[Mist] Elemental ponderings

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I'm thinking of revising the list of damaging elements in Halls of Mist.

Damaging elements can be used in elemental bolts, breaths, brands, etc. They always cause damage and often have (potential) side effects.

I don't think poison, disease, confusion, etc. should be handled as dangerous elements in Mist. They are simply status effects that can be resisted. (But all of these are potential side effects for some damaging element.) Light and darkness feel weird as sources of damage, and I've removed them from the list.

Most elements have one or more potential side effects besides damage. The chance for a side-effect might vary from 20% to 100%.

A resistance of 55% would reduce damage by that amount, and would have a 55% chance of negating any side effect.

The complete list might look something like this:

Acid
Cold		slow
Electricity	stun
Heat
Mercury		poison, speed up animated monsters
Nexus		teleport
Psyche		confuse, hallu, fear
Rot		disease
Shards		cut
Time		drain XP, drain stats, slow or speed up
Water		minor displacement, stun, confuse

One important design consideration is that every realm should have a different list of typical elemental attacks:

REALM		MOST COMMON ELEMENTS
Aether		Psyche, Time
Skultgard	Electricity, Mercury
Thornwild	Acid, Rot
Chaos		Cold, Heat, Shards, Water, Nexus

Mist's Chaos is Elemental Chaos. I imagine Nexus as the force that connects "atoms" together and sets their location in space. Therefore, Nexus attacks both disintegrate and displace things.

Both Acid and Rot appear in nature, so they are appropriate for Thornwild. (Druids would have access other elements, like Electricity and Water. Many undead of other realms have Rot attacks.)

For Skultgard elements I'm going for alchemical/laboratory flavour. Historically, Mercury has been one of the most important elements for alchemists. I'm imagining Skultgard animists using Mercury to give false life to golems or zombies, and also transmogrifying dwarves and giants into monstrous ogres with enchanted abilities. As a highly poisonous element Mercury would also work fine for well for spells like Quicksilver Dagger and Mercury Vapor. (Some Skultgard mages would also have access to Acid, Cold, Heat, Shards and Nexus.)

Aether is an astral realm of dreams, myths, gods, demons, ghosts. Time means little in the realm of Aether. In Aether, you might have visions of future or stumble into an old friend that died years ago. Therefore Time also makes perfect sense as a damaging element. But I'm not sure whether Psyche is a good name for an element -- would Spirit or maybe Dream be better?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Perhaps "mystical", damaging Darkness would work as one of Aether realm's elements, appropriate for many demons, nagas, etc.

Maybe call it Void and associate it with demons. Void would have unique side effects: blindness and taint.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

A refined list of elements:

Simple (no side effects, good for brands)
	Acid
	Cold
	Electricity
	Heat

Complex
	Fragments (cut)
	Mercury (poison, speed up animated monsters)
	Nexus (teleport)
	Psykhe (confuse, hallu)
	Rot (disease)
	Sulphur (light area, blind)
	Time (slow, drain XP and stats)
	Void (darken area, scare, taint)
	Water (stun, minor displacement)

Note that all elements have a different starting letter. This allows information about resistances to be packed into a single line: "Resists: ACEFHMNPRSTVW". Especially if I get rid of percentile resists.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Here's another attempt for an Unified Elemental System.

This might be of interest to other *band maintainers, too? The flavourful elemental system is one of the strengths of Angband, and making it more streamlined and transparent might be a good idea.


Unified Elemental System, Attempt II

Basic damaging elemental damage types -- used on both elemental attacks and brands -- are Fire, Cold, Acid, Energy, and Impact.

In addition to these basic elements, there's also Dust which does nothing on its own. It's a "wrapper element" for breath attacks and the like that cause no damage but have some special effects.

There's a resistance and vulnerability for each of the basic elements and Dust. Resistance halves the damage by that element, vulnerability doubles it.

Both exotic elemental attacks and physical (melee or ranged) attacks can have special effects wrapped into them. Some examples: a sulphur blast is blinding fire, frost is slowing cold, longsword of confusion, poisonous bite.

The probability and power of special effects depends on the attack's damage (modified by resistance or vulnerability, if appropriate). For breath attacks, damage is half the monster's hitpoints. For player's melee or ranged attacks, damage is the weapon's damage without taking any brands or slays into account.

Take the square root of the attack's damage and round to nearest. For each special effect, roll 1d20. If the die roll is equal to or below the square root of damage, the effect comes in force, with power equal to the die roll.

Some special effects are instantaneous and happen only once. Some are status effects. A status effect has a 1 in power chance of ending every game turn. Poison and cuts deal damage equal to their power every turn.


Exotic elemental attacks

• Sulphur is blinding fire that lights area.
• Void is scary and tainted cold that darkens area.
• Frost is slowing cold.
• Nether is xp-draining cold.
• Demon-blood is tainted and poisonous acid.
• Electricity is stunning energy.
• Nexus is stat-draining and teleporting energy.
• Water is flowing and stunning impact.
• Shards is cutting impact.
• Quicksilver is poisonous impact.
• Gravity is slowing, flowing and earth-binding impact.
• Rot is infectious and poisonous dust.
• Delirium is confusing, hallucinating and poisonous dust.
• Mercury Vapor is poisonous dust.
• Pollen is calming and sleeping dust.

There's some Mist-specific status effects in there. Earthbound damages fliers and removes the ability to jump. Flow is brand new, it moves you around randomly every turn but doesn't take any energy.