Class/magic: non-casters and hybrids

[Derakon]

posted it here: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?p=129868

but i want to be sure this doesn't go unnoticed .. i found a *slightly* overpowered ego sling.
Something tells me this isn't supposed to happen.

That +6 is +.6 shots/round. It makes you 60% more effective, not 700%.

The phrasing of the +shots description needs to be updated, because it's very misleading right now.

[Sky]

That +6 is +.6 shots/round. It makes you 60% more effective, not 700%.

The phrasing of the +shots description needs to be updated, because it's very misleading right now.

oooohhhhh ......


ok, that makes *way* more sense.


(note: the weaponsmith doesn't think this is accurate. i sold the sling, he paid me 1 gold. and the sling is now on sale for 10 million, 330k gold. some buffer overrun uh?)

[Nick]

(note: the weaponsmith doesn't think this is accurate. i sold the sling, he paid me 1 gold. and the sling is now on sale for 10 million, 330k gold. some buffer overrun uh?)

Yes, I should fix that.

[Nick]

hmm. .. i tried using this in serious play, and it's .. kinda like Wonder, yeah you could get some amazing results, but in practical terms it's best not to cast it.

The idea is that you line up a bunch of minor mobs, feed your thirst, and when you are pumped, you go kill that big Unique. However, the Confusion status (there's others, like getting random wound statuses just happen) means you can lose a big number of turns. And it's not preventable by pConf.

Yeah, maybe the side-effects need tuning a bit.

[Derakon]

Randomly losing control of your character because you decided to use a class-defining ability doesn't really sound like fun to me. How about a scaling AC debuff that increases as your other abilities do? So the bigger your bloodlust, the better your offense and the worse your defense?

[Drokk]

Randomly losing control of your character because you decided to use a class-defining ability doesn't really sound like fun to me. How about a scaling AC debuff that increases as your other abilities do? So the bigger your bloodlust, the better your offense and the worse your defense?

Agreed, I feel like this or a 'reckless attacks' debuff (large damage bonus, but due to the wild nature of the bloodlust not exactly accurate).

[Philip]

A fun addition would be to make up to x (where x is somehow dependent on the bloodlust counter) of your attacks while in bloodlust mode affect every tile around you as well. I imagine even then, being surrounded would be bad, but this could tempt players to go for it to boost the bloodlust counter.

As a negative consequence, some of your attacks could be redirected to another target nearby - you still have less control, but you do a lot more damage. Confusion as a status is crippling because it prevents you from doing pretty much everything (except healing, but including teleporting), but if you only applied the parts of its effects that are annoying but non-lethal, it could still be used a bit.

Another bloodlust-themed ability that could be interesting is, if you want the class to be a sort of shadow warrior with burst damage and then run away, rather than stand-your-ground berserker (which feels almost necessary given how easily some monsters can force a player to disengage anyway), you could have an ability that transforms your bloodlust counter into healing, maybe even combined with a moderate distance teleport. Alternatively, ordinary bloodlust decay could heal the player - giving some moderate healing throughout a fight, and then healing you up a bit after a fight ends.

[Nick]

As a negative consequence, some of your attacks could be redirected to another target nearby - you still have less control, but you do a lot more damage.

This is already implemented.

Another bloodlust-themed ability that could be interesting is, if you want the class to be a sort of shadow warrior with burst damage and then run away, rather than stand-your-ground berserker (which feels almost necessary given how easily some monsters can force a player to disengage anyway), you could have an ability that transforms your bloodlust counter into healing, maybe even combined with a moderate distance teleport. Alternatively, ordinary bloodlust decay could heal the player - giving some moderate healing throughout a fight, and then healing you up a bit after a fight ends.

In fact, it's currently kind of the opposite - bad side-effects occur when the counter gets close to zero.

The intended ethos of the mechanic is that it gives massive benefits (including one which no-one seems to have noticed yet...) at the cost of annoying and potentially dangerous side-effects. The player should be tempted to use it, and to keep the effect going longer than is strictly wise. I suspect that currently the side-effects are happening a bit too often, and the confusion is overdone. On the other hand, I'm not intending that this should be an obvious spell to cast - there should always be the question of whether it is worth the risk in a given situation.

