Monster list tweaking

[Nick]

You could add an extra number to monster records that would be their spell power (I.e. they cast spells as if they were a level N monster), then scale spell damage with spell power rating rather than actual monster level. Spell power could be set to the monster's old depth to keep the same balance. It would also allow you to differentiate different casters by altering the level to tweak the monster's power easily.

Like in O/FA, you mean

[EpicMan]

About monster level affecting danger because of level-based spells like darkness strorm:

You could add an extra number to monster records that would be their spell power (I.e. they cast spells as if they were a level N monster), then scale spell damage with spell power rating rather than actual monster level. Spell power could be set to the monster's old depth to keep the same balance. It would also allow you to differentiate different casters by altering the level to tweak the monster's power easily.

[Timo Pietilä]

To move some monsters down sounds like a good idea to make room if more monsters are to be added, since it seems to be easier to come up with new ones in the low and middle range. It seems a bit difficult to come up with things that are stronger than something with the name "Great wyrm of balance" or "Black reaver" without making it sound ridiculous or out of place in the current Angband mythology.

"adding things" can be dangerous thing. You might end up having a forest with boring trees, instead of garden with interesting trees with individuality.

I think there are already a bit too many monsters in Angband. For example I tend to forget which one was the deeper one Maeglin or Eol, and when I see them I really don't care which one I'm fighting. Same for unique giants, I find them boring. Nightwalker and Nightcrawler. I mix those to each other and always need to check from monster memory which one was the one with nether breath and which one was the one with disenchant melee.

[Antoine]

Could you say a little more, please? If the actual gameplay is unchanged, why is it bad to change the underlying mechanism?

You are proposing a gameplay change aren't you?

Under the status quo, the most dangerous monsters are of relatively few types - encountered in native depth, but unusually dangerous at that depth.

Under your proposal, the most dangerous monsters are of many different types - encountered OOD.

So instead of getting killed by Dracoliches and Dracolisks all the time, you'd get zapped by Great Wyrms, Pit Fiends or Archliches early in the dungeon.

A.

[artes]

To move some monsters down sounds like a good idea to make room if more monsters are to be added, since it seems to be easier to come up with new ones in the low and middle range. It seems a bit difficult to come up with things that are stronger than something with the name "Great wyrm of balance" or "Black reaver" without making it sound ridiculous or out of place in the current Angband mythology.

[fizzix]

Yes. Massive job to balance so that you get something that vaguely resemble current gameplay, but as a change it makes some sense.

In that case couple of minor things in fizzix list:

Bile Wyrm : acid is halved by armor, so those are weakest of all wyrms, and as such needs to be shallower than Ice and Storm variants, not deeper.

Gelugons are +20 speed shard breathers and summoners, as such they should be about as deep as Law Dragons if not deeper.

Tarrasque is easily more dangerous than Balance Dragon. So deeper it goes. Same applies to Huan and Carcharoth (so maybe Balance Dragon is too deep in fact).

Bronze golem is less dangerous than Bone golem. Swap those.

Nightcrawler has same problem as Black Reaver, many of its main weapons depends of its depth. That said, it is far more dangerous than Nightwalker, even that Nightwalker is more annoying in melee. Those are in wrong order in that list.

Non-unique demon dangers are IMO in order Pit-fiend, Greater Balrog, Gelugon, Horned Reaper, Bile Demon, Lesser Balrog, then rest of the group (Osyluth being one of the weakest even that it is fast). If you add darkness storm to Balrogs then Lesser Balrog comes before Bile Demon in this list and Greater Balrog and Pit-Fiend swap places.

I can fight two Horned Reapers at the same time, and there is no limit how many of those can be in LoS but just two Gelugons can kill me in single round.

Unique angels should be somewhere in that mix.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll probably tweak things to reflect these orderings. In general, uniques will be much harder than comparable monsters. In fact, if you want, uniques can be viewed as monsters that are much more dangerous than the depth that they're found in.

I think horned reapers were deep because then the depth allowed them to trample over almost everything. I do agree that gelugons are more dangerous though.

[Max Stats]

Even if you make dungeon two level deep with Morgoth waiting at dlvl 2 player would just play level 1 so long that he is ready to face Morgoth.

But this would certainly make trapdoors a lot nastier.

[Timo Pietilä]

No. Let me try and explain as simply as I can: the proposal is to make the native depths of monsters more closely indicative of their power/danger/whatever you call it. At the moment there are large variations in the power of monsters of the same native depth.

If we made this change without changing anything else, then gameplay would change because the variations in power encountered on any given dungeon level would be significantly reduced, leading to a duller game. This is what I think you and Antoine object to, and I can understand that.

The proposal is to increase the number of OOD monsters, and the extent to which they are OOD, so that the variability of encountered danger remains roughly the same, so the game stays interesting.

Does that make any better sense?

Yes. Massive job to balance so that you get something that vaguely resemble current gameplay, but as a change it makes some sense.

In that case couple of minor things in fizzix list:

Bile Wyrm : acid is halved by armor, so those are weakest of all wyrms, and as such needs to be shallower than Ice and Storm variants, not deeper.

Gelugons are +20 speed shard breathers and summoners, as such they should be about as deep as Law Dragons if not deeper.

Tarrasque is easily more dangerous than Balance Dragon. So deeper it goes. Same applies to Huan and Carcharoth (so maybe Balance Dragon is too deep in fact).

