Charisma in NPP

[CunningGabe]

While looking at NPP's source the other day, I've noticed that it has Charisma affect the chance of putting a monster to sleep, confusing it, etc. To what extent do people think this redeems Charisma? How noticeable is the effect? I know this idea has been tossed around for Vanilla, and I'm just curious how well it plays out.

[Derakon]

That makes some sense on thinking about it, but I have to say that if I were a newcomer I wouldn't expect any non-spellcasting stat to have an impact on that kind of thing, and the only spellcasting stats in Angband are INT and WIS.

My impression of the direction of Vanilla development is that Charisma is (eventually) going to be removed altogether anyway.

[will_asher]

While looking at NPP's source the other day, I've noticed that it has Charisma affects the chance of putting a monster to sleep, confusing it, etc. To what extent do people think this redeems Charisma? How noticeable is the effect? I know this idea has been tossed around for Vanilla, and I'm just curious how well it plays out.

DaJAngband does this same thing with Charisma (although probably a different way -I didn't look at the NPP code). In theory, it should make those status-effect wands, rods, and spells more useful (and it has to some extent) as well as making charisma valuable.
In actual playing, to be honest, There is some difference but I haven't noticed as much difference as I had hoped. One problem is that after those effects had been useless for a long time before this change, it's a little hard to get into the habit of using them again.
Maybe I should look at how NPP did it. It's likely better than how I did it in DAJ.

I have also toyed with the idea of making a caster class with CHA as a spell stat, but I don't know if I'll ever get around to adding it.

[Nick]

I played with the idea of using it as a failrate stat in FA, and having a different stat for mana. It was quite a neat idea:

        Mana  Fail
Mage    INT   DEX
Priest  WIS   CHR
Druid   WIS   DEX
Necro   INT   CHR

but didn't seem to work so well in practice.

Currently I'm planning to use it in monster interactions for (distant) future AI changes.

[will_asher]

I played with the idea of using it as a failrate stat in FA, and having a different stat for mana. It was quite a neat idea, but didn't seem to work so well in practice.

Why didn't it work? Maybe it'll let me know I shouldn't bother trying it in DAJ.

[nppangband]

Maybe I should look at how NPP did it. It's likely better than how I did it in DAJ.

It is just a table in tables.c, which adds a small chance for various temporary effects to succeed (sleep, confusion, stunning, etc). I think with charisma maxed, it adds 15% to the chance of success.

I haven't gotten much feedback on it. I think the various wands/staves/spells that sleep, confuse, or scare the monsters have been so useless for so long, nobody bothers to try any more. Way back in Moria, they were incredibly useful, but they were nerfed about the same time the grape jelly trick was removed from the game as well (for those who remember that far back).

I just squelch those wands out of habit myself. It is probably most appreciated in an Ironman game, when the player is trying to use whatever they can find to help them kill creatures.

[Derakon]

Or a no-selling game, where you're carrying everything that might be remotely useful until it starts slowing you down.

Staves of Confuse Monster are occasionally useful e.g. for shutting down a room of group spellcasters. Sleep Monster I have never found to be useful because monsters always seem to wake up too easily. Back in Moria you could sleep a snaga in a corridor and actually have a decent chance of running away from the entire horde. These days it just seems to buy you a turn or two.

[CunningGabe]

I think having a charm monster effect might be kind of cool -- forcing a monster to melee its friends.

I also think it would be interesting if characters with high charisma could passively induce status effects. For example, monsters would be more likely to run away from you. Or maybe you could passively induce confusion (rarely).

I think there's a lot of potential here with status effects. They have been useless for a long time, but they could be an interesting source of tactical flavor.

[buzzkill]

DaJAngband does this same thing with Charisma (although probably a different way -I didn't look at the NPP code). In theory, it should make those status-effect wands, rods, and spells more useful (and it has to some extent) as well as making charisma valuable.

I've noticed the change in DaJ (vs. other varaints). RSW's that sleep, confuse and slow are actually quite useful. Like, going out of your way to pick them up useful. Something like 100% useful until a certain point, which IIRC is probably nearing DL20 or DL30. I didn't realize effectiveness was based on CHA, so now I'm wondering if I just had a high starting CHA character (I'm sure that non-standard-roller users can't fathom that).

[LostTemplar]

Why didn't it work? Maybe it'll let me know I shouldn't bother trying it in DAJ.

currently artifacts and class / race bonuses are designed for int / wis as spellcasting stats, dex warrior and cha useless, you have to redesign srtifact set.

Btw I like charisma, I allways restore it if it is drained in me ironman games, I dont like that my character is ugly. Imo it is ok to have a few things in the game that have no effect on gameplay just for fun.

[Bostock]

The sorry state of status-inducers in *bands

Having entire swaths of magic items and of multiple classes' spellsets be so pointless is really kind of tragic -- not meaning to ignore the difficulty of rebalancing for useful status-inducing wands, just saying the wasted development effort is really kind of sad, albeit a sunken cost.

UnAndrew did a couple of nice blog articles on balancing status-inducers, though it was mostly related to PvP. His conclusion was roughly, "a well-balanced status-inducer gets a lock on an enemy for roughly the same time/effort cost as a contemporary damaging attack would kill that enemy."

Incidentally, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup handles the matter fairly well IMO.