Redundant monsters

[claws]

Scattershot response:

* Out of this list, I'd argue a few monsters aren't useless:
- Spriggan rider: The basic concept of two monsters, and their combined mr, sinv, hp, and magically allowing spriggans to use a spear and a buckler together isn't completely ignorable. Exaggerating this concept by making giant fireflies not rather plain would easily make this not a pointless monster.
- Cherub: Spreads might amongst other holies! Not ignorable!
- Spider: The basket of spiders trap is unique and amusing if you aren't vehemently against traps in general.
- Baby alligator: Alligator packs would be rather pushing the limitus of danger for swamp, so these dilute it.

* I do agree with good chunks of it, though; for example, I'd love for the fish to become distinct, or the garbage 5s and 4s. Quite a large chunk of the monsters addressed here mostly just fodder kept around at best so that more interesting/stronger monsters aren't continuously spammed, vague flavourful fodder for vaults (which I'm guilty of, myself), or to dilute summoning spells (wolves, crappy 4s/5s, the ghosts). However, I'd argue it's much worse when the level generator spawns them when they're no longer relevant (kobold packs, crocodiles in swamp) or extremely excessive (nothing wrong with skeletal warriors until you kill over 150 of them in one game without visiting the Hells) and thus pointing towards changes needed in monpick.cc as well.

* Most vault defined monsters would start falling into a case-by-case basis of checking each, but they mostly point at wanting to continue the flavor of a set while showing some weakness (if it were up to me I'd just swap out the vampire nobles and mummy warriors in el_kab with regular monsters owning better equipment). Personally, though, I find pure name changes like hungry kobolds, spriggan bakers, and mad/crazed wizards if not exactly necessary, at least mostly harmless in their elicited response. Some of the contestable exceptions to vault defined monsters being redundant or not interesting: crystal guardians, the sewer mermaids/siren, the diamond obelisk.

* Sometimes new monster concepts are combined with old monsters: gila monsters were reborn as basilisks, and the rolling boulder beetle patch on mantis is interesting. These redundant monsters aren't necessarily doomed, it's just much easier to come up with a new monster concept rather then improve old monsters, and it'd be a major shift of monster variety in executioner if such a mass of monsters was removed regardless of said monsters. (Seriously, the Existing Monsters Feedback page on the devwiki is huge, delayed, and ignored; it could use fresh blood.)

[greepish]

I think trying to keep crawl from being spoiler reliant is a lost cause. Here's some things that will kill you outright mid and late game without spoilers, and are completely unintuitive.

-Not knowing Liches can have paralysis or crystal spear
-Not knowing any of a dozen monsters with banishment
-Not knowing any of a dozen monsters with crystal spear
-Not knowing you practically need rF++ to enter zot
-Not knowing you practically need rElec to enter zot
-Not knowing abandoning X god will kill you
-Not knowing Controlled Blink magically works in -cTele, while control teleport + blink doesn't
-Not knowing any of scores of uniques that will flat out kill you if you don't know what they do.
-Not knowing about min delay

And... about 400 other things.

At this point, screw spoiler arguments. Variety wins. You can win crawl completely unspoilered, but you'd have to enjoy losing dozens of 8 hour characters only to start over because you missed one piece of info. Crawl should only be theoretically winnable without spoilers, which it is. If people wanted to code 400 rats, I'd say go for it.

[XuaXua]

Exaggerating this concept by making giant fireflies not rather plain

Secretly randomly apply permanent inner flame on giant fireflies.

Done.

[XuaXua]

Gimmie a monster and I'll tell you how to fix it. One monster at a time.

[dk]

Gimmie a monster and I'll tell you how to fix it. One monster at a time.

Start with Big Fish.

[The Mantis]

This is an incomplete reply to minqmay.

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Vampire Bats:

A Speed 30 vampiric monster with low HP. Each hit drains the enemy, leaving them sickened, and heals the bat. A solid support monster suffering from low damage output.

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Fire bats:


Come in packs.
Deal 66-80% AC-ignoring damage.
Low HP, very high speed, erratic movement. This is a trait of the 'b' genus, with the exception of butterflies and ravens (below).

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Ravens:


Strike multiple times (most flying monsters are just faster than usual).
Flying.

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Gnoll sergeants:


Pack leaders.


Start with a great weapon.
I agree they need differentiation.

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Wolves:


Wolves are fast and dangerous enemies, but when they come in, there are a fair few fast and dangerous enemies. I like their packs.

