Rethinking Torment

[Gadrel]

After a few trips there players tend to find the Hells and Tomb to be tedious. Players have no problem doing Lair and Vault hundreds of times, but the thought of doing Hell/Tomb again fill them with dread. While I think there are several reasons for this the largest, or at least one of the largest, is torment. Below, please see my pro/con analysis of the torment mechanic and a proposed solution.

Pros:

Let's be positive. Torment adds a challenging mechanic to extended that is not seen anywhere else in the game. It encourages players to be careful and avoid blindly charging into certain monsters.

Cons:

Torment is tedious, and disproportionately so for melee characters. Melee characters tend to have more hp than casters and far fewer ranged options to deal with tormenting mobs. As a result, melee characters eat more torments, for more hp loss, resulting in far more time spent healing.

Torment breaks game mechanics so there is no real way to prepare for it. As a result, torment invalidates a lot of character development because defensive stats, skills, and resistances are meaningless. (I know necromut and to a lesser extent rn+++ can prevent/mitigate torment effects, but necromut is not possible on all characters, often melee, and rn+++ only slightly reduces the damage of torment.)

Torment is repetitive. The solution to dealing with torment varies little during extended. If you're a caster, destroy the tormenting enemy from range. If you're a melee, somehow break los to drag the tormenter to you and melee it. If you're in tomb, just stair dance all branch. Once finished, heal the damage, and move on. This doesn't really add any challenge or gameplay mechanic that isn't seen elsewhere in the game. Instead, it adds the tedium of healing loads of torment damage.

Solution:

Torment should add complexity and challenge that may be overcome in a wide variety of ways. Thus, instead of dealing percentage based damage torment should inflict one of a random set of "debuffs." I put debuffs in quotes because each "debuff" would actually be a collection of many that fit a theme. Only one torment debuff could be active on a player at a time, be unresistable, and last for a significant duration. Here are some suggested debuffs, which combine a caster penalty, fighter penalty, mitigatable damage component, and global effect:

Antaeus's Frozen Wrath:
Player may not cast spells from the fire magic school.
Enemies are protected by Ozocubu's Armor with an additional damage shield (player takes damage with each melee strike.)
Player is engulfed in a freezing cloud which follows the player and deals resistable ice damage. (Also prevented by Qazlal piety effect.)
Potions are frozen and unusable.

Asmodeus's Fire:
Player may not cast spells from the ice magic school.
Enemies the player melees may perform a retaliatory attack (similar to minotaur passive.)
The player is covered in sticky flame.
Sentinel's mark.

Ereshkigal's Malaise:
Player may not cast spells from the charm school.
Enemies the player kills via melee or ranged weaponry have a significant chance to return to life/unlife. (Similar to death elf lost soul mechanic.)
The player ceases to regenerate naturally. (Counterable by wearing a regen item, potions/wands still work, god healing still works.)
Player LoS halved.

Dispater's Malice:
Player may not cast spells from the air school.
Enemies are protected by Stoneskin, have Statue Form's melee bonus, and are immune to ranged weaponry (arrows, etc.)
Dungeon walls deal damage mitigated by ac.
Scrolls may not be read.

Thank you for reading and your time. I hope that this post generates helpful discussion regarding torment and extended replayability.

[Turukano]

After a few trips there players tend to find the Hells and Tomb to be tedious. Players have no problem doing Lair and Vault hundreds of times, but the thought of doing Hell/Tomb again fill them with dread.

Here's a list of ways you can deal with torment.

Look at evilmike's post if you like.

[1010011010]

Hell isn't that tedious. Torment rarely come up and when it does it in close quarters (hell effect, loot rooms) and/or expected (end vaults).

Kik and gargoyle also provides some protection and there are many method of gaining health to compensate.

There aren't actually that many mechanics that do what you want (create "interesting" circumstance that must be fought through) and those that do are often best avoided the same way torment is. Tapor snails make you slow, jourgun's shatter is reduced by flying, silent spectres have silence, sentinels mark you; all best dealt with my luring then to a safe area around a corner and kill then. An exception I can think of is convokers which you curare. And of course, if it's too hard you just run away.