[Sky]

haven't notice it because i've most just tried the spell against orcs.

let me slip in here two quick questions:


1. if' im trying to spawn a specific Unique, does my depth influence my chances? So, if i want to kill Castamir (Depth 38) should i ideally be on DL38?


2. if i'm trying to spawn a specific artifact .. same as above.

So, is deeper always better?

(i'm at 80/137 artifacts)

[Pete Mack]

Castam8r will always have at least a dl 38 drop. If you do kill him deeper than dl 38, his drop will slowly improve, at 1/2 the difference between 38 and your actual dl, so at dl 50, his drop will be dl 44. This is not to say you should always delay killing uniques: a DL 38 drop at dl 38 is likely worth more to the player than a dl 44 drop at dl 50. (The one place wihere this doesn't hold is Wormtongue, as drop value is rapidly increasing at dl 10, but level difficult remains low.)

[Sky]

yes, i know that, but it's not what i wanted to know. to be honest, i've been asking this question for a while but i'm getting surprisingly vague answers.

my game has an artifact pool of 137 artifacts. we'll consider the depth in a second.

normally, the lower i go in the dungeon, the more likely that i will find an artifact.

Now, from observation, the larger the number of artifacts not spawned, the more likely that drops/spawns will be artifacts. I must assume that the game checks each artifact that has (depth=currentDL) to see if it spawns.

This likely means that if i run through DL127, i will get the biggest number of artifacts in the smallest number of turns.

However, while the above holds true (if i dive faster, i start to see artifacts drop like candy), once i reach a certain depth, nothing seems to spawn or drop. I've spent all of yesterday, i don't know how many hours, on DL97 grinding for drops, killing every type of Wyrm and Pit Fiend and Archlich and i have seen maybe two artifacts, out of 57 still out there.

And the depth spread is well within my current DL (for most).


The same works for uniques. I'm looking for Osse, and since he spawns on DL65~ish, if i find a GV on DL97, he should totally be there if i haven't killed him already - but he's not.

This leads me to think i should maybe go back up to DL65 to find him.

note that artifacts not spawning reinforces the idea that each available depth artifact gets checked for, as more artifacts already found = less checks being made.

[Nick]

2. if i'm trying to spawn a specific artifact .. same as above.

So, is deeper always better?

It's not easy to answer. Objects get made like this (simplified):

1. Try and make a special artifact (rings, amulets, lights)
2. If not, pick an object kind - anything from object.txt
3. Apply magic to the item; this will try to make an artifact, but definitely fail if there is no artifact of that object kind

If the artifact is out of depth, it has to pass an extra roll (1 in how out of depth it is) to get created.

So the short answer is the artifact is much less likely to drop out of depth, but once it's in depth it will go through approximately the same process; but because deeper monsters tend to drop better items, on the whole your chance is better the deeper you go.

EDIT: Missed one important thing - some artifacts have a maximum depth, and won't be generated below that.

[Sky]

what about uniques then? do they have an "ideal" depth ?


i'm gonna be totally honest now, i'm playing a Blackguard randart game and while i'm already over CL50 and totally capped on everything, there's one artifact that's just too incredible and i'm not gonna stop until i've found it and play my last 2 fights with it.

doesn't matter *how* long i have to look for it. (it's power 356 if that matters; i've already found two dragon armors of 500 and 600 power)

I'm doing this because i strongly suspect this could be an unbeatable record.

edit: THREE dragon armors.

[Pete Mack]

Ideally, you kill uniques when you can stomp them without using many consumables.

[Sky]

no no no, ideal for finding them. i could probably stomp morgoth right now. Osse has been hiding for quite some time now and i want his head.



see, i should point out that, most people here see Angband as a game where the objective is to kill morgoth. Get to morgoth, and kill him.

To me, Angband like any other RPG, the objective is to see how grossly overpowered you can get; how much gear can you find, how many insane combinations of buffs you can stack up. I value much more a character that gets to basespeed 100 or that can nuke sauron with 1 turn of arrows, rather than one which kills him with a shovel.