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Giant slugs:


Giant slugs are slow, powerful enemies. If you're a Spriggan or other low hp race without amazing melee, these are much more painful than Agate Snails (they can do your whole HP). They're sort of like less powerful elephant slugs. If you don't see any reason an elephant slug can kill you (a common and amusing thing people say is 'you can just run away'), play Sprint I.

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Bumblebees:


Fair enough. It is reasonable to say this monster is not sufficiently undifferentiated.
There are high-damage poison creatures - like Spiny Frogs - which do this quite well.


Notable as a normal speed flying monster with poison.

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Riders:


Spriggan riders create a second monster when they are defeated that has a 50% chance of being able to wield weapons.
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Giant fireflies:


Giant fireflies are in, I think, just for spriggan riders. I don't recall ever seeing one outside of this barring polymorphing a HD:3 natural monster.


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Rotting hulks:


Disease branded melee and slow attacks with high HD make this a rarity: a slow monster that is effective at inflicting status.

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Flayed ghost:


Ironically flayed ghosts are unique because they're a normal monster. They don't have any special brand, spells, or melee. AF_BLEEDING should be in~!
Trait of the p genus is undead status, moderate HP and normal speed.

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(
Trait of the r genus is weak single-hit melee and in more powerful cases above-average speed.
)
Grey rats:


These are fast natural monsters made for Lair and Sewer early to go with green and orange rats.

Porcupines:


Porcupines need Spines desperately. They're not even powerful enough for Lair:1. The best place they're used is Tutorial.
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Giant centipedes:


Giant centipedes aren't undifferentiated. They fall into a niche of low damage, high poison enemies which is certainly rare.
Low damage, huge poison.
These are really fatal in Lair with low HP and a monster chasing you - go past one and you might as well already be killed. Of course, it's unlikely you'll actually get killed directly by one.
Trait of the spider genus is poison.

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Spider:


Spiders could be improved by giving them packs in Spider (i.e. spawning them in groups of 5-8).
Pretty low damage, high poison, high speed.
Trait of the spider genus is poison.

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Iron devils:


Iron devils are the upgraded form of iron imps: resisting, high-damage, high AC melee monsters.
Unfortunately they're a 4, so unlike Call Imp from Eustachio getting Iron Imps and giving you pause, these appear basically at the end of the game, since nothing summons 4s just by itself.

[The Mantis]

If you doubt any of my claims here about monster stats, feel free to look for yourself.

I did.

Every monster in the H genus has multiple attacks, and all but two (manticore, minotaur) can fly. And extremely fast monsters functionally "strike multiple times" anyway, so on a monster that's already speed 20 this is mostly under the hood.

Actually, wyverns attack once for 20. It's true that H-genus monsters can fly and have multiple attacks as a rule, I'll edit that in.

They are almost identical to war dogs.

That's true, I did mean that. Edited.

And elephant slugs are the reason giant slugs are redundant. Also, if you factor in their speed they put out less damage than a single yak...they do have better accuracy, but I've never been in Lair with 23 max HP.

Actually, you're oversimplifying. They deal that damage in a single hit, which means that low HP, high AC characters can still take a beating. Like most slow speed monsters, their danger is not alone, but with another opponent.

Look at its stats. It's actually really close to being two regular spriggan monsters taped together.

Were they taped together, one would not occur from the destruction of the other. Unless you're using a very strange adhesive.

You didn't even give me anything to respond to here.

I'll write something.

Why do green and orange rats need something to go with them?

Because you can't kite grey rats at normal speed, and they come in packs?

Yes, not only are there more Lair deaths to a bunch of monsters that don't even generate there, there are more Lair deaths to old item mimics that have specifically chosen to mimic plain clubs.

!lg * killer=giant eyeball

Not particularly dangerous when you enter there. The latter two are vault monsters from the same vault.

Shadow wraiths and eidola.

I stand corrected. Penultimate.

A griffon is just a flatly stronger hippogriff. Not very remarkable considering how dull hippogriffs are in the first place. Wyverns have very little in common; those are much faster.

In fact, a wyvern does twenty damage twice every three turns. So it's between a hippogriff and a griffon in power. I don't deny that they're 'dull', it's just that they're not undifferentiated.

Just like how giant toads were more powerful giant frogs. Guess why giant toads were removed?

Brown oozes only spawn in Slime. They're dull, yes, and undifferentiated. This brings me to my second essential counterstatement, which is that there's no reason to remove something if there's nothing else to fill its niche. That's just worse.

