Monster list tweaking

[LostTemplar]

IMHO if any problem exists, it is in individual base objects, e.g. long swords (and most moderately hevy weapons) are simply too weak or too heavy, they are never best choice, only very light or very heavy weapons are ever usefull. Revisiting object.txt and tuning values is the only solution here, problem cannot be fixed magically by changing combat algorithm or something.

[Magnate]

IMHO if any problem exists, it is in individual base objects, e.g. long swords (and most moderately hevy weapons) are simply too weak or too heavy, they are never best choice, only very light or very heavy weapons are ever usefull. Revisiting object.txt and tuning values is the only solution here, problem cannot be fixed magically by changing combat algorithm or something.

Ummm. I guess this is in line with your earlier "O combat gives no real difference". I'll just say I'm on the other side of the fence on this one. I think there's an awful lot that can be done to improve combat without tweaking objects. (I say this as a compulsive tweaker of objects.)

[Derakon]

As far as blows are concerned, I suspect there's a window where they give you the same number of blows as light weapons do but heavy ones still give fewer, but honestly by the time your STR and DEX are that high, you're deep enough that the number of blows is not always the deciding factor behind a given weapon choice. Thus, midweight weapons are often the right choice when they're simply the best weapons you've found so far.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Correct me if i'm wrong but i think O combat gives you a higher critical percent chance for heavier weapons.

[LostTemplar]

Correct me if i'm wrong but i think O combat gives you a higher critical percent chance for heavier weapons.

No, chance is the same, and power of critical is proportional to die sides e.g. d12 weapon benefit more from crits then d4. Heavy weapons generaly have many small dice e.g. 4d5 for great axe, they benefit less from crits, however Sangband have this changed, e.g. it have something like 1d21 for high end weapons resulting in sensitive crits.

[Derakon]

Heavier weapons do give access to better-quality crits (in Vanilla). So for example, you'll never see a "*GREAT*" hit from a dagger. I think those are restricted to weapons that weigh at least 20 pounds, though you shouldn't quote me on that. The average damage display when 'I'nspecting weapons incorporates damage from criticals.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Raise the damage dice of middle weapons to balance out the lack of blows, in example a longsword 3d4 instead of 2d5, longswords are about 3 times bigger than a dagger aftr all. Bastard swords 3d5 they are just a little bit bigger affter all, then you go back on track with the two-handed sword 3d6, which is again just a little bit bigger, and it is already 3d6 so you can in affect stay in balance with damage dice with the bigger weapons as they are.

This would perhaps encourage getting bigger weapons at game start instead of staying with daggers and whips until stat gain.

[fizzix]

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.

[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!)

[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.)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.