Monster: Tank


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Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 23rd June 2014, 20:49

Monster: Tank

I've been thinking about this for a while now and there isn't really a traditional tank style monster. Certainly, there are monsters that grab your attention and that you want to die first (e.g Siron, Ironbrand convoker etc.) and monsters with high HP (e.g Bone Dragon) but no common monster in the game serves to hold a players attention with a view of taking the damage so that others can swam and kill you.

Maybe Tentacled monstrosity fills this role. Once one has you constricted I would have thought the best approach would be to kill it first before anything else. They do have high HP and so in some respects do fulfill the tanking role. The issue with these is the speed they move at which means you can normally fight one on your own terms (i.e in a corridor).

What I had in mind was something slightly different.

The monster would need to be fast (faster than the average player character anyway) so that it could catch up to you.
It would need to have high HP to be hardy enough.
Crucially, it would stop you attacking other monsters so long as it was next to you.

Now, tentacled monstrosity may indirectly serve the third function (when they have you!) but what I have in mind is something more direct. A 'draw attack' ability or 'hold attention' magic effect so that the player could only attack the tank. This would have to work for magic and ranged combat also, but you can then start to play with the idea (bolts don't fire through, Poison arrow/Iron shot hit every time, penetration fails etc).

Obviously, it would need to cause some damage (or some other hindrance) to stop you simply running away with it in tow and killing it away from other monsters. We can achieve this by making it simply slow the player character, or:

Barbs like Manticore
Maybe Poison (but redundant in later game)
Corrosion could also be interesting

I hope you can see what I am getting at. It may be, as I've said, that tentacled monstrosity serves the same purpose and if you feel this is the case please say so. We can then discuss if they should be faster to be more of a threat ;) It also occurs to me that there are fast monsters that cause slow, poison and paralysis (I'm looking at you Wasps) but these all have fairly low HP and can't be said to be 'tanks'.

Does anyone out there think this idea has potential? Is Crawl missing a tank style monster? Am I completely off base and ought to go away?

Comments are more than welcome!

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 23rd June 2014, 21:09

Re: Monster: Tank

This is because in crawl, you have no teammates, and CC is very binary in its effect.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Monday, 23rd June 2014, 22:36

Re: Monster: Tank

If something prevents the player from eliminating a threat quickly, player response will be to run away and 'reset' the fight so that they can eliminate the threat quickly.

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Tomb Titivator

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Post Tuesday, 24th June 2014, 04:55

Re: Monster: Tank

Ironheart Preservers literally "take the damage so that others can swarm and kill you."

I feel like Crawl already has a lot of monsters that jump to the top of the Kill/Avoid Priority List the moment they appear (Convokers, Wretched Stars, anything that can paralyze/sleep/banish/smite/mutate you, etc.) and also has lots of monster abilities that prevent you escaping (constriction, mesmerization, barbs, warden door/stair sealing, etc.) and also lots of monsters that have ridiculously high HP (for their depth) and also monsters that are faster than you. Monsters that fall into two or more of these camps tend to become monsters I [x][e]clude and only engage with if/when they can be trivialized.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 02:27

Re: Monster: Tank

Seems like the OP is looking for a mechanic that would essentially be a stronger version of mesmerize. While super-mesmerized, you cannot walk away from the mob, but also cannot attack any other monster that is not the mesmerizing mob. Should you ever be super-mesmerized by 2 mobs, allow attacking either.

There might be some edge cases to track down - can you cast freezing cloud if it hits the monster's tile? If it doesn't? What if the monster's tile is in one of the 'maybe' affected tiles? Can I fire an OOD in the mob's direction or only if it's aimed at the monster's current tile? But all in all, fairly simple ability. Whether it would be any better/significantly different from current mesmerize, I don't know.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 05:05

Re: Monster: Tank

Effects like this don't work very well since mostly they just encourage you really heavily to walk very far backward toward a safe area every time you spot a single monster. That monster then follows you (it's likely speed 10 so you're not getting killed as you do this) and you kill it alone.

There are, of course, other reasons to already do this, but the amount of walking-away that you must do to not get heavily punished would increase greatly by introducing monsters that force your attention in this specific fashion. (With most monsters, if they show up in los while you're already fighting something else, you can go ahead and further reposition yourself to take care of them in some way; with a monster that literally prevents you from attacking other monsters and from retreating, this is of course not so.)

