less likely to ping-pong between the same two locations, and an increase to melee skill for druids and necromancers.

[Voovus]

Sadly I don't have a suitable savefile for the druid with the immunity bug, only an obituary.

On a different note, I played through with another necromancer (before today's changes, obviously). The class now works pretty well, I think, and I would encourage the real veterans here to try it out. Great work, Nick!

There are still a few issues that need some thought:

Undead. These are still the most unpleasant opponents for the necromancer, which feels thematically wrong. Admittedly, I now realise that I forgot to try Command on them. Also, they seem to be perfectly killable with Storm of Darkness, which may again be thematically wrong.

Inventory space. I found both my necromancers more space limited than standard characters, to the extent that I threw away spellbooks 1 and 2 first time round, and spellbook 1 and nearly 2 the second time. I think the issue is that, unlike other spellcasters, the necromancer doesn't get any spells that replace essential gear, like Word of Recall, Satisfy Hunger, Haste, Slow monster, or any digging or healing.

Darkness. This generally works very well. There's a slight problem in that the necromancer will automatically step onto a lit square when running, which is simply dangerous. The Create Darkness spell also wants a larger radius, as at present to safely darken a room from a corridor requires two casts - first for the door square and then for the room. Enlightenment is a little annoying, without some sort of a Mass Darkness spell, to switch the light back off in the entire dungeon (or at least in the corridors). Finally, Huqhox correctly predicted that the Arkenstone would be a troublemaker - it successfully pursuaded my necromancer to change all gear to get the extra +4 Con. Maybe this is as it should be, as the Arkenstone doesn't show up all that often. (The downside is that, as a result, I didn't playtest the darkness rule in the late game.)

Monster light radius. This works very well. Minor suggestion: maybe remove the light radius for (monster) necromancers, and increase the light radius for, say, paladins and ainur?

Vampire form. I played a magic oriented kobold necromancer, so didn't try this out much, but it seems to be *very* powerful against living creatures. Even with pathetic melee gear (200 damage) my necromancer (with fire immunity) gnawed both Carcharoth and Ungoliant to death.

[Nick]

There are still a few issues that need some thought:

Thanks again for the feedback.

Undead. These are still the most unpleasant opponents for the necromancer, which feels thematically wrong. Admittedly, I now realise that I forgot to try Command on them. Also, they seem to be perfectly killable with Storm of Darkness, which may again be thematically wrong.

Yes, this needs some thought. I'm not sure exactly what's best thematically, and I think that's partly because of the differences between Tolkien undead and Angband undead.

Inventory space. I found both my necromancers more space limited than standard characters, to the extent that I threw away spellbooks 1 and 2 first time round, and spellbook 1 and nearly 2 the second time. I think the issue is that, unlike other spellcasters, the necromancer doesn't get any spells that replace essential gear, like Word of Recall, Satisfy Hunger, Haste, Slow monster, or any digging or healing.

Interesting. I didn't give a lot of thought to utility spells, so maybe I need to; or maybe it's just a downside to what I think is really quite a powerful class.

Darkness. This generally works very well. There's a slight problem in that the necromancer will automatically step onto a lit square when running, which is simply dangerous. The Create Darkness spell also wants a larger radius, as at present to safely darken a room from a corridor requires two casts - first for the door square and then for the room. Enlightenment is a little annoying, without some sort of a Mass Darkness spell, to switch the light back off in the entire dungeon (or at least in the corridors). Finally, Huqhox correctly predicted that the Arkenstone would be a troublemaker - it successfully pursuaded my necromancer to change all gear to get the extra +4 Con. Maybe this is as it should be, as the Arkenstone doesn't show up all that often. (The downside is that, as a result, I didn't playtest the darkness rule in the late game.)

Yeah, stop before light and bigger radius (possibly as levels are gained) for Create Darkness sound sensible. The enlightenment and Arkenstone issues I'd be more inclined to say are just another downside, but maybe that's unrealistic.