If I got hit by any of those which lasts "for a significant duration" I would almost always flee and wait it out. Keep in mind all hell up stairs are portals out and nothing spawn in the vestubial.

Tomb is tedious. I think Mummy priests should lose torment and greater mummies smite.

[stickyfingers]

Tomb is tedious because of death curses, not torment. Also, vestibule has spawns (that are rather rare, but IIRC never end).

[Wahaha]

I don't agree with some of your premises. In Hells getting damaged by torment is relevant even after the fight because of hell effects. I don't find healing after torment tedious in Hell because the situation always stays dangerous. Same for Pan but only in some situations instead of all. Tomb is tedious but for reasons other than torment, see next paragraphs.

For a fight to be dangerous, there needs to be a good chance of the character reaching 0 hp. Therefore, if the character does not get low on hp, the fight is not dangerous, unless the enemy has spells that can hit for 100+ damage but those don't make great design either so let's ignore them. So we could say that a sign of a dangerous fight is ending it with low hp. Now that we have hopefully agreed that getting to low hp is somewhat necessary to have dangerous fights, we can reverse that and say that if we want to have dangerous fights, the player should get to low hp regularly. What I'm getting at is that healing after fights is a natural consequence if the fights are dangerous. Torment does a good job at making fights dangerous by making characters get to low hp, and if it wasn't torment then it would have to be something else that gets them to low hp, and the tedious healing after fights remains (but again I don't think resting in hell is tedious). So if you think that healing after fights is tedious, it is a problem with healing mechanics, or with the layout of Tomb, but it's not really a problem with torment because it does something that needs to be done and it does it well, as long as there are other decent sources of damage. Healing might indeed be tedious so it would be nice if resting to full took only one keypress. Why does resting even stop after 100 hp?

The following has been said many times in other threads but I guess it needs to be said here too. Getting strong extended characters to low hp is a pretty hard task, so that makes torment valuable as a mechanic, because few things can do so much damage reliably and fairly. For example the debuffs you proposed would make fights harder, but not nearly as hard as hp torment makes them, so extended would become a lot easier. One exception there is the debuff with sentinel's mark which in Pan is death. If you can think of something that works well mechanically and adds enough difficulty to allow torment frequency to be reduced, then there's a small chance that it might be introduced, but torment won't be replaced entirely for sure.

What actually makes Tomb tedious is that stairs exist. Imagine if stairs didn't exist, or if monsters could walk through stairs. Yeah, suddenly Tomb is a much better branch, not perfect but better. Let's keep the no stairs example to Tomb only because it might break other parts of the game, but for Tomb I think it works great, it would also help if the layout wasn't so linear.

The reason I personally don't like doing extended is because of a few reasons but none of them are related to torment.

[crate]

By the way Tomb is NOT tedious because of death curses.

Death curses on a slow, melee-only monster are unacceptable; the only reason people actually kill guardian mummies (and "mummy") is because it's actually less annoying to get cursed than to not kill the monster. I'm entirely convinced that it's possible to kill every mupr/greatermu in tomb while simultaneously never getting cursed by a guardian mummy, though the actual steps to achieve this are really awful to even consider (and, yes, it probably involves stairs, but the death curse is a problem even if you remove this extreme possibility).

They're much less awful on mupr/greatermu but I still don't like death curses.

(I agree that tomb has other, bigger problems than just death curses, but I think you are crazy if you suggest they are not a problem at all. I also agree that torment isn't the problem.)

Torment in hells and pan is great.

[Wahaha]

You're right that avoiding curses is tedious, I wasn't thinking of that. Avoiding them with summons can be tedious depending on the summon. I assumed that getting hit with curses was called tedious in and of itself and I don't agree with that. I'll edit out that line because yea it can be tedious if curses are avoided.

[Quazifuji]

You're right that avoiding curses is tedious, I wasn't thinking of that. Avoiding them with summons can be tedious depending on the summon. I assumed that getting hit with curses was called tedious in and of itself and I don't agree with that. I'll edit out that line because yea it can be tedious if curses are avoided.

