NPP thoughts

[Derakon]

After having giant fleas show up out of nowhere and start taking over the section of the dungeon blocking a pit I needed to clear for a quest, I went into monster.txt and sterilized 'em. I killed 300 of them first but there's simply no way to keep an infestation under control once it starts unless you get really lucky with doors, and I didn't (and I note that giant fleas even have BASH_DOOR, not that I ever saw them use it). This is not fun, so I've fixed it, at least for the fleas.

If we're going to keep breeders, personally I recommend not making them fast and/or greatly reducing the chance to breed. Right now, assuming I read the code correctly, monsters will breed if there are at most 3 adjacent monsters and a random number between 0 and the number of adjacent monsters * MON_MULT_ADJ (currently 8) is 0. This seems like it should make breeding pretty rare, but clearly from my own experience it doesn't.

Part of the problem here is that young characters have strictly limited ability to deal with groups. Sure, one orb of draining can kill 10 fleas...but I can only cast 5 orbs (at a 20% failure rate) before I run out of mana and have to rest, and if I leave even one flea behind, it repopulates very quickly thanks to the "always breed if there are no adjacent monsters" logic. Functionally this means that if the fleas have taken over a room and a corridor, then there's too many of them to kill before I run out of mana, which means that it's impossible to clear them out, which means that I have to abandon the level, which means failing a quest through no fault of my own, which means tanking my reputation. All in all not fun.

Mages are a bit better off thanks to cheap stinking cloud; everyone else is even worse off (than the priest I'm playing). Though I suppose playing stealthier races than dwarves mitigates the issue slightly.

Of course, in Vanilla I'd simply abandon the level and not give it a second thought. Quests greatly change the calculus here though.

In other news...
* I continue to be surprised that dark hounds aren't hurt by bright light. They aren't in Vanilla either, though, so oh well.
* Jammed doors seem to be very difficult to take down. You'd think a strength of 17 would eventually be able to take out a wooden door, but I've yet to succeed. Monsters have no such limitation, though; after 7 attempts at taking out a door, a brown yeek kindly opened it from the other side for me.
* Sun Beam (and presumably other "arc" spells) seem to have a display bug with the targeting projection line. If I target a space that is two spaces up and four spaces left of me, for example, then the first time I cast Sun Beam it won't animate properly (though it still seems to hit the appropriate targets). Repeat castings are shown correctly though.
* Incidentally, how will your plans to make mimics actually be objects until detected mesh with squelching? Will I suddenly see mimics springing out of purple dots? I don't really like the sound of that...
* The items from nests definitely are screwy. I'm consistently getting average or cursed ego items. I am getting a few nice items though.
* Amusing randart name: The Large Leather Shield of Rumor. Nothing particularly special, but definitely better than the bog-standard small leather shield I was using before.
* Are you sure you have damage falloff working correctly? It seems like Orb of Draining is consistently killing evil enemies regardless of how far from the epicenter they are. I haven't done any comparisons for enemies that survive getting hit, though.
* Troll priests are notably more durable than anything else in a troll pit at 1250'. Seems a bit odd; I assume it has something to do with their not showing up in groups.

[Derakon]

Oh, I did not know that. Interesting.

[nppangband]

I didn't write this very clearly, but what I meant was that the potion was on the ground on a space that got hit by the cold breath, but didn't shatter. In my experience objects on the ground are always destroyed by relevant elements, so I was wondering if my experience was faulty here.

In both Angband and NPP, the objects get a saving throw against elemental attacks. For example, with cold breaths, if a random # between 0 and 40 is greater than the damage, the object is not destroyed.

[Derakon]

With 4gai, the damage from cone breaths dissipates with distance. Getting hit by a cold hound breath from across the room won't have much effect on anything. I don't recall doing much to the saving throws, but we have been at this for 7 years, and I s.

I didn't write this very clearly, but what I meant was that the potion was on the ground on a space that got hit by the cold breath, but didn't shatter. In my experience objects on the ground are always destroyed by relevant elements, so I was wondering if my experience was faulty here.