Giant amoeba are corpse-leaving monsters in Slime.
Giant eyeball. Giant orange brain and great orb of eyes if you count mutagenic corpses. And I'm not sure why there should be a corpse-leaving monster in Slime anyway.

Fortunately I omitted any statement implying they were the only corpse-leaving monsters in Slime. Food is nice. Some r/cs need food. Mutagenic corpses don't give nutrition.

Rock trolls and iron trolls are regenerating, high-damage monsters.
You say they're the same, so why not cut one of them like I said? Also, trolls and deep trolls are regenerating, high-damage monsters, but they're normal speed whereas rock/iron trolls are slow.

You didn't say that, you plant. The slow point should be added to the list, I'll do that. Mainly iron trolls differ from rock trolls by the fact that they're metal, with the whole metal resists, so that's a point to be thought of.

Jellyfish deal almost no damage and have enormous status inflicts. If you're vulnerable to these, they might kill you.
You know how I said giant centipedes only have 6 online Lair kills? Jellyfish have a total of 15 online kills across the entire game.

They appear in water. Not many r/cs are comfortable in water. Later, almost every r/c has enough armour to make it very, very unlikely a jelly will ever land a hit for its two applications of poison.

If by "normal" you mean "not dangerous" then yes.

By normal, I mean not a kraken.

Unless you count magic "resistance," metal gargoyles have the exact same resistances as regular gargoyles. Honestly after reading this sentence I strongly suspect your entire post is formulated for the purpose of wasting my time/trolling, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

I had no idea that normal gargoyles even existed.

[dpeg]

Just lost a longer reply, so more brief this time.

1. Reducing fake variety is good. This can come from removing monsters (yes, that has happened before) or changing them (slime creatures, ugly things, catoblepas). Also note that features like trampling, reaching or constriction can turn a mundane monster into an interesting one.

2. minmay's list contains certainly some culprits but will probably not get anything done, if the past is any indicator. I suggest to discuss one monster at a time (or at most a group of related monsters, e.g. rats): Why do they fail right now? Would they be better if moved up? How to add stuff (spell, AI, weapon move etc.) to make them better? If removed, how to replace them? Etc.

3. I don't buy the spoiler motivation (especially greepish's comment on that is ridiculously off the mark) but it is the result that counts.

4. Some general comments: Slow monsters are always problematic; for two good slow monsters see jellies and giant eyes. Difference in resistances, holiness etc. may or may not suffice to distinguish monsters.

5. I am not sure about vault-defined monsters. To me, they're like semi-uniques, which is probably not good.

6. There is a flipside: whenever discussing a new monster, think whether some existing monster could take this place. (This is what happened to catoblepas.)

7. If you want to make sure the discussion leads to anything, copy your results to ##crawl-dev (unread by developers but at least permanent).

[KoboldLord]

Taking the issue to its logical conclusion, we really only need two monsters for the entire game: the abomination, and the wizard abomination. Since all monsters currently in the game and also all monsters that could hypothetically be in the game can all be reduced in concept to either sacks of hp and damage, or to sacks of hp and special abilities, we can just replace all monsters will abominations of varying stats. On D1, you'll fight super-fast flying abominations that hit for 1hp and slightly-fast abominations that can poison you, plus abominations that have glowing weapons. Later on, you can add abominations with all manner of specials.

[greepish]

Taking the issue to its logical conclusion, we really only need two monsters for the entire game: the abomination, and the wizard abomination. Since all monsters currently in the game and also all monsters that could hypothetically be in the game can all be reduced in concept to either sacks of hp and damage, or to sacks of hp and special abilities, we can just replace all monsters will abominations of varying stats. On D1, you'll fight super-fast flying abominations that hit for 1hp and slightly-fast abominations that can poison you, plus abominations that have glowing weapons. Later on, you can add abominations with all manner of specials.

Abomination is kind of derivative of wizard abomination, though. It's just a wizard abomination that always attack rather than attacks and uses abilities.

Edit: In all seriousness, though, if you really want to make crawl less spoiler-reliant you don't need to cut out "redundant" monsters. Just add on the monster examine a string saying roughly how much damage it does and it's highest possible hit points, just like how it estimates its MR (it looks X resistant to hostile enchantments). Either that, or take out MR hints, since if you don't want hints to HP and Damage it makes even less sense to have hints as to something ethereal like MR.

[roctavian]

One thing I posted in a monster suggestion on the Wiki was to think of monsters that can encourage new behaviors/playstyles among players.
So, usually the plan is to take monsters on one-at-a-time as much as possible -- in a corridor if it's not a slime creature, even. Slime creatures were a good way to get characters out of the 1-tile passageways, and catoblepas help do the same. I really like those monsters, even if I also really hate slime creatures on another level.

