Let Nagas Constrict at Level 1

[tabstorm]

Wait, wasn't there also some bug with constriction damage back then, which was the real reason nagas were the second most won race.

I find it odd seeing so many people saying nagas are good, when those same people talk about how horrible chei is, and how bad ponderous items are.
Poison spit is not useless, but it's not very good either. Poor accuracy, poor damage, and lots of enemies have rPois. On top of that, you have reduced AC in the early game due to your deformed body, and you are unlikely to have a barding anytime early in the game.

Being able to walk away from fights, and pillar dance, is a huge boost to survival on D1, and nagas don't have that option. Constriction at XL1 would at least smooth out the part of the game where they're most helpless.

Ponderous and Chei are only bad early on because there are many (generic!) enemies that you must avoid or you will die. Past Lair or so this is not the case any more. For me, a high enchantment ponderous plate would be a no-brainer if I am playing a character that has enough strength. Same with Chei: If he dosen't randomly kill you, once you get 5-6* of piety, the remainder of the game will be very easy due to your very high damage and defense. It is rare that there is a single enemy that you have to walk halfway across the map to avoid or else you will die once you are around XL14 or so.

[tasonir]

Furthermore, I am not tasonir and I do not restrict myself to playing NaMo. .

Hey, I've also won 3 NaHu and a NaFi Oddly enough, I've apparently never won a NaTm, I'll have to do that soon. But yeah, nagas are probably best suited for book backgrounds, or otherwise fighters. I do think monk qualifies as having a decent weapon, since they get 4 unarmed, but if you disagree I understand. Probably not the thread to go into detail about it

Am I the only one who thought that sandman's constriction on the adder seemed weak? 1 damage for the first 3 turns, before it finally hit for 2 on turn 4? I mean, adders don't have a ton of hp, sure, but any decent weapon should be able to hit for 2-3 times that damage. I guess the strength of constriction is just that it doesn't miss, especially on something like an adder where you're probably missing a lot.

[Sar]

Constrict also reduces EV and adders are infamous for being hard to land a hit on.

[Sandman25]

The Op didn't take advantage of EV penalty from constriction. It missed the adder once, got disappointed in life and was waiting for death. Surprisingly it won the fight. Not what I'd call "weak"

[pickled_heretic]

I don't see that as shooting it down at all. I took it as saying the devs are fairly indifferent on the matter. We did kind of steal the thread from the OP though...

Nah, the thread wasn't stolen. I am just struggling to understand the design philosophy behind difficulty, as I indicated in the very first post in the thread. Some people think Nagas are not hard at xl1, well okay you are certainly entitled to your (wrong) opinion, where others are all about the super hard early difficulty and think it improves crawl. I don't really understand that mentality and I don't think it improves the game at all, but I can at least agree with you that nagas are in fact pretty hard at xl~1.

on that point, I don't believe the plateau of difficulty that occurs post-lair is good for the game for the following reasons: you go from frustrating gameplay that forces you to restart several times to really mundane grindy "tab through big blobs of monsters that can't really do much to you" really fast, and receiving constriction at xl13 really exacerbates that problem. When I think of games in general I think the most intuitive, the most common, and the best difficulty curve is one that gradually increases in intensity, and I don't understand at all any justification for the existing difficulty curve in crawl. Does anyone really enjoy tabbing through orc for the nth time like a wrecking ball?

[Sandman25]

Crawl has different species.
Easy early game and hard late game: Tr, Sp
Hard early game and easy late game: Na, Ds, arguably Op
Easy early game and easy late game: Mi, Gr
Hard early game and hard late game: Fe, Mu, arguably Op

[tasonir]

I am the oddball who likes utterly destroying the dungeon with really powerful characters, but I understand that most players don't. You certainly have the majority opinion.

The problem with end game balance is that by the time you've gotten your first rune, there's a very, very wide gap between strong characters and weak characters. You could increase the damage of everything from vaults onwards by 50% and strong characters would take it in stride, but there's a certain range of weaker characters who would suddenly become extremely difficult to win. Imagine 50% more damage on a felid or spriggan...the chances of being one shot would be huge. The huge range of max hp is one of the main sources of difficulty, and because there are races with low hp, it's hard to raise damage enough to actually threaten the ones with high hp. This is why nagas are so strong - third highest hp in the game, behind only ogres and trolls, who have considerable downsides. Of course, their 30% hp is bigger than their downsides, so they're still strong. But naga doesn't have as many restrictions and gets nearly as many hp, making them quite strong, despite the slow. They'd be fine in a crawl where the late game did more damage.

[Sar]

Tr? Hard late game? Okay.

[dpeg]

Anyone who's complaining about compulsive luring should love nagas: slower movement speed, hence less luring. In my opinion we could use another slow moving species.

[Sandman25]

Tr? Hard late game? Okay.

Yes, this is my experience. Lack of resists and low AC. I died with late Tr at least once.

Edit. Probably I am insane too.

[and into]

Mod note: Received a report on a low-content insulting post, so I deleted it (along with a non-insulting post that was rendered insensible by the aforementioned deletion). Keep it civil, folks. Thank you!