Monster list tweaking

[Zyphyr]

Incidentally, if you assume that the spell itself costs 3 mana, has a 0% failure rate, and does 12d8 damage directly, then using your mana reserves (at 40 mana) would get you 720 damage on average (54 * 40 / 3). Hm. That's more competitive than I'd assumed it would be. And is firebolt 3 mana, or 2? I don't have the files handy at the moment to check.

Firebolt is 3 mana. However, if you have Firebolt at 0% fail, Lesser Recharge will be there as well (making recharge pull well ahead) and mana pool will be larger as well (though that only alter the maximum output and not the relative values).

[Derakon]

Incidentally, firebolt wands have a base 12d8 damage, not 9d8. I misremembered. So the average damage per bolt goes from 40.5 to 54, or 72.9 after the device skill multiplier kicks in. Given Fizzix's claimed 12 charges before running out of mana for Recharge Item, that's 874 damage, discounting the charges that were in the wand going into the fight.

Incidentally, if you assume that the spell itself costs 3 mana, has a 0% failure rate, and does 12d8 damage directly, then using your mana reserves (at 40 mana) would get you 720 damage on average (54 * 40 / 3). Hm. That's more competitive than I'd assumed it would be. And is firebolt 3 mana, or 2? I don't have the files handy at the moment to check.

[Max Stats]

Wand of Fire Bolts: 9d8 base damage, level-30 item; level-20 elf mage gets 3+36+26 = 65 base device skill. Thus each bolt does ~1.35 * 40.5 = 54 damage. Lesser Recharging recharges with strength 6 (2 + 20/5), giving 80% success rate of recharging an empty wand and restoring 2-3 charges each time. It also costs 7 mana to cast. I don't feel like calculating the failure rate for the spell just now, so let's say it's 30%. Let's also say the mage has 60 mana.

Man, why couldn't we have had word problems like these in Algebra class?

[fizzix]

Give me a couple of days to run the stats on the latest v4, because I've tried a number of different things to push the +hit/dam figures back towards V. Hopefully I haven't overshot, but the damage output might not be so much lower.

On your speed changes, why do all four of the big constructs have -5 speed? Does nothing have -10 speed any more?

monsters with -10 speed:

several snakes
several worm masses
creeping copper/silver coins
disenchanter eye
giant white tick
blue icky thing
earth elemental

[Magnate]

The next idea would be to reduce (by half?) some of the HP of some of the high-hp uniques that I mentioned above and give them +5 speed. I need to think about this more though.

Give me a couple of days to run the stats on the latest v4, because I've tried a number of different things to push the +hit/dam figures back towards V. Hopefully I haven't overshot, but the damage output might not be so much lower.

On your speed changes, why do all four of the big constructs have -5 speed? Does nothing have -10 speed any more?

[fizzix]

Here are the list of changes to monster speed. These monsters gain speed:

-10 -> -5
colossus
eog golem
giant brown tick
stone golem
creeping gold coins

+0 -> +5
mature dragons
nalfeshnee
glabrezu
erinyes
giant roc
gauth
greater mummy
necromancer
mage
giant grey ant
giant silver ant
killer stag beetle
quylthulg
imp
brigand
night lizard

+10 -> +15
great wyrms
arch/demi lich
dreadlord
elder vampire
dagashi
ninja
master rogue
dragon flies

And these monsters lose speed

0 -> -5
mithril golem
iron golem

+10 -> +5
phantom
spectre
shade
storm giant
acidic cytoplasm
beorn
basilisk
wyvern
colbran
adamantite coins
3-headed hydra
sasquatch
stegocentipede
mirkwood spider
ochre jelly
wood spider
cave spider

+20 -> +15
time hound/vortex
Istar

I should add that mature dragons were moved a bit deeper so that they appear at stat gain (dlevel 40+). That pushes ancient dragons deeper as well.

The next idea would be to reduce (by half?) some of the HP of some of the high-hp uniques that I mentioned above and give them +5 speed. I need to think about this more though.

[fizzix]

Wand of Fire Bolts: 9d8 base damage, level-30 item; level-20 elf mage gets 3+36+26 = 65 base device skill. Thus each bolt does ~1.35 * 40.5 = 54 damage. Lesser Recharging recharges with strength 6 (2 + 20/5), giving 80% success rate of recharging an empty wand and restoring 2-3 charges each time. It also costs 7 mana to cast. I don't feel like calculating the failure rate for the spell just now, so let's say it's 30%. Let's also say the mage has 60 mana.

So he can cast Recharging 8 times, or about 5-6 times successfully. That gets him 10-18 charges, each of which deals about 54 damage, for a total of 540-972 damage. I think my assumptions were pretty conservative. Probably the mage will be higher-level and will be wearing some +INT gear, which stretches his mana pool and improves his device skill. Also, this ignores the charges that were in the wand to start with. So it's a stretch, but it's much more feasible for the mage than for the warrior...assuming of course that the unique in question comes alone.

Until you hit stat gain it's really hard to get more than 2 SP per level. So that your 60 SP is actually 40, you only get 5 casts, of which 4 are likely to succeed, in which you get 12 charges, which gives 648. 30% is exactly right for my level 21 mage with 18/40 INT (who incidentally has 40 SP). There's also that 60% chance of destroying the wand by attempting 4 recharges...

Also, khim, ibun, mim, sanghayando, angamaite...are all immune to fire, so you need to get acid bolts for the petty dwarves and frost bolts for the humans. However, restore mana is not terribly rare, and you could imagine that a mage is expected to burn one on each of these battles.

