Unique reason to kill uniques

[Sandman25]

As a whole, crawl's uniques have a huge flaw: they are overwhelmingly not actually worth fighting. The risk-reward is completely out-of-whack. Killing Frederick is by no means impossible. In fact it's not even terribly hard. For doing this, you get a whopping total of a bit less than 3800 xp, and maybe if you are lucky a good weapon (let's be optimistic and say you get a good weapon for your character 20% of the time.)

For comparison, frost giants have noticeably less powerful spells and give about half as much xp; they also have a pretty decent weapon (battleaxe of freezing). They do not come in packs; Frederick does not come with a band. I believe frost giants are typically located deeper in the dungeon than Frederick but this might be not entirely correct. I will assert without proof that it is significantly less dangerous to kill two frost giants than to kill one Frederick. Alternatively, you could compare Frederick to stone giants. It takes about 2.5 stone giants to make one Frederick of xp. This is also signficantly easier than killing one Frederick.

I suggest to give unique reward for killing uniques - max hit points.
Max HP bonus is HD/XL where HD is hit dice of the unique, XL is player experience level before killing the unique.
For example:

• When XL 4 player kills Sigmund (HD 3), HP bonus is 3/4, i.e. there is 75% chance to get 1 max HP.
• When XL 10 player kills Aizul (HD 14), HP bonus is 14/10, i.e. player gets 1-2 max HP (there is 40% chance to get 2 max HP and 60% chance to get 1 max HP).

This solves problem "it's safer to kill 2 Frost Giants instead of Frederick" and also encourages to do it as soon as possible. Killing Sigmund by XL 27 player has only 3/27 chance to increase max HP by 1.

If we want to keep average max HP close to current values, it is possible to decrease player's max HP by 1 for every 2-3 uniques encountered on average, I am not sure how to explain it in-game though.

[TeshiAlair]

I would personally give each unique a chance to drop an unrandart. Give them two tiers: one average for the general level, and one good but not game shattering.

For instance:

Sigmund's Yellow Robe
+1 robe. Invoke invis.

Sigmund's Scythe
-2, +4 scythe. Has a random brand

EDIT: While some people might regard this as spoilery 1. Uniques already are kinda spoilery. 2. This is already the case with Roxanne and sort of with Yuif and Psyche

[duvessa]

I assert that this is approaching the problem from the wrong direction entirely. Take statues. They are among the easiest monsters in the game to avoid fighting. They are also considered some of the worst monsters in the game. If statues dropped items when destroyed, would that make them any better? I assert that it would not.

[TeshiAlair]

Right, but statues are basically less-stupid traps. Uniques should be well, unique and interesting. The idea of taking spoils from them really interests me. Hell, even if they just dropped items that didn't take inventory space but were tokens of your conquest

[DracheReborn]

I have this idea for a collector god whose conduct asks you to kill uniques, i.e. "adding them to his collection". That could be a way to make uniques relevant without affecting the rest of crawl.

[nicolae]

I have this idea for a collector god whose conduct asks you to kill uniques, i.e. "adding them to his collection". That could be a way to make uniques relevant without affecting the rest of crawl.

That wouldn't make uniques relevant to anyone following the other nineteen gods, though.

[dpeg]

There is a point, but I don't think it's as bad as some claim. Giving maxhp is a paradigm shift that's uncalled for, in my opinion -- a form of the power spiral. (Doesn't help that it won't make any thematic sense.) Let's look for something less radical.

An example from my games: whenever I meet Gastronok and he has an ego hat, then I get agitated. This item could help me immediately, so I actually think whether I can kill the snail rather than ignoring it. I'm not a really good player, so it might be better to ignore Gastronok whatsoever, but I think this thought process can be used to make uniques more relevant.

I am all in favour of uniques having better items. Again, I don't think of guaranteed artefacts: a great chance of an ego and/or unusually high (perhaps even non-standard) enchantments would do. That one unique you just killed might still only drop a cursed +0 robe, but in general you'd expect better gear off uniques. I'm willing to bring this up from time to time; I am very much against guaranteed good loot, and strongly against fixed items.

[Amnesiac]

Why not just give more exp?

[Klown]

Some think there is too much exp overall.

Leveling up takes -forever- after you've cleared Lair or so. It's barely an rpg element at that point.

Better equipment, exp, etc. would be nice rewards for killing uniques.

