Incoming Jugg nerf!

[byrel]

Now has 2 hits, one at 80, and the other at 40 so your AC actually does some good.
https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/4 ... 14aa3bdeec

[Moose]

Well, Juggernauts were already rare enough, that I don't see why this is really necessary. They were a novel threat, and actually made me slow down and think a bit about how to approach them. Hope they're still formidably dangerous after this change.

[Lasty]

I'm a little worried that this nerfs them too much, but there's also a concern about them being a relatively common one-shot-kill against squishier species. Scaling their damage over two dice makes that less likely, but at the cost of making AC way better against them.

[Siegurt]

I'm a little worried that this nerfs them too much, but there's also a concern about them being a relatively common one-shot-kill against squishier species. Scaling their damage over two dice makes that less likely, but at the cost of making AC way better against them.

You could give their attacks reduced-ac-effectiveness (like phantasmal warriors) Incidentally phantasmal warrior's defense-peircing effects aren't listed in their description (although IIRC the effects themselves have a message to that effect IIRC, it'd be good to have it in the description)

[CanOfWorms]

The defense piercing property was removed recently.

[The Ferret]

I'm a little worried that this nerfs them too much, but there's also a concern about them being a relatively common one-shot-kill against squishier species. Scaling their damage over two dice makes that less likely, but at the cost of making AC way better against them.

So are adders and ogres and centaurs, and they're in a portion of the game where you aren't expected to have a full panoply of consumables and divine abilities to help you fight or escape.

What's wrong with similarly dangerous enemies in the later game?

Sometimes I feel like the reason that any character that reaches some arbitary point past early game should win is because we built the game to allow those wins.

[MainiacJoe]

I don't get to play that often, so one thing that worries me about juggernauts and the new death cobs and caustic shrikes is that one monster can throw away many hours of work, whereas with adders and ogres I'm still in the point of the game where a death is not felt as a big waste of time and effort.

[Lasty]

What's wrong with similarly dangerous enemies in the later game?

This is where I was at when I made juggernauts.

one monster can throw away many hours of work

Whereas this is how others on the team felt about it. The concern is that rounding a corner and getting one-shot is too big a risk and too big a problem after investing hours into a game.

[MainiacJoe]

What's wrong with similarly dangerous enemies in the later game?

This is where I was at when I made juggernauts.

one monster can throw away many hours of work

Whereas this is how others on the team felt about it. The concern is that rounding a corner and getting one-shot is too big a risk and too big a problem after investing hours into a game.

One of the things I like about Crawl vs. Nethack is that you are never invulnerable. The sort of threats the end game has (I'm talking 3 runes here, all I have experience with) that are fun are the ones that develop into more than you expected, or the ones where you say, "oh, I'm going to just tip-toe away from this". Juggernauts on the other hand feel more like Nethackish gnome with a wand of death: your only option is to flee and hope it doesn't kill you before you can get away.

If you want juggernauts to be a threat but not an instadeath to high AC characters, then give it Roxanne's Blink Closer instead of spriggan movement speed.

[le_nerd]

Mh, maybe give Juggernauts an audible warning ala Lerny? Iit is the biggest and baddest monster in the dungeon, at least by flavour.

Use the portal distance classes and maybe add direction. "You hear a monstrous stomping in the distance". "You hear a monstrous stomping sound nearby. It comes from southeast". That way we reduce the "turn corner-one-hit-kill" danger and can keep the original ridicoulous d120 damage.

[The Ferret]

Keep the crazy damage and ensure that players always have a chance to react.

Juggernauts get a special cantrip - "The juggernaut stomps its feet in warning. The dungeon trembles!" - this cantrip is cast once at 100% the first turn a player comes into its line of sight, and never again. The theory is that you are assumed to have consumables and divine abilities to help you avoid the encounter, if you so choose.

This leaves us with slowed players and Chei worshippers getting one-shot, and exploring new areas of the dungeon when slowed or worshipping Chei is a mistake, so I'm not terribly worried about it.

This approach could theoretically be taken with other unusually dangerous monsters, and could open the door to even more new and dangerous late-game enemies without stupid special attacks that are either gear checks or just ridiculous (looking at you, death cobs).

edit: this cantrip is functionally close to Blink Closer in most cases, but can expand to many monsters you would not expect to have Blink Closer - including, arguably, juggernauts themselves. It is also less game-breaking than Blink Closer, so i.e. you can kite juggernauts.