Getting hit with curses isn't tedious, but the possibility of getting hit with a large number of curses if you fight too many enemies at once adds a lot of tediousness to Tomb. Really, it just feels like Tomb as a whole revolves around enemies that are a nuisance on their own but a major threat in numbers, in large numbers. In general, a large part of the tactics in many section of DCSS involve avoiding dealing with enemies in large numbers in the first place, but in most of the game there are several ways to deal with the stuation, with the three most common probably being AoE abilities, positioning in a corridor or other space that allows you to fight a small number at a time, or luring single enemies away to fight them one by one. Death curses counter the first strategy, smite targeting often counters the second strategy (you can still sometimes position to block Line of Sight, but just blocking line of fire doesn't work, and the abundance of long, wide corridors or large, open rooms makes blocking line of sight in Tomb difficult. This means that, for most characters, the only option is to just fight as few enemies at a time as possible through extremely careful movement, kiting, and lots and lots of stairdancing. So the entirety of Tomb is frequently spent kiting enemies around so you can engage in a series of mostly trivial 1v1 fights, because fighting more than that is suicide.

Of course, these are good tactics in most of the game, but the layout and enemies of Tomb make it particularly necessary and tedious there.

[Siegurt]

You're right that avoiding curses is tedious, I wasn't thinking of that. Avoiding them with summons can be tedious depending on the summon. I assumed that getting hit with curses was called tedious in and of itself and I don't agree with that. I'll edit out that line because yea it can be tedious if curses are avoided.

JFYI, killing a creature with a summon will death curse you now (So you can't avoid death curses with summons)
http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... a685d7ae81

[Tiber]

I don't agree with some of your premises. In Hells getting damaged by torment is relevant even after the fight because of hell effects. I don't find healing after torment tedious in Hell because the situation always stays dangerous. Same for Pan but only in some situations instead of all. Tomb is tedious but for reasons other than torment, see next paragraphs.

For a fight to be dangerous, there needs to be a good chance of the character reaching 0 hp. Therefore, if the character does not get low on hp, the fight is not dangerous, unless the enemy has spells that can hit for 100+ damage but those don't make great design either so let's ignore them. So we could say that a sign of a dangerous fight is ending it with low hp. Now that we have hopefully agreed that getting to low hp is somewhat necessary to have dangerous fights, we can reverse that and say that if we want to have dangerous fights, the player should get to low hp regularly. What I'm getting at is that healing after fights is a natural consequence if the fights are dangerous. Torment does a good job at making fights dangerous by making characters get to low hp, and if it wasn't torment then it would have to be something else that gets them to low hp, and the tedious healing after fights remains (but again I don't think resting in hell is tedious). So if you think that healing after fights is tedious, it is a problem with healing mechanics, or with the layout of Tomb, but it's not really a problem with torment because it does something that needs to be done and it does it well, as long as there are other decent sources of damage. Healing might indeed be tedious so it would be nice if resting to full took only one keypress. Why does resting even stop after 100 hp?

The following has been said many times in other threads but I guess it needs to be said here too. Getting strong extended characters to low hp is a pretty hard task, so that makes torment valuable as a mechanic, because few things can do so much damage reliably and fairly. For example the debuffs you proposed would make fights harder, but not nearly as hard as hp torment makes them, so extended would become a lot easier. One exception there is the debuff with sentinel's mark which in Pan is death. If you can think of something that works well mechanically and adds enough difficulty to allow torment frequency to be reduced, then there's a small chance that it might be introduced, but torment won't be replaced entirely for sure.

What actually makes Tomb tedious is that stairs exist. Imagine if stairs didn't exist, or if monsters could walk through stairs. Yeah, suddenly Tomb is a much better branch, not perfect but better. Let's keep the no stairs example to Tomb only because it might break other parts of the game, but for Tomb I think it works great, it would also help if the layout wasn't so linear.

