Smooth out Naga AC bonus and give Mummy some


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Temple Termagant

Posts: 8

Joined: Thursday, 10th April 2014, 22:35

Post Saturday, 13th July 2019, 14:39

Smooth out Naga AC bonus and give Mummy some

Naga currently starts with 0 and deformed body, combined with size dodge penalty, resulting in the lowest defence stats among all species in D1.
Change to +3 at start, like have-it-all Ce, and +1 every 4 or 5 XL would smooth the early game somewhat without breaking anything.

Monster mummies barring normal ones have no rF-. Player's retain the vulnerability all game, despite being more powerful than even a greater monstrous one.
Removing it at the same time as getting the first necro enhancer, that is XL13, would mitigate the extremes of RNG while remedy the above disparity.

A more radical proposal is to give Mu AC bonus that starts at +2 and grows 2 by receiving each enhancer, equivalent to lich form's +6 at XL26.
Both normal monstrous lich and greater mummy have 10AC, so the parity is there.
Mu can use a handout or two, plus it is neat and tidy to have Mu as Hu paying XP for perma lich form instead of just the worst species.
Best of all, Mu is still terrible no matter what.

Yes, I play Na and Mu a lot.
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Halls Hopper

Posts: 66

Joined: Thursday, 20th March 2014, 13:09

Post Saturday, 13th July 2019, 15:26

Re: Smooth out Naga AC bonus and give Mummy some

I've been playing almost exclusively mummy these last few months and feel the complete opposite about fire resistance. Starting with rf- feels really terrible, but as soon as you have one reliable source of rf+ it's not bad at all. Fire resistant gear is common enough that compensating for it in the later part of the game is no problem. It's the pre-lair orc wizard puffs of flame and branded reaching weapons rending you that make it bad.

If there is going to be a change to mummy rf it needs to be at the start, something like a starting ring of fire resistance to make pre-lair more consistent would make them much less painful to start playing, without giving them buffs late game when the players options expand and the game softens up.

Also throw that ac idea right out the window

bel

Cocytus Succeeder

Posts: 2184

Joined: Tuesday, 3rd February 2015, 22:05

Post Saturday, 13th July 2019, 18:02

Re: Smooth out Naga AC bonus and give Mummy some

Nagas do really suck in early game. Apart from the things mentioned in the OP, they're slow.

I did an analysis of Naga games from 0.22 using the difficulty measure outlined here. Here's the plot. I would say that both the early game and the later game difficulty are non-ideal.

From reading old crawl-dev logs, it seems that Naga constriction at XL1 was removed because it was felt that since they're already a strong late-game species, they shouldn't be made a strong early-game species as well. However, this change may have twisted the dial far too much in the other direction.

So some kind of Naga early game buff looks good. Giving Nagas +3 AC seems ok. Draconians start with +4 AC and Nagas would still be weaker than Draconians in the early game (because Nagas are slow). Or you can give Nagas some kind of tail slap or venomous bite aux attack. Maybe they could once again start with constriction.

As for Mummy, I have the impression that it's meant to suck, to provide a "challenge species". So I have no comment.
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cliffracer

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 139

Joined: Saturday, 10th January 2015, 22:27

Post Saturday, 13th July 2019, 19:48

Re: Smooth out Naga AC bonus and give Mummy some

Nagas definitely could do with a couple extra points of AC or something, just to get them over the initial "slow and helpless" stage. Whether constriction would be too much of a buff really just depends on where people think they should be on the difficulty scale. It'd make them significantly easier than they are now in some ways, but given the impact of the "slow" drawback, that might be perfectly justifiable.

Mummies...actually, I don't think their early-game is too bad, all things considered. Their skills are crap, but they have the usual advantage of being able to run away, and there aren't really any early-game enemies that rely heavily on fire damage (even orc wizards and such use things besides throw flame). If anything, I'd rather they get something more general-purpose than the necromancy enhancer, and that comes along well after the early-game.

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 41

Joined: Wednesday, 14th March 2018, 00:31

Post Saturday, 13th July 2019, 20:08

Re: Smooth out Naga AC bonus and give Mummy some

Thinking about nagas as a species I'd agree that they start out weaker than average and end up stronger, and I'm glad bel came through with actual numbers to show this. My general opinion is that species should maintain around the same relative difficulty (i.e. even if the game becomes easier, minotaurs and gargoyles should be easier at all levels and mummies and felids should be harder).

Switching Naga to +3 and +1 per 4 levels from +0 and +1 per 3 levels sounds like a good idea, especially given that AC helps pretty much all naga types. It might even be good to switch to +3 and +1 per 5 levels (+3 at the start, -1 at the end) given how the post-barding game is lopsided in the opposite way.

Alternatively, given their specific and swingy nature I wonder if bardings could just be folded into species bonuses entirely

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Saturday, 13th July 2019, 21:42

Re: Smooth out Naga AC bonus and give Mummy some

species screen: "They move slowly but are naturally resilient."
game: worse starting AC+EV than ogre or octopode

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bel, byrel, nago

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