[The Ferret]

I don't get to play that often, so one thing that worries me about juggernauts and the new death cobs and caustic shrikes is that one monster can throw away many hours of work, whereas with adders and ogres I'm still in the point of the game where a death is not felt as a big waste of time and effort.

This was my last point.

Do your many hours of work entitle you to win if you play... not even perfectly, but in a cautious manner?

If reaching point X entitles you to win if you aren't reckless, shouldn't we just end the game with victory at point X? After point X, isn't the rest of the game just a long and tedious way of putting your name on the scoreboard?

[dynast]

I believe players should have the feeling that they died because they made a mistake, not because they didnt stand a chance, which is usually the case for juggernauts.

[Hurkyl]

Counterpoint: one can argue that the mistake is visiting levels where your character isn't built to survive the encounters it might have. Or conversely, not building your character to be able to survive encounters in the levels you visit.

The real question is if Juggernauts are so harsh a wall to overly constrain the space of builds that can expect to survive.

[MainiacJoe]

I believe players should have the feeling that they died because they made a mistake, not because they didnt stand a chance, which is usually the case for juggernauts.

Yes, this is precisely what i meant. I've lost several characters in Depths or Elf:3 or Zot or to Lerny. These were crushingly disappointing, but also after I calmed down I analyzed the situation and it was obvious what i did wrong and I learned from it. With juggernauts, which NB I haven't faced yet, I just scared that even a well-prepared-normally character will have a hard time getting away successfully. I don't want to get shoehorned into EV builds because AC builds are fun, too.

[ldf]

I believe that juggernaut's danger is highly exaggerated. You have a plenty of options to deal with them safely with any character ready for Depths. Just release tab button and use these options.

[Bart]

We already have enough monsters/uniques that can kill sub-120HP characters peeking around a corner in one turn.

The other problem is that the list of completely safe juggernaut disposal methods has only two positions: escape or spam summons. The first is unreliable due to juggernauts' speed and the other requires training one of two skills, which isn't very interesting either.

[tasonir]

I believe that juggernaut's danger is highly exaggerated. You have a plenty of options to deal with them safely with any character ready for Depths. Just release tab button and use these options.

The problem isn't that you don't have options, it's that 80% of the time tabbing works just fine, and the other 20% it puts you into a critical emergency.

I've only fought them a handful of times (aka, not statistically significant) and most of those fights went pretty smoothly. But I'll always remember the one fight where he hit me for 91 damage through what I thought were good defenses. Bad rolls are really bad. That's immediately an emergency situation where you can't stay in the fight and have to burn things to get away. Which is fine, and I did that, and didn't die. But what bugs me and I think most other people is that this happens very randomly, as it is all at once rather than over a few turns. I don't think Juggs are or were horribly broken, but I do like the change to 80 + 40.

Imho crawl damage is generally too spiky, and it's too easy to heal. I'd love to revamp the whole thing, but that's a massive amount of work. It'd likely be an entirely different game if I could wish everything into existence (I'm certainly not going to actually code it! I've got games to play over here!).

[Sprucery]

I vote for autofight to be removed :)

[byrel]

I don't know how to implement it, but it seems to me the best way of handling this problem (both in the specific case of juggernauts and in general) is adding an attack tag AF_CONSISTENT which turns the damage calculation from 1d120-1dAC to 2d60-1dAC. That maintains the effective armour piercing nature of a single large attack and drastically reduces the chance of killing a 100HP, 10AC spriggan (from 12% of hits that pass EV to 3.2%). The new juggernaut has a 1.7% chance of killing the spriggan for reference.

For a full comparison, ignoring EV:

  Code:

100 HP, 10AC
1d120:     12% chance of kill,   66.2 avg damage,  4.5% chance to hit for zero
1d80+1d40: 1.7% chance of kill,  50.6 avg damage,  1.0% chance to hit for zero
2d60:      3.2% chance to kill,  55.5 avg damage,  0.46% chance to hit for zero

100HP, 30AC (spriggan in dragon armour, or moderately wounded normal race)
1d120:     5.3% chance of kill,  46.3 avg damage,  12.9% chance to hit for zero
1d80+1d40: 0.2% chance of kill,  35.6 avg damage,   7.5% chance to hit for zero
2d60:      1.2% chance to kill,  45.8 avg damage,   4.0% chance to hit for zero

