[Announce] FrogComposband 7.1.liquorice released

[Seraphimus]

I'll keep that in mind, Perhaps I just haven't had the best of luck with finding solid ego items for my kits.

[budswell]

I tend to lose many characters to boulder throwers (well, actually to being a crap player, but humor me).
There is no resist boulder right? Can boulders ever miss? (does AC help?). Or do I just need to keep out of line-of-sight and keep my HP up (i.e. don't be shy with speed and healing potions)?

Also, latest death was my first politition. I noticed that both orcs and trolls accomanying uniques were instantly immune to charm. Is this because they were escorts? Or just coincidence or level?

[Sideways]

I tend to lose many characters to boulder throwers (well, actually to being a crap player, but humor me).
There is no resist boulder right? Can boulders ever miss? (does AC help?). Or do I just need to keep out of line-of-sight and keep my HP up (i.e. don't be shy with speed and healing potions)?

You cannot resist the direct raw damage from boulders (except for the slight reduction from the Evasion demigod talent); but you can resist boulder cuts with shard resistance and boulder stunning with sound resistance. I don't think boulders can miss in Frog.

Boulder-throwers are best fought one at a time - boulder double-moves are quite rare, and if you're at the point where a single boulder might kill you you should heal anyway (or better still, heal on the turn before to keep the emergency from occurring in the first place!). Note also that many boulder-throwers are vulnerable to confusion, and if you're fighting them one at a time you can try to confuse them fairly safely - if the confusion doesn't take (or wears off unexpectedly) you're still unlikely to be immediately killed by the single enemy.

Also, latest death was my first politition. I noticed that both orcs and trolls accomanying uniques were instantly immune to charm. Is this because they were escorts? Or just coincidence or level?

I think the escorts of dungeon guardians and level guardians are (usually) immune to charming, but the escorts of regular uniques aren't. (The "usually" is because normal rules might not apply to politicians with Sexy Swimsuits...)

[budswell]

Question on staves of Summon Hydras/Ants/etc.
I have *Identified* a Summon Hydras staff and it says the failure is 1.7%. But (anecdotally) it seems to be about 1 in 5 that "something went wrong" and the summoned creatures are hostile.
Is this a different thing than the normal failure rate? If so, does any stat or level or something influence the chances?

[Sideways]

Question on staves of Summon Hydras/Ants/etc.
I have *Identified* a Summon Hydras staff and it says the failure is 1.7%. But (anecdotally) it seems to be about 1 in 5 that "something went wrong" and the summoned creatures are hostile.
Is this a different thing than the normal failure rate? If so, does any stat or level or something influence the chances?

The chance of something going wrong is fixed and independent of the device failure rate, and you have no way to influence it. (It is not, however, the same on all staves; staves of Summon Monsters have a significantly lower chance of going wrong that way. I think this is to compensate for Summon Monsters never summoning pets who summon.)

[Seraphimus]

You cannot resist the direct raw damage from boulders (except for the slight reduction from the Evasion demigod talent); but you can resist boulder cuts with shard resistance and boulder stunning with sound resistance. I don't think boulders can miss in Frog.

Boulder-throwers are best fought one at a time - boulder double-moves are quite rare, and if you're at the point where a single boulder might kill you you should heal anyway (or better still, heal on the turn before to keep the emergency from occurring in the first place!). Note also that many boulder-throwers are vulnerable to confusion, and if you're fighting them one at a time you can try to confuse them fairly safely - if the confusion doesn't take (or wears off unexpectedly) you're still unlikely to be immediately killed by the single enemy.

I think the escorts of dungeon guardians and level guardians are (usually) immune to charming, but the escorts of regular uniques aren't. (The "usually" is because normal rules might not apply to politicians with Sexy Swimsuits...)

I will personally say I really feel that boulders need to have their damage reduced by AC, Especially when you bad luck, have an enemy just chain them at you 3-4 turns in a row It sucks. Also with the fact that most throwers spawn in packs sometimes fighting them one at a time isn't always an option, especially if a summoner or is involved (and the improved AI making Anti-summon corridors much less useful).

They really feel like they create a lot of "It breathes you die" moments but with no mechanical way to resist or avoid them. at least with things like nether I know if I gear right I can survive an unlucky encounter.

Honestly i just feel like it's one too many sources of unresistable damage. To me big dangerous melee threats like giants and trolls should be more dangerous in melee than at range (though I do approve of giving them a ranged attack as they were otherwise just not dangerous at all to casters) and as it stands that is not the case for the majority of throwers, even with a mage I try to close to melee faster so they stop throwing because the boulder hits way harder then their melee attacks do (because melee is reduced by AC, technically twice because miss chance) and that doesn't even always work, they'll still throw 2-3 turns in a row in melee sometimes and it's brutal.

[Thraalbee]

I dont agree. Maybe play a Cyclops and reverse the situation? Lots of damage and stun is fun.

[Sideways]

In principle I'm sympathetic to the idea that AC should reduce damage from rocks. It makes perfect sense from a reality point of view, much like Hugo saying big monsters' corpses should weigh hundreds of pounds or more; the problem is the gameplay implications that change would have.

