I've been playing a lot of Shiren the Wanderer of late, a japanese roguelike for the SNES that was ported in English to the DS (highly recommended, by the way). It's more of a hack-style game, but there are some items that I've been thinking could be profitably imported to increase tactical depth in *bands, without breaking balance too much.
I've adapted the item types to conform to *band standards.
Wand of Knockback: knocks a monster back until it runs into an obstruction (e.g. a wall or another monster) upon which it takes damage. This would be a pretty potent item: not as powerful as -telOther but in the same ballpark. The power could be limited by reducing the knockback range.
Wand of Swapping: causes the player to trade places with the target monster. Useful for escapes, but only if the target monster is either away from other monsters, or if the char is powerful and wants to protect himself within a mob of weaker monsters. Probably other creative applications as well. Would be very useful in conjunction with Wand of Knockback or a spell of scare monster.
Wand of Postpone: basically works the same as -telOther, except the monster in question gets set on top of the stairs and paralyzed there. May not make as much sense in Angband given that there are multiple sets of stairs, but it still may work. An interesting trade-off.
Wand of Paralysis: causes the target monster to be paralyzed for x number of turns. If disturbed, e.g., by an attack, it gets a turn immediately. Don't know if this is feasible with *band's energy system.
Scroll of Sleep: works the same as Angband's mass sleep spell, except that it always works, and once it wears off, newly woken monsters get a speed boost (which would have to be temporary in bands). If the reason that charm spells aren't implemented in *bands is because they'd be too powerful, this might be a good trade-off.
Mushroom of Dragon's Breath: you eat it and then pick a direction to breathe. Fun mushroom flavor, that's all.
I've adapted the item types to conform to *band standards.
Wand of Knockback: knocks a monster back until it runs into an obstruction (e.g. a wall or another monster) upon which it takes damage. This would be a pretty potent item: not as powerful as -telOther but in the same ballpark. The power could be limited by reducing the knockback range.
Wand of Swapping: causes the player to trade places with the target monster. Useful for escapes, but only if the target monster is either away from other monsters, or if the char is powerful and wants to protect himself within a mob of weaker monsters. Probably other creative applications as well. Would be very useful in conjunction with Wand of Knockback or a spell of scare monster.
Wand of Postpone: basically works the same as -telOther, except the monster in question gets set on top of the stairs and paralyzed there. May not make as much sense in Angband given that there are multiple sets of stairs, but it still may work. An interesting trade-off.
Wand of Paralysis: causes the target monster to be paralyzed for x number of turns. If disturbed, e.g., by an attack, it gets a turn immediately. Don't know if this is feasible with *band's energy system.
Scroll of Sleep: works the same as Angband's mass sleep spell, except that it always works, and once it wears off, newly woken monsters get a speed boost (which would have to be temporary in bands). If the reason that charm spells aren't implemented in *bands is because they'd be too powerful, this might be a good trade-off.
Mushroom of Dragon's Breath: you eat it and then pick a direction to breathe. Fun mushroom flavor, that's all.
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