100HP, 50AC (wounded melee tank)
1d120:     3.2% chance of kill,  38.5 avg damage,  21.2% chance to hit for zero
1d80+1d40: 0.1% chance of kill,  25.5 avg damage,  19.4% chance to hit for zero
2d60:      0.7% chance to kill,  36.9 avg damage,  11.5% chance to hit for zero


tl;dr New jugg is crippled vs heavy armour, AF_CONSISTENT would yield similar results for diminishing 1-shot kills of squishies while slightly increasing damage vs heavy armour.

edit Design Thoughts: to be clear, I don't think this should be applied to all monsters. The swinginess of crawl's damage is regrettable, but fairly well entrenched in the current balance of the game. There's not really any way of gradually approaching that problem, so it's probably best left as is. However, when we want to design melee monsters that are actually threats to high AC while not being pure dice-roll-kills for low-AC, something like AF_CONSISTENT seems appropriate.

I don't think this would be too spoily in practice, because it doesn't actually change optimal play. If you're entirely unaware of this mechanic, you shouldn't engage a juggernaut at 100HP. If you're fully spoiled, you still shouldn't engage a juggernaut at 100HP. It just makes the RNG slightly more gracious in the case that you're forced to (either from bad paralysis roll or walking around a corner) or choose to in spite of it being suboptimal.

[tasonir]

I'm a fan of AF_Consistent, and in theory I do think it should be applied to all monsters (I believe I even suggested a version which rolled 3 dice, which is similar to how many spells roll 3 dice, although there are some that roll more). However in practice I realize this would cause a lot of balance work, and if you wanted to apply it only to juggernauts at first I'd be fine with that.

What I think would be a better overall solution though, is to give monsters a base damage. Instead of 1d120, they get 30+1d60. So instead of 0-120 damage they can deal 30-90. Same average. Less one shotting, less chance to just tab through them without taking damage. They can't hit a 20ac caster for no damage (they can still miss, just not hit for 0). A 40ac tank could still take 0 damage, but it's much more likely that they'll take some when they're only "covering" 10 dice rolls instead of covering 40 (when they roll max on their ac roll).

I'm fairly sure I've proposed this before, but like you said, the current system is fairly heavily entrenched, so I understand if people aren't eager to go in and completely redesign basic combat mechanics.

[WingedEspeon]

I would heavily support giving jugs 30+1d60 damage as it would be much more effective at preventing one-shoting than the current nerf, as well as giving them better armour piecing than the current nerf.

[partial]

I'm a little worried that this nerfs them too much, but there's also a concern about them being a relatively common one-shot-kill against squishier species. Scaling their damage over two dice makes that less likely, but at the cost of making AC way better against them.

So are adders and ogres and centaurs, and they're in a portion of the game where you aren't expected to have a full panoply of consumables and divine abilities to help you fight or escape.

What's wrong with similarly dangerous enemies in the later game?

Sometimes I feel like the reason that any character that reaches some arbitary point past early game should win is because we built the game to allow those wins.

because restarting after a D1 poison death is nbd

[The Ferret]

I'm a little worried that this nerfs them too much, but there's also a concern about them being a relatively common one-shot-kill against squishier species. Scaling their damage over two dice makes that less likely, but at the cost of making AC way better against them.

So are adders and ogres and centaurs, and they're in a portion of the game where you aren't expected to have a full panoply of consumables and divine abilities to help you fight or escape.

What's wrong with similarly dangerous enemies in the later game?

Sometimes I feel like the reason that any character that reaches some arbitary point past early game should win is because we built the game to allow those wins.

because restarting after a D1 poison death is nbd

But, again, if we're going to give you the win at whatever point it becomes a big deal to die, why not just end the game there to save tedium?

[chequers]

You're not differentiating between deaths of different "quality". Dying in Zot because you were surrounded by a pack of draconians and you didn't treat a black draconian with the respect your lack of rElec required is a Good Death. Walking around a corner and getting one-shot by a Juggernaut is a Bad Death.

[sweetrabies]

If the problem is concern about getting popped after walking around a corner, forcing juggs to take a flavorful filler action on their first action in LOS (like The Ferret suggested) sounds fair. If you choose to engage a dangerous monster after being alerted to its being there, that's a risky decision that you chose to make. On the other hand, it seems silly to me to say that getting popped after walking around a corner into an ogre in the early game is an acceptable/good/fun death while getting popped after walking around a corner into a juggernaut is a bad death. Both of them are bad deaths, from the perspective of limiting the player's input on the situation.

[archaeo]

Walking around a corner and getting one-shot by a Juggernaut is a Bad Death.

getting one-shot out of the blue has terrible "deathfeel," just like finding your twentieth stone of tremors has bad "lootfeel."

