duvessa wrote:monkeytor wrote:So to prevent degenerate play, a mechanic is introduced which is both spoilery and immensely counter-intuitive? It seems like it would be much more elegant to simply have monsters move away from the wall when it starts exploding at them. You could get one free hit, but monsters you can kill with one LRD aren't really a threat to begin with.
So to get rid of a spoilery and counter-intuitive mechanic, you introduce a different spoilery and counter-intuitive mechanic?
I disagree.
The current mechanic is counter-intuitive and spoilery because an unspoiled player would expect LRD to always work the same way: it creates an explosion of shrapnel in all open squares surrounding the targeted square, based on spell power and targeted material. It turns out this is not the case, although it used to be: there will be no explosion on the other side of walls which separate the player from the space beyond them, as outlined above. The reason for this is the desire to prevent certain tactics that are considered degenerate; the result is that the spell is inconsistent and doesn't really 'make sense' in the way that, say, magic dart makes sense. To discover this inconsistency, a player either needs to be spoiled or observe the use of the spell under certain demonstrative conditions.
That monsters simply stand still and allow themselves to be LRD'd to death is a broader problem in that they still do this in certain layouts when there is a gap in the wall. As far as I know there's no other situation in the game where a monster allows itself to be killed without either attacking or running away. Again, the intuitive assumption IMO would be that the monster
would move when being LRD'd in that way, and the exploitable spoilery mechanic would be knowing that they will just wait there if the player is not in view.
There is one monster which consistently keeps its distance from the player: the orb spider. A reasonable solution would be to give corridor-LRD'd monsters orb spider avoidance AI based on the center of the explosion. If there's concern about herding, they could be afflicted with fright as per a scroll of fear so that they attempt to leave the area. A more drastic solution would be to not allow any spells to do damage outside of LOS, but again I think this would take a lot of the fun out of LRD.
LRD is powerful, even moreso as an Ash worshipper, formicid, or antennaed demonspawn, but I don't think it would be game-breakingly powerful even if we could LRD monsters in adjacent corridors. I know one of duvessa's goals is to eliminate all possibility for degenerate play, and it's one that many on these forums share; in this case, though, it seems like we lose more in intuitiveness and consistency than we gain in systematic spam-proofing.