Greetings.
I hope I'm not violating any protocols with this post; if so, please enlighten me and I shall endeavour to rectify my mistake!
I've been working on a variant on and off for a while, and it's still very rudimentary, but I feel like it's starting to have enough "shape" to it that I'd like to share it with the community and start getting feedback, if only on the basic ideas I've got for it.
Thus far, here are some of my thoughts for what I'd like to do, some of it still pretty sketchy, and very little final. Please note that they are based on my observations of the current state of Vanilla, which I recognize is in turn based on my own play style. Other people may quite like the aspects of Vanilla that annoy me, and that's fine; it's just a different style of play. There may also be some things I've overlooked that would mitigate the things that annoy me, and if so, I'm happy to hear about them!
First of all, I feel like the current state of Vanilla has pretty much reversed the common D&D complaint of "linear warriors, quadratic wizards," with spells able to do quite a bit of damage, but a good item setup able to do truly staggering amounts with plenty of +to-dam and enough blows per round. So I'm looking for some ways to balance that out, mainly by increasing the variety of buffs that apply to spellcasting classes.
Second of all, and proceeding pretty directly from the above, I feel that many of the classes just aren't differentiated enough. By and large, my impression of The Optimal Path To Victory in Angband (setting aside personal challenges and deliberate increasing of difficulty through sub-optimal, but more interesting, choices) is that you just find ways to get your melee damage and AC as high as possible, with some method of escape from a battle that looks unwinnable. I'd really like to create a variety of different, but (more or less) equally viable paths to victory...or at least to a strong, high-level character. (I haven't thought far enough ahead to say whether or how much I'll be changing Morgoth's behaviour to account for all this!)
So with those basic premises laid out, here are the general thoughts I have on classes:
Mage:
- Existing mage archetype, at higher levels, tends to either shoot off a bunch of spells in a burst, then run away to regenerate mana and come back to kill the bigger monsters later, or be a hybrid type that fires some blasting spells, buffs up, and goes to hit them in the face until they die. While I have no problem in principle with either of these, I'd like to make the blaster-mage require less running away, and enable a full-on "buff and bash" mage without (much of) the blasting. Oh, and make debuffing monsters actually meaningful.
I've already added the following modifiers, all planned to be available on items (and the first two planned to be increased innately in mages):
- Spell speed: Spells can be cast faster than 1 per turn, to compete with multiple blows/round; however, allowing spells to also be slower than 1 per turn creates some interesting possibilities for balancing very powerful damage spells.
- Spell power: Increase damage, duration, and ability to overcome resistance by various percentages (currently, each +1 spell power on an item increases the spell power by 25%)
- Half and quarter mana usage
Priest:
- I feel that Priest and Paladin play very similarly right now—as in-your-face warriors who happen to be able to heal and cast some other spells. I actually quite like that role, but I think it more properly belongs to a Paladin, not a Priest. I'm still sort of stumbling around in the dark trying to find a new role for the Priest. My first vague idea, inspired by one of the Priest archetypes in Blizzard's Hearthstone, is a mind-control based Priest: turn evil creatures to the side of good and use them to fight their former fellows. There are a variety of difficulties with this idea, but I haven't come up with a better one yet (so I'm open to suggestions!).
Paladin:
- In general, as I said, I like where the Paladin is right now. I do like the idea of adding an innate Protection from Evil effect to Paladins starting at, say, level 30.
Ranger:
- I'm not sure exactly where I want the Ranger going yet, either. It's possible that the "buff-and-bash" mage role I mentioned above should go to the Ranger; it's also possible I should attempt to improve missile combat to parity with melee combat, similar to what I'm trying to do with the blaster-mage.
Warrior:
- My original idea for creating an Angband variant was actually to essentially implement the Legend game system, or at least its class/track system, in a roguelike. While I mostly want to defer that to a separate variant someday, I still like what the Legend Barbarian does, which is basically: go into a berserk rage, intimidate and later straight-out injure everyone around you by sheer force of presence, and gain the ability to shrug off damage that would turn a lesser being into a smear on the floor. I think it needs a certain amount of adjustment for Angband, but that's the general idea for what I'd like to do with the Warrior.