[nppangband]

Obviously Priests should be pure spellcasters, the problem I want to avoid most is making Priests feel too similar to either the Druid or the Mage.

IIRC, The Prime Directive in Star Trek is something like "Don't interfere with the evolution of alien cultures". IMO, in *band player class design The Prime Directive is "Make sure that no player class is just an inferior version of another class". I think we might want to make Priests stand out even more from Druids, to make sure that Priests are not just Druids without "Haste" or that Druids aren't just Priests with worse "Healing".

Agreed with both your and buzzkill's posts. To me, ideally all classes (and to a lessor extent, all races) would have strengths and weaknesses that present a unique challenge in winning the game, and certain monsters should be difficult to kill for some classes, but easy for others. Priests should be the best in the game at destroying evil and undead creatures, but things like Ainur/angels should present a problem for them. I think we have three good spellsets that just need minor revisions at this point. And I think we can do more with spell effects (spells that last more than one turn) and different shape spells other than simply bolt, beam, cone, or ball spells. Maybe the priest should get dispell evil effect spell, that pop up randomly like the lightning spell for mages or the drain life spell for druids.

I only see one unfair thing in the NPP priest spellset right now, and that is the combination of alter reality and clairvoyance is just a bit too much. I would like to see those nerfed a bit.

My other concern with NPP magic is that, between quests, chests, and the bookshop, it is just a little bit too easy to get dungeon spellbooks right now.

[nppangband]

It's already a combination of annoying and lifesaving how they go dormant until you get close. If all 95 monsters in a treasure pit mobbed you at once there'd be no way to take one down at the depths you get quests for 'em.

They will behave, wake up and/or attack the same way. They will just be much harder to distinguish from normal objects until they attack, or you attack them. But when casting detect treasure, a rectangle room with 95 treasures in it is pretty much a dead giveaway that they are all mimics. Maybe I should occasionally make a room full of actual treasure to keep the player guessing.

I don't think I've ever seen recharging scrolls available for sale, which means the only sources of recharging are spells (effectively mage-only) or the magic shop service (grossly overpriced; only useful if the staff in question can't be bought).

They are standard inventory in the alchemy shop. They should be there most of the time.

The thing that bugs me about this is that monsters which I cannot see can see me just fine and are able to shoot at me. Yes, if I detect them, I can shoot at them, but unless I have telepathy the situation is grossly asymmetrical.

That has always been a quirk of the Angband AI. The monsters always know exactly where the player is.

That seems like a good priority. It might be worth trying to add a minimum-distance-to-other-stairs caveat, but it's not a huge deal, or at least it hasn't been so far. Just means exploring the entire dungeon until I find the room that has all the staircases.

I might work with it a little bit soon. Right after I typed that previous message saying safety was the top priority, I went into 2 consecutive levels where I went down a staircase and was right by a large group of monsters.

* If you aren't going to give strong pseudo-ID to everyone, could you at least let the weak pseudoers detect average items?

Fair enough. I will add this.

* Is it intended that ball spells can hit around corners that you couldn't shoot? E.g.

...X.
##.##
 #*#
 #@#

@ targets the *, and X is hit. If you were standing on *, then you wouldn't be able to shoot X.

I use the Sangband/4gai projection functions. They are, IMHO, much better than the ones that Angband has used for years, but they aren't perfect.

* I find the addition of light-based attack spells to the priest interesting. Definitely makes them play more mage-like early on; once you get Shock Bolt there's little point in melee or missile weapons as a first resort.

Agreed. Diego and Anssi Ramela did a great job with those.

* I'm guessing that carrying capacity has been tweaked. My priest with 18 STR gets overloaded woefully quickly...

I checked, and it is the exact same.

* Chests might also be a bit overpowered sometimes. A large wooden chests at 1050' netted me Ethereal Openings, Radagast's Protections, a scroll of Teleport (?), and two scrolls of Acquirement...of course, the resulting items were Gorlim's useless helm and hard studded leather of resist acid. Oh, well, the spellbook is much appreciated.

