Remove food destruction from harpies

[Sar]

Proposal: remove food destruction from harpies.

Reasoning: I don't know why it is in the game! As I understand, the reason item destruction exists is to prevent you from carrying too much tactical resources (how successful it, if at all, is a question I would rather not discuss here). Food is, barring some edge cases, not a tactical resource. In practice, what food destruction on harpies encourages is either leaving all your food on staircases in Shoals and tediously travelling to the food stash when you get really hungry and there are no meaty enemies in sight or tediously force-throwing away your bread when you encounter harpies in Vaults or somewhere else.

The only things would be lost are flavour and this:

  Code:

The harpy lunges at you hungrily! Your sausage is devoured!

Are these things enough to pay the price of having an annoying and insignificant mechanic in the game? That's not for me to decide.

P.S.: I don't care about spore food destruction much, you are not encouraged to kill spores by tabbing and it's rare and usually if you walk into a spore you have other problems (you're damaged, confused, and made a loud noise).

[pubby]

Even without food destruction, harpies would still be the most annoying enemy in shoals. I'm more in favour of completely removing them.

[dck]

I think harpies are really good enemies, they're fast and come in packs and hit hard enough that even a single one can sometimes be a problem for some characters.
Their food destruction mechanic makes them pretty unbearable, but if that was cut you'd be left with an enemy you can't just walk away from and which poses a sizeable threat.
That alone makes them better than most nagas.

[Sar]

Yeah, I do agree harpies can be cool (very fast enemy with multiple attacks that spawns in packs), that is why I only suggested removing food destruction from them.

[Leafsnail]

That message isn't even in the learndb anymore so I'm pretty sure this mechanic has no further reason to exist.

e: If you ignore the food destruction harpies are actually probably the best monsters in shoals 1-4. Most of the others are way too weak/alone or waterbound to be a real threat.

[Klown]

I had a recent game where my level 20 MiBe couldn't get past a ridiculous level, or even make it to the next staircase. Harpies had taken around 20 rations from me when I was in the Shoals, so instead of being able to run around Hell/elsewhere hoping to get my exp higher to beat the one level, I was starving, and died in the Slime Pits hoping to find Jivya.

[jejorda2]

What if, to keep the flavor, harpies would move towards food or corpses on the ground instead of attacking the player, and were distracted (stab vulnerable) for three or four turns while they ate the food? They could even attack other harpies (or other enemies) who happen to be standing on food or corpses.

I think this could make you think differently about food and corpses sometimes, but it might be spoilery. It could be extended to necrophages and whoever else eats corpses if it makes the decision about what order to kill things in more important.

[dck]

That corpse eating thing is meant to be a buff for ghouls, hungry ghosts and necrophages who can eat corpses, not a debuff so you can freely whack on them while they eat.

[Tiber]

I would just have them eat food off the ground, and optionally, if you tried to eat food right in front of them, they could take it away. I fully admit though that the latter is for flavor more than anything and might not be worth bothering with.

[and into]

I agree with Sar; why bother having any gimmick on Harpies? I could see the point in trying to brainstorm some trick (though food-related tricks are usually bad regardless) for them to have if they were boring enemies in need of improvement. But as several people in this thread have pointed out, they are actually really good enemies already, except for the whole food destruction thing being annoying. So why don't we just remove that annoying thing and make them completely good enemies?

[Galefury]

I'd prefer a more inclusive approach (remove item destruction, period), but sure, removing it from just Harpies would be a good start.

[oiseaux]

Agree that the harpy food steal is tedious, but they would seem a bit bland if it was taken away. It'd be nice if you could distract them with food on ground, but communicating that this is possible to the player might be tricky.

[njvack]

Agree that the harpy food steal is tedious, but they would seem a bit bland if it was taken away.

Why? They're already fast, flying, come in packs, and hit very hard for when you might first be entering shoals. That seems spicy enough.

[duvessa]

Shoals monsters I find more bland than harpies:

  Code:

  {  1,  6,  258, DOWN, MONS_BAT },
  {  1,  5,  334, FLAT, MONS_SEA_SNAKE },
  {  1,  5,  258, FLAT, MONS_HIPPOGRIFF },
  {  1,  5,  981, FLAT, MONS_MERFOLK },
  {  1,  5,  334, FLAT, MONS_MERMAID },
  { -1,  5,   89, SEMI, MONS_CENTAUR },
  {  1,  5,  334, FLAT, MONS_MANTICORE },
  {  1,  5,  420, FLAT, MONS_SNAPPING_TURTLE },
  {  1,  7,   25, PEAK, MONS_OKLOB_PLANT },
  {  1,  7,  125, SEMI, MONS_SIREN },
  {  1,  7,   89, SEMI, MONS_CYCLOPS },
  {  1,  7,  258, FLAT, MONS_SHARK },
  {  1,  7,   52, FLAT, MONS_OCTOPODE },
  {  1,  7,   73, SEMI, MONS_KRAKEN },
  {  2,  8,   25, PEAK, MONS_ALLIGATOR_SNAPPING_TURTLE },
  {  2,  8,   52, SEMI, MONS_MERFOLK_IMPALER },

Shoals monsters I find less bland than harpies:

  Code:

  {  2,  8,   52, SEMI, MONS_MERFOLK_AQUAMANCER },
  {  2,  8,   25, PEAK, MONS_MERFOLK_JAVELINEER },

Removing food destruction would not change this. Seems fine to me.