Remove/reform written description of MR level

[and into]

This is a minor point, but this has bothered me for a little while.

For a long time, and at least as of 0.17, players with two pips of MR have been described in game as being "very resistant," and three pips as "extremely resistant." (Apologies if this has been changed in 0.18, haven't played it yet because Mac offline Tiles version is still not working....)

While there is a subjective element in terms of how exactly one interprets "very" and "extremely," the current word choice strikes me as rather misleading. I think most people would reasonably expect to avoid the vast majority of hostile enchantments if their MR level is described as "very resistant."

I'd propose either removing the written descriptions of MR level, as they are not necessary now that the character screen displays MR pips. If the descriptions stay, I would suggest at the very least changing them to something like the following:

----- Not resistant to hostile enchantment
*---- Slightly resistant
**--- Somewhat resistant
***-- Quite resistant
****- Very resistant
***** Almost entirely resistant

[Arrhythmia]

You can avoid the vast majority of hostile enchantments at 3 pips though.

[duvessa]

Why is there still a description at all, now that there's a bar? Players don't get called "resistant to fire", "very resistant to fire", etc.

[genericpseudonym]

"Quite resistant" is probably a poor choice for a description because "quite" means very different things in different dialects of English.

[and into]

Yes, that's why I suggested removal over change, even careful wording might be misleading, and the information is better presented already as a bar.

[Sprucery]

Yeah, just remove the verbal description, it is just a leftover from when there were no pips shown.

(Apologies if this has been changed in 0.18, haven't played it yet because Mac offline Tiles version is still not working....)

What seems to be the problem? I've been playing 0.18.1 offline tiles on my Mac for a while now.

[Brannock]

"Quite resistant" is probably a poor choice for a description because "quite" means very different things in different dialects of English.

In that case "resistant" (by itself) seems sufficient for 3 pips.

Anyway I don't mind either direction (reword or remove) to solve this problem.

[Rast]

Just use numbers already.

[andreas]

Just use numbers already.

Agreed. Three pips is anyway a number already, of course... just a less clear number than could be used.

[ion_frigate]

I'm usually in favor of numbers. MR calculations are so arcane that I think numbers would confuse the issue more, not less.

It's intuitive that an attack does up to 35 damage in one hit, or that rF+ provides 50% resistance to fire. This:

  Code:

(magic resistance + 100 - the spells power) is compared to ( random2(100) + random2(101) ) and if the random numbers are less the spell is negated

is not intuitive. Chance to affect a monster, chance for a spell to affect you - those are good. But MR itself goes into such a bizarre calculation that it's useless by itself; in addition to the formula not being particularly simple (no, it's not going to stump you, but it's going to make you stop and do some addition), it depends on three magic numbers (+100, random2(100), random2(101)) in addition to another number that the player will have to look up (spell power).

We should either use better qualifiers, or overhaul the system completely.

[genericpseudonym]

On the other hand, revealing numbers seems relatively more important with something like MR because despite what the UI shows there's not just 5 discrete levels, and in any case they can already figure out the number by looking at a monster's chance to affect them with some hex.

Or alternately just change MR to a pip system and make it impossible to gain a fraction of a pip by leveling. Instead of getting 3 MR per level, humans get one pip (which is 40 MR) at levels 14 and 27. But this is a pretty big reduction for most of the game so MR gain would maybe have to be rebalanced.

[ion_frigate]

We don't show exact spell power either - it's a case where the numbers just aren't directly meaningful enough to be useful.

Though looking at that formula again, I'm realizing it's basically just comparing spell power to MR, with some fuzzing thrown in. So perhaps a non-word scale could be made meaningful: by displaying it exactly the same way we display MR (complete with stepdowns). That way, if you have a hex at ####...... and you see a monster with ###....... for MR, you know you have a >50% chance of affecting it. This should definitely be made clear in the documentation somewhere, but I think it's a pretty intuitive and useful display.

[dynast]

You can avoid the vast majority of hostile enchantments at 3 pips though.

True, i also dont know any enemies who have a hex that can bypass 4 pips(maybe pan lords do), let alone 5. I think max mr could be 3 pips.

[dowan]

I think sentinals have a 1% chance to mark you with 4*. And that's 1% in evil RNG, meaning it happens a lot more often than 1 out of 100 times, in my experience which is definitely not colored by conformation bias, no sir.

[dynast]

I think sentinals have a 1% chance to mark you with 4*. And that's 1% in evil RNG, meaning it happens a lot more often than 1 out of 100 times, in my experience which is definitely not colored by conformation bias, no sir.

I dare say its the same odds as paralyse(1% at 3pips), though i could be wrong, since that son of a ***** always manages no mark you.

[genericpseudonym]

Aliches are IIRC the highest-HD monster with an actual hex other than randlords, and their paralyse is 72 power. Unless other spells have much higher power, 172 MR (just barely above 4 pips) should be enough for immunity to everything.

For some reason the knowledge bots don't show monsters' enchant power and the wiki only does for paralyse though, so maybe other spells are easier to land.

[PleasingFungus]

MPA removed these this morning.

[PleasingFungus]

Aliches are IIRC the highest-HD monster with an actual hex other than randlords, and their paralyse is 72 power. Unless other spells have much higher power, 172 MR (just barely above 4 pips) should be enough for immunity to everything.

For some reason the knowledge bots don't show monsters' enchant power and the wiki only does for paralyse though, so maybe other spells are easier to land.

other spells do have higher power than paralyse.

  Code:

static int _mons_power_hd_factor(spell_type spell, bool random)
{
    switch (spell)
    {
        case SPELL_CONFUSION_GAZE:
            if (random)
                return 5 * (2 + random2(3)) * ENCH_POW_FACTOR;
            return 5 * (2 + 1) * ENCH_POW_FACTOR;

        case SPELL_CAUSE_FEAR:
            return 18 * ENCH_POW_FACTOR;

        case SPELL_SENTINEL_MARK:
            return 16 * ENCH_POW_FACTOR;

        case SPELL_SAP_MAGIC:
        case SPELL_MESMERISE:
            return 10 * ENCH_POW_FACTOR;

        case SPELL_MASS_CONFUSION:
            return 8 * ENCH_POW_FACTOR;

        case SPELL_SLEEP:
        case SPELL_AGONY:
        case SPELL_STRIP_RESISTANCE:
        case SPELL_VIRULENCE:
        case SPELL_DRAIN_MAGIC:
        case SPELL_DIMENSION_ANCHOR:
            return 6 * ENCH_POW_FACTOR;
...

(default is 4 * ENCH_POW_FACTOR; ench spellpower is HD * power_hd_factor / ENCH_POW_FACTOR, or 200, whichever is less.)

4 pips of mr gives near-immunity to almost all enchantments in practice, but you do seem to need 5* to get from 1-2% hex chance down to 0 on the very highest power hexes. the MR/2 effect (phantasmal warrior melee, enchantress hex) do also provide some small added benefit to having higher MR. (note that the Strip Resistance spell has a 1/3 chance of ignoring MR entirely.)