I mostly just like the "foofeel" portmanteau, tbh.

[Pollen_Golem]

What if you make Juggs deaf and make them generate only in the middle of open areas? Then they can only wake up by seeing you or by getting hurt from out of your LOS. You would almost never run into it after rounding a corner. Unlike "flavorful filler action on first action in LOS" you can still get surprised if you... blink to the edge of your LOS or teleport.

[chequers]

Neither of the mechanics you describe exist in the game.

[Hurkyl]

On the other hand, it seems silly to me to say that getting popped after walking around a corner into an ogre in the early game is an acceptable/good/fun death

That's a bad death too. But it's generally much less tragic, so there is less need to for the game design to make sacrifices (i.e. to be less fun/interesting/challenging/whatever) to avoid ogre OHKs.

[Sprucery]

I would like to know how often characters really get killed by exploring around a corner and getting one-shotted by something. I don't remember a single time that this would have happened to me. And I use autoexplore all the time.

But, I haven't yet played a game with juggernauts...

[daggaz]

Cant remember getting straight out one-shotted, but autoexplore has opened some doors that ended in my death within a couple turns. Usually something like a long, straight hallway opening into a room with 3 orc priests, or turning the corner and finding a certain wand-o-destruction wielding goblin pushover. Coming down the stairs adjacent to an 8-headed hydra on a new lair floor is often a great career-ending moment, too. When it happens..

[sweetrabies]

That's a bad death too. But it's generally much less tragic, so there is less need to for the game design to make sacrifices (i.e. to be less fun/interesting/challenging/whatever) to avoid ogre OHKs.

While I admitted don't have much experience with very low HP races (I don't play much spriggan/felid/vine stalker, though I do like gargoyles and deep elves), it seems more reasonable to have at least 120 HP by the time juggernauts are reasonably likely to show up than 40 HP by the time ogres are. You've got a lot more time to gain XP (bearing in mind that you can do Lair, Orc, lair branches, and Elf, on top of most of D), which means more chances to have levels and to invest in fighting. If you haven't done that, well, per the Crawl manual design philosophy (emphasis mine):

So, yes, there may be situations where you are doomed - no action could have saved your life. But then, from the midgame on, most deaths are not of this type: By this stage, almost all casualties can be traced back to actual mistakes; if not tactical ones, then of a strategical type, like wrong skilling (too broad or too narrow), unwise use of resources (too conservative or too liberal), or wrong decisions about branch/god/gear.

Also, my (limited, as I started with ver.0.16) experience seems to mirror Sprucery and daggaz. Off the top of my head, I can't recall ever getting pasted just after turning a corner, and the closest experience I've had to that is getting chomped by a big hydra right after taking some stairs (not counting one time that I got shafted near the start of D:1 and got killed by a centaur archer IIRC while trying to climb some stairs, which was a pretty fun death for me just because it was so absurdly unlucky ).

[njvack]

Both Deathfeel and Jugg Nerf would be excellent band names.

[prozacelf]

Both Deathfeel and Jugg Nerf would be excellent band names.

Whereas Death Nerf would be an excellent sport. And uh...Juggfeel some sort of adult publication, I guess.

[stoneychips]

Where are people getting trounced by these juggernauts generally? I can only recall seeing one or two in a recent handful of games running to Depths/quick ascension. (Unless I count a shadow juggernaut called up by a ghost crab in the Swamp. Barely noticed the shadow one; it might have just been crowded out by other shadows?)

It seems like some believe there should always be a threat of insta-death for no tactical reason (that's not counting strategy such as maybe lack of sufficient HP/general physical defenses?), and others feel there should generally be a chance for some tactical response, provided one has at least reasonably decent overall abilities whatever those would be. I suppose I'm in the second camp: I want a few ways to respond, at least say a turn or three.

Rather liked the sound of the proposal to make juggernauts noisy, like boring beetles - so you could hear them coming. It fits with the flavor. They are supposed to be these huge, ambling, heavy things aren't they? We could say the same of things like titans or some dragons perhaps, but if these are really the "baddest" then why not. It doesn't seem logical that they should be stealthy enough that you wouldn't know they are just around the corner. Unless there's a whole lot of noise right next to you already.