Rogue:
- This is where I actually started my efforts, again inspired by Legend, and, indeed, it was playing a Vanilla Rogue that led me to this in the first place, as it seemed to play like just a "Mage Lite". So the first thing I did was to implement Sneak Attack, which greatly increases the Rogue's chances of doing a critical hit—and damage if he manages it—when a monster is asleep. Thus, it greatly rewards stealth, and already changes the rogue game significantly at earlier levels. I've also implemented "bonus move" (inspired by Legend), which allows for moving further than is normally possible without monsters being able to do anything about it, but not attacking or otherwise acting more. (Basically, you can take 2 steps before the monster can do anything, but if you hit him, he gets a turn.)
Some thoughts about non-class-specific stuff to do:
- Already implemented "enemy memory", remembering a specific monster from the last 10 that you have fought, but not yet killed; this is also the first step towards allowing at least some class(es) to detect (track?) any monster in that list. Inspired by Smeagol getting away too damn many times.
- Already implemented a display of specific monsters' actual speed under its health display. I like that some monsters are a little bit faster or slower than their type's stated speed, but it's really aggravating to be trying to chase or run away from a monster that's supposed to be exactly the same speed as you, only to find that it's actually just a little bit faster and you didn't know it. Also helps with monsters that can haste themselves.
- More complex aggro: add ability for monsters to be hostile to each other, and/or friendly/neutral to you. This will make a Summoner role feasible (either as a separate class or another Mage role), as well as the aforementioned mind-control Priest, and possible animal companions for ranger. Probably requires fiendishly complicated changes to monster AI, but I think it might be worth it.
- Several additional buffs/debuffs, including two already implemented: Entangled (can act, but not move) for monsters and players, and Blind for monsters (which presently prevents spellcasting and makes them flow by smell).
- Standing effects, like an area of obscuring mist or acid pools on the ground, and temporary walls, like a wall of ice created by a spell.
So...that's all I can think of off the top of my head that I've got planned right now. The code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/danaris/tgcangband (TGCAngband being the provisional name of the variant)...and, as I said, feedback is welcomed!
I hope I'm not violating any protocols with this post; if so, please enlighten me and I shall endeavour to rectify my mistake!
I've been working on a variant on and off for a while, and it's still very rudimentary, but I feel like it's starting to have enough "shape" to it that I'd like to share it with the community and start getting feedback, if only on the basic ideas I've got for it.
Thus far, here are some of my thoughts for what I'd like to do, some of it still pretty sketchy, and very little final. Please note that they are based on my observations of the current state of Vanilla, which I recognize is in turn based on my own play style. Other people may quite like the aspects of Vanilla that annoy me, and that's fine; it's just a different style of play. There may also be some things I've overlooked that would mitigate the things that annoy me, and if so, I'm happy to hear about them!
First of all, I feel like the current state of Vanilla has pretty much reversed the common D&D complaint of "linear warriors, quadratic wizards," with spells able to do quite a bit of damage, but a good item setup able to do truly staggering amounts with plenty of +to-dam and enough blows per round. So I'm looking for some ways to balance that out, mainly by increasing the variety of buffs that apply to spellcasting classes.
Second of all, and proceeding pretty directly from the above, I feel that many of the classes just aren't differentiated enough. By and large, my impression of The Optimal Path To Victory in Angband (setting aside personal challenges and deliberate increasing of difficulty through sub-optimal, but more interesting, choices) is that you just find ways to get your melee damage and AC as high as possible, with some method of escape from a battle that looks unwinnable. I'd really like to create a variety of different, but (more or less) equally viable paths to victory...or at least to a strong, high-level character. (I haven't thought far enough ahead to say whether or how much I'll be changing Morgoth's behaviour to account for all this!)
So with those basic premises laid out, here are the general thoughts I have on classes:
Mage:
- Existing mage archetype, at higher levels, tends to either shoot off a bunch of spells in a burst, then run away to regenerate mana and come back to kill the bigger monsters later, or be a hybrid type that fires some blasting spells, buffs up, and goes to hit them in the face until they die. While I have no problem in principle with either of these, I'd like to make the blaster-mage require less running away, and enable a full-on "buff and bash" mage without (much of) the blasting. Oh, and make debuffing monsters actually meaningful.