The reason I personally don't like doing extended is because of a few reasons but none of them are related to torment.

Except for the last level of the Hells, I usually can just rest up and take the hell effects because they're not that dangerous except for when a fiend is dropped in. The problem torment has is that the only hitpoint that matters is the last one. Torment is ideal for softening up a healthy enemy, but it alone does not make an enemy lethal. The vast majority of times I am tormented, I do not die or even come all that close to dying. I just spend a bunch of turns resting afterwards. I honestly think the Abyss does the best job at being threatening, because it applies constant pressure to you. Sentinel's Mark is also one of the most dangerous spells in the game, and it does no damage at all.

[Wahaha]

This means that, for most characters, the only option is to just fight as few enemies at a time as possible through extremely careful movement, kiting, and lots and lots of stairdancing. So the entirety of Tomb is frequently spent kiting enemies around so you can engage in a series of mostly trivial 1v1 fights, because fighting more than that is suicide.

Of course, these are good tactics in most of the game, but the layout and enemies of Tomb make it particularly necessary and tedious there.

These are tactics that many characters have to apply during the majority of the game, but when these tactics are necessary in Tomb they suddenly become tedious? You can pull groups of guardian mummies and kill them mostly at the same time with almost no risk. If anything the problem is with Tomb being a line and having a bunch of harmless guardian mummies in the way that need to be cut through to pass. That's why it feels tedious, because at least in other branches there's a risk of something coming from behind and there's multiple paths. If the layout was better (not a line) and if there were more monster types that were dangerous that diluted the amount of guardian mummies, it wouldn't feel nearly as tedious because you wouldn't be mostly clearing a swarm of guardian mummies that are blocking a single path.

Except for the last level of the Hells, I usually can just rest up and take the hell effects because they're not that dangerous except for when a fiend is dropped in.

Only if you have regen or Makh/TSO. If it's regen then you probably need to clear 2 or 3... or 4 more groups of monsters before you're at full health. It's easy to see how getting a fiend effect is dangerous in this situation. If there's no regen either, well I wouldn't be doing hells in that case, but it's extremely dangerous if you're on low hp in hells without regen.

The problem torment has is that the only hitpoint that matters is the last one. Torment is ideal for softening up a healthy enemy, but it alone does not make an enemy lethal. The vast majority of times I am tormented, I do not die or even come all that close to dying. I just spend a bunch of turns resting afterwards.

You quoted my whole post but apparently didn't read it. I explained precisely why taking damage from torment is good and addressed the "heal up afterwards" thing. I'm just going to add that the only monster that torments that can't also finish you off is the tormentor.

Sentinel's Mark is also one of the most dangerous spells in the game, and it does no damage at all.

One exception there is the debuff with sentinel's mark which in Pan is death.

[Psiweapon]

With Makhleb, tormenting summons are actually much more dangerous for the enemies than for you.

[and into]

As pointed out, torment matters quite a bit in hells even after the fight ends, and also torment is quite scary in abyss on a lot of characters and really matters, too. I can kind of see where getting tormented right before you finish killing off everything in LOS can be a bit annoying in Pan or Tomb, but this is true of several game effects and to some extent is unavoidable. (I mean, even getting one nasty hit from an enemy just before you kill it is a bit of an eye-roller, as you now have to 5 up your health.) One could argue that torment is overused (I don't think I'd agree but I can see why one might say that), but for the most part it is really good everywhere it is used, which is why it is used so much throughout extended.

As for "Melee characters don't have ranged options"—well let's take a berserker who sticks with Trog as a case study. Even for Troggie you have ranged combat (which Trog supports through ammo and weapon gifts even) and a lot of evocables that are really good and give you all the ranged support you will ever need. Also anti-magic is the strongest brand for extended, assuming you don't care about your own MP pool. There really is not a meaningful power difference between a Troggie with high evocations who evokes a rod a few times then switches to weapon, and a late game character who casts a few level 6 or even level 7 spells while wielding a staff of conjurations, then switches to a weapon. The only difference comes in with certain high level spells, but then those have such a high cost to get online that they *should* stand out in terms of power level and should not be replicated (or even approximated) by any evocable item. Those high level spells are fun but aren't needed even for extended. And even then the most powerful high level spells are not conjurations or direct damage spells in the first place, and thus don't have anything to do with killing torment-casting enemies from range. (I've cleared 15 and 10 rune games on non-Gargoyle berserkers who stuck with Trog for all game, fwiw.)

