Monsters you are not allowed to ranged

[khalil]

I would like to make a complaint: there's monsters you are not allowed to cast against too.
First off, there's Mennas, but even without him there's silent specters.
How do I kill silent specters via spells? I don't, I grab a sword.
I see no reason it shouldn't work the other way around.

[ackack]

I would like to make a complaint: there's monsters you are not allowed to cast against too.
First off, there's Mennas, but even without him there's silent specters.
How do I kill silent specters via spells? I don't, I grab a sword.
I see no reason it shouldn't work the other way around.

This is very different for a few reasons:

--- Magic use within a single combat is intrinsically limited by MP, so there is often a very practical reason for magic-focused offense to want a melee weapon anyway as a backup. Melee combat does not have this limitation.
--- A backup melee weapon can be used with no skill. By contrast, melee fighters don't have the option of using conjurations without investing skill.
--- There are enough decent low-skill weapons around that getting pretty good at melee is also a cheaper proposition (i.e. 10-14 points in one weapon skill) than getting to be pretty good at conjurations.
--- This is especially true because armour choices do not punish melee like they do casting.

[Kalma]

Ranged weapons can be used with no skill, though.

[dck]

You can kill Mennas perfectly with magic.
I don't know if you're pretending the points the OP made don't exist on purpose or not, but not only do monsters that are designed to be much easier to kill with non-melee attacks take away the importance of positioning in a game that revolves around it as its core mechanic. They also make certain types of attacks desirable to the point of ridiculousness (see the lajatang with 21 skill vs freeze against an old sp druid comparison), this is not reasonable nor does it translate into good gameplay.
Regardless, there are no monsters that shut off ranged or magic, and there shouldn't be.

[khalil]

You can kill Mennas perfectly with magic.
I don't know if you're pretending the points the OP made don't exist on purpose or not, but not only do monsters that are designed to be much easier to kill with non-melee attacks take away the importance of positioning in a game that revolves around it as its core mechanic. They also make certain types of attacks desirable to the point of ridiculousness (see the lajatang with 21 skill vs freeze against an old sp druid comparison), this is not reasonable nor does it translate into good gameplay.
Regardless, there are no monsters that shut off ranged or magic, and there shouldn't be.

Sure: I can hit him with a level 9 spell the instant he enters LoS. If that fails, I haste myself and hope I can get to a staircase in time.
i will say that I consider the EV issue to be a terrible thing, (especially given how many new sprig monsters there are) but I'm ok with one or two monsters that force melee characters to pull out a crossbow or whatever.

[dck]

Uh, no. You haste yourself and shoot your preferred SH-ignoring bolts until he silences you, then crabwalk away until you can shoot some more and kill him.
I mean, if you're fighting Mennas at all then that implies he can't deal that much damage to you or that you can take a good beating, else to fight him at all would be flat out suicidal as opposed to just dumb.

[khalil]

Yes. Likewise, you are dumb for fighting one of the monsters you aren't allowed to melee, so all your points are invalid too.
One a more logical note, this entire thread is about fighting things you aren't prepared to fight. We're assuming I can't kill mennas for the same reason we assume fighter mcwarrior doesn't have a wand of fireball.

[pratamawirya]

Yes. Likewise, you are dumb for fighting one of the monsters you aren't allowed to melee, so all your points are invalid too.

Sorry, but what is that line supposed to mean?

EDIT: Fighting Mennas (according to dck, at least) with magic is perfectly doable, as long as you're strong enough. If you're not strong enough, then fighting it AT ALL (be it with melee or magic or whatever) is dumb.

Fighting the new anti-melee monsters is dumb ONLY IF you try to melee them.

The two cases don't look similar.

[Leafsnail]

Also note that Mennas is a unique, while all the monsters in the OP are not. It's much easier to evade a single enemy than a branch full of them.

e: it is pretty bizarre to say a completely kiteable monster is anti-ranged/magic, too.