That said, my only substantial fight with a juggernaut so far (in Depths) was simple enough. I didn't even block LOS. I had a few minor Makhleb summons around already from the last fight. Tossed poisoned javelins at it (with my huge 5 Throwing lol) while it decided to take its time on the little gang of hellwings and the like. It took a few turns, but the juggernaut never even reached me from about 6-8 spaces away. To be fair, I can't recall if I might have summoned one major demon to help out or not. But it certainly wasn't the sort of fuss you expect from say, cannons like a lich.

Still, the feeling of turning a corner to apparent unavoidable insta-death, after working up "super" physical defenses especially, can be frustrating.

[Bart]

Where are people getting trounced by these juggernauts generally?

Umm, in Depths?

Short story: I once saw a guy who walked past two brimstone fiends unhasted for 8 turns and he lost only 50 HP. Conclusion: brimstone fiends are rather harmless. My point is - anecdotal references are good for storytelling, but not for risk assessment. The facts are:
- juggernaut can hit for 120 damage in a single turn
- juggernaut becomes trivial when faced by multiple summons.
Also, I think that due to most of players being spoiled and paranoid about juggernauts, they do not get a share of kills they deserve.

[stoneychips]

... Also, I think that due to most of players being spoiled and paranoid about juggernauts, they do not get a share of kills they deserve.

Spoiled usually suggests people are being gifted things they didn't necessarily earn.

Paranoid could suggest they are being unduly fearful, or it might be taken to mean they are just really fearful because there is some possibility of a real threat (small or large probability, is not yet specified)

What are you saying, exactly?

Personally I prefer to play characters that are somewhat hybrid, or at least carry around a bit of hybrid-style gear (evocables with bolts and summons whenever possible). So I'm not especially bothered if there's some creature in the dungeon which flat melee strength won't easily kill, but it's "trivial" in the face of some small to mediocre summons or other tactics. That is, as I said IF you get a reasonable clue when this behemoth is likely to appear. Now if shambling behemoth with 120 automatic damage (is it really that automatic?) gets stealth or free attack too, then it's a bit out of character and silly.

Qualifier to that though: I think auto-explore is fun, but even so I wonder if perhaps people rely on it too much. If auto-explore is the cause of many of these deaths then perhaps a better answer would be to fix auto mode so that it doesn't normally drop people in such simple kill scenarios. Not sure if that's practical, but anyway the fault there wouldn't lie with the juggernaut if that's what's going on.

[Bart]

Spoiled with the knowledge of what juggernaut is capable of, without being given this information in-game; paranoid as a result of being warned by other (possibly exaggerating) players, Crawlers undertake utmost countermeasures when they spot juggernauts. There are though monsters deserving more attention, yet we are talking (and worrying) about them much less, e.g. (ancient) liches. So, because juggernauts are treated very carefully/respectfully,

they do not get a share of kills they deserve

Note that you do not need to autoexplore to be killed by walking past corner - be it juggernaut or anything else.

[sweetrabies]

Whereas Death Nerf would be an excellent sport. And uh...Juggfeel some sort of adult publication, I guess.

Wouldn't a death nerf just be increased longevity and/or immortality? Both Juggfeel and Feelnaut are definitely NSFW.

It seems like some believe there should always be a threat of insta-death for no tactical reason (that's not counting strategy such as maybe lack of sufficient HP/general physical defenses?), and others feel there should generally be a chance for some tactical response, provided one has at least reasonably decent overall abilities whatever those would be. I suppose I'm in the second camp: I want a few ways to respond, at least say a turn or three.

Max HP should be a significant thing, both in terms of choosing your race and in terms of choosing how much to prioritize investing in fighting skill. If it is not a significant thing, then there is no real reason for different races to have different HP modifiers, and the main attraction of investing in fighting skill becomes less meaningful. The most straightforward way to make max HP be a significant thing is to have monsters capable of outputting enough damage to make the player worry about losing all of their HP in a short span of time. Thus, having monsters that can put out such damage increases both tactical and strategic depth, making the game more enjoyable overall.

Note that there are two obvious ways to avoid the threat of insta-death from juggernauts: avoid getting into melee (tactical) and have enough HP to survive a theoretical max damage hit (strategic).

[kuniqs]

Don't explore Depths below full health

[Baldu3]

I have died many times to juggernaut before i learned their details, i really wanted to complain a lot (and maybe i did??) but since I know them now I rarely care much anymore.

This monster really feels like the pinnacle of of what is called spoiler here though. It was one of the biggest threats in the dungeon until i knew about it's weird speeds and it's other attributes, now if 1v1 i use butterflies to lock it down indefinitely, and if with a group i immediately escape.

[RBrandon]

Don't explore Depths

Fixed that for you