Idea: make stunning reduce sight radius

[Derakon]

Stunning has a problem: newbies don't realize how dangerous it is. It's not IMO exactly that the Knocked Out status itself is problematic, moreso that unless you have foreknowledge, you don't realize how much danger you're in when you're in Stun / Heavy Stun. IMO that's because the effects of being stunned (worsening to-hit/to-dam/spell/device rates) are non-obvious, so the player is disinclined to cure the status. I know I used to think of stunning as an effect that's pretty harmless and goes away on its own soon enough. I didn't realize how much worse it was making me at combat.

Rather than make stunning less punishing by removing or mitigating the KO status, I propose we make it worse -- but in a way that encourages players to actually address the status quickly. That should make them less likely to get knocked out. In short, the proposal is:

1. When you get Stunned, your sight radius is reduced to 2. You cannot see anything (even remembered map tiles) outside of this radius, even if normally revealed by detection/ESP.
2. When you get Heavily Stunned, your sight radius is reduced to 1, as above.
3. (edited in for clarity) You can still get knocked out, with the same paralysis effect that the game currently has.

In effect it's like the old "amnesia" effect, which caused you to forget the map; however, this would be temporary. The intent is to simulate tunnel vision: the PC is so impaired they're unable to think about anything that's not directly in front of them.

What do you think?

[Thraalbee]

I like it! Possibly instead of making things out of range invisible replace all out of range with a *

[tangar]

I like the idea to change stunning mechanics, cause completely loosing control over character without noticing isn't good. Maybe stunning could start like blindness (as Derakon described) + confusion (so it would be more different from common blindness)

[Derakon]

To be clear, my proposal would be to add the reduced sight radius to the existing stunning effects. Letting stun stack up too high would still knock you out. That said, if you want to turn this into a brainstorming thread, by all means feel free.

[Monkey Face]

The biggest issue I see with this is in the early levels before curing stunning becomes easy. What if we also made it so that !CLW and !CSW reduce the time counter on the stun (it would still take !CCW or higher to eliminate it completely unless the counter was already low enough)?

[fph]

Sounds like a great idea!

One doubt: how would it interact with the light radius mechanics for the necromancer?

[Mark]

+1 to this idea.

Will not only make stunning more obvious it will make it more interesting too.

[Derakon]

The biggest issue I see with this is in the early levels before curing stunning becomes easy. What if we also made it so that !CLW and !CSW reduce the time counter on the stun (it would still take !CCW or higher to eliminate it completely unless the counter was already low enough)?

Is stunning at all common in the early game (before CCW)? I don't think it's likely unless a melee enemy gets a lucky hit. If that leads to the player having to deal with the combat substantially differently because they suddenly have less information, is that a bad thing?

Sounds like a great idea!

One doubt: how would it interact with the light radius mechanics for the necromancer?

I have yet to play a necromancer but I don't think that there's an incompatibility there. The effect isn't "your light radius is reduced", it's "your sight radius is reduced".

[luneya]

Is stunning at all common in the early game (before CCW)? I don't think it's likely unless a melee enemy gets a lucky hit. If that leads to the player having to deal with the combat substantially differently because they suddenly have less information, is that a bad thing?



I have yet to play a necromancer but I don't think that there's an incompatibility there. The effect isn't "your light radius is reduced", it's "your sight radius is reduced".

Unless you're a divine caster, CCW is not a limitless resource. !CCW is common enough that it doesn't have to be hoarded like !heal and higher, but it's possible to run out. The town shops sometimes stock !CCW, but the only heal that's guaranteed is !CLW.

Even though stunning doesn't happen in the early game, I wouldn't want to make it nastier than it already is without also increasing the treatment options. If we're going that route, not only would I make sure that CLW and CSW reduce the stun timer (as they do with poison, etc.), but I would also make it so that heroism and berserk strength confer pStun along with pFear. Both of those changes are thematically logical, and anyway few people carry those potions during the part of the late midgame when stun is most problematic. If people want to carry those potions as stun protection, that means sacrificing an inventory slot that could have gone to something else.

[Nick]

I like it.

A possible modification is to make it more graduated. "Stun" status corresponds to the stun counter being 1-49, and "Heavy Stun" to 50-99. So perhaps

Counter | Radius
1-20    | 10
20-40   | 4
40-49   | 3
50-70   | 2
70-99   | 1

or something like that.

[takkaria]

https://github.com/angband/angband/pull/523

That was fun and surprisingly quick to (mostly) implement

I can confirm that it is a fun visual effect, though I have no comment on its balance.

[Derakon]

Unless you're a divine caster, CCW is not a limitless resource. !CCW is common enough that it doesn't have to be hoarded like !heal and higher, but it's possible to run out. The town shops sometimes stock !CCW, but the only heal that's guaranteed is !CLW.

Even though stunning doesn't happen in the early game, I wouldn't want to make it nastier than it already is without also increasing the treatment options. If we're going that route, not only would I make sure that CLW and CSW reduce the stun timer (as they do with poison, etc.), but I would also make it so that heroism and berserk strength confer pStun along with pFear. Both of those changes are thematically logical, and anyway few people carry those potions during the part of the late midgame when stun is most problematic. If people want to carry those potions as stun protection, that means sacrificing an inventory slot that could have gone to something else.

I like that idea of heroism and berserk strength granting pStun. A+ would brainstorm again.

I don't object to C[L,S]W reducing stun timers, to be clear. I just don't really remember ever having been in a situation where I was stunned and didn't have CCW. But maybe I'm an outlier in that, or my memory is just letting me down again.

That was fun and surprisingly quick to (mostly) implement

Wow, that was fast! Thank you! I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays.

[Nick]

Yes, that was fast. That takkaria has potential as a maintainer...

[takkaria]

Yes, that was fast. That takkaria has potential as a maintainer...

I'm not catching that hot potato again...

[Grotug]

I like it! Possibly instead of making things out of range invisible replace all out of range with a *

+1

maybe monsters could be yellow *, objects could remain red * and walls could be cyan *?