Class/magic feature branch

[jevansau]

I think creatures in single combat shouldn't waste turns on summoning, and that is probably enough of a nerf. For Q's, probably fair that 1 class has a good way to deal with them

[Voovus]

Nick, here's some feedback on the Rogue. The character feels different from all the others, in a good way, though it also feels a bit un-Vanilla-ish. But maybe I've just been using the steal ability too much.

The Rogue is a good fighter, and has a selection of some really excellent spells (phase door, object detection, reveal monsters, teleport self, teleport other). The game felt significantly easier than, say, with a necromancer. The absolutely central ability is stealing - it generates a large amount of high quality treasure. In principle, that's a great idea. However, it works a bit too well in practice.

In the very early game, pinching something from Wormtongue and then running for your life is fun. Using up all you phase doors, confuse monsters and so on, in order to get a shiny object is very satisfying.

Unfortunately, once teleportation (especially Teleport Other) becomes available, the fun is lost. It becomes "steal, steal, steal, teleport, find a new unique monster, rinse and repeat". I don't have a constructive idea how to fix this at the moment, I'm afraid. Even if Teleport Other isn't available as a spell, it will still be there in wands and rods. (Teleport Self and Teleport Other are probably the most overpowered tools in the entire game in the first place... but that's a bigger can of worms than I'd be happy to open.)

Stealing also creates the rather bizarre incentive of keeping uniques alive. What's the point of killing Ar Pharazon, if you can just empty his pocketses, go down a level, and repeat the exercise?

Having said that, beating Morgoth to pulp with Grond was very satisfying... even if the time it took me to steal it might have been enough to kill him in the first place.

By the way, what does the chance of a successful theft depend on? My impression is that it sees character and monster levels, whether the monster is awake, and probably character stealth and speed. I'd be inclined to remove character level and speed from the formula, so as to encourage low level adventurers to steal from dangerous foes. However, that might make dwarf and half-troll rogues a bit pointless.

Oh, and the monster screaming (siren effect?) is a nice touch. A bit of a shock when it happens for the first time, especially if it's in the middle of a vault.

[Nick]

Nick, here's some feedback on the Rogue.

Thanks, this is really helpful.

Unfortunately, once teleportation (especially Teleport Other) becomes available, the fun is lost. It becomes "steal, steal, steal, teleport, find a new unique monster, rinse and repeat". I don't have a constructive idea how to fix this at the moment, I'm afraid. Even if Teleport Other isn't available as a spell, it will still be there in wands and rods. (Teleport Self and Teleport Other are probably the most overpowered tools in the entire game in the first place... but that's a bigger can of worms than I'd be happy to open.)

OK, I can see this is a problem. One possible solution is to prevent the player form using any teleportation magic for a few turns after a theft - this would make the Hit and Run spell more valuable, too.

Stealing also creates the rather bizarre incentive of keeping uniques alive. What's the point of killing Ar Pharazon, if you can just empty his pocketses, go down a level, and repeat the exercise?

Hm, yes. Maybe uniques need to be extra hard to steal from.

By the way, what does the chance of a successful theft depend on? My impression is that it sees character and monster levels, whether the monster is awake, and probably character stealth and speed. I'd be inclined to remove character level and speed from the formula, so as to encourage low level adventurers to steal from dangerous foes. However, that might make dwarf and half-troll rogues a bit pointless.

Player theft skill is based on stealth and DEX (penalised heavily if the player is blind, confused or hallucinating), and monster protection from theft is based on level and monster/player speed difference (halved if the monster is asleep). Any theft attempt is the same from the player end, and the monster gets a roll to see how well it responds.

I'm inclined to think that the changes above plus a bit of a buff to monster protection will be a good first attempt at difficulty adjustment.

[PowerWyrm]

OK, I can see this is a problem. One possible solution is to prevent the player form using any teleportation magic for a few turns after a theft - this would make the Hit and Run spell more valuable, too.

But monsters do the opposite, right?

"The brigand touches you. 1100 gold pieces were stolen! There is a puff of smoke!"

Adding fixed inventories would fix the problem, but that would probably be a lot of work.

BTW you can steal Morgoth's crown and Grond as a Rogue? That's a bit silly... In MAngband, players can have access to these items because of the innate multiplayer nature of the game, but any player trying to wield Grond will get a "you are too weak to wield the mighty Grond" message until they kill Morgoth. Trying to wear the Crown is even worse... it kills the character outright ("you are blasted by the power of the Crown" -- 5000 unresistable dam).

[Nick]

But monsters do the opposite, right?

"The brigand touches you. 1100 gold pieces were stolen! There is a puff of smoke!"

Yes, that's very true. I may start by just changing some of the numbers.

Adding fixed inventories would fix the problem, but that would probably be a lot of work.

What do you mean by fixed inventories?

BTW you can steal Morgoth's crown and Grond as a Rogue? That's a bit silly...

