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The problem is that it only gives you that many turns to live if you're only taking fire damage. In more realistic dangerous situations (outside Z:5, at least) you're already blocking so much fire damage at 2 pips that it's dwarfed by the non-fire damage, which means you don't get much extra time t...

I'm betting some of these deaths involved the polymorph happening once the player was already low health. Sonja the big kobold won't make matters better if Sonja the Sonja lethally poisoned you and you don't have curing.

Pikel's table is pretty nasty.

IMO the utility for "moving through a wall and thus not adjacent to things otherwise faster than you" is greater than its utility as a stabbing tool. EE has the kill potential it needs with its damaging spells, though petrify covers offense a bit in situations where walls aren't readily ac...

It isn't always minor though. In some cases elemental portion of damage can account for 1/3 to 1/2 of the damage you'd take. Earlier you mentioned "turns to live" being "high enough". In most actual crawl situations you're not consistently so strong where you just face-tank damag...

You get special dialogue if you banish them. Also if you use enslavement to make one kill the other.

I don't want to turn it into another long "relative vs absolute" discussion but number of turns to live is almost useless after it is high enough, especially considering that most monsters don't use fire attacks. Pips - Lost HP: 0 - 60 1 - 30 2 - 20 3 - 12 60 is close for average damage o...

Some responses surprise me, others not so much. I suspect the reason things like regeneration are popular is consistent utility w/o much opportunity cost. Prior to entering a fight, you're not losing much to cast regeneration for example, it just makes you a bit safer and saves some time healing. I ...

Some of these were tough calls, especially for best spells in the middle categories. Elemental schools are so close that last place felt pretty close to 1st.

Scroll of noise and lightning bolt have double the noise produced that shouting has, if you want to pull stuff.

Definitely don't think tweaking spell likelihood is the way to go. You can pick Sif Muna and train it if you want that. Felids are competent blaster casters, owing to speed and that they can fling hunger-inducing spells while staying on 100% chunks pretty easily (speed is much more important, but fl...

The bee might not notice you due to stealth. There might be a door to close. You might be one of many starts with a way of dealing with a bee or two (Fi has might, Gl has net, As has curare, Ar has wands, just from first column). Reducing d:2 bees to "well I'm dead" is short changing the ...

Let's say you have 200 health and eat a 60 damage pure fire elemental attack: - No resistance lets you take 3 hits before dying. (60 damage per hit) - rF+ lets you take 6 hits before dying. (30 damage per hit) - rf++ lets you take 9 hits before dying. (20 damage per hit) - rf+++ lets you take 16 hit...

It's a good tradeoff for d:2 killer bees to occasionally be "guaranteed death despite perfect play" if they mostly are survivable by running away, and I think that's mostly true. On d2? If you don't have luck with blind-using a consumable or happen to be within 10 tiles of stairs most spe...

Generally, you can, as long as being in melee with the hydra for a turn or two won't kill you. On average, you stay about the same distance from the hydra. But pillar-dancing a hydra (or anything, really) is a fate worse than death. If you can pull a hydra upstairs and pillar dance it to death, you...

When I'm talking "tendencies", I mean expectations in games *on average*, not that a particular game can't be stingy and get you killed before you even see late game if you're sub-perfect. The more levels, consumables, spell books, and gear you drop, the greater the likelihood of late-game...

I find killer bee swarms hard enough in Lair. I'm glad I've never seen them on d:2 (although I'm pretty sure I saw a hell knight on d:3 or something silly the other day) Hell knight is way too far OOD to spawn naturally in D3. There are some cases where late game enemies spawn on early levels and a...

There's a picture of the situation on Reddit. Player had explored most of D2 and was caught approaching the last set of stairs, with the bees between him and stairs. Per the picture, he could have survived because he began as a gladiator and had throwing nets, making it possible to net a bee in the ...

But it does matter. Both how much of the level you've cleared (prior positioning) and whether or not you're on stairs (current positioning) matter significantly to how much risk TP other brings to the table. Heck, you might even allow it intentionally if in an undesirable position. You're not going ...

D2 is pretty far out of depth, you got pretty darned unlucky. I'm not sure I've seen that in ~370 games. I've seen ogres in d2-d4 on rare occasions. You can still live sometimes depending on where they are relative to you on discovery and whether your panic resource usage bears fruit, but I agree th...

Late game balance is when if early game is hard, late game remains hard too and if early game is easy, late game remains easy too. Okay, I understand now. I don't think you can realistically avoid said convergence in a roguelike such as crawl though. The natural tendency will be for loot/XP to norm...

TP other is much more tame per that line of reasoning than any of dispersal/TP/shaft traps. It comes in a predictable location/branch and has several counterplay options (block LoS, have MR), and the enemy that can use it is slow...so in most cases even with relatively poor MR the player can avoid t...

I like the idea of the mage swap, but I don't think TP other should be removed completely. It *CAN* cause problems, and it's probably okay if it's not as threatening as everything else if you also have petrify on some enemies. Getting teleported into constriction if you don't manage LoS or have MR i...

