"struggles to resist" sounds as if a turn was just wasted

[Pollen_Golem]

The act of struggling against enchantment sounds like something that takes you a moment to do.
I kind of expect monsters to stay in one place when they keep struggling to resist.

Wouldn't the messages be better if they did not involve the idea of the monster itself resisting?
Could the messages could be more passive, like "the goblin is protected" or something?

If monsters actually did waste a turn struggling, that might be interesting too.
You'd need to make the "resisting difficulty" more variable and buff the effectiveness of MR+

[mps]

Do you persist in the expectation that monsters will waste a turn "struggling to resist" after you see them not do that? Like, what does this even mean? You tried to hex a monster, you saw the message and began confidently planning your next move on the assumption the monster was too busy to come after you, then realized that the monster had moved anyway?

It would not be interesting if you could freeze monsters by emptying junk wands on them. Like, "Oh good, it's one of those magic immune monsters! I'll just freeze him for the next twenty turns." It would be like door dancing, but sillier.

[Pollen_Golem]

Monsters often resist without struggling, and in this case, one would not expect them to waste a turn.
So if stalling monsters with hex-wands became a thing, they'd need to resist without struggling more often, and succumb to hexes less often.
And there's no reason for this to not be reciprocal with monsters enchanting the player.
Freezing monsters (hexdancing?) is a radical alternative approach. I'm mostly talking about a purely cosmetic issue.

[mps]

I don't think anyone else has ever had this expectation, so I'm not sure there's a cosmetic issue to talk about.

[and into]

"The goblin is protected" would be much more misleading. I would assume this meant the goblin had some special buff or item that was making it immune (or at least highly resistant) to the spell.

I don't think the message is a problem, but one could argue that these different messages are not needed any more, because hexes and hex-likes list the chance to succeed now. So you could just switch to "The spell failed to affect the <foo>" or something similar for all cases in which the enemy resists. This would very slightly diminish message clutter, I guess. But it doesn't strike me as very important one way or the other.

[Hurkyl]

I don't think the message is a problem,

To be fair, you have prior knowledge of the spell effects and why the message was added. It's hard to put yourself into the place of someone who doesn't know what's going on and has to guess at it.

If the OP was misled by the message, it would be useful information if that was said.

[Pollen_Golem]

"The goblin is protected" would be much more misleading. I would assume this meant the goblin had some special buff or item that was making it immune (or at least highly resistant) to the spell.

I don't think the message is a problem, but one could argue that these different messages are not needed any more, because hexes and hex-likes list the chance to succeed now. So you could just switch to "The spell failed to affect the <foo>" or something similar for all cases in which the enemy resists. This would very slightly diminish message clutter, I guess. But it doesn't strike me as very important one way or the other.

OK, I agree with this. When a hex or hex-like fails, the message should always simply be "The Foo resists."

On a more serious note, me and another player didn't know if (46%) means (46% to fail) or (46% to succeed). There's enough message clutter in Crawl that adding those two words would be harmless. You already have the word "failure" right there in the spell and god screens.

[and into]

On a more serious note, me and another player didn't know if (46%) means (46% to fail) or (46% to succeed). There's enough message clutter in Crawl that adding those two words would be harmless. You already have the word "failure" right there in the spell and god screens.

Agree with this. Especially since it gives the chance to succeed, which is the opposite of what you see for spell chance on the I screen.

[duvessa]

I don't think the message is a problem, but one could argue that these different messages are not needed any more, because hexes and hex-likes list the chance to succeed now. So you could just switch to "The spell failed to affect the <foo>" or something similar for all cases in which the enemy resists. This would very slightly diminish message clutter, I guess. But it doesn't strike me as very important one way or the other.

The messages actually aren't technically useless yet because of monsters with wands or random spells (or just monsters targeting other monsters) in which case you never see the percentage chance. I believe the chance displayed is also actually a lie if the target is a player ghost or a leveled up monster or something.

"You resist the 81% chance of banishment."

[Pollen_Golem]

monsters with wands or random spells

I'm not sure but I think that currently, 100% of the time, you either succumb or get the flat message "You resist." EDIT: This is wrong.

[reaver]

On a more serious note, me and another player didn't know if (46%) means (46% to fail) or (46% to succeed). There's enough message clutter in Crawl that adding those two words would be harmless. You already have the word "failure" right there in the spell and god screens.

Agree with this. Especially since it gives the chance to succeed, which is the opposite of what you see for spell chance on the I screen.

Somebody PM me a reminder if I haven't implemented this by Thursday morning. This is a good idea but I am not currently on my development machine.