They are supposed to be overpowered, but sufficiently rare enough to justify it. I am at 1300' with a mage and I haven't found a single chest yet.

* Have I mentioned lately how I like the message compaction? "4 Cave orcs shrivel away in the light!" indeed.

That is one of my favorite features (full credit goes to Diego for that one). I am actually amazed nobody has asked that this be put in Vanilla. For those of you who haven't seen it, in Angband, take a troll priest to a troll pit and cast dispel evil. You will get hundreds of messages, one or two per affected monster. Do the same in NPP, and the damage messages get tallied and displayed as a count: "8 half trolls are destroyed. 7 Troll Priests scream in agony. 13 cave trolls flee in terror!". So much better.

* Nativity boots seem to be overpriced. 13k for boots that grant nativity to acicd; I'm not going to find any acid-based terrain until well after I've found better boots. Even if they were for earlier terrains, terrain itself is rare enough that it's not worth losing, say, +1 stealth to get that nativity.

That is on my to-do list. 1) determine how much monetary value nativity should add to an item. And 2) Determine how much power, for randart purposes, should be assessed when adding nativity to an item.

* I cast Probing, moved the cursor over a boil-covered wretch, and instead of probing the monster, I probed the floor...

The monster should be given priority. I will double-check this. If you, by chance, see this again, a savefile is extremely helpful. Sometimes these problems are situation-specific and I can't re-create them.

* Why does Perception have to cost 20 mana for a priest? Are you trying to make it very annoying to identify items? Its failure rate is also high -- 20% for a level-27 character (the spell's available at level 20) with 18/162 WIS.

Good point. Seems a big much.

* Are you supposed to be able to get the berries from thornbushes? They're mentioned when I walk on the tile but I can't figure out any way to interact with the terrain.

No. That is for flavor only.

* A wounded Cold Hound breathed frost at me and the potion (of naivety) didn't shatter. Do items on the floor get a saving throw against destruction now?

With 4gai, the damage from cone breaths dissipates with distance. Getting hit by a cold hound breath from across the room won't have much effect on anything. I don't recall doing much to the saving throws, but we have been at this for 7 years, and I s.

* I just had a quest level where 7 of the quest monster (sasquatches) were generated in the same pair of rooms. I'm guessing this is because they're native to icy terrain, which those rooms had. Kinda weird though.

Yes, monsters do prefer to be generated and stay in their native terrains. They get combat and damage bonuses, and they use less energy to move (but not attack) while in native terrain. The player gets the same bonuses if they are native to terrains as well, and I am still trying to decide how valuable it is.

[ramela]

I think there should be more distinction than that, particularly in terms of distinction beyond just what kinds of monsters you pick your fights against. Basically, one would want playing each pure caster to feel significantly different from playing the other two.

There might be untapped design space left in the range of projections each class has access to...

[buzzkill]

I not familiar with NPP but IMO priests should reign over a) evil and b) dead/undead, which should be enough to give them a decent chance of success in the dungeon. They should have spells or spell like abilities that a) protect themselves from and b) deal tremendous damage to these classes of enemies exclusively. They should be inferior fighters and inferior casters against most other enemies. I don't feel that they are commonly portrayed this way, at least in the variants I have played. Is it a tight niche? Yes, but this is a man of the cloth on a murderous rampage through a dungeon. What do you expect?

[ramela]

Well, there are a limited amount of priest-like spells themes. The theme of the druid spells are spells involving a natural element or force, and the theme of the NPP mages is supernatural spells. There is lots of room for variety there. The priest has orb of draining, light, dispel evil, dispel undead, but they all seem to be variations on the same "damage evil" theme. There can be more powerful increments of the same spell theme, or we can come up with some new ones. I agree that priests should go the same "pure spellcaster" route that you took the druid and mage.

Obviously Priests should be pure spellcasters, the problem I want to avoid most is making Priests feel too similar to either the Druid or the Mage.

