The Tavern

This is with 0 throwing skill:

Nets are basically always worth grabbing, yeah. Perhaps could do with worse accuracy/easier to escape at low throwing.

Why are nets a problem? Netting the ancient liches does not prevent them from lcsing you, and only slightly increases damage for non shortblades.

I don't normally kill ancient liches in two swings. There's clearly some kind of damage boost happening.

What is your weapon and skill?

+7 vamp laj, +4 more slaying from items, 16.2 weapon skill.
about 25 Fighting, and 6 stealth if it's relevant.

Liches would be able to LCS you, but they waste a bunch of turns struggling to escape the net, so it's basically consumable antimagic. Also you [always?] hit netted dudes. Inaccuracy bolt is real effective (thanks bcadren).

Wiki says that you have a (Dexterity + (Stealth + Weapon skill)/2)% chance to do about 45.8% extra damage.

Liches have little ev anyways. Also, when unnetted, they waste turns walking and meleeing instead.

Nets are a consumable that is always in short supply. You will normally only see a handful over the course of a game, and they are rarely good for more than one use, although you apparently got lucky this time. It's okay for a rare single-shot consumable to be powerful; it isn't like you didn't save that net through fights with a couple thousand other monsters that you could have spent it on, with another couple hundred yet to go that you could have saved it for.

If it's the flavor of a mundane net being useful against a powerful undead spellcaster that you don't like, imagine that it's a magic net.

KoboldLord: This is true, but still (and I believe this is what Rast had in mind as well -- please correct me if I'm wrong) there would be more interesting decisions if Throwing skill mattered here.

Now: pick up all nets; decision is about when to use it
With Throwing having impact: pick up all nets; decide if/when/how far to train Throwing; decide when to use net

i would describe it as being a different decision, rather than necessarily a more interesting decision. after all, if you made nets meaningfully weaker for characters with 0 throwing, many of them would not bother with nets at all (just like with blowguns/poison needles, post-nerf). for them, it looks like:

Now: pick up all nets; decision is about when to use it
With Throwing having impact: decide if/when/how far to train Throwing; if not bothering with throwing, don't pick up nets at all

changing from a tactical to a strategic decision, basically.

PF: Fair enough, but of course you'd still pick up nets, because while less powerful than now, they'd still be useful.

Anyway, as long as they're rare, this is not really crucial, because they do provide decisions after all.

If it was a scroll that you read to cripple a targeted monster for a short time, would you argue that it's a good idea to tie the effect of a scroll to an arbitrarily selected skill?

The net has throwing flavor, and the throwing skill currently affects its accuracy. Does the skill need to affect its accuracy? Or is that just the status quo because ten years ago it fit the flavor even though it doesn't actually serve any game balance purpose? Maybe this is the sort of consumable that doesn't call for a skill tax, because it is so limited in availability.

I don't think a foobar that you can activate once to let you get a free stab or two in on a single monster of your choice (if it doesn't pass a defense roll) needs to be skill-locked. If I have to train my throwing skill to use it, it's only going to be a choice at all on a throwing build, and even then it's competing for inventory space with all of the other throwing items I can use. Throwing is already very strong and heavy on inventory clutter.

My complain it that it cripples an archlich just as hard as it cripples an orc warrior. Maybe even harder -- the orc seems to struggle out faster, but that could be my imagination.

Last time I checked nets had about 50% chance to land on Ancient Lich with Throwing 0, that's too much IMHO.

I don't think nets should exist, personally. They're complicated and mechanically exceptionalist for what amounts to yet another "lose some actions and maybe some EV/SH" debuff (confuse, slow, petrify, paralyse, sleep...).

For consumables that do not rely on skills we have potions and scrolls, which is probably enough.

FR: Netting skill and Blowguns skill. If there's too much exp in the game...

Turn nets into a scroll. Scroll of hold monster or whatever.

An important aspect of nets is that monsters use them against you, notably gnolls. Definitely worth keeping.

Make d:1 gnoll always spawn with nets and a halberd.

Is it? The interface is bad, the way struggling works is really unintuitive, monsters rarely have nets in the first place, and the ultimate result is interchangeable with ensnare. I don't see how it's needed when monsters can already have ensnare and use hex wands.

Yeah, it's fun and flavorful when that d:3 gnoll nets you. And fine that you can pick up a couple nets and trivialize Sigmund with them. My complain is that they can trivialize Arch Liches just as hard, without even training Throwing.

Maybe the fix is to improve spellcaster AI when netted; they should have a high chance of casting spells instead of struggling, with an enhanced chance to cast blink if available.

So a spellcaster being in a net should actively make it more dangerous?

Sure, why not. Better than having them waste all their turns struggling.

I checked the wiki: apparently none of the ancient lich spellbooks have blink. Perhaps one or two should.

They don't waste all their turns struggling. I was under the impression that monsters only struggle if they try to move or melee you. Roxanne doesn't struggle at all if ensnared.