[Sandman25]

Why not just give more exp?

Because killing N Frost Giants still gives more XP and is safer. Provided you don't fight them all simultaneously of course.

[Sar]

I do think there is probably too much XP and I do think that shortening most branches and trimming spawn lists to prevent certain monsters from spawning when they are not a threat to anyone (how many of you have been threatened by a yak band post-Lair) would be an interesting experiment in making Crawl harder without making it more annoying.

[Leafsnail]

If there's too much XP overall then some of it could be shifted from monsters that aren't threatening to uniques.

[Klown]

I do think there is probably too much XP and I do think that shortening most branches and trimming spawn lists to prevent certain monsters from spawning when they are not a threat to anyone (how many of you have been threatened by a yak band post-Lair) would be an interesting experiment in making Crawl harder without making it more annoying.

+1 for shorter, quicker Crawl that keeps an engaging level of difficulty throughout the entire game.

[dck]

Well, there frankly is a huge surplus of experience when as a race with average aptitudes you can train any random skill (with also average aptitudes) you gain zero benefit from to 27 over the course of a 3 rune game and still be okay.
This was addressed a while back by DracoOmega and while it did tone it down decent notch I still believe more aggressive measures (branch length reduction, overall monster trimming) would be at least worth trying. It would also help dealing with the problems of pacing crawl has been presenting for a long time now.

[n1000]

today's was an inspiring morning. Its fruit is the following: Uniques should be more dangerous to fight and give no XP.

[damiac]

Well, there frankly is a huge surplus of experience when as a race with average aptitudes you can train any random skill (with also average aptitudes) you gain zero benefit from to 27 over the course of a 3 rune game and still be okay.
This was addressed a while back by DracoOmega and while it did tone it down decent notch I still believe more aggressive measures (branch length reduction, overall monster trimming) would be at least worth trying. It would also help dealing with the problems of pacing crawl has been presenting for a long time now.

Enough spare experience to train 1 extra skill is too much to you?

For the non-professional players, I think 1 extra skill's worth of experience is not "too much". At least not unless that experience would be moved to an optional branch or something. This game is not too easy, and it's been getting harder.

If crawl was balanced to make Duvessa and Dck happy, all monsters would be speed 0.5, you'd get 50% as much experience, and all uniques would insta-kill you if you spent more than 2 turns in their LOS. Also for some reason ranged weapons would be even weaker.

[bryanpeddy]

I would personally give each unique a chance to drop an unrandart. Give them two tiers: one average for the general level, and one good but not game shattering.

For instance:

Sigmund's Yellow Robe
+1 robe. Invoke invis.

Sigmund's Scythe
-2, +4 scythe. Has a random brand

EDIT: While some people might regard this as spoilery 1. Uniques already are kinda spoilery. 2. This is already the case with Roxanne and sort of with Yuif and Psyche

You know, uniques should be a strong possible source of at least randarts, if not this. I like this particular idea. I mean, they're supposed to be my fellow adventurers, usually, right?

[Zwobot]

For me the reward for killing a unique usually is that unique is dead. As in - it won't walk in while I'm dealing with said frost giant or whatever. Sure if by some chance I can park Boris somewhere, where he will not wake up and start wandering around that's great.

Simply put a dead unique can't wake up, or be recalled on my face. That's actually a pretty decent reward in my opinion

Also ... Following the idea that uniques should offer more XP and possibly artifacts as reward all the way leads to the way ToME4 is played. There each zone has some kind of boss monster at the end (alike the Lernean Hydra in Swamp) ... and that's where the rewards and danger for that zone are handed out. I find that gameplay underwhelming. If anything uniques shouldn't give any extra XP to drive home the point that - yes, it's cool to kill Cerebov. But no, you don't actually have to fight him,

[jejorda2]

For me the reward for killing a unique usually is that unique is dead. As in - it won't walk in while I'm dealing with said frost giant or whatever. Sure if by some chance I can park Boris somewhere, where he will not wake up and start wandering around that's great.

This reward would be more valuable if running away from uniques didn't work well.

Maybe at certain milestones (turn counts? xp counts? staircases climbed? attacks made?) a selection of the uniques that you have seen but not killed should be teleported into LOS and you should be marked. Then it would make more sense to find a way to isolate and deal with uniques.

[Igxfl]

Instant Aizul/Mara/Fredrick teledeath is complete ragequit material.