As for the positive suggestions in the OP, there are lots of problems. But I'll just say that complexity is not only not a virtue, but is in fact bad for game design, in and of itself. Oftentimes the game play benefit of adding features, which also happen to increase complexity, makes those features absolutely good and worthwhile. But "increasing complexity" should always be seen as an unfortunate side effect of adding new content to the game. Thus the content needs to be good on its own merits in order to make up for that bad side effect.

[Tiber]

Except for the last level of the Hells, I usually can just rest up and take the hell effects because they're not that dangerous except for when a fiend is dropped in.

Only if you have regen or Makh/TSO. If it's regen then you probably need to clear 2 or 3... or 4 more groups of monsters before you're at full health. It's easy to see how getting a fiend effect is dangerous in this situation. If there's no regen either, well I wouldn't be doing hells in that case, but it's extremely dangerous if you're on low hp in hells without regen.

The problem torment has is that the only hitpoint that matters is the last one. Torment is ideal for softening up a healthy enemy, but it alone does not make an enemy lethal. The vast majority of times I am tormented, I do not die or even come all that close to dying. I just spend a bunch of turns resting afterwards.

You quoted my whole post but apparently didn't read it. I explained precisely why taking damage from torment is good and addressed the "heal up afterwards" thing. I'm just going to add that the only monster that torments that can't also finish you off is the tormentor.

Sentinel's Mark is also one of the most dangerous spells in the game, and it does no damage at all.

One exception there is the debuff with sentinel's mark which in Pan is death.

I've cleared Hell with a Naga of Chei. Was it tedious? Yes, but if I couldn't take one group of spawned enemies, I wouldn't be there. Unless the spawns come at a time when you're already in a dangerous fight, they aren't frequent or dangerous enough to accomplish much, so I may as well take my time and deal with the hell effects.

I read your comment about what makes a dangerous fight, and I was specifically disagreeing with it. Getting to low HP is NOT what makes a fight dangerous. Feeling like you're going to die is what makes a fight dangerous. A spell that is literally designed to become less dangerous the closer you are to death is not really all that scary. Hell Sentinels are one of the nastier 1's and they don't even have torment. Death Curse torment actually comes after the thing that could actually kill you is gone, so it only serves its purpose of being threatening if you fight multiple enemies (which you shouldn't do and mummies really aren't that hard to run away from anyway).

I'm aware that you namechecked Sentinel's Mark as well. I mentioned it as well because I think it's a good example of an effect that works well at being dangerous. The times when I've been in the abyss or had Sentinel's Mark on me have been some of the most memorable and intense moments playing the game. Many of the enemies I encounter individually aren't dangerous enough to kill me, but they create constant pressure that I can't get out of just by killing it and resting up.

[Sandman25]

Getting to low HP is NOT what makes a fight dangerous. Feeling like you're going to die is what makes a fight dangerous. A spell that is literally designed to become less dangerous the closer you are to death is not really all that scary. Hell Sentinels are one of the nastier 1's and they don't even have torment.

It is impossible to feel like you're going to die without getting low HP first (I exclude intentional removing of MR jewelry when you see a monster with Paralyze spell here).
Hell Sentinels are a joke at full HP for most species unless they are with Chei. Also not every character in extended has extremely high AC and does not care about conventional damage. Torment alone is very good, Torment with Hellfire and conventional damage is perfect.

[Lasty]

Hell Sentinels are one of the nastier 1's and they don't even have torment.

Given that you can prevent all harm from hell sentinels with spammals or sputterflies or even just walking away, I would not call them one of the more dangerous 1s.

