Make non-Fiend 1s more dangerous

[theropod]

With the exception of the Executioner, the 1s that can't torment aren't in the same league as the 1s that can. So this is a family of buffs to the non-Fiend 1s.

Balrug: upgrade fireball to hellfire, permanent ring of flames
Blue Death: permanent invisibility, upgrade summon bolt of cold to freezing cloud, replace call imp, teleport other with irresistible slow, irresistible confuse, (distortion brand melee might or might not be too much)
Cacodemon: weakest of the bunch by far, upgrade polymorph other to smite-targetted mutagenic cloud, upgrade dig to liquefaction or a smite-targeted variant therof, give it acid breath, upgrade summon imp and summon demon to summon demon(s) (multiple tier 2-4 demons).
Green Death: All spells it casts ignore poison resistance. Venom-brand melee (again ignoring poison resistance). Upgrade summon demon to summon acid blob.

[mageykun]

Well, those changes would certainly make the selected creatures more difficult. I'm not sure that's a good thing though. It would increase the difficulty of Elf:5, Pan and Abyss. This means the post endgame becomes somewhat more difficult, which isn't a problem, but the lives of anyone who run into these 1's early becomes much harder. You can run away from a balrug while taking fireballs if you have the misfortune to find one early. Hellfires would kill you before you got out of range. I really don't like what this would do to Elf and the abyss either. Elf's summons are already a significant challenge and don't really need a buff. In the abyss's case, it doesn't need more disincentive to enter. Plenty of players are unwilling to risk the abyss as is during a 3 rune run, and plenty of early banish-ies get killed with the abyss as it is now. Super-1's won't help with either.

(Alos...if 'rogs become hellfire spammers, does Cherberov's level suddenly become ridiculous Zig hard?)

Irresistible status spells strike me as both unbalanced, and uninteresting. It makes the monster harder without allowing the player strategic or tactical counters. Now, maybe giving the green death's poison attacks the chance to penetrate rPois like venom bolt... but as I understand, there are plans to make rPois itself less binary in the future anyways.

Also, these improvements would ridiculously break Makhleb. Summon greater servant does in no way need a buff.

[MrMisterMonkey]

There's a "demons" branch on gitorious, wherein demon tiers got shuffled around a bunch; the nonthreatening 1s are now 2s in there.

[XuaXua]

It would turn that ice vault with the blue demons into a F.U. vault.

[JeffQyzt]

Balrug:...permanent ring of flames

I do like this one on purely thematic grounds, though

[Stormfox]

Don't forget that Blue Deaths get Shadow Creatures as well. Depending on where you run into one, that's already more than enough bad news without upgrading their innate abilities.

[dpeg]

Regardless of the specific proposal (which I find quite interesting), it'd be nice if players could stop the "oh, this will wreck Foo and Bar, cannot have that" attitude. If 1 demons are buffed, this has an impact on Elf:5, sure. It goes without saying that toning down Elf summoning is one option.
A balance change like the one proposed almost always necessitates further tweaks, and one of the questions is whether the total package might be too much to get right.

[daftfad]

I support these changes for awesome flavor:

- Balrugs get a ring of flames
- Cacodemons get a ring of mutagenic fog. Would this make them invisible through the fog? Nice.
- Green deaths get a ring of poison
- Blue deaths get a ring of freezing clouds

If that seems overpowered, maybe give them to the monsters as spells so the rings are only occasionally up.

[galehar]

Giving cloud spells or ring of clouds to monsters is going to be problematic. They'll kill each other with them.

[mageykun]

...on the other hand though, if high level demons carelessly killed their lesser kin with crazy clouds, it would fix some of the problems with chain summoning. It would only be possible to sustain so many or so dense a concentration of demons without them 'correcting' their numbers. And casual friendly fire sounds like excellent flavor for demons.

[dpeg]

minmay: Could you please stop spreading your cryptic "it used to be much better, but is all going down-hill these days" comments? If you think certain changes were bad for balance, make a list and explain.
I have no idea what you mean in this case, so I am very much interested in your list.

[Kate]

I'd say the demons branch is going in the right direction by downgrading the less-threatening 1s to 2 instead. It's fine for them not to be as powerful as the fiends, they should just be a different tier and be able to show up/be summoned earlier.

[sanka]

There's also the 0.8 ranged AI changes that make ducking around a corner less effective vs. centaurs. This makes centaurs more dangerous to all characters, but melee characters are hit harder by it: while Cj simply takes more damage, Fi takes more damage and takes damage for a longer time (since it has to spend turns moving close to the centaur).

Maybe I'm not a very good player - but this change (which I like a lot) made the game for my casters more miserable, because they are so fragile. Centaurs are suddenly a big(ger) threat.
Against a centaur it's usually a good strategy to force them to melee, as they usually cause much less damage (especially if they wear a cursed bow ). Sometimes shooting them with a conjurer from distance is not a very good idea - they are monsters you want to shoot from the next tile.