Incidentally, I think recharging is bugged -- there's practically no way that anything except for Greater Recharging can restore more than 2-3 charges to an item. Charges restored are 2 + d(spell strength / (item level + 2) + 1). Since item levels are usually pretty big and spell strength (for Lesser Recharging) is 2 + clvl / 5, the latter value is always 1.

IIRC recharge scrolls act like greater recharging cast at clevel 40. Lesser recharging is supposed to be weak I think, but maybe it is too weak? I haven't thought about this much.

[buzzkill]

The controversial change is to lower the HP of some of the early uniques. Early uniques in v4 are simply unkillable at their found levels without an excessive amount of grinding. There is a huge jump in unique HP around dlevel 20, but there is not a corresponding jump in damage output until stat-gain (which now starts in the 40s). I'm going to hold off on this until I get some work done on the monster speeds. But I'm keeping it in my mind as I play through.

I be very cautious in doing this, or hold off on it for as long as you can. I'd much rather find uniques to be too hard than too easy. They should be difficult to kill. If an average character can maybe take it down with a combination of speed, RSW's, and intelligent tactics, then I wouldn't mess with them at all.

I disagree with the notion that the drop should be in some way compensatory to the amount of consumables needed to kill it. Uniques are one of the few things that really stress your limited resources. It's the players decision to fight or flee.

However, I at one time suggested (roughly) that a the greatness of a unique's drop should be relative to the uniques native depth vs. the character's level. Kill Wormtounge at CL3 and get an awesome drop, kill him at CL30 and get crap, or something like that... and I still think it's a good idea.

[Derakon]

Find me a mage that can do 800 damage to a unique with spells, and I'll show you one that has already hit stat-gain or has found a powerful wand.

Wand of Fire Bolts: 9d8 base damage, level-30 item; level-20 elf mage gets 3+36+26 = 65 base device skill. Thus each bolt does ~1.35 * 40.5 = 54 damage. Lesser Recharging recharges with strength 6 (2 + 20/5), giving 80% success rate of recharging an empty wand and restoring 2-3 charges each time. It also costs 7 mana to cast. I don't feel like calculating the failure rate for the spell just now, so let's say it's 30%. Let's also say the mage has 60 mana.

So he can cast Recharging 8 times, or about 5-6 times successfully. That gets him 10-18 charges, each of which deals about 54 damage, for a total of 540-972 damage. I think my assumptions were pretty conservative. Probably the mage will be higher-level and will be wearing some +INT gear, which stretches his mana pool and improves his device skill. Also, this ignores the charges that were in the wand to start with. So it's a stretch, but it's much more feasible for the mage than for the warrior...assuming of course that the unique in question comes alone.


Incidentally, I think recharging is bugged -- there's practically no way that anything except for Greater Recharging can restore more than 2-3 charges to an item. Charges restored are 2 + d(spell strength / (item level + 2) + 1). Since item levels are usually pretty big and spell strength (for Lesser Recharging) is 2 + clvl / 5, the latter value is always 1.

[fizzix]

Perhaps it's a too much hassle, but I believe "somewhat" would be a better term than "slightly" for both slower and faster monsters.

not a hassle at all, and certainly a better choice of words.

[fizzix]

"Unkillable" may be a bit strong, but certainly the amount of resources you'd have to expend to kill early uniques in melee is in no way made up for by their drops. My only concern is that this may make them too easy to be killed by spells, which haven't been hit by the massive nerf that melee received.

Find me a mage that can do 800 damage to a unique with spells, and I'll show you one that has already hit stat-gain or has found a powerful wand.

[Derakon]

I'm inclined to agree with sethos.

"Unkillable" may be a bit strong, but certainly the amount of resources you'd have to expend to kill early uniques in melee is in no way made up for by their drops. My only concern is that this may make them too easy to be killed by spells, which haven't been hit by the massive nerf that melee received.

[sethos]

Perhaps it's a too much hassle, but I believe "somewhat" would be a better term than "slightly" for both slower and faster monsters.

[fizzix]

One long overdue change coming, and one controversial one suggested.

The long overdue change is to add gradations to speed for monsters for 105, 115, and 125. (these correspond to -5, +5 and +15 speed respectively).

previous gradations were described as: slowly, at normal speed, quickly, very quickly, extremely quickly.

Now there are: slowly, slightly slowly, at normal speed, slighly quickly, quickly, very quickly, extremely quickly, unbelievably quickly.

I'll push some corresponding changes to the monster list shortly. Mature dragons will get +5 speed, but I haven't gone much beyond that in thought. Suggestions are welcome.

The controversial change is to lower the HP of some of the early uniques. Early uniques in v4 are simply unkillable at their found levels without an excessive amount of grinding. There is a huge jump in unique HP around dlevel 20, but there is not a corresponding jump in damage output until stat-gain (which now starts in the 40s). I'm going to hold off on this until I get some work done on the monster speeds. But I'm keeping it in my mind as I play through.

(uniques that l'm thinking about getting lowered hp include: some orc/troll uniques, khim, ibun, mim, sanghayando, angamite, lorgan, beorn, adunaphel.)

[Magnate]

In a brief occurrence of internet, I've sent a pull request for the first attempt at monster rebalancing. Changes can be found at github.com/fizzix/v4 on the monsterlist branch.

I will try to test and merge these this evening, during a half-time break in my ongoing battle with the front room ceiling.

(@artes: I'll try to merge your 3.4 bugfixes too!)