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Barkeep

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 13:49

Re: Monster: Tank

Yeah -- there are already plenty of crawl monsters that "draw aggro" (boggarts, giant eyeballs, some vaults dudes) from the player, because they represent immediate threats. And preservers, as mentioned above, are pretty good tank monsters as it is.

Positioning is also tricky; if you have a tank monster that doesn't do much damage but does get in the way of other monsters, then it doesn't matter if it has a million HP, because it keeps dangerous dudes from hitting you.

You could maybe do a thing where they'd roll with bands of monsters with smite attacks and refuse to be drawn away from the band. But that might just lead to more advanced luring techniques involving corridors with corners.

A monster who blocked (or reflected) penetrating beams might also be interesting traveling with bands of weaker dudes who can attack from afar.
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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 14:16

Re: Monster: Tank

I think that the concept could maybe work if you took a page from D&D, particularly 4e's defenders. For the uninitiated, the idea there is that, going based off simple numbers, they're somewhat harder to kill than average, but they're not that threatening otherwise. However, they become more dangerous when you try to avoid them than when you focus on them. It's not necessarily straight-up forcing you to deal with them like mesmerize, nor is it demanding attention by being naturally dangerous, it's simply imposing a penalty when you don't. A simple example would be granting them a free attack (an off-turn attack that does not delay the creature's next action, essentially) when you attack something else or move away (often with exclusions designed so that 2 tanks couldn't essentially force you to trigger the penalty). Another example might be an enemy with a bubble around it. This bubble extends 1 square around it and stops ranged attacks from 2 or more squares away. It and any adjacent enemy is immune to ranged attacks and magic coming from outside the bubble, but you can move into and use melee attacks through the bubble without problems.

Dungeon Master

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 16:53

Re: Monster: Tank

Having a monster be fully immune to ranged combat would mean that builds based on ranged combat can't interact with it, aside from running away. Shutting off options entirely is generally not a great idea, particularly when the options being shut off include the majority of the different attacks in the game.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 18:10

Re: Monster: Tank

Bone dragons
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 18:14

Re: Monster: Tank

Lasty wrote:Having a monster be fully immune to ranged combat would mean that builds based on ranged combat can't interact with it, aside from running away. Shutting off options entirely is generally not a great idea, particularly when the options being shut off include the majority of the different attacks in the game.


It's not just that, it's also that the "tank" idea fundamentally shuts off options for any character (since your options used to be "attack any monster in LoS or escape somehow", and now they are "attack this specific monster or escape somehow"). I think it actually simplifies your combat decisions - since the order in which you attack monsters in LoS is defined partially by the game and not fully by you - and this seems to be against design goals, in addition to the point brought up earlier that people would just escape.
Last edited by cerebovssquire on Friday, 27th June 2014, 19:02, edited 1 time in total.

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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 19:01

Re: Monster: Tank

Lasty wrote:Having a monster be fully immune to ranged combat would mean that builds based on ranged combat can't interact with it, aside from running away. Shutting off options entirely is generally not a great idea, particularly when the options being shut off include the majority of the different attacks in the game.

A. You could attack the monster using a ranged weapon or magic; you would just have to fire at it from within the bubble (at point-blank range). Depending on the design, it could also encourage tactics to block the enemy's line of fire.
B. Counterpoint: Hexers and magic immunity
C. It could be a short-duration spell, short enough that players wouldn't have to feel like they have to completely reset the fight.
D. It was just one example.

Barkeep

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Post Friday, 27th June 2014, 20:12

Re: Monster: Tank

As has already been said, I think the niche that the OP identifies is already basically filled by other stuff in Crawl.

As for the force-field idea of Tiber... Eh, I guess it could work, but honestly I'm getting pretty tired of how many new bells and whistles lots of enemies are getting. A ton of new enemies have been added over the past few versions, and nearly all of them have special new combinations of spells and abilities and unique effects. The cumulative effect really is draining when nearly every thing you run into in, say, Depths, has some unique aspect that requires special consideration in terms of how you handle it. It stops being a fun challenge and just becomes sort of exhausting.

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