I've already added the following modifiers, all planned to be available on items (and the first two planned to be increased innately in mages):
- Spell speed: Spells can be cast faster than 1 per turn, to compete with multiple blows/round; however, allowing spells to also be slower than 1 per turn creates some interesting possibilities for balancing very powerful damage spells.
- Spell power: Increase damage, duration, and ability to overcome resistance by various percentages (currently, each +1 spell power on an item increases the spell power by 25%)
- Half and quarter mana usage
Priest:
- I feel that Priest and Paladin play very similarly right now—as in-your-face warriors who happen to be able to heal and cast some other spells. I actually quite like that role, but I think it more properly belongs to a Paladin, not a Priest. I'm still sort of stumbling around in the dark trying to find a new role for the Priest. My first vague idea, inspired by one of the Priest archetypes in Blizzard's Hearthstone, is a mind-control based Priest: turn evil creatures to the side of good and use them to fight their former fellows. There are a variety of difficulties with this idea, but I haven't come up with a better one yet (so I'm open to suggestions!).
Paladin:
- In general, as I said, I like where the Paladin is right now. I do like the idea of adding an innate Protection from Evil effect to Paladins starting at, say, level 30.
Ranger:
- I'm not sure exactly where I want the Ranger going yet, either. It's possible that the "buff-and-bash" mage role I mentioned above should go to the Ranger; it's also possible I should attempt to improve missile combat to parity with melee combat, similar to what I'm trying to do with the blaster-mage.
Warrior:
- My original idea for creating an Angband variant was actually to essentially implement the Legend game system, or at least its class/track system, in a roguelike. While I mostly want to defer that to a separate variant someday, I still like what the Legend Barbarian does, which is basically: go into a berserk rage, intimidate and later straight-out injure everyone around you by sheer force of presence, and gain the ability to shrug off damage that would turn a lesser being into a smear on the floor. I think it needs a certain amount of adjustment for Angband, but that's the general idea for what I'd like to do with the Warrior.
Rogue:
- This is where I actually started my efforts, again inspired by Legend, and, indeed, it was playing a Vanilla Rogue that led me to this in the first place, as it seemed to play like just a "Mage Lite". So the first thing I did was to implement Sneak Attack, which greatly increases the Rogue's chances of doing a critical hit—and damage if he manages it—when a monster is asleep. Thus, it greatly rewards stealth, and already changes the rogue game significantly at earlier levels. I've also implemented "bonus move" (inspired by Legend), which allows for moving further than is normally possible without monsters being able to do anything about it, but not attacking or otherwise acting more. (Basically, you can take 2 steps before the monster can do anything, but if you hit him, he gets a turn.)
Some thoughts about non-class-specific stuff to do:
- Already implemented "enemy memory", remembering a specific monster from the last 10 that you have fought, but not yet killed; this is also the first step towards allowing at least some class(es) to detect (track?) any monster in that list. Inspired by Smeagol getting away too damn many times.
- Already implemented a display of specific monsters' actual speed under its health display. I like that some monsters are a little bit faster or slower than their type's stated speed, but it's really aggravating to be trying to chase or run away from a monster that's supposed to be exactly the same speed as you, only to find that it's actually just a little bit faster and you didn't know it. Also helps with monsters that can haste themselves.
- More complex aggro: add ability for monsters to be hostile to each other, and/or friendly/neutral to you. This will make a Summoner role feasible (either as a separate class or another Mage role), as well as the aforementioned mind-control Priest, and possible animal companions for ranger. Probably requires fiendishly complicated changes to monster AI, but I think it might be worth it.
- Several additional buffs/debuffs, including two already implemented: Entangled (can act, but not move) for monsters and players, and Blind for monsters (which presently prevents spellcasting and makes them flow by smell).
- Standing effects, like an area of obscuring mist or acid pools on the ground, and temporary walls, like a wall of ice created by a spell.
So...that's all I can think of off the top of my head that I've got planned right now. The code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/danaris/tgcangband (TGCAngband being the provisional name of the variant)...and, as I said, feedback is welcomed!
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