I hadn't actually considered it as a possibility - I suspect it's about to get a lot less likely

[PowerWyrm]

What do you mean by fixed inventories?

Unique is generated with items A & B. If you leave the level and generate him again, he still has items A & B. Then you'd only be able to steal a fixed amount of stuff from the same unique. That would be really hard to implement I guess, unless uniques get fixed drops hardcoded in monster.txt.

[Derakon]

Unique is generated with items A & B. If you leave the level and generate him again, he still has items A & B. Then you'd only be able to steal a fixed amount of stuff from the same unique. That would be really hard to implement I guess, unless uniques get fixed drops hardcoded in monster.txt.

We do already save monster inventories, we just delete them when the player leaves the level. So the required change would be something like:

* At start of game, generate all uniques with level-appropriate drops, but flag them as "inactive". Flagged monsters don't appear on the level (maybe they're just treated at being at x=1000, y=1000 or something).
* Unique monster data goes in a new section of the savefile that is always saved (separate from the data for non-unique monsters on the current level).
* When generating a unique, instead of actually generating it, just remove the inactive flag and give it a valid position.
* When leaving the level, all living uniques on it are re-flagged.

As a bonus, this would remove the incentive to keep uniques alive so they can drop higher-quality stuff later.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

As a bonus, this would remove the incentive to keep uniques alive so they can drop higher-quality stuff later.

*BUT* wouldn't this also encourage the "kill every unique" before facing Morgoth playstyle, since if an artifact is in a monster's inventory it will never be found unless @ kills (or steals) from that particular monster. Maybe that's what is intended, but it seems to me to violate the idea that Angband does not force or favor one playstyle over another.

[Derakon]

*BUT* wouldn't this also encourage the "kill every unique" before facing Morgoth playstyle, since if an artifact is in a monster's inventory it will never be found unless @ kills (or steals) from that particular monster. Maybe that's what is intended, but it seems to me to violate the idea that Angband does not force or favor one playstyle over another.

Hm, that's a fair point. I dimly recall that we have some logic in place already for "this artifact is notionally in this monster's inventory, but since we also generated it right here, we replace the one in inventory with a different item". Am I misremembering? If it does exist, it could be applied in this case -- if a unique has an artifact and the artifact gets generated, then the unique's item gets replaced by another randomly-generated level-appropriate item.

[Antoine]

Why not simply say that a given monster can only be pickpocketed once?

Then you don't need monster inventories.

A.

[luneya]

Why not simply say that a given monster can only be pickpocketed once?

Then you don't need monster inventories.

A.

The problem with that is that if you banish or run away from a unique, the next time that unique is generated, it counts as a new monster. This leaves 3 options for avoiding pickpocket abuse:

1. Remove pickpocket entirely
2. Make it impossible to pickpocket uniques. Simply making the fail rate 100% on such attempts will work, but isn't user-friendly. A better implementation is that when the pickpocket command is issued targeting uniques, the action is aborted, and an error message such as "You wouldn't dare try that on %NAME" is displayed.
3. Fully implement monster inventories, and moreover make it so that a unique's inventory does not reset when the monster is generated for a second time (except that if the unique had an artifact, this artifact is returned to the item generation pool when the unique is removed from the game by banishment or leaving the level, and replaced with a new item if it is no longer available upon subsequent generations of that unique).

[Antoine]

> The problem with that is that if you banish or run away from a unique, the next time that unique is generated, it counts as a new monster

So then, the game just needs to remember whether a unique has been pickpocketed before, and if so, set the 'immune to pickpocket' flag when that unique reappears.

A.

[Nick]

New builds for Windows and macOS now up on the build page - source zipfile is here. Changes are:

• Hit to shatter no longer asks for a target
• A code rework for player timed effects
• Necromancers get a "darken level detect all object" spell - like a dark version of !Enlightenment
• Monsters in single combat no longer try to summon
• Stealing has been made harder - nothing has been done to prevent the player stealing and then teleporting, but I think this might be enough; we'll see

Also Blackguard class

Blackguards are fighters powered up by dangerous necromancy spells. I had a lot of fun making them. It's possible that they're over-powered. From reading some posts about ComChengPosFrogBerryBand, I think they're a little like Maulers.

Opinions encouraged

[Huqhox]

> The problem with that is that if you banish or run away from a unique, the next time that unique is generated, it counts as a new monster

So then, the game just needs to remember whether a unique has been pickpocketed before, and if so, set the 'immune to pickpocket' flag when that unique reappears.

A.

Or an alternative would be to remember how many items the unique is carrying. Then stealing one would reduce that by one. No need to carry a pre-generated inventory around then, just a number

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Monsters in single combat no longer try to summon

What does this mean? Morgoth won't summon if you fight him while he's alone? Huh?

Opinions encouraged

Any ETA of the lore.txt / monster.txt fix?