The Tavern

Right now Hornets can 1 shot you by paralyzing and then killing you while paralyzed.
They can do this even if you have poison resist and magic resist.

My suggestion is change it to a slow or make poison resist make you immune to it. I suspect rpois helps a bit but still lets you get 1 shot by a lucky roll.
Weaker characters focused on dodge instead of armor like octopodes/cats/any dodge build can easily get wrecked by this.

I thought rPois prevents the paralysis... has this changed?

Yes it checks rpois, they aren't tarantellas.
On one hand hornets with their paralysis thing are kinda silly enemy, on the other hand they're weak by the time they're legit spawn so whatever.

ood hornet is scary.

Are there examples of games where a non-OOD hornet one-shot a character from full health? It seems possible but exceptionally unlikely.

While hornets are fast and have high defenses and decent hp and damage, they have only 40 MR so I'd say that any death from their puncture is more a player fault than a case of 'unavoidable\spoilery paralysis is a stupid mechanism'

rpois certainly does not prevent paralysis.

Here is an example character I lost to a hornet, I was fighting him on the steps. He paralyzed me and killed me from full health.
I lost all my shield and dodge instantly making me an easy target. I had rpois on a ring. I died before the paralyze ended. With no dodge or shield it only takes a second.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/mdona ... 081511.txt

I am sure I could have played it better and not died, but that is true for every character who ever died and not really the problem that I think we need to address.

Sorry, my fault, I was 100% sure hornet paralysis was resisted by rpois. I agree that could get some rework.

And I'm putting hornet right below to 'tarantella' in my stupid monster tier list, just because I prefer paralysis to chain confusion

The problem here aren't the hornets, but the paralysis mechanic itself that allows for guaranteed death in many circumstances as you helplessly tab through the messages. All it takes is a failed resist (MR also), or not - you can be paralyzed by a chaos brand also with no MR check. It's a hardcore punishment for any character trying to not play with high AC, something which is already made too difficult.

The problem here aren't the hornets, but the paralysis mechanic itself that allows for guaranteed death in many circumstances as you helplessly tab through the messages. All it takes is a failed resist (MR also), or not - you can be paralyzed by a chaos brand also with no MR check. It's a hardcore punishment for any character trying to not play with high AC, something which is already made too difficult. The remedy to never let anything with paralysis hit you in melee range is a nonsensical argument, it just isn't very realistic. Oh, then there are the abyss blob things and eyeballs which don't even need to melee you to paralyze you, and bypass all resistances of all forms. It seems just like a cheap mechanism to boost player death levels, or a gear-check for certain areas.

Complaints about how paralyze works have been voiced before, so this isn't anything new, they just never got anywhere.

I can confirm, I play primarily Octopodes and hornets are basically satan until you have statue form or something similiar.

Of course, they have weaknesses and are hexable/easy to kill from range, but hornets remain an existential threat in melee for the entire game, unlike high AC characters which can just not care about them beyond late dungeon or so.

rPois has a 2/3 chance of preventing the paralysis or slowing.

I die to hornets maybe once every 100 games. They're a rare enemy in dungeon and usually not that hard to kill from a distance for range characters, while any character that chooses to fight them in close combat will generally have high enough armor to survive paralysis. Paralysis in general kills many more characters, but it's the range paralysis that is most dangerous.

On the other hand, I have gotten one shot by a stone giant rock for 58 damage with 19 or so armor from max range in the mines. That felt just a little more ridiculous, considering a character with less armor would've died in the same situation with 70 health or more, and you almost can't avoid facing stone giants before you get 100 health.

I think high armor characters in this game are at a huge advantage in almost every situation. It's why octopodes have such a low win rate - either you find a way to raise your armor hard before level 15, or you're basically dead. From a challenge race perspective, it's fine, but there are many situations where it doesn't feel fair.

Octopode isn't as hard as you think, you can easily win one without spells or much AC.

Just this specific interaction with hornets doesn't feel feel 'intended'. (i.e. are hornets made to be a potential game-ender for low AC characters, or is this an undesirable emergent characteristic? )

I don't think a stone giant large rock can do more than 65 damage, unless you're wearing harm or something.

I think that from a game design viewpoint paralysation either should not remove your EV, or should also remove your AC, but in any way, should affect all defences equally. Right now if paralysation is an ok threat to builds with AC, it is too strong against EV builds, and if it is ok against EV, it is too weak against AC builds.

I understand that this would be strange from a flavour point of view.

Paralysation shouldn't remove +EV from items, as that magic should still work even when the player is paralysed.

So it's an MR check that also checks poison resistance?

You are allowed to keep it in the game, but only if you put how absurd the mechanic is in the 'v' description.

Hornets don't check MR.