If Each Monster Had Max 1 Spell

[Shtopit]

This is something I thought while reading a GDD thread. What if each monster had only one spell, and would always use it, as long as conditions are met?

For example, take an orc pack. Let's say that it has a wizard, a priest, and four orcs. Instead, we could have a pack made up of a necromancer orc (pain), a Beogh priest (smite), an orc healer (heal), an orc ice mage (throw frost), an orc hexer (confuse), and an orc assassin (invisibility).

It would somewhat increase their attack potential, but there is the matter that they would block each other's line of sight (except the smiter, which would be a lot more dangerous; maybe it could have a visible timer to reload its smite spell). More than anything, I wonder if it would increase variety, and make the game more tactical.

Another example are Deep Trolls. A pack with 1 shaman, 1 earth mage, and 8 deep trolls could become 2 troll diggers (dig), 2 troll earth mages (deconstruction), 2 troll quickeners (haste), 2 troll healers (heal), 2 troll drummers (might).

Any opinions?

[chequers]

I like this idea in theory. It would make enemies much more comprehensible to players. Right now the range of spells monsters have (or can have, with multi spell books) is so wide you don't really play in a specialised way against most of them.

I'm worried it might make luring much worse, but I think it could be worth a shot.

[sanka]

While I think that going all the way to reduce monsters to one spell may not be a good goal, but going towards this direction, simplifying the spell sets enemies has would be very good.

The problem with going all the way is that some spells simply do not make a good enemy alone, but could be interesting together with other spells.

[TheMeInTeam]

Isolating monsters would let players hard counter them more easily. An orc healer by itself is a sitting duck for example. Also strengthens resistance swapping in addition to luring, and I don't think we need more of either of those things.

[MisterPersonMan]

I like this idea, for player comprehension. There would also be strategy added, by incentivising taking out the biggest threats to your current character first. If there were many enemies that were mixed and matched in each group, it'd be interesting to evaluate the threat level of each encounter instead of just going through the motions every time. TheMeInTeam does point out the flaws very well, though.

I think it'd work better as something for one branch. Maybe we could have mixed groups of specialized casters in Elf?

[Shtopit]

About luring, I guess that there aren't that many ways to act on it: speed, pack AI, obsidian axe (=making it costly or impossible to leave monsters sight) are the only ones that come to mind. Pack AI probably would be the best, with stuff like keeping pack integrity and refusing to enter excessively disadvantageous terrain layouts (like corridors).

About sitting ducks, yes, that's true, a monster whose only spell is heal wouldn't be too dangerous in and of itself. They should all have a melee option (what if you have rN immunity, for example, you would be completely safe from necros). And the kind of monsters generated should probably be pack-dependent. However, there are things about pack-independent monsters that could be cool, like having solitary hasters patrolling the level and capable of joining an alerted pack.

[chequers]

I was worried about luring initially too, but I think you can only tell for sure with play testing.

[TheMeInTeam]

If you make monsters refuse to enter corridors you create artificial sanctuaries with no penalty for attacking. It's very easy for "anti luring" to turn into "free hits" or "easy escapes".

[MisterPersonMan]

If you make monsters refuse to enter corridors you create artificial sanctuaries with no penalty for attacking. It's very easy for "anti luring" to turn into "free hits" or "easy escapes".

You don't need to prohibit moving through corridors. Just give the AI a focus on keeping other members of the group alive. Stuff like swapping positions, sticking together, and retreating when necessary would be anti-luring without the need to create "safe zones".

It'd be interesting in terms of flavor, too. Groups of enemies actually acting as a team would be cool.

[stormdragon]

I think it'd work better as something for one branch. Maybe we could have mixed groups of specialized casters in Elf?

This already exists in the vaults branch: Sentinel, Convoker, Warden, Preserver.

[Shtopit]

I think it'd work better as something for one branch. Maybe we could have mixed groups of specialized casters in Elf?

This already exists in the vaults branch: Sentinel, Convoker, Warden, Preserver.

