Understanding spell power


Ask fellow adventurers how to stay alive in the deep, dark, dangerous dungeon below, or share your own accumulated wisdom.

Halls Hopper

Posts: 76

Joined: Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 21:07

Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 21:37

Re: Understanding spell power

Looks like I'd get a more prompt during every turn of combat against 2+ dudes, which is sort of bad. Anyway, why the hell would you start experimenting against something that is "extremely dangerous"? You experiment against things that aren't dangerous and have decent hp: yaks, single slime creatures, whatever.

And since you're being vague and haven't provided a morgue, I'll take a shot in the dark and say you should have used ?fear instead of fighting that dude.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5382

Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 21:46

Re: Understanding spell power

While this is highly verbose, I think it could be made more condensed and still give a lot of useful information. Note that this will never be approved, but something like:

  Code:
Your Shard of Ice hits the Ettin for 35 damage! (5 damage resisted)
The ettin hits you for 6 damage. (13 damage resisted)


Would be quite reasonable. You could have separate messages for resistances/AC reduction, or just roll them all into one. Maybe say "damage was reduced by 5" so we don't confuse anyone with the word resist for AC reductions. You could do the same for to-hit rolls, but personally I'd leave them out on hits. On misses you could show the comparison. dice ranges for max rolls optional.

  Code:
You closely miss the ettin! (To hit: 4 (1d20) EV: 7 (1d10))


One problem with this is that many spells use frankly absurd damage formulas, like airstrike shown above. It increases in max damage once every 6 points, and also once every 7 points. Why? Would gaining 2 points every 6 be too strong? Why roll 3 different ranges instead of just doing a simple 3dN? This kind of formula only works because it's hidden and so the user doesn't know it's so unintuitive.
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 21:47

Re: Understanding spell power

regardless of how people feel about crawl displaying numbers, I think it would be nice to have an option to be able to see the information that used to be hosted on the now-dead gretell ingame in some way - I do not want to sit in IRC just to remind myself of something regarding a monster.

this may be prohibitive programming-wise, I don't know, I don't want it to get in the way of removing item destruction or anything.
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Swamp Slogger

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Joined: Friday, 15th March 2013, 23:33

Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 21:50

Re: Understanding spell power

tabstorm wrote:regardless of how people feel about crawl displaying numbers, I think it would be nice to have an option to be able to see the information that used to be hosted on the now-dead gretell ingame in some way - I do not want to sit in IRC just to remind myself of something regarding a monster.


http://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12011&p=172378

it tends to give me lua memory errors when doing autoexplore or fast-travel though

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 11111

Joined: Friday, 8th February 2013, 12:00

Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 21:51

Re: Understanding spell power

basil,

Yes, it encourages careful play and is not that useful for experienced players, I don't use it now. But I learned a lot when playing with it.

Do you mean it's always possible to prepare for fighting monster Foo by experimenting with monster Bar?

Btw it was a Sun Demon (speed 12) immune to Fear and when I died it was almost dead and dealt me unexpectedly high damage.
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 21:56

Re: Understanding spell power

zardo wrote:
tabstorm wrote:regardless of how people feel about crawl displaying numbers, I think it would be nice to have an option to be able to see the information that used to be hosted on the now-dead gretell ingame in some way - I do not want to sit in IRC just to remind myself of something regarding a monster.


http://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12011&p=172378

it tends to give me lua memory errors when doing autoexplore or fast-travel though


From reading this it seems to be the case that it automatically examines every monster, I don't want to do this, just to see the gretell info in xv after a further prompt for instance, maybe like hit 'g' to see detailed information about this enemy. I wouldn't care that much if it didn't seem to be the case that gretell is dead indefinitely.
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Halls Hopper

Posts: 76

Joined: Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 21:07

Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 22:56

Re: Understanding spell power

Sandman25 wrote:basil,

Yes, it encourages careful play and is not that useful for experienced players, I don't use it now. But I learned a lot when playing with it.

Drowning the player with so many numbers and getting a more prompt every move encourages less careful play, since the player has to keep spacing through all of them to make a fight with some orcs at XL12 not take way too long, which makes them more likely to space through more prompts that actually matter.

Sandman25 wrote:Do you mean it's always possible to prepare for fighting monster Foo by experimenting with monster Bar?

/fireball and |inacc maybe complicate that a bit, but experimenting will show you what's "good enough" in the general case. And Sun Demons have good evasion and rF+++ anyway.

Sandman25 wrote:Btw it was a Sun Demon (speed 12) immune to Fear and when I died it was almost dead and dealt me unexpectedly high damage.

If you took 80 damage in one turn you were double-moved, which is bad with any monster that's not chaff. And fighting sun demons without rF is also sort of bad, so maybe don't do that.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 11111

Joined: Friday, 8th February 2013, 12:00

Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 23:24

Re: Understanding spell power

basil wrote:Drowning the player with so many numbers and getting a more prompt every move encourages less careful play, since the player has to keep spacing through all of them to make a fight with some orcs at XL12 not take way too long, which makes them more likely to space through more prompts that actually matter.


