Towards FAangband 1.2

[LostTemplar]

You get 1 die worth of damage affected by deadliness and slay per round at most and 20 mana burned. e.g. with ringil and 200 deadliness against evil you will have 13 bonus damage per round from mana burn, it is about 3% of your total damage. with 1d23 slay evil, bonus will be about 54 dmg/round, 10%, not too good also.

Monsters like dragons are likely to be out of mana quickly, due to low mana pool, but they are more dangerous without mana.

[thapper]

Yeah, I was probably thinking about dragons, and I had not thought about the point that some monsters actually gets more dangerous without mana.

[LostTemplar]

Dragon with mana will try to blind, confuse, or scare player allmost allways, very low chance for breath, without mana it will breath any time, it gets roll for ranged attack. This is indeed broken AI, but it is how it works now. Manaburn makes e.g. Glaurung much harder to kill, another example is WD of storm, just fodder for a warrior and nightmare for rogue, well not really, but how often do you clear storm dragon pits with mana burning melee ?.

This does not apply strictly to dragons with nasty summons e.g. WD of balance or power, but anyway you are going to use ASC against them probably, or just avoid.

[LostTemplar]

One more possibility to balance mana burn vs Morgoth is giving him something terrible, that he can use without mana, e.g. more powerfull version of breath attack.

[camlost]

One more possibility to balance mana burn vs Morgoth is giving him something terrible, that he can use without mana, e.g. more powerfull version of breath attack.

That runs the risk of making Morgoth harder for people with manaburn than without, which is backwards.

If manaburn and questors are a problem, then there are a few options:
1) Make questors immune or resistant. Or not require mana, or have a metric boatload of it.

2) Increase mana regen rate for questors, especially at low mana, which might result in being able to cast spells with reasonable frequency. Of course, finding the proper rate is perhaps very hard.

3) Add a spell that gives questors time to recoup. Perhaps a combination of thrustaway and mana regain? Perhaps it could give the player (and nearby monsters?) more mana too.

[LostTemplar]

That runs the risk of making Morgoth harder for people with manaburn than without, which is backwards

Something terrible should not be stronger then his current spells, just comparable, maybe just couple of his spells may have 0 mana cost, definitely not all, manaburn still must hurt him, just not render completely helpless (his melee is nothing to care about).

[Fendell Orcbane]

Dragon with mana will try to blind, confuse, or scare player allmost allways, very low chance for breath, without mana it will breath any time, it gets roll for ranged attack. This is indeed broken AI, but it is how it works now. Manaburn makes e.g. Glaurung much harder to kill, another example is WD of storm, just fodder for a warrior and nightmare for rogue, well not really, but how often do you clear storm dragon pits with mana burning melee ?.

This does not apply strictly to dragons with nasty summons e.g. WD of balance or power, but anyway you are going to use ASC against them probably, or just avoid.

I think that create doors works as well if not better than ASC. I say this because you have a lot of creatures that dig. Like WDOP. I hate them. But with create doors I'm willing to step up to them: )

[Fendell Orcbane]

IMHO currently mana burn is a bit broken. It adds very small amount of damage against monsters with mana, and reduce thier mana, so it is useless if monster dies before it's mana is reduced to 0, and this happens in 99% of fights, but it is extremely overpowered if monster mana is eliminated before monster is seriosly hurt e.g. Morgoth or Ungoliath.

It can be remade, so instead of reducing monster mana it only adds damage, proportional to mana, but this additional damage should be significant.

I want some feedback on this subject.

I'm with you on the Mana burn. With my last winner Morgoth got to summon 3 times before he ran out of mana. Sauron wasn't too hard either. With my first winner I was scared of Morgoth. Of course I wasn't ready for him just summoning Winged Dragons. Maybe mana burn is too powerful and should be removed?

[Nick]

If anyone's wondering, I have not abandoned this - in fact I'm a long way toward moving FA as close to V's codebase as possible. I hadn't planned on quite such a complete change, but once I got started...

I've had a couple of changes of mind, too - mostly from becoming more aware of details of differences. I'm going to keep squelch (more or less) as it is - FA egos, curses and jewellery don't really fit the V model. I'm also not going to touch stores, because there's a possibility they'll be gone soon

I'm hoping that 1.2 is weeks away rather than months.

[Fendell Orcbane]

If anyone's wondering, I have not abandoned this - in fact I'm a long way toward moving FA as close to V's codebase as possible. I hadn't planned on quite such a complete change, but once I got started...

I've had a couple of changes of mind, too - mostly from becoming more aware of details of differences. I'm going to keep squelch (more or less) as it is - FA egos, curses and jewellery don't really fit the V model. I'm also not going to touch stores, because there's a possibility they'll be gone soon

I'm hoping that 1.2 is weeks away rather than months.

So no more stores? Why ? And as for 1.2 being weeks away...I feel like I'm just getting into 1.6 : )

[Nick]

So no more stores? Why ?

Well, I'm thinking (some vague ideas upthread) of redoing wilderness, and might make the buying mechanic a bit different - perhaps have actual NPCs you can buy from. We'll see.

[Fendell Orcbane]

Well, I'm thinking (some vague ideas upthread) of redoing wilderness, and might make the buying mechanic a bit different - perhaps have actual NPCs you can buy from. We'll see.

I think that having NPC's that you can buy stuff from would be so cool : )

[Nick]

Latest

Looks like the advice on this update will be "Don't update a live character" - I'm in the process of breaking the way existing specialties are stored.

[Bostock]

Well, I'm thinking (some vague ideas upthread) of redoing wilderness

I'm really looking forward to this!

[andrewdoull]

perhaps have actual NPCs you can buy from.

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