dck wrote:@Siegurt: The MR mention was for emepescorpions actually.
Regardless, sometimes your AC is barely double digit because you can't find any decent aux armor, but for example as a DE there is no excuse for your EV to be just 15 with 14 dex wearing robes by the time you're done with lair, and those initial fighting and weapon skill from your tests are unacceptably low for a XL 16 character, and a morningstar of flaming isn't the kind of weapon any caster would go for.
That said, I never claimed you should train fighting and killdudes to kill monstrosities such as ghost moths at that level, but you should train them to have hp and kill all the other things that aren't extraordinarily dangerous.
Stealth exists and so do exclusions and so does invistele (nothing in spider but arachne sees inv) and walking away.
Yeah, looking at it those were pretty hopeless and silly aribtrary-ish numbers.
To do something a slightly more realistic, I did manual training from levels 1->15 with a DECj and trained:
Fighting, Dodge, Spellcasting, Conjuration(doubled) and that's it. I know a typically conjurer would probably train less spellcasting, and more charms/hexes and maybe some weapon skill than this but what I ended up with was:
10.3 Fight, 14.2 Dodge, 15.1 Spellcasting, 17.9 Conjuration, 5 Str, 22 Int, 15 Dex
I put +2 robes, gloves, boots, and helmet on him, this yields 13 AC and 21 EV, I also gave him a +2 quarterstaff.
For comparison's sake, he's got 87 max HP and 38 max HP.
With agility his EV is boosted to 30
Using both might and agility:
Attempt #1 was a death after 21 hits (Moth was "severely wounded")
Attempt #2 was a success after 27 hits (50 damage taken)
Attempt #3 was a death after 17 hits (Moth was "almost dead")
Attempt #4 was a success after 22 hits (54 damage taken)
Attempt #5 was a death after 14 hits (Moth was "almost dead")
Attempt #6 was a death after 19 hits (Moth was "severely wounded")
Using agility with no might:
Attempt #1 was a death after 21 hits (Moth was "moderately wounded")
Attempt #2 was a death after 27 hits (Moth was "heavily wounded")
Attempt #3 was a death after 25 hits (Moth was "moderately wounded")
(clearly this isn't going to happen)
Using might with no agility:
Attempt #1 was a death after 10 hits (Moth was "moderately wounded")
Attempt #2 was a death after 16 hits (Moth was "severely wounded")
Attempt #3 was a death after 9 hits (Moth was "Slightly wounded")
(Also not gonna happen)
Using a potion of speed:
Death after 19 hits (Moth was "moderately wounded")
No potions were all death.
It looks to me like the viable solution when you encounter a ghost moth as a level 15 DECj is to escape in some fashion. If you have agility, might, speed, and a decent weapon and decent fighting skill you might beat it, but you probably shouldn't.