RePosBand: play as a monster in Angbad 3.2

[Adley]

Morgoth Curses renegades.
Curse has different effects, the probability of one happening, it's frequency and the type of curses that can happen depending on your level :
Some random curses idea :
Summon Q's
Summon breeders (they appear, awake, on random tiles in the level)
Summon minor demons
Summon greater Demons
Summon minor undeads
Summon greater Undeads
Summon minor dragons
Summon greater Dragons
Random teleport
Reduce a random stat
Remove (for a small time) an innate positive flag
Ect

[Arjen]

I haven't updated to .6* yet, so I can't say anything on that.

However, here's my thoughts on Balrogs and what could be done to tone them down:

1. Balrogs have a lot of hp. I beat out a level 50 warrior by the mid 30s.
2. Balrogs do a lot of damage. Insane physical stats are great, I love the starting gear, it's a lot of fun and fits thematically just carving your way through the dungeon. Honestly I wasn't in any danger until around the 70's, with one or two close calls due to my over confidence.
3. In their current form, Balrogs are too strong. Even with aggravate, you're still just a wood chipper, and aggravate just acts like the hands piling the wood in.
4. Balrogs heal too much. Massive amounts of hp mean !C*W heal *A LOT*. !CCW can outheal !Heal I think towards the end.

I wouldn't nerf the physical stats, playing an overpowered monster is what playing a Balrog should be.

1. I think you were lucky with finding con pots. I had like 600 hp at lvl 30 (Still a lot, i know)

2. Yeah, balrog need to be strong, they are demons. And i even found a MoD early on, I switched it for my executioners sword. But i wouldn't change this.

3. Yeah, Aggr helps you more than making the game harder. With the aggr I just wielded Calris, Hammerhand, Gorlim for a while.

4. True, i used CCWs a lot, healing me like 150-200 hp. To avoid this, cap CCW at 100? No idea, i'm not good at balancing games, only playing.

Ow and i hated the burning part, you can't carry WoRs with you so you need to find a rod to travel or buy a lot of scrolls if you have the money. First rod i found was around dlvl 50. And every source of teleporting is also vulnerable to fire, so you also loose your way out. I needed teleporting several times because of chainsummoning.

I would go for the second idea of making them vulnerable for cold. And maybe light (as being a 'good' attack.)

To make them harder you can also increase the xp they need to level. Balrogs are old right? And they have seen the world. Just make them 300%- 400%. This way you won't level as fast when you are way out of your detph killing monsters.

Or maybe just flag them as munchkin monsterrace?

[Sirridan]

I haven't updated to .6* yet, so I can't say anything on that.

However, here's my thoughts on Balrogs and what could be done to tone them down:

1. Balrogs have a lot of hp. I beat out a level 50 warrior by the mid 30s.
2. Balrogs do a lot of damage. Insane physical stats are great, I love the starting gear, it's a lot of fun and fits thematically just carving your way through the dungeon. Honestly I wasn't in any danger until around the 70's, with one or two close calls due to my over confidence.
3. In their current form, Balrogs are too strong. Even with aggravate, you're still just a wood chipper, and aggravate just acts like the hands piling the wood in.
4. Balrogs heal too much. Massive amounts of hp mean !C*W heal *A LOT*. !CCW can outheal !Heal I think towards the end.

My suggestions to make this more of a challenge instead of just easy-mode warrior.

1. Implement FIRE_TOUCH: Either burn all scrolls and staves immediately, or give them a few rounds. This would probably entail starting a balrog off with a rod of recall.

2. Make balrogs vulnerable to cold: One big weakness in an otherwise near-invincible shell.

I wouldn't nerf the physical stats, playing an overpowered monster is what playing a Balrog should be.

[pampl]

Balrog is easy, but that could also because of Feanor at clvl 32... But they are insanely strong, loads of hp and the aggr isnt that bad. I'm now going to get the P. Just killed Sauron without the need of potions/scrolls/rods.

O and why do they have mana? They don't have spells. Not even fire breathe.

I'll post my char after morgoth or after my death.

*edit*
Well he is dead, fight was over in 5 minutes. Could have been tricky because i saw i was out of teleports (he drains charges... how would i know?)

Ow and about the new monster/arts/uniques... I didn't find special arts and i did kill some classbosses. But i think i went too fast through the game to find everything.

Fire breath (and later plasma breath) is a cool idea. I'll have to make it pretty expensive to keep them from being better breath spammers than dragons or hounds though.

They have mana for two reasons: one is that it's the default behavior for monsters and I didn't bother changing it, and the other is that they'll eventually have powers anyway. In Pos they had the ability to summon demons and, later, high demons. That might be too strong - and I don't know how much it would contribute to the flavor of playing a renegade Balrog - but my attitude is generally implement first and ask questions later.

Two things I can do to make them harder: one is the brute force solution, reducing their stats and max HP. I'll probably give them 1 point less to stats across the board and a 5 point smaller hp die size (so 125 less max hp at 50) and see what that's like.. I want to have a pretty light touch when it comes to nerfing. The other is more interesting: implementing the FIRE_TOUCH flag from Pos, that makes it so any flammable objects carried by the balrog burst into flames after a few turns. That would make playing a balrog more distinct and flavorful, and hopefully more challenging, but would also reduce their tactical options somewhat... I'm not sure people are interested in tactical variety when they choose to play a raging demon of fire and darkness, though.