And more consistently in Spider. But my idea has more to do with unbundling spellcasters and distributing their spells in a clear way among their mooks. One example in Vaults would be the ogres: instead of having a large number of mook ogres and one or two ogre mages, there would be e.g. 1 haster, some with different elemental bolts, 1 with slow, 1 with paralyse, 1 with crystal spear, 1 with confuse...

[duvessa]

Even discounting all the issues with adding even more pack monsters...what's the point of reducing monster spell sets to one spell if you're just going to immediately try to re-create the original spell sets by using multiple monsters? You completely negate the simplicity gain by doing that.

[chequers]

I don't think that's totally true. It would be easier to remember "oh that deep troll has red highlights, that means it's the battlecry variant, because the red orc variant had battlecry too" than "oh orc wizard has spells x y z". There would be a common language across different monsters, and you would get the bonus of visual and name prompts/associations to help remember. Currently you just have brute force remember "ok orc sorcerer can do x y z".

[Hellmonk]

Reducing monster spell complexity is good. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only upside of the proposal. I think the case for increasing tactical depth by splitting up monsters in this way is extremely overstated. Unless you are going to radically overhaul other crawl mechanics, you're going to lose depth in a lot of scenarios, possibly more than you gain. It might be reasonable to reduce the max size of a monster spellbook to 3. It's hard to think of an enemy offhand that really needs a more complex spell set than that. Make some cuts to overcomplicated monster spells (resonance strike, ghostly sacrifice, most of the shit that demonspawn cast) and low impact spells (cause fear, corona, sting) across the board. The biggest gains to be made are of course in consolidating some of crawl's mostly redundant elemental damage spells, but I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

[tealizard]

The big problems with pack monsters, pack splitting etc., are really problems with crawl and obviously cannot be solved by changing monsters alone. On the other hand, replacing a lot of trash monsters in packs with monsters that can actually do something would change naive group combat dynamics in a good way, I think. For example, a typical ogre mage band scenario has a several trash monsters blocking the one or two monsters that can do something through most of the fight. Through pretty simple positioning, the player prevents all casting. On the other hand, if you have several monsters of different kinds it may be impossible to totally stop spells and positioning may be a matter of choosing which spells to avoid.

Maintaining pack integrity cannot be achieved through AI, but it probably can be achieved through monster abilities that prevent the player from withdrawing from combat and through terrain that limits options for luring and separating. For example, there is no requirement to generate one tile choke points, sharp corners, etc.

[Shtopit]

Even discounting all the issues with adding even more pack monsters...what's the point of reducing monster spell sets to one spell if you're just going to immediately try to re-create the original spell sets by using multiple monsters? You completely negate the simplicity gain by doing that.

Those were just (unclear) examples. As far as I am concerned, packs should vary to have pack members with from 1 to all of the possible spells dispersed among them.

The advantage of having the spells dispersed among different monsters is that you can choose which monster to kill. The spells that will be cast at you will depend on what you chose earlier, instead of pure randomness. So player agency.

Reducing monster spell complexity is good. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only upside of the proposal. I think the case for increasing tactical depth by splitting up monsters in this way is extremely overstated. Unless you are going to radically overhaul other crawl mechanics, you're going to lose depth in a lot of scenarios, possibly more than you gain. It might be reasonable to reduce the max size of a monster spellbook to 3. It's hard to think of an enemy offhand that really needs a more complex spell set than that. Make some cuts to overcomplicated monster spells (resonance strike, ghostly sacrifice, most of the shit that demonspawn cast) and low impact spells (cause fear, corona, sting) across the board. The biggest gains to be made are of course in consolidating some of crawl's mostly redundant elemental damage spells, but I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

That's another way of doing it. I prefer mine only because it's more immediate to read. If the 3-spell book were somehow built to ease memorisation, I'd be OK with it.

But I think Tealizard got an important detail: one of the purposes is that of avoiding mook swarms that end up hindering their "leaders" and stopping them from being dangerous. Ogres in Vaults are an evident example, and maybe they would be a good place to start.