IIRC, The Prime Directive in Star Trek is something like "Don't interfere with the evolution of alien cultures". IMO, in *band player class design The Prime Directive is "Make sure that no player class is just an inferior version of another class". I think we might want to make Priests stand out even more from Druids, to make sure that Priests are not just Druids without "Haste" or that Druids aren't just Priests with worse "Healing".

[Derakon]

Well, that was ignominous. Stone-to-mud'd a wall with the plan to teleport away the lesser balrog behind it (in a vault at 1600'); it proceeded to invoke chaos and breathe fire before I got another turn. So much for that character! Stupid, stupid, stupid. At least should've drunk a potion of speed beforehand.

[nppangband]

By the way, to anyone playing NPP, please do not attempt to melee "Pazuzu, Lord of Air." (a deep unique). He needs a little fixing, as it turns out he the stun side effect of his melee attack is so strong he has a decent chance of knocking out a fully healthy character in only one round. Here is a thread with a temporary fix until the next release:

http://forum.nppangband.org/viewtopic.php?id=1029

[nppangband]

I still feel like the Priests should propably be tweaked more though, away from spell based combat, since both Druids and Mages do that already. The existence of half-caster classes and Druids kind of shrinks the design space available for Priests.

Well, there are a limited amount of priest-like spells themes. The theme of the druid spells are spells involving a natural element or force, and the theme of the NPP mages is supernatural spells. There is lots of room for variety there. The priest has orb of draining, light, dispel evil, dispel undead, but they all seem to be variations on the same "damage evil" theme. There can be more powerful increments of the same spell theme, or we can come up with some new ones. I agree that priests should go the same "pure spellcaster" route that you took the druid and mage.

[Derakon]

I should clarify that I haven't passed stat-gain with this character yet, so my thoughts on OoD are basically for shortly after it is obtained. Its damage output is far higher than that of Shockbolt, it hits an area, and it does double damage against evil, so even though it's more expensive it's still way more efficient than any other option until Sun Beam is obtained.

We'll see how things go with this character.

[ramela]

I find it kind of encouraging that you find Orb overpowered, considering that we weakened somewhat it when I tweaked the Priest's spells. At least I know that I didn't go overboard.

I don't remember winning with a Priest since the change, so I was a little worried...

They still always felt like they were winnable, I guess I just haven't truly adapted to the weaker OoD and the resulting need to be more careful in the mid-game due to the changes.

As far as I remember, we moved OoD to level 15, increased the mana cost to 10 and increased the failrate, in order to make it more unreliable early on. Also, the damage it deals doesn't increase as fast as it used to, so it doesn't totally obsolete all other damage spells that Priests get.

The biggest difference in my opinion since the change is the fact that OoD used to be pretty good even against non-evil monsters, but now it is instead pretty bad against them. Which makes more sense flavourwise.

When the Light based spells were added they were made significantly worse against Trolls and Orcs while becoming more powerfull against most undead and devastating against immaterial undead monsters like 'G's .

I still feel like the Priests should propably be tweaked more though, away from spell based combat, since both Druids and Mages do that already. The existence of half-caster classes and Druids kind of shrinks the design space available for Priests.

[Derakon]

In NPP 060 mimics are literally going to be objects...until they change into a monster and attack you.

It's already a combination of annoying and lifesaving how they go dormant until you get close. If all 95 monsters in a treasure pit mobbed you at once there'd be no way to take one down at the depths you get quests for 'em.

It is slightly different. They only have a 10% chance at 18/150, and zero chance at 18.180. I must admit I have no idea when and why this was changed. Maybe I will change it back.

Ehh, it's no big deal. I was just surprised that my Knowledge [Angband Lore] skill check failed.

In general scrolls are cheaper than staves per use. I guess the advantage of staves is that they can be recharged. Maybe this is only noticable because there are so many magic mapping scrolls in NPP stores. I will think about this one....