Different topic: has anyone had trouble killing monsters inside walls in 0.6 or 0.6.1? I think I'm experiencing a bug and I'm not sure if it's just in my newest code or was introduced earlier.

[Arjen]

Balrog is easy, but that could also because of Feanor at clvl 32... But they are insanely strong, loads of hp and the aggr isnt that bad. I'm now going to get the P. Just killed Sauron without the need of potions/scrolls/rods.

O and why do they have mana? They don't have spells. Not even fire breathe.

I'll post my char after morgoth or after my death.

*edit*
Well he is dead, fight was over in 5 minutes. Could have been tricky because i saw i was out of teleports (he drains charges... how would i know?)

Ow and about the new monster/arts/uniques... I didn't find special arts and i did kill some classbosses. But i think i went too fast through the game to find everything.

[pampl]

No bless/heroism when i killed him, i meleed him in a gcv (i think). One of those 1 space a monster vaults. I just meleed him as Greater Balrog. I got no notice what so ever of killing my 'king'.

Atm im lvl 49 at dlvl 98 going for the kill.

OK, crap, I made it so first it checks if they have an artifact THEN it checks if they're the race's standard bearer, and because he doesn't have an artifact... standard bearers for red dragons, chaos dragons, liches, spiders, trolls, and hydras should still work, but ghosts, angels, and Xs will have the same problem.

0.6.1 will be up on github momentarily. It's savefile compatible. It'll only help people who have yet to slay their standard bearer, though. I could try to make a version that searches back through your kill history to see if you've already done the deed, but it would take a while and it sounds like you're about to win...

How did you like playing a balrog? Too easy, too hard, just right? Did you run into any of the new monsters or uniques or artifacts?
Edit:
Forgot the link to 0.6.1

[Arjen]

No bless/heroism when i killed him, i meleed him in a gcv (i think). One of those 1 space a monster vaults. I just meleed him as Greater Balrog. I got no notice what so ever of killing my 'king'.

Atm im lvl 49 at dlvl 98 going for the kill.

[pampl]

Does those 'king' monsters already work? Because i just killed Gothmog and have killed the Balrog of Moria without the perma bless or unique item.

Uh oh, that sounds bad. This is 0.6 and you're a Balrog, right? Gothmog doesn't have a unique artifact yet but he should definitely have given you the perma bless and heroism. What were the circumstances you killed him under - were you already blessed/heroic, did you kill him in melee or with ranged or magic items, etc?

[Arjen]

Does those 'king' monsters already work? Because i just killed Gothmog and have killed the Balrog of Moria without the perma bless or unique item.

[pampl]

Pampl, is there anywhere else you can upload this too? I've really enjoyed the earlier versions, but mediafire keeps giving me a 403 error when I try to download this one.

Chall T. Dow

Sure, here's a github link:

https://github.com/downloads/simongre/RePosBand/reposband%200.6.rar

I think I should stop using mediafire anyway, their pop up ads bug me.

I was able to compile and run RePosBand on Linux by copying src/powers* and lib/xtra/*.glade files from the 0.6 archive to the git repo copy. Archive alone didn't work for me.
Seems to work fine otherwise, keep up the great work!

Just FWIW I had to grab the autogen.sh file from git to get it to compile on Debian Squeeze... Else I got this:

$ ./autogen.sh
: command not found2: 
: command not found5: 
'/autogen.sh: line 15: syntax error near unexpected token `
'/autogen.sh: line 15: `run_or_die ()

Noted. I'll be sure to include those files now.

[Therem Harth]

Just FWIW I had to grab the autogen.sh file from git to get it to compile on Debian Squeeze... Else I got this:

$ ./autogen.sh
: command not found2: 
: command not found5: 
'/autogen.sh: line 15: syntax error near unexpected token `
'/autogen.sh: line 15: `run_or_die ()

[Challtdow]

Pampl, is there anywhere else you can upload this too? I've really enjoyed the earlier versions, but mediafire keeps giving me a 403 error when I try to download this one.

Chall T. Dow

[Ycombinator]

I was able to compile and run RePosBand on Linux by copying src/powers* and lib/xtra/*.glade files from the 0.6 archive to the git repo copy. Archive alone didn't work for me.
Seems to work fine otherwise, keep up the great work!

[juggle5]

Thanks! I can compile PosBand now.

I think some of the links you had before *did* have reposband.h in them (e.g., the 0.6.0 package); just the links to download the source code had the missing file.

[pampl]

Pampl,
I tried compiling the latest 0.6 version on Mac, and I can't find reposband.h either. I tried checking both the .tar.gz file and the .zip file. Then I tried browsing the source files on github, and reposband.h doesn't appear to be there. Can you add it to source control and post a 0.6.1 version? Thanks!

It's up on github now. I can't post a zip that works any better, though, because my compression program already seems to think it successfully included reposband.h. I'll try a .rar version and see if that fixes the problem.

https://github.com/downloads/simongre/RePosBand/reposband%200.6.rar