[khalil]

It was a response to the person saying I was an idiot for chalenging mennas when I had a chance to lose.
And while he is a unique, silent specters are not. They can not be killed via magic. At all. Not like the spriggan 'virtualy impossible to hit', you just plain old can't use magic around silent specters.
And you know what? It doesn't matter. If I see a silent specter, I hold tab down until it goes away.
If I can carry around a mace so I can kill those, I see no reason melee fighters can't learn magic dart or something.

[dck]

Ignoring the rest of the stupid stuff fucking work on your reading comprehension dude.

[pratamawirya]

If I can carry around a mace so I can kill those, I see no reason melee fighters can't learn magic dart or something.

Learning combat spells as a melee fighter is usually much more obnoxious than using (please note that the word here isn't "learning") a big club or something to support your magic.

[damiac]

Luckily, there are other ranged options besides spells. Evocations, bows, crossbows, slings, throwing... Hell, aren't they "grossly OP" according to the veterans? So nobody ever said your "melee character" has to learn any conjurations.

Have you considered that just because melee is your preferred method of dealing with everything, that crawl's design goals might not be "Make sure Dck and Duvessa never have to change their playstyle"? Where is it stated in the crawl philosophy document that positioning in melee is the core of the game?

Silent specters are monsters that shut down magic completely. Not that they're hard to hit with magic, or they do something bad to you when you hit them with magic, you literally cannot use magic on them, or around them. So saying "there are no monsters that shut off ranged or magic" is untrue. But, what is actually true is that there are no monsters that shut off melee, and there shouldn't be.

[khalil]

If I can carry around a mace so I can kill those, I see no reason melee fighters can't learn magic dart or something.

Learning combat spells as a melee fighter is usually much more obnoxious than using (please note that the word here isn't "learning") a big club or something to support your magic.

Then go fetch yourself a crossbow. Or throwing axes. Or giant rocks.

[duvessa]

So saying "there are no monsters that shut off ranged or magic" is untrue.

Good thing absolutely nobody said that, then! Nobody claimed there are no monsters that shut off conjurations specifically, because there is indeed exactly one monster that does. Now, it has been claimed that there are no monsters that favour melee attacks over ranged ones. I maintain that is true, and cannot think of a counterexample (perhaps monsters with DMsl are intended to, but if so, they fail at it).

[damiac]

You can kill Mennas perfectly with magic.
I don't know if you're pretending the points the OP made don't exist on purpose or not, but not only do monsters that are designed to be much easier to kill with non-melee attacks take away the importance of positioning in a game that revolves around it as its core mechanic. They also make certain types of attacks desirable to the point of ridiculousness (see the lajatang with 21 skill vs freeze against an old sp druid comparison), this is not reasonable nor does it translate into good gameplay.
Regardless, there are no monsters that shut off ranged or magic, and there shouldn't be.

[dck]

summons and out of LoS clouds :)

[Sar]

Dragon Call does work pretty well with Silence, actually.

[khalil]

summons and out of LoS clouds

Tried that once. Spamming haunt didn't do any damage to him because he tore through the spirits like wet tissue paper, but it did slow him down long enough for me to get away.

[duvessa]

Mennas can be killed by plenty of in-LOS spells, and silent spectres are unlikely to tear through anything like wet tissue paper.

Also a big part of my point is that if these monsters actually did prevent you from killing them with spells, that would be a bad thing. As I said in the first post I don't think shutting off or weakening large classes of attacks is an interesting thing for a monster to do. It just happens that in current Crawl, all of the monsters that do this at all, only target melee. The topic isn't named "monsters you aren't allowed to shoot with arrows" because no such monsters exist and it doesn't make much sense for me to campaign for removing something that doesn't exist in the first place.

[khalil]

Mennas can be killed by plenty of in-LOS spells, and silent spectres are unlikely to tear through anything like wet tissue paper.