I don't think I've ever seen recharging scrolls available for sale, which means the only sources of recharging are spells (effectively mage-only) or the magic shop service (grossly overpriced; only useful if the staff in question can't be bought).

You are shooting through the fire. Only you can't see it. Line of sight and line of fire are calculated differently in NPP. There is an object memory, much like monster memory, that can tell you all you know about the terrains.

The thing that bugs me about this is that monsters which I cannot see can see me just fine and are able to shoot at me. Yes, if I detect them, I can shoot at them, but unless I have telepathy the situation is grossly asymmetrical.

I didn't see much different between NPP and Vanilla as of 3.1.2v2. Once I finalize NPP 0.5.1 I am going to take a look at the latest vanilla. Maybe it is in there. I am constantly going to be adding vanilla features, in order of desirability. At the pace they are coding, I doubt I will ever catch up to them again.

Heh. This was mostly whining, honestly. Priests and paladins really get the shaft here -- they can't detect lice and they tend to have bad stealth. I don't know that this really needs to be changed, since it's usually not an issue...then again, I never saw the point of the giant lice monsters in the first place. They're just pure annoyance.

NPP puts a high priprity on making the stairs in the most remote part of the dungeon possible, trying to make sure the player almost has 1-2 turns before being attacked. Sometimes things like that screenshot happen. I am suprised no stairs were put over there in that corridor on the lft side. Maybe someday I can make it look better, but mostly I want to make sure the player is reasonably safe.

That seems like a good priority. It might be worth trying to add a minimum-distance-to-other-stairs caveat, but it's not a huge deal, or at least it hasn't been so far. Just means exploring the entire dungeon until I find the room that has all the staircases.

A few more bits!

* If you aren't going to give strong pseudo-ID to everyone, could you at least let the weak pseudoers detect average items?
* Is it intended that ball spells can hit around corners that you couldn't shoot? E.g.

...X.
##.##
 #*#
 #@#

@ targets the *, and X is hit. If you were standing on *, then you wouldn't be able to shoot X.
* I find the addition of light-based attack spells to the priest interesting. Definitely makes them play more mage-like early on; once you get Shock Bolt there's little point in melee or missile weapons as a first resort.
* I'm guessing that carrying capacity has been tweaked. My priest with 18 STR gets overloaded woefully quickly...
* Orb of Draining seems a trifle overpowered. It seems to be a one-hit kill on anything evil it hits that comes in groups, even if they're at the fringes of the orb.
* Likewise, Sun Beam makes quick work of monsters in corridors. I admit this makes Zephyr Hounds much less annoying.
* Chests might also be a bit overpowered sometimes. A large wooden chests at 1050' netted me Ethereal Openings, Radagast's Protections, a scroll of Teleport (?), and two scrolls of Acquirement...of course, the resulting items were Gorlim's useless helm and hard studded leather of resist acid. Oh, well, the spellbook is much appreciated.
* Have I mentioned lately how I like the message compaction? "4 Cave orcs shrivel away in the light!" indeed.
* Nativity boots seem to be overpriced. 13k for boots that grant nativity to acicd; I'm not going to find any acid-based terrain until well after I've found better boots. Even if they were for earlier terrains, terrain itself is rare enough that it's not worth losing, say, +1 stealth to get that nativity.
* I cast Probing, moved the cursor over a boil-covered wretch, and instead of probing the monster, I probed the floor...
* Why does Perception have to cost 20 mana for a priest? Are you trying to make it very annoying to identify items? Its failure rate is also high -- 20% for a level-27 character (the spell's available at level 20) with 18/162 WIS.
* Are you supposed to be able to get the berries from thornbushes? They're mentioned when I walk on the tile but I can't figure out any way to interact with the terrain.
* A wounded Cold Hound breathed frost at me and the potion (of naivety) didn't shatter. Do items on the floor get a saving throw against destruction now?
* I just had a quest level where 7 of the quest monster (sasquatches) were generated in the same pair of rooms. I'm guessing this is because they're native to icy terrain, which those rooms had. Kinda weird though.