Monster list tweaking

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

Like in O/FA, you mean

LOL, you always say that. :-)

[Nick]

LOL, you always say that. :-)

Yeah - when in doubt, stick to the truth

[LostTemplar]

Like in O/FA, you mean

Many "good and new" vanilla ideas seems to be in O style variants for ages.
Btw new proposed monster depth list seems to be pretty close to FA monsters natural depths.

[Magnate]

Many "good and new" vanilla ideas seems to be in O style variants for ages.

But without moving to O-combat (see threads passim ad nauseam) there are a number that we can't use.

However, we will be including monster mana in v4 shortly, and subject to what the other devs think I'd be very keen to separate monster casting power from monster level too.

[LostTemplar]

O combat gives no real difference, still at the begining light weapons are preferable to heavy. Heavy weapons only become better after stat gain.

[Narvius]

That said, I've been failing to understand what's exactly wrong with that [light weapons > heavy weapons early on] (with the sole exception of it not being obvious to novice players - but seriously, there are easier ways to solve that than overhauling the combat system). Light weapons are easier to use for beginners, and @ is a beginner at the beginning, no?

[d_m]

That said, I've been failing to understand what's exactly wrong with that [light weapons > heavy weapons early on] (with the sole exception of it not being obvious to novice players - but seriously, there are easier ways to solve that than overhauling the combat system).

On some level a lot of these things are mostly subjective. But without getting too philosophical...

Part of game design is trying to do the most with the least (make the decision space for the player interesting given the existing items). Many of us feel that the current decision of what weapon to use isn't thematically interesting OR tactically interesting, and doesn't make good use of the "class/stat/weapon space."

For starters, class tends not to make much (if any) difference. We'd all like to imagine warriors, rogues and mages choosing to use different weapons but currently class has very little impact. And where it does, it's reversed... due to max blows. Given the same STR/DEX a warrior will always prefer lighter weapons than a mage, which seems backwards.

The bigger problem though is that even ability scores have a very weird effect. If you were to graph STR + DEX on the X axis and optimal weapon weight on the Y axis, you'd see a sort of U, where at very low STR+DEX you want the heaviest weapon possible (due to the 1 blow guarantee), as soon as you start getting multiple dagger blows it drops hard down towards zero, where it slowly climbs, spiking up sharply at the end (when you hit the max blows wall).

This isn't great because at any given time there aren't many useful base objects for weapons. Early on you only really care about drops that are daggers, main gauche, short sword, whip, etc. Late game you only care about heavy drops. The range of weapon bases you're interested in is usually pretty narrow. Obviously if you rely on magic or ranged damage then this isn't as big a deal and you may find yourself using a Defender battle axe while a warrior would still be using a Dagger +9,+9.

Anyway, whether or not you consider this a problem is pretty subjective, but I (and a lot of others including many variant authors) think it can be improved (in many different, not always compatible ways). I won't go into my preferred solution, I was just trying to quickly illustrate why many people refer to this as a problem.