Also a big part of my point is that if these monsters actually did prevent you from killing them with spells, that would be a bad thing. As I said in the first post I don't think shutting off or weakening large classes of attacks is an interesting thing for a monster to do. It just happens that in current Crawl, all of the monsters that do this at all, only target melee. The topic isn't named "monsters you aren't allowed to shoot with arrows" because no such monsters exist and it doesn't make much sense for me to campaign for removing something that doesn't exist in the first place.

To the first thing yes, they don't do any damage at all as far as I know. However, their silence extends beyond los, so you can't kill them that way.

[and into]

Uh actually Mennas is "anti-evil" characters (Demonspawn, Ghoul, Mummy, etc.) Also Silence doesn't just prevent casting.

Mennas punishes melee as much, if not more than caster. Melee dudes are basically going to be in a Silence aura almost constantly, whereas guys who can kill Mennas with casting can keep distance and thus are under no such conditional.

Know what a "pure caster" needs to kill Mennas? Here:

1.) Good terrain for surrounding Mennas with summons
2.) One application of haste via whatever method
3.) Shadow Creatures

Not being Naga makes it a lot safer, and a wand of teleportation makes it safer in case shadow creatures happens to give bad stuff and Mennas gets through.

By contrast, dudes who want to kill Mennas but don't have strong spells to do so are going to have to deal with the fact that they will need to take Mennas out in melee, and thus will be in his radius of silence almost constantly, and thus cannot cast anything nor use scrolls (no ?tele or ?blinking if Mennas starts getting lucky hits), nor use invocations.

So the bottom line is that I've skipped Mennas much more often with guys who didn't do much casting. I take him out with casters pretty often, unless I'm a demonspawn or something in which case it just isn't worth risking getting even hit once.


Now silent specters:

Summons, minions (via e.g. necromancy), forms, buffs are all useful against silent specters, and summons can completely take them out just with magic. Also they are extremely weak and not a threat in melee so as long as you isolate them, even a horribly trained/built character who only uses "-1, -4 dagger of Master Blaster {int +6, SInv}" as a "sick caster weapon" can actually take them out easily in melee without any other training. Also that enormous freaking radius of silence makes it pretty obvious where they are and you can just avoid waking them.

Last (but by no means least!), Silent Specters only appear in vaults or in completely optional areas of the game like Crypt. They are only really dangerous in Ziggs which exist to challenge even post-endgame characters in ways that don't even pretend to be fair.

So the analogy really does not hold at all. Bringing up silent specters and Mennas and complaining that they are "anti-caster" in the same way that, say, some enemies like Sirens (before recent change to AI) used to be anti-melee, really just shows a downright dismal understanding of Crawl.

[daggaz]

For monsters that strongly favor ranged attacks over melee (obviously magic would have to be included here as ranged, not sure if that was your point), I would profer oklobs and electric eels.

EDIT: nevermind, just saw you wrote the opposite of that.

[Sprucery]

I've killed Mennas exactly once, with a GrSu. Four castings of Haunt did the trick.

[and into]

I've killed Mennas exactly once, with a GrSu. Four castings of Haunt did the trick.

That's a good approach as well.

Hasted bolt of cold/fire at good spell power with enough MP will likely take him out, a potion of magic makes that almost certain.

I haven't tried taking Mennas down with simulacra, personally, so I can't speak from immediate experience. That seems riskier IMO because he will cut through them fast, but potentially with enough good chunks you could swarm him nonetheless. That ice damage racks up fast. So there's another option.

But I did take him out with summon ugly thing once back in the day. This was before summoning nerf and I wasn't actually in danger, keeping Mennas at edge of LOS, however trying to keep up a critical mass of those ugly bastards while Mennas kept healing and I kept furiously channeling was a pretty ridiculous scene. I kept getting unlucky elements (purple and cyan, Mennas is completely rElec) so it was basically this silly tug-of-war between Mennas and a dozen incompetent minions. It took like 5 minutes or more IRL to bring him down. Ah, good times.

Anyway, best ways to deal with Mennas all involve magic.