Class/magic feature branch

[Derakon]

In this case I did have map knowledge because of priest's clairvoyance. But let's be honest. If the next step *can* take you in the line of sight of a known monster, you should not be running anymore.

I see. So the logic should be "assume all tiles I do not have prior knowledge of are open, and stop if that would allow a monster I know about to see me." That sounds reasonable. There's an edge case where walls get destroyed without the player's knowledge, but outside of that .01% case it sounds pretty reasonable to me.

We've had a reduced-range option for years. I've never used it myself, but surely someone on the forums has and can comment on the balance implications.

[fizzix]

I symathize with the disturb issue, but unless you have full map knowledge, how do you know when the next step will take you into LOS of a monster? For all you know there's an oxbow in the corridor, or a pile of rubble, or the corridor just dead-ends and the monsters you're detecting are only reachable via a completely different route.

In this case I did have map knowledge because of priest's clairvoyance. But let's be honest. If the next step *can* take you in the line of sight of a known monster, you should not be running anymore.

Alternatively, since we're redesigning a lot of stuff anyway, drop max-range down by at least half.

[Derakon]

I symathize with the disturb issue, but unless you have full map knowledge, how do you know when the next step will take you into LOS of a monster? For all you know there's an oxbow in the corridor, or a pile of rubble, or the corridor just dead-ends and the monsters you're detecting are only reachable via a completely different route.

[fizzix]

Quick bug and some more detailed thoughts.

One bug I noticed is that if you "banish evil" a sleeping monster, it doesn't awaken. I'm not sure if that's as designed, but it feels weird to me.

My dunadan priest is squarely in the endgame. He's pretty much in "mop up duty" where it's a manner of staying awake long enough to kill enough uniques and gather enough gear to kill Morgoth. This part of gameplay has become less and less interesting to me over the years, so I'm not sure I'll finish. Especially since a crash on angband.live erase nearly a full level of progress, but that's neither here nor there.

Overall my thoughts on priests are that they need a few things:

1) They need a way to handle non-evil monsters in the early game. They have crappy combat and until they can cast Orb of Destruction a few times reliably, no way of damaging anything. Combined with lack of detection options, means that they really struggle when they get surprised by fast moving, non-evil monsters. Monsters like panthers and crows are absolutely deadly to priests. Otherwise you really need to grind those first two dungeon levels to get enough XP levels to survive. I recommend some early spell options to pacify non-evil creatures, but there are other options available. Weak glyphs that allow you to block movement of very weak creatures are a possibility. As is a means of detecting these monsters. I'm not sure what works the best.

2) Priests in the midgame are one trick ponies, and the trick is orb of destruction. Every once in a while you'll cast spear of light, but in general Orb just outclasses every other spell, that it's pretty monotonous.

3) Priests struggle greatly with resistances. The generally low HP means that high elemental damage monsters will really hurt, even through single resistance. Lack of "resist fire and cold" hurts them in the midgame. Fortunately or unfortunately for the dunadan character, randarts are broken and I found very early sources of Fire Immunity. Perhaps !resistance could be an option here. Those might deserve a slot, especially if they're common enough.

4) Removing a mid-level heal from priests (something ~100 HP) was a bit mean. It makes consumables necessary for midgame battles.

5) The damage spells in the final priest book come way too late to be useful. You'll probably never get the fail rate down far enough to actually want to cast them, as opposed to the good old melee & heal. I don't know for sure because getting to character level 50 is such a grind, I never bother doing it. I do feel that at level 50, all spells should be 0% fail though, which I don't think is the case. I would move a light damaging spell into the 2nd town book, maybe unlocked around level 25, and move the dispel evil/dispel undead into the 5th book, since those are really spells to help clean-up duty. The grindiness of the endgame leads me to my next point.