[BobIsDead]

Whilst I don't have a lot of experience with the extended endgame, so don't know all the little tricks and strategies behind it, I do have a fair bit of experience with primarily melee character and struggling with torment-hurling foes.

The problem is, I think, that they are so unlike any other enemies melee folk are going to be put up against. Unlike other enemies with nasty abilities, there's little on offer in the way of defences. Sure, we can lessen the effectiveness with life protection and very specific builds don't need to worry about it, but for the most part we've got little in the way of protection. And unlike with, for example, smiting foes, we can't simply get tough enough that the damage doesn't matter, as a couple of torments will bring anyone down to dangerously low health if other strong enemies are around.

The effect is such that it causes us to severely alter our playstyle around such foes. Whilst it's good to keep us from getting complacent, it really does feel jarring how differently I play when torment is involved. Sure, that could be simply my inexperience, but it feels like a cheap way of balancing the scales. I mean, I get why it's done, I know that every build likely has something that acts as its kryptonite. But that isn't the same as liking it.

I'm not sure I'd have any solutions that wouldn't severely undermine the point of torment, aside from making it less widely avaliable. However, the OP's comment about debuffs makes me consider one of my own. What if torment, rather than halving the health you had, doubled the health that all attacks took from you? The effects would be similar to what they are now. It would wear out on its own over time and multiple torments could stack with each other, similar to corrosion. The one major difference would be that, instead of quaffing several potions of heal wounds to undo the effects, I'd only have to quaff but a single potion of cancellation.

On the whole, though, as I said, I understand why torment is the way it is. And I understand that, as unfair as it feels, the fact that it shakes up my gamestyle so much probably indicates underyling problems with my gamestyle.

[crate]

The effect is such that it causes us to severely alter our playstyle around such foes.

Try playing the same way against other monsters that you do against monsters that torment.

If you're doing the right things against monsters that do have torment, applying those same tactics to monsters that don't have torment will improve your success dramatically.

The biggest thing in crawl tactics is to keep as few things that can possibly damage you in los as possible at all times. Torment just happens to encourage this more strongly.

So yes, you are correct when you say this:

the fact that it shakes up my gamestyle so much probably indicates underyling problems with my gamestyle.

[Sandman25]

The effect is such that it causes us to severely alter our playstyle around such foes.

Try playing the same way against other monsters that you do against monsters that torment

There are several good tactics which don't work vs Torment because it is smite-targeted and deals huge damage quickly: luring to explored territory (Tormentors are fast), corridors (no need for LoF), pillar dancing waiting for HP/MP regeneration (Torment is ranged), using vampiric axes for healing from popcorn (obvious reasons unless you are with TSO/Makhleb), using meat shield for retreat (no need for LoF), using allies for killing(no need for LoF and summons don't attack out of LoS), cast buffs while waiting for melee monsters to come closer (Torment is ranged), block ranged fire by being adjacent (tormenting monsters still are as likely to use Torment in this case).
Torment has only one good tactic - Haste and kill, preferably with anti-magic (run away/CBlink is effective too but it does not help to kill)

[and into]

Torment has only one good tactic - Haste and kill, preferably with anti-magic (run away/CBlink is effective too but it does not help to kill)

"Haste and run away" is really good, too (not so much in Zigs admittedly but that content is optional to the power of two).

Tormentors are fast, but most enemies that cast torment are not fast, and outside of casting torment, which cannot by itself kill you, tormentors are basically harmless. Among other things, retreating is useful when it comes to separating fast enemies in a pack from other enemies in the same pack—that's a solid "three rune game" tactic that still applies in extended. Yes torment and some other things in extended do turn up the pressure and they do present a learning curve (you will probably die in Tomb or the Hells the first time you try for 15 runes), but at a fundamental level the tactics that are good throughout the mandatory portion of the game are also good in the optional bits.


The following from evilmike was referenced earlier, but probably deserves quotation in this thread, so I include it (spoilered) below.

