Hungry Ghosts are just indirect Harpies

[milski]

I mean old harpies, with food destruction.

Hungry ghosts are reasonably durable, deal practically no damage, and effectively destroy a large portion of permafood if you fight one.The extent of fighting a Hungry Ghost is burning a few pieces of permafood and a large amount of tedium for a small amount of EXP.

[Lasty]

The reason harpies got changed wasn't that they ate food per se, but rather that they were item destruction. You don't need to throw food from your inventory when fighting a hungry ghost -- in fact, that just makes things worse.

[nago]

I don't know devs discussion about it but from the log ( http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 8d224483af) it certainly looks more about it being an annoying gimmick without real consequences provided only by a single monster in the game. Which is pretty much the same thing hungry ghosts do (aka they eat food only for the unspoiled player or who don't care about that)

Plus, that commit is in January, item destruction was removed in may so I don't think those two commit are correlated in some way

[Quazifuji]

I don't think I've ever had to eat more than just a ration after fighting a Hungry Ghost, even early in the game, while food-stealing Harpies could sometimes destroy way more than that. Also, the counterplay to Harpies was to keep a bare minimum of food in your inventory and leaving most of your food on the ground when you explored Shoals, which was dumb, and Hungry Ghosts don't have that problem.

I'm not a fan of Hungry Ghosts, I would be perfectly okay with their removal, but I don't think they're anywhere near as bad as Harpies were, and they lack the ridiculously tedious counterplay.

[KoboldLord]

Hungry ghosts can straight-up murder you if you let them close to melee. Old-version harpies could also straight-up murder you, but they did it through hit point damage rather than through food destruction. Harpies' ability to destroy food was not actually related to their ability to present a credible threat, so the ability could be removed without actually affecting their threat level in any way. As long as hungry ghosts can directly kill your character with their special ability they are probably a legitimate melee threat, as it puts tactical demands on your management of the situation without unduly affecting your strategic situation.

Whether we need another melee-only threat is another matter, I suppose. Maybe hungry ghosts need to blink close.

[Pollen_Golem]

Whether we need another melee-only threat is another matter, I suppose. Maybe hungry ghosts need to blink close

or have Aura of Voracity, depleting the satiation of every being in sight

[johlstei]

Whether we need another melee-only threat is another matter, I suppose. Maybe hungry ghosts need to blink close

or have Aura of Voracity, depleting the satiation of every being in sight

Merge hungry ghosts and torpor snails and do this - slows you and drains you of sustenance unless you can stop it.

[tasonir]

I haven't really been bothered by hungry ghosts/death cobs. It's a surprise to suddenly be starving, but generally it just means if you're low on food you have to prioritize them, and if you aren't low on food you can consider it to be a one turn paralyse every 4-5 turns as you have to eat a jelly/fruit/something. And that's a significant penalty, but not as bad as a full paralyze, it's pretty far imho. I generally target them early on, but you aren't forced to in most cases. If anything the changes aren't that impactful, but I'm thankful for that, because I don't want a whole bunch of new starving deaths that late in the game (as far as cobs are concerned). It's killed at least a few people, but is generally fair as long as you watch your status lights.

[archaeo]

if you aren't low on food you can consider it to be a one turn paralyse every 4-5 turns as you have to eat a jelly/fruit/something.

Why isn't it just a one-turn stun, then? Why tie it into the food subsystem at all, which just makes you hit some extra buttons to stop being stunned? You don't even have to change the monsters' flavor all that much; just make it a "Putrid Ghost" instead and create AF_NASUEA (or make it a spell) that gives the player a 1-turn "nauseous" stun.

[Bart]

Death cobs fair? They are unfair as hell. Have high EV/SH? Laugh in their face. Have average or better evo (you definitely should)? Laugh in their face. Have high AC, but low EV/SH and met two cobs in open space? Better start teleporting, because you will eat all your rations before you kill one cob.

The monster is unbalanced; sometimes extremely annoying, sometimes dangerous and sometimes just boring. Death cob became an additional reason to carry a wand of paralysis into zot; it accomplishes nothing else.

I suggest giving it MR immunity, omniresistance and LOS hungering attack, because why only some characters are supposed to have fun with it?

[Sprucery]

I would just like to point out that there's nothing wrong with certain monsters being very dangerous for some characters and easier for others. This is already the case with many monsters such as certain uniques and monsters with MR-checking spells, for example.

(Not supporting the new death cobs particularly, though: I play 0.16 and have not seen them yet.)