The Tavern

imps and phantoms blinking randomly means that if they are a threat to you, you get a free escape almost all the time, and if they are not a threat to you, you will kill them but it will be more annoying than it should be.

blink frogs maybe are different because being fast and spawning in a pack means some of them will often blink and move in a way that intercepts your escape.

maybe imps should also be fast and spawn in packs.

monsters and uniques with spells and ranged weapons who blink are good.

phantoms are just boring though and i wouldn't miss them.

(plain) imps could alternatively be improved by giving them all a stack of like 20+ stones or some other low-tier ranged attack

While we're on the subject of blink frogs, can their weird nethacky distortion resistance either be removed or be listed in their resistances in xv (apologies if this has been changed since the last time I examined a blink frog)?

Strong agree. Worth mentioning the red devil hop here too. If for some reason you're fighting these things and they're dangerous (almost never) it does nothing. If they're not dangerous (almost always), it is purely annoying, right out of the "roguelikes are supposed to be bad" school of design.

Hellmonk wrote:While we're on the subject of blink frogs, can their weird nethacky distortion resistance either be removed or be listed in their resistances in xv (apologies if this has been changed since the last time I examined a blink frog)?

I vote remove. Now that there are plenty of other Abyss-unique monsters (as opposed to when Abyss was Yet More Demons And Draconians), it's thematically out of place. Not to mention the sound gameplay reasons for removing (single-monster resistance, hard to communicate to the player, etc).

It would be an improvement to have blinking enemies, especially crimson imps and phantoms regenerate slowly, or not at all.

I really feel like phantoms have no reason to exist. Crimson Imps are mostly harmless nuisances, but at least you can argue that maybe they help teach some sort of lesson about blinking monsters or monsters that are easier to run away from than kill or whatever.

But phantoms are just harder undead crimson imps. They're 100% nuisance, and there's no argument about them teaching new players anything because crimson imps already exist. Why are they still in the game?

Imps are a starter book summon, having blink there makes them deliberately unreliable for e.g. blocking off a corridor. Blink frogs are fine as a characteristic threat of Lair though their description could mention their interaction with distortion.

Phantoms I can't make a tenable defence for.

Psieye wrote:Imps are a starter book summon, having blink there makes them deliberately unreliable for e.g. blocking off a corridor.

This doesn't mean they need to exist as an actual, non-summon enemy.

Give phantoms 'blink close' instead, in effect making them faster.

Or give them regen, so they actually do something with that time off they get from melee.

Shtopit wrote:Or give them regen, so they actually do something with that time off they get from melee.

That would make the problem worse. I don't think anybody here is interested in prolonging fights against phantoms. Now if they didn't regen at all, then at least the fight would have a foreseeable end.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:Give phantoms 'blink close' instead, in effect making them faster.

Phantoms hit kind of hard to be difficult or impossible to escape. Might as well forget about playing characters that rely on killing things at range instead of hp and conventional defenses.

e: Blink close is tactically not so good because it makes monsters into a question of whether you have the defenses and dps to take it on at melee range. It removes tactics from the equation, unless you have a way to hit the monster while it's out of line of sight. Makes more sense to ask why this exists later in the game than to add it to the early game.

I'm always surprised at how much damage Phantoms can do early on when they actually stay near and hit me instead of blinking away.

Phantoms actually only hit for 10. That's less than an orc with a short sword, and only marginally more than a giant frog (speed 15).

The big difference is probably that phantoms are quite durable. They are tougher than ogres for example.

Still, even with blink close, they would still only have speed 10, and most characters would have consumables and escape options. Phantoms aren't that common. If it's really a problem, then they could just lose some HP.

If their blink were activated by hurting them and forcing them to get out of melee range, it would make more sense from a game perspective than "I hit you, ergo I blink, cos why not." Maybe it would make them too weak?

Phantoms could be given an early version of rakshasas' cloning ability. They'd produce clones that hit for zero damage, with 1HP, 0AC and 0EV. But these clones also blink, and perhaps phantoms have a special spell that's Blink Close + Blink Allies Encircling. Think this.

Phantoms have a bad depth for blink allies encircling -- there isn't as much margin for error as there is for characters doing lair branches. They'd shut down centaurs or whatever by blocking line of fire/forcing them into melee range. Almost worth kiting around for some characters. On the other hand, they might pull some ogres or orc warriors or whatever into melee, and cut off avenues of escape, and that would be utterly disastrous for other characters. It would teach players the wrong lesson: "it is good to leave some monsters alive in Crawl, because they help you sometimes, even if they occasionally kill you."

i think ion meant a special blink allies spell that affected only the phantom clones of the proposed revised phantom

yesno wrote:i think ion meant a special blink allies spell that affected only the phantom clones of the proposed revised phantom

That is what I meant, yeah. It would be an early introduction to other monsters with cloning mechanics. An interesting addition might be to make it so that destroying a clone gives the phantom an immediate riposte-type attack if it's in melee range (or just any immediate action, be it blinking, moving, etc).

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Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Remove or reform some blinking monsters

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Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

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Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters

Re: Remove or reform some blinking monsters