The Tavern

At the moment there are, I believe, only a few monsters with sticky flame resistance, mottled drakes/draconians, and any monster on the W glyph. This is really terrible because it only affects one spell, and is communicated literally no where, in no way, aside from the player losing a turn if they try to cast sticky flame at one of these monsters. I would, at the very least, like it if sticky flame resistance was added to the xv screen.

there is a clutter concern with the current xv screen; a warning when you cast sticky flame at such a monster may suffice, though?

FR: Remove sticky flame resistance, give some of those monsters rF+

Seems like a fair number of these rare or invisible resistances/vulnerabilities should be either made more relevant, or removed entirely.

A few of them have been brought up lately, but there's:

-Sticky flame resistance. Only a few monsters have it, or use it. Rare hell effect. And only provided to the player by MDA.

-Airstrike vulnerability/shatter resistance. Flight is used by a lot of monsters, and a lot of players (at least on occasion). Adds hidden vulnerability to the handful of monsters that use Airstrike, and to a single player spell, as well as hidden resistance to a rare player and monster spell.

-Steam resistance. Steam is only used by a few monsters, can't be (directly) used by players, and created as an incidental by fire/water interactions. It's intrinsically possessed by rare characters and rare enemies, and made effectively irrelevant by fire resistance.

-Acid resistance. Very few monsters use acid/are acidic, and the player only accesses acid through a wand and an artefact. Only has noticeable relevance in Slime, and has hidden interaction with the slime walls.

-Asphyxiation. Rare effect (drowning, curare, etc.), rare resistance (nonbreathing).

Maybe also:
-Hellfire resistance. Hellfire's available to a number of monsters, but only available to players through two rare unrandarts. Resistance to it is pretty ubiquitous in parts of the game where hellfire is common, but not available to the player in any form.

Seems like these rare or undisclosed damage sources/resistances should be either elaborated on, or removed. rElec, for example, is on the character screen and has been made more and more relevant.
Other thoughts?

Give applicable monsters a category of "incorporeal" or "insubstantial" or "a ghost" or something similar, meaning they can't be sticky flamed, aren't affected by shatter, and anything else that only applies to ghosts etc. Just like flying things are not additionally said to be "vulnerable to airstrike".

edit: to be clear, I mean on xv like flying, not where it already exists... (though I didn't know it existed because Gretell doesn't mention it; it only says they all have resistance: napalm)

There is indeed a flag called insubstantial. These monsters are undead or nonliving, with the exception of smoke demons. list of rSticky monsters. Apparently you can sticky-flame starcursed masses but not wretched stars.

this exists and is totally impossible to predict or discover in game.

I cant believe there is space in my brain dedicated to knowing this very useful information.

Hey, incorporeal monsters aren't immune to sticky flame, they take damage when you cast it. It just doesn't do the sticky part.

Shouldn't incorporeal things be immune to most damage? I mean, your sword should just pass through. Maybe they're solid enough to provide some resistance to your sword, and the flames pass through them and hurt them, but by the next turn the flame's on the floor - what is there to stick to?

It's like no one thought this bad mechanic through or something.

it does make sense to me - they are somewhat like a non-newtonian fluid. Hit them, and they're solid. But place something onto them, and it falls through.

but why should sticky-flame not work against ghosts and shit, from a gameplay standpoint, not a "flavor that could be argued either way" standpoint

so why can't I slowly move into a ghost's square

because you can't move slowly enough to do that

Incoming chei buff!

Squares are weird. Why can't I stand over a rat? Or a cockroach? I get that it's "giant", but if it's the size of a felid or smaller, I can't see it ever being an obstacle to anything larger than a halfling, let alone a troll.