6) Not generic to priests, but I find Angband's endgame to be too drawn out and not much fun. This is a problem that is generic to a great many games, not just Angband. I find the same with games like Civilization or Rimworld. The end feels like mop-up duty and it lasts too long. There are too many high level uniques, and most high level monsters just aren't worth dealing with. The last 60 levels of Angband feel like the "extended" game of DCSS. (for those not in the know, DCSS has extra hard optional areas. They're long and pretty tedious). I feel that once you can defeat Saruman, you're essentially in cruising mode. So to me, that's the point where the game stops being fun. I don't know the solution here, it probably comes down to personal preference, that is likely not shared by many.

7) Another issue not generic to priests. My character almost died in a totally unfair way, that should have been preventable with a better disturb system. I ran down a hallway, the character turned round a corner and walked into a long line of time hounds. Now, the time hounds were detectable by ESP, since I had it, so my character knew they were there. I of course, did not know they were there when I started running, since it was a fairly long corridor. I wound up eating a bunch of time hound breaths, dropping my HP from full (720 ish) to about 100, which is when I gained control of @. I only had 720 HP because my gear was OP too. There are two problems here. Time hounds are still way too overpowered, in a totally not fun way. Also the disturb algorithm is clearly broken. The run command should never take you into LoS of any monster if you know it's there. Also there used to be an option to disturb when any known monster moved. I really wish that was still in the game, I lobbied hard against its removal, but no one agreed, it seemed.

Angband shines between DL 1-50 and CL 1-30 after which it becomes significantly less fun IMO.

[Moving Pictures]

An idea...

Odd thought, halfway through the morning coffee...

Mages (etc) choose spells when the slots are available. As part of an entry-level mechanic, would it be possible to diminish the spell failure of spells first chosen, compared to others?

What I mean by that is that if I choose spell (a) early, say CL4, its failure rate would be far less than if I chose that spell at CL 15. I suspect, however, that doing so would be a coding nightmare, so ...

[Derakon]

@Derakon-
That'd be a recipe for abuse: any time you see a dangerous monster, run away at an angle and make a little knight's move funny. Then blast away from out of LOS.

OK, so fix asymmetric LOS while we're at it.

[Pete Mack]

@Derakon-
That'd be a recipe for abuse: any time you see a dangerous monster, run away at an angle and make a little knight's move funny. Then blast away from out of LOS.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Let's just get the rare artifact Rod of Delving. FAAngband has this! (To steal Nick's quote. )

[Derakon]

ToME 2 has a "probability travel" ability that works like a superpowered version of that: you can step into a wall, and appear either on the other side (no matter how far away, basically the first unoccupied non-wall tile in a straight line), or at the edge of the map, whichever comes first. In the latter case it also removes a wall tile automatically so you can land without coexisting with the wall. It's great for fast travel and escapes, but has limited tactical value simply because any use of it is likely to take you a long distance from your fight. I would definitely characterize it as less powerful than being able to take single steps through walls.

...y'know what could possibly be interesting? An ability that temporarily gives players the ability to destroy walls as they move through them, Umber Hulk-style.

[wobbly]

That's crawl-style passwall if you didn't realize. So you can look how it work there, though different balance in general.

[Rydel]

What if, instead of letting you move into the rock, it just completely passed through it - when you cast it, you select a direction, which has to have a wall, there appear on the other side. The wall would probably have to be thin (1, maybe 2 squares), so it would act as a short-range targetted teleport with some extra requirements. This would avoid issues of the character staying in the wall, while still acting as a decent tool for repositioning or escape.

[wobbly]

Compared to 0 fail with a turn to transform. That's what the mage has. What's the druid got (actually haven't looked at there later books)

[fph]

Poor man's? The main two reasons why people don't use tele-level as their primary escape are (1) it makes you lose the level, with whatever good was in it, and (2) it's rare to find scrolls so it's better to keep them for dangerous situations.

Now, take away those drawbacks...

[wobbly]

Perhaps its workable as a shapeshift on the druid? If you can't cast etc. it's just a poormans telelevel except without the reset

[Pete Mack]

@wobbly--
Agree. Even if it cuts damage in half, it makes a massively overpowered replacement for resistance. I too played such a character Posband Shadow Dragon, IIRC. It was fun once. But it had zero replayability.