Spoiler: show

1. Gods. Kiku outright gives you torment resistance (not perfect, but fairly good). TSO gives you rn+++ and healing on kills (everything that casts torment is stuff that TSO will heal you for). Makhleb also gives you enough healing on kills to offset torment damage. With these gods, you can't ignore torment, but you can safely fight enemies that use it. These three gods make tormenting enemies fairly easy... hellfire is a bigger threat, imo.

2. Walking away. Much like with orc priests, simple retreating tends to be enough to deal with tormenting enemies. The only thing that casts torment and is faster than you is tormentors, and pan lords (gloorx, and some random ones). It's safe to just retreat to a decent spot and then fight your enemies one at a time (heal in emergencies). Usually you won't get tormented that much. This is your #1 strategy.

3. Regeneration. If you're not with a healing god, regen is fairly mandatory. It's not super useful in a fight, but it lets you recover quickly between fights... hp loss stops being such a big worry. The spell isn't too uncommon, and it's also granted by several items and by trog. Healing with ely is also fairly reliable.

4. Fog. This is similar to walking away. Limited, though.

5. Being undead. This one is limited unless you cast necromutation.

6. Statue form. Easier to get than necromutation, has some drawbacks though. Useful if you just want to kill tormenting enemies.

7. Summons. You can use these to kill tormenting enemies without them being able to torment you. This is a good idea for casters, especially. You don't need that much summoning skill.

8. Just being really powerful. Kill them before they can get more than one torment off. A good idea for any character. Use holy wrath if you can. I think a lot of people underestimate this option.

9. rN+++. This comes with TSO, but you can get it in other ways too. Cuts torment damage to 35% instead of 50%. Without any rN, at 200 hp two torments will take you down to 50 hp. With rN+++ you'll be at 84 (roughly... regeneration between torments and rounding makes the number a bit higher). Pretty significant.

Combine as many of these as possible for best results.

Overall I'd say most characters have ways of dealing with torment, although it's a bigger threat for some than it is for others. The ones that have the hardest time (in my opinion) are pure-melee followers of trog, but even they get a regeneration power which helps a great deal.

I suppose, in theory, you could do something like create a pure melee character of Okawaru (no spells, no evocations, etc...), and decide to do the extended endgame. But you've gimped yourself in that case - you want a way to deal with torment in the extended endgame, just like you want a way to deal with orbs of fire in zot.

Some brief editorial notes to update evilmike in line with 0.16:

Item 4 is only 99% true (revamped cloak of thieves), and item 7 is not as good but still applies (summons are still helpful for distracting/escaping stuff and can block stuff at the edge of your LOS, even if the summons cannot attack them). In addition, much (much much much) better ranged attacks are now available via evocations than was the case when this was written. Finally, Qazlal's noise can make extended very dicey, but the invocations are very good at taking down particular targets in a group of enemies.

[crate]

Torment has only one good tactic - Haste and kill

You're still looking at this too broadly. I would in fact call that more of a strategy than a tactic. Torment happens to be one mechanic that cares about how good your positioning every turn is more than most things.

It is true there are not many different good strategies against torment, but then, how many different good strategies really exist in crawl, anyway?

Additionally I'm not sure that "only one good tactic" is a problem; the overriding strategy of "keep as few dangerous things in los as possible" is arguably the only one good strategy in crawl (as always I'm assuming the goal is "win the game as safely as possible", so things like speedruns are bad play by this metric but that's because they have a different goal), yet lots of people have fun playing crawl. "Get the dangerous thing out of los ASAP" being good is not a problem, I would assert. (Killing a thing gets it out of los, in addition to changing your position or using los-blocking effects doing so also.)

Anyway I don't personally play any differently against monsters that can torment than against monsters that can't. Well, I should revise that statement: I do, but that's because I actually get punished for being lazy and doing things I know are bad against tormenting monsters, whereas there are many cases where I know I'm taking actions that aren't ideal (in the sense of keeping my HP as high as possible without using unnecessary consumables) but I also know I'm not going to get punished for it so I just do it anyway. So I'm a lot less lazy against torment.