Sure, these details should not be displayed by default. It is not hard to implement with new init.txt/RC option.

Sandman25 wrote:/fireball and |inacc maybe complicate that a bit, but experimenting will show you what's "good enough" in the general case.


It's not that simple IMHO. For example, with some characters I don't even try to kill Curse Toes. Perhaps a character could kill it easily but testing it in real game is a very bad idea, especially without clarity. Also OoFs are quite different from other monsters, Enchantress, Jorgrun etc.

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3160

Joined: Sunday, 5th August 2012, 14:52

Post Friday, 16th May 2014, 13:22

Re: Understanding spell power

Keep in mind that while it is a design goal to allow a player to win Crawl without spoilers, it is not a design goal to allow a player to win Crawl on their first try. You are expected to learn that certain things are a bad idea by trying them and then dying.

Aside from that, what about the monster "sun demon" made you think it was safe to fight without rF+? A reasonable degree of caution should be used when fighting unfamiliar monsters overall, and one aspect of that caution might be assuming that if something is explicitly associated with a type of elemental damage, it might be a bad idea to fight it while unprotected.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 11111

Joined: Friday, 8th February 2013, 12:00

Post Friday, 16th May 2014, 13:30

Re: Understanding spell power

Lasty wrote:Keep in mind that while it is a design goal to allow a player to win Crawl without spoilers, it is not a design goal to allow a player to win Crawl on their first try. You are expected to learn that certain things are a bad idea by trying them and then dying.


Yes, that explains a lot. Now I see why they don't want to display critical info.

Aside from that, what about the monster "sun demon" made you think it was safe to fight without rF+? A reasonable degree of caution should be used when fighting unfamiliar monsters overall, and one aspect of that caution might be assuming that if something is explicitly associated with a type of elemental damage, it might be a bad idea to fight it while unprotected.

What made you think that I didn't have rF+? But more importantly what makes you think that rF+ is that good vs Sun Demon. 30 + fire (5-9) is really different from 30 + fire (10-19)? I was losing about 10 damage every turn and then suddenly I lost 60+. It does not matter if I did any mistakes in that fight (of course I did), hiding max damage for monsters is cruel.

Dungeon Master

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Joined: Sunday, 5th August 2012, 14:52

Post Friday, 16th May 2014, 14:16

Re: Understanding spell power

Sandman25 wrote:What made you think that I didn't have rF+? But more importantly what makes you think that rF+ is that good vs Sun Demon. 30 + fire (5-9) is really different from 30 + fire (10-19)? I was losing about 10 damage every turn and then suddenly I lost 60+. It does not matter if I did any mistakes in that fight (of course I did), hiding max damage for monsters is cruel.

Another poster asserted it. If that's wrong, I apologize.

But yes, I do think {0-30} + {5-9} (avg 22) is more survivable than {0-30} + {10-19} (avg 29.5). Because of the way AC works, even modest gains in damage add up to considerably more damage taken per time unit, which is why slaying is actually quite good -- though I know you don't believe that latter point.

Edit: Also, spikes of 39 damage are considerably less scary than 49.

For this message the author Lasty has received thanks:
Sandman25

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 11111

Joined: Friday, 8th February 2013, 12:00

Post Friday, 16th May 2014, 14:23

Re: Understanding spell power

Lasty wrote:which is why slaying is actually quite good -- though I know you don't believe that latter point.


I am surprised you have such impression. Slaying is the best jewelry type, I just don't agree that wearing it is a no-brainer because sometimes it's not that great and wearing something else brings more benefits.

Dungeon Master

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Joined: Sunday, 5th August 2012, 14:52

Post Friday, 16th May 2014, 14:55

Re: Understanding spell power

Sandman25 wrote:
Lasty wrote:which is why slaying is actually quite good -- though I know you don't believe that latter point.


I am surprised you have such impression. Slaying is the best jewelry type, I just don't agree that wearing it is a no-brainer because sometimes it's not that great and wearing something else brings more benefits.

Oh, sorry again. I had a mistaken impression about your argument on this score. I didn't mean to misrepresent you.

For this message the author Lasty has received thanks:
Sandman25

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5382

Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Friday, 16th May 2014, 17:22

Re: Understanding spell power

Lasty wrote:Edit: Also, spikes of 39 damage are considerably less scary than 49.

This is the best thing about resistances and why I love them so much. They consistently reduce the worst case scenario. AC, EV have a chance of doing absolutely nothing for you if you get a bad roll. This is also why I like GDR - it doesn't reduce damage that much, but it *promises* you some effect when it applies. Removing chances of suddenly dying/taking so much damage you are in crisis is a seriously good thing.
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