Post Saturday, 18th November 2017, 02:23

Torment proposal

Switch torment into a chant which takes a randomized number of turns to complete, say 2 or rarely sometimes 3.

Why change torment?
Torment requires fairly specific tactics to neutralize. You can be undead, gargoyle, be a lucky demonspawn, use necromutation, worship mak kiku or tso. Failing those methods, it practically renders every other form of defense nearly useless. 400 health, lots of ac, evasion, shields, resists.... they all amount to barely anything, potentially in no time at all. This pushes games to do extended, which is currently a huge portion of the game into similar configurations for every game. I appreciate difficulty, but prefer difficulty that you have some time to react to and comes in more varied forms. Currently if you happen to get tormented a few times and a hellfire or smite or anything to tip the scales, you can go from full strength to dead instantly.

Why change torment to a chant?
It leaves it still a potent device to affect any characters with very strong defenses (but not against torment), but gives time to react. This allows for other tactical ways of dealing with torment, so player skill can have more impact.

What about impact on difficulty of extended?
A change like this would certainly make extended easier, so, in addition I would suggest tweaking some other things (besides torment) to be more difficult. For starters, the gobs of silly, easy monsters could be ramped up to be more difficult. Hordes of popcorn undead in hell, I'm looking at you.