This, by the way, is partly why tomb feels so awful: the tactics you (well, I ... I'm not going to assume you use the same tactics, I guess...) use in tomb are actually excellent elsewhere, but elsewhere no one bothers with playing that way since the benefit over playing in a fashion that makes you take more damage but still not die is marginal at best, and crawl gives you more resources than you need if you play well enough so if things do go wrong you can use some of those spare resources. In tomb suddenly the monsters actually punish you for not taking pains to fight in a fashion that keeps as few monsters in LOS as absolutely possible, so now the tedious stair-luring strategies become enough better at keeping you alive that they're "worthwhile".

I do agree with Wahaha that stairs in tomb are a problem, but I've never brought this up anywhere because I think that stairs everywhere in crawl are just as big of a problem (from a design standpoint), it's just that the problem is hidden because no one cares to look for it outside of tomb, and any possible solution I've personally come up with for how to "fix" stairs either doesn't fix anything or turns crawl into not-crawl, and thus none of them are acceptable.

Tomb does have the additional complication of low background noise which magnifies things even more, just like torment does.

[Sandman25]

Anyway I don't personally play any differently against monsters that can torment than against monsters that can't.

Fortunately there are situations when it is a bad idea to fight alone monster but it does not apply to torment of course. Examples:
1) Use hostile monster as a shield from paralyzer/banisher/hydra/whatever, the dangerous monster is killed by smite attack (Pacification/Portal Projectile/Airstrike/Upheaval/Freezing Cloud/Poisonous Cloud) or by just bolt attacks or new evokables.
2) Enslave hostile monster (Orc Knight killing an Orc which wields distortion, or just killing those Orc Sorcerers).
3) Disaster/Slouch. High piety cost really encourages getting all those Killer Bees/whatever in LoS first.
4) Refrigeration, Toxic Radiance, Intoxication, Ignite Poison are not MP efficient vs single target.
Mass Confusion and Discord are useless and even harmful vs single target. Mephitic Cloud, especially in corridor - it's better to have Louise blocked by 2 monsters than by 1.
5) Inner Flame.
6) Control Undead.
7) Vampiric Axes, axes with Makhleb/TSO. It still can be applied in extended but with some limitations: you cannot lead Hell Sentinel to popcorn but you can lead popcorn to Hell Sentinel.
8) Reading Torment as undead.

I wonder why we don't have an "anti-pack" monster which would be weaker in big numbers (the bigger number the bigger penalty). Some could say it would be annoying to gather 5+ monsters before fighting them but luring 5 monsters one after another is even more annoying IMHO.

[Brannock]

I wonder why we don't have an "anti-pack" monster which would be weaker in big numbers (the bigger number the bigger penalty). Some could say it would be annoying to gather 5+ monsters before fighting them but luring 5 monsters one after another is even more annoying IMHO.

Slime creatures fill that role, albeit in a different method than you were thinking of I'm sure.

[Sandman25]

I wonder why we don't have an "anti-pack" monster which would be weaker in big numbers (the bigger number the bigger penalty). Some could say it would be annoying to gather 5+ monsters before fighting them but luring 5 monsters one after another is even more annoying IMHO.

Slime creatures fill that role, albeit in a different method than you were thinking of I'm sure.

Slime creatures are not different for me. Even with Qazlal I am fighting them one on one, it just takes retreating further than usual.

[duvessa]

Slime creatures act almost identically to yaks. They're a pack of speed 10 melee monsters that are much slower than speed 10 in practice (because of pack AI for yaks, because of pack AI + merging + splitting for slime creatures). The only differences worth noting are that slime creatures have rPois, take longer to kill, and don't give you free nutrition/zombies/extra piety.

[XuaXua]

Slime creatures act almost identically to yaks. They're a pack of speed 10 melee monsters that are much slower than speed 10 in practice (because of pack AI for yaks, because of pack AI + merging + splitting for slime creatures). The only differences worth noting are that slime creatures have rPois, take longer to kill, and don't give you free nutrition/zombies/extra piety.

Also they merge to form Devastator.