Rocks right now are fairly balanced as a source of damage; and that would be disturbed, one way or another, if AC affected rock damage. If AC were to just outright reduce rock damage from what it currently is, rock-throwers would be less challenging and less interesting; but if unadjusted rock damage were increased to compensate, that would make rock-throwers extremely deadly to low-AC characters like duelists, quylthulgs and sorcerers.

Rock damage that essentially hit the squishiest characters the hardest would be very difficult to balance; melee already does that, of course, but it's possible for squishy mage-types to fight big melee brutes while avoiding the melee. This is harder to do against a ranged attack, and any attempt to pull it off while avoiding the (increased) danger of being one-shot to death would likely involve tedious solutions like sniping lesser titans with Chaos Strike from around the corner before engaging them.

[Seraphimus]

I can respect that line of reasoning, honestly my feelings on the matter more stemmed from the fact That in it's current state it feels like big melee brutes are more along the lines of big ranged brutes, even my spellcasters frequently prefer to engage most giants and trolls in melee range because the rocks are more dangerous

an example is the Ice giant, yeah it can potentially do 200 damage with it's 4 swings in melee (assuming max damage it's 120 physical and 80 cold) but that's reduced 3 times, once by RCold once by AC and again by the miss chance of your AC. assuming around 130 AC which (in my experience) should be fairly easily achievable by most characters by level 50. that attack, even rolling max damage is gonna average significantly less than 100 damage a turn. (vs. a level 50 monster 130 AC is ~42-43% physical protection with a similar dodge chance) and that's assuming a single Rcold stack.

by contrast, the boulder does 150 damage every time. it also makes the damage of these monsters really unpredictable swinging from relatively low to huge very quickly depending on how many times they throw.

honestly maybe they don't need to be reduced by AC, but maybe a small miss chance, or make them affected by shards resistance (would be unintuitive but I feel like It makes more sense than most of the other options)

[CyclopsSlayer]

ToME has this same issue. Giants in melee are little threat. Boulder throwers, however, can nearly one-shot you.
Especially since Frog allows foes to use area attacks around corners. Ball attacks, poison clouds, boulders hitting from outside LOS. I guess it is fair since players do it all the time, heh.

Maybe reduce the chance of consecutive boulders? It hasn't happened recently, but I remember stepping into a room and getting boulders from several mobs at once. Insta-gank...

[archolewa]

Personally, i think making them reduced by shards makes sense. It makes as much sense as rockets getting reduced by shards (something I didnt know for the longest time). This slso means that boulder throwers serve as a good practice for cybetdemons.

On a related note, itd be really nice if the monster memory indicated somewhere what resistance (if any) protect against an attack. Normally its obvious, but not always (see: rockets).

[Sideways]

Shard resistance is already one of the two resistances that can mitigate the side effects of a rock (it protects from cuts; sound resistance protects from stunning); so it would make sense from that perspective too. rShards is already one of the most important high resists, though (together with nether and chaos), so it doesn't really need being made even more important.

From that point of view, sound resistance would work better, since rSound is currently less useful; or the damage could be a combination of sound and shards, like bomb damage already is. But I am not entirely convinced that rock damage needs to be resistable at all; current rocks work reasonably well; the Arena biclops is admittedly a bit of a crapshoot, but it does a good job at preventing @ from just charging straight to the elder thing and the _curewounds.

--

There is already an FAQ entry on the topic of resisting exotic elements with no clear corresponding resistance:

Q: Can I ever resist exotic attacks/elements like Water, Ice, Gravity, Rockets or Toxic Waste that aren't listed on my character sheet?

A: In most cases, you cannot resist the raw damage from such exotic elements. (There are a few exceptions - Toxic Waste can be resisted through poison resistance; Rockets have shard-based damage; Levitation effectively provides resistance to Gravity; and Bombs are combined sound and shards and can be resisted accordingly.)

However, many side-effects of exotic elements can be blocked or mitigated by resisting appropriate normal elements. For example, Shard resistance works against the cuts from Ice and Rocks, Sound resistance works against most elemental stunning effects as well as potion destruction from Water, and Cold resistance works against potion destruction from Ice.

[Nick]

O/FA give boulders a miss chance.

[Seraphimus]

One last question about boulders, does anything stop them from smashing potions? Because if not, then can we at the very least let shards protect from the potion shatter effect they have, it's infuriating how often they smash potions. I even have Shard resist Right now.

Also, I got the lava lam of telmora on a Dragon character. It gives fire Brand but The bonus Appears not to be applying to my claws or bite is this intended behavior?

[Sideways]

Potion destruction from rocks is actually already half sound-based and half shards-based; sometimes you get one, sometimes the other. So you can be safe from it; but you need to cover both sound and shards.

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As stated in the help:

Off-weapon slays and brands are never applied to innate attacks or unarmed combat, except for six specific brands (Acid, Electricity, Fire, Cold, Poison and Mana) which are special-cased for martial arts.