Even with all that late game throws at the player, roguelikes do provide resources and convergence over time regardless. I would argue that *right now* late game is already easier than early game for most species on the weak side of the power curve. The resources might not be there just yet in d1-d4...

Constriction is *not* irrelevant as a status! While TP other can be beneficial, allowing it is usually a misplay as it can also dump you into constriction hell and force burning of multiple consumables to not die. For the most part, players should be routinely avoiding similarly bad situations arisi...

Cloaks are too big, but hats/scarfs are justifiable. IMO scarfs make even more sense than hats. Presumably if the cat can read scrolls, zap wands, and wear rings it has sufficient dexterity to wrap a scarf around itself, and in contrast to cloaks it wouldn't cover its entire body. Bonus points if do...

Can the hydras by kited in a way and dealt with that way? I've not managed to do it, but I hope someone has. They regen fast and have normal move speed. Since they have rpois most normal means of kiting won't work well. I guess you could chop a head using a fire weapon, then back off until full hea...

You can't get away from "weak characters need more consumables" in practice though. That's a substantial part of what makes them weak options in the first place. There are significant power differentials in species and backgrounds set before the player makes a single move. Part of the idea...

I see what you mean. Swamp 4 can be pretty diverse with the rune vault, and you even left out ghost moths for spider. Just about everything in snake is "TP other" or constrict risk. Main curveballs are anaconda rush + constrict or guardian serpent running you down + teleporting lots of con...

Snake, swamp, depths, vaults, and elf could all have some justification, depending on how far you want to reach wrt lore. In terms of just having an enemy type, maybe swamp...though I disagree with the broad view that swamp is materially easier than snake/spider.

A melee character with more than 20 AC and reasonable EV or SH can kill hydras with floor junk. Short blades are a good, often overlooked option. They don't chop heads and they're common enough that you usually have a branded one lying around. 20AC melee can take them up stairs and park them somewh...

Given the disparity between starting species/backgrounds we're stuck with some spiral unless you want to make all timed portals happen later in the game. The main reason Wizlabs and Desolation of Salt are consistently doable is that they're late enough in the game where you've had enough chances at ...

You could probably make a case that it's a bit too spoiler-reliant. The amount of XP you can get before challenging tomb would allow for cblink, necromutation, god swapping, abyss scumming for blink scrolls, and swapping gear around to make whatever you need castable.

Thinking back on my games (I have over 360 last I saw) there was maybe one unavoidable shaft trap death (got dumped between monsters before I could reasonably ID the few consumables I had...blind quaffs/reading didn't save me in time). There were a few others I died after falling through a shaft but...

I agree with hellmonk's list, aside from the avatar. Short of trying to starve you out in labyrinth or something hungry ghosts don't do much of anything. The other monsters are more annoying and would be higher on my list, however. They - Are only threatening in extremely rare cases. - Can be very a...

I think there's a tendency for newer players to overestimate the impact of spell hunger and the importance of stockpiling rations, to the point where they'll prioritize eliminating spell hunger entirely over increasing spell power, leading to weaker characters that burn through MP less efficiently....

On a recent run with some nonsense like 5 caustic shrikes on depths 1, I got equally nonsense-good weapons in a 3 rune: the +11 hand crossbow of Summertime {penet, rF+ MR+ Int+5} (You found it on level 10 of the Dungeon) the +11 bardiche of Offence (weapon) {freeze, +Fly rPois Str+2} (Okawaru gifted...

I'm happy to be wrong regarding Zot paralysis. On playing with this a bit more: - I have to echo the sentiment about alarm traps and autoexplore. Autoexplore has been something of a false choice for a long time compared to careful play, but this exacerbates it. Perhaps the answer is the algorithm fo...

As I improve as a player that number will grow As you improve as a player, you will start to recognize that getting shafted or teleported is not a death sentence, and that the percentage of your deaths that were due to traps, rather than your own errors, is 0%. Also, please read the last sentence o...

I get shafted nearly every game at some point, but in > 300 games with a worse record than I care to admit I can still count the number of times it's directly resulted in unavoidable death on one hand, and might need 200 more to get to two hands. It happens rarely, most typically in first floor or t...

Every chunk or edible corpse that rots could have been used to offset spell hunger. I'd like to point out that this isn't really true for most of the game unless you spam spells at nothing. Chunks are actually pretty plentiful (I've had dungeon fights where I casually butchered all and got 30+), so...

Getting shafted or teleported doesn't kill you. Usually not, though it can depending on what happens when you arrive (may or may not have a valid move that isn't high % death chance). In a game that is designed to reward careful play/punish tabbing into the unknown, it's strange to randomly dump ef...

My thought would be to give them more stuff in line with how the more annoying ones are early: blowguns/throwing style assassins, with a bit less HP penalty. Short blades aptitude is massive but begs for a shield, and they need huge XP with poor aptitude to do better than a buckler. Crossbows are st...

I've liked a lot of the recent trunk changes but not this one. In general, agency-less deaths should be viewed as a bad implementation, not a good one. Possibility for legit player mistakes to lead to death are common in this game and could be made more so. Traps run a risk of death-without-counterp...

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