Monster light radius. This works very well. Minor suggestion: maybe remove the light radius for (monster) necromancers, and increase the light radius for, say, paladins and ainur?

Again, sounds sensible - allowing bigger than 1 light radius will take a little work, but extra code flexibility is always good. I'll try and remember to do that when I get to the monster list revamp.

Vampire form. I played a magic oriented kobold necromancer, so didn't try this out much, but it seems to be *very* powerful against living creatures. Even with pathetic melee gear (200 damage) my necromancer (with fire immunity) gnawed both Carcharoth and Ungoliant to death.

Maybe a little overdone, then, but I do want this to feel powerful

[Voovus]

Immunity bug appears to be caused by fox form. I'm getting it again with Thorin equipped. I didn't have the problem in vampire form with Narya. Save file attached.


Angband Vanilla undead have been around for 25 years, since their childhood in Moria, so I guess it's too late to ask them to change into something more Tolkienesque.

[Nick]

Immunity bug appears to be caused by fox form. I'm getting it again with Thorin equipped. I didn't have the problem in vampire form with Narya. Save file attached.

Thanks, bug found and fixed, fix will be in the next update. A stupid error in shapechanges was scrambling the player's level of acid resistance.

Angband Vanilla undead have been around for 25 years, since their childhood in Moria, so I guess it's too late to ask them to change into something more Tolkienesque.

Yes, indeed. I am thinking, though, that there might be something in necromancers treating undead with the SPIRIT flag (ghosts, liches, vampires, wraiths, which are approximately Tolkien undead) differently from the others (skeletons and zombies).

[Gwarl]

Is the zip file linked in the OP up to date? If not, can we get a new one?

(I need the source and messing with git checkout etc while keeping my folder full of variants organised is a struggle)

[Nick]

Is the zip file linked in the OP up to date? If not, can we get a new one?

No, it's not; this is the latest.

I've just pushed the latest changes (the bug fix to shapechanged acid resist level); I'll update this post once the build page has fully updated, and from now on I'll include the zip in these update posts.

EDIT: OK, build page now has bugfixed Windows and macOS versions.

[Gwarl]

Thanks, I'll put the newest version online this weekend.

Incidentally, the main branch has been updated with the weapon damage fix etc

[Nick]

Build page now has new Windows and macOS builds with latest master bugfixes, and Paladins. Source zipfile is here (note that this is just a link to the tip of the feature/magic branch, so will get the most recent push every time).

[Gwarl]

And it's finally available to play online

[Estie]

What about a link to the live server on the front page ? Maybe a tab "live play" or so.

[Voovus]

Build page now has new Windows and macOS builds with latest master bugfixes, and Paladins.

Oooh, shiny!

Nick, before I forget: this is from a melee necromancer experiment.

1. Warg form should probably cure fear and give fear immunity. Could do with a bit more damage, though I find it hard to gauge just how much difference the to-hit bonus makes.

2. Darkness works well until the endgame, when I find it far too tempting to put on gear with extra +4Con and then use enlightenment, Arkenstone/randart lightsource and not worry about creature light radius. Not sure what a good fix would be. Maybe the right thing would be for the necromancer in a lit square to have a max Con of 18/180 instead of 18/200, though I realise that this is not consistent with usual rules.

3. At the risk of being shouted at by the veterans... ... Maybe if usual light sources had a significantly larger radius (like the necromancer's darkness vision), we wouldn't all be relying on the light area spell or rods.

4. On a happier note, the new noxious fumes is great. It's powerful, but its short radius makes it more dangerous to use than normal spells, especially against lit monsters. Also, this was the first time I actively collected Salt Water...

[Nick]

Build page now has new macOS and Windows builds, with Rogues (no changes to necromancers at this point). Source zipfile is here.

Changes to Rogues include:

• Less books (duh)
• Melee is worse to start out with, but gets to the same point at CL50
• Better throwing
• Can steal items from monsters (use the alter command, '+')