Bronze golem is less dangerous than Bone golem. Swap those.

Nightcrawler has same problem as Black Reaver, many of its main weapons depends of its depth. That said, it is far more dangerous than Nightwalker, even that Nightwalker is more annoying in melee. Those are in wrong order in that list.

Non-unique demon dangers are IMO in order Pit-fiend, Greater Balrog, Gelugon, Horned Reaper, Bile Demon, Lesser Balrog, then rest of the group (Osyluth being one of the weakest even that it is fast). If you add darkness storm to Balrogs then Lesser Balrog comes before Bile Demon in this list and Greater Balrog and Pit-Fiend swap places.

I can fight two Horned Reapers at the same time, and there is no limit how many of those can be in LoS but just two Gelugons can kill me in single round.

Unique angels should be somewhere in that mix.

[Magnate]

How do you keep the gameplay same if you move monsters around? Did this thread suddenly take 180 degree turn, and you are not supposed to change monster dlevels anymore?

No. Let me try and explain as simply as I can: the proposal is to make the native depths of monsters more closely indicative of their power/danger/whatever you call it. At the moment there are large variations in the power of monsters of the same native depth.

If we made this change without changing anything else, then gameplay would change because the variations in power encountered on any given dungeon level would be significantly reduced, leading to a duller game. This is what I think you and Antoine object to, and I can understand that.

The proposal is to increase the number of OOD monsters, and the extent to which they are OOD, so that the variability of encountered danger remains roughly the same, so the game stays interesting.

Does that make any better sense?

[Timo Pietilä]

Could you say a little more, please? If the actual gameplay is unchanged

How do you keep the gameplay same if you move monsters around? Did this thread suddenly take 180 degree turn, and you are not supposed to change monster dlevels anymore?

[Magnate]

I understand what you're doing but I don't think it's good for the game

Could you say a little more, please? If the actual gameplay is unchanged, why is it bad to change the underlying mechanism?

[myshkin]

1) I prefer that every monster's depth corresponds in some way to its difficulty. Of course with wide varieties of monsters, this is very difficult to quantify, and depends greatly on the specific game you are playing. A nexus vortex is dangerous to a powerful character without rnexus but is ignorable for a much weaker character with rnexus.

By "depth," do you mean the race's native depth, the depth at which this particular monster appears, or something else? Similarly, by "difficulty," do you mean the race's native depth (i.e. mlvl), or some more nuanced measure of how tough the monster is?

I am curious as to how people would want the following thought experiment to go: Consider the distribution of characters who are first encountering dlvl 50. (I'm picking a specific level just to be concrete; I don't intend anything special about dlvl 50.) These characters might be mostly between 150-600 HP, have a maximum damage per round of 10-100, have speed from 0-20, etc. Pick a character from this distribution, compare it to the monsters it encounters on dlvl 50, and repeat a few hundred times. What proportion of these encounters should fall into each of the following categories? Assume an expert player with knowledge of monster attributes and tactics. For extra credit, think about what rewards a character should get for each kind of encounter.

• Pushover - Poses no danger to the character, except maybe as an obstacle (e.g. a single orc)
• Fight - Characters will win this encounter, but may need to use a handful of rounds and some tactics (e.g. ancient non-MH dragons?)
• Major fight - A well-prepared character can win this encounter, but may be forced to flee (e.g. some vaults, middling dragon uniques depending on the character)
• Very risky encounter - Character might be able to defeat the monster(s) with luck and/or consumable consumption, but death is also quite possible once engaged, even with best play; most players would evade before engaging (e.g. The Phoenix in most cases)
• Evade or die - Character should leave level, banish, or take other evasive action immediately upon detection, on pain of death (e.g. pack of time hounds)

For the moment, I'm disregarding unpleasant side effects that may make the player want to avoid an encounter for reasons other than risk of death, e.g. stat swapping, disenchantment, equipment/inventory damage. I'm also ignoring synergies among nearby encounters. Feel free to amend my list of categories as needed.

[Gorbad]

Well, you are creating an variant I wont be playing, and hopefully nothing from it is coming to vanilla as it is (because nothing from it will be directly useful for vanilla) so feel free to do whatever you wish. Personally I feel that similar monster danger level at any given dlvl just makes game more boring.

You are beginning to sound like dos350... I am sure you have very valid points, but remarks like this are just spiteful. Create your own angband fork and everyone who agrees will flock to your version. Welcome to the wonderful world of Open Source.

[Antoine]

Actually all monsters should be dangerous when encountered at depth. What we should avoid are massive discrepancies between the danger levels of monsters of the same native depth, which is what fizzix is trying to address. The discrepancies between the danger levels of monsters present on any given generated level should be roughly what it is now - but the more dangerous monsters should be varying degrees OOD.

I understand what you're doing but I don't think it's good for the game

A.

[Malak Darkhunter]

here is my take on the monsters, never liked monster pits of any sort it's tedious gameplay, I like the idea of having smaller groups, pits, but make the monsters tougher in return, trolls, giants, dragons, balrogs should never appear in large groups, but make them tougher and more dangerous and therefore worth more expereince in return, I think there is a thing such as too many monsters generated on a level, that makes for frustrating gameplay.

that's my 2 cents, I'm fine with whatever you guy's decide to do, I'll play it.