But it's always advantageous to concentrate your fire on one monster at a time. It always eliminates the source of danger faster than distributing hits over several monsters, AOE aside. What if there were a monster that shows up in packs, deals low Smite damage or bestows some stacking malus, but loses said ability for 3-4 turns each time it's hit? Players can concentrate fire on one at a time, still, but it may be safer to distribute the hits.

Or a monster with a sort of static discharge effect that it's immune to, so a load of them in a line in a passageway can "help" the one in front by sending the damage down the line. Maybe they would also be dangerous to other monsters in the dungeon? Maybe they could replace jellyfish, or be another kind?

[XuaXua]

Just add on the monster examine a string saying roughly how much damage it does and it's highest possible hit points

In believe that is the " dangerous " line, which is determined dynamically in comparison to the player.

[twelwe]

This is a great thread, and it's too bad a dev already dismissed it as being somewhat valid but too broad because each monster was not given a case-by-case treatment. As shown, minmay can give concise explanations when challenged about each monster as to why they are boring, uninteresting, adding no depth at all aside from a false front of "variety" or "flavor." The argument for removing sharks is the same for removing hippogryphs, and the same for removing giant slugs and so on. Certainly, it could be argued that new unique combat effects could spice up certain monsters, but seeing as how slow new features like constriction are implemented, and how subsequently slow they are to tune, I think such a goal is unrealistic. I found the argument about mimics being loot reducers to have a similar problem: the best loot reduction is just reducing loot. Sometimes the most simple answer is the best, and much like mountain dwarves, the monsters from minmay's list add no depth to the game.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Ok, going to run through the list with the own differentiation ideas I have, removing the entries I don't have ideas for.

-Vampire bat (Life drain attacks)
-Fire bat (Fire-branded attack)
-Gnoll sergeant (Probably some sort of rally, inspire allies, or other such abilities to make other Gnolls tougher)
-Wolf (Could periodically howl while chasing the player, attracting other wolves and/or monsters)
-Spriggan rider (I think the point is they're supposed to be two monsters taped together)
-Giant firefly (Give it Corona-inducing attacks regardless of being mounted or unmounted. Could also, alternatively or in addition to, have a small halo of light)
-Flayed ghost (Cause bleeding?)
-Grey rat
-Green rat (I still think all rats should be able to gang up on the player in a corridor by "merging" like slime creatures and getting an attack for each rat in the pack. Inflicting enough damage would kill one or more rats (depending on the damage done), sort of like cutting off hydra heads, except it can leave corpses for each kill).
-Porcupine (Really needs Spines)
-Giant centipede (Well, in a swarm they can cause a deadly dose of poisoning, otherwise they suck. So, maybe make them travel in packs?)
-Baby alligator (If it doesn't already, memory fails me right now, should travel in packs with a regular Alligator(s))
-Giant leech (Needs life-draining attacks)
-Boulder beetle (I heard there's a patch for them to roll. Not sure what effect that does)
-Giant amoeba (Maybe it can sometimes/always split when damaged and, if left alone, the chunks can recombine such as if the player retreats, or even regrow into more fully formed amoeba)
-Two-headed ogre (It should argue with itself! Ok, honestly no serious suggestion here)
-Wood golem (Should take extra damage from axes and also share sheep's Sticky Flame mechanics. Could also spread forest fires too)
-Stone/iron/crystal golems (Perhaps the crystal golem could reflect spells?)
-Toenail golem (While I can't think of anything here, I always found this monster amusing and it'd be a shame to see it go. Maybe Xom should sometimes send these to attack/help the player?)

[greepish]

Just add on the monster examine a string saying roughly how much damage it does and it's highest possible hit points

In believe that is the " dangerous " line, which is determined dynamically in comparison to the player.

I'm not really sure this is good enough. In fact, having it be determined dynamically is much worse, since you don't know the factors involved. Giving a rough estimate, e.g.,

Hydra: "Durable, with multiple strong attacks"
Ettin: "Durable, Multiple Massive attacks"
(Ex-)Giant Toad : "Tough, Singular moderate attack"
AncientLich: "Very Durable, moderate attack"
Antaeus: "Extremely Durable, multiple massive attacks"
Kobold: "Extremely frail, singular very weak attack"


Would go a long ways into making the problem in this thread literally a non-issue.

[njvack]

Giant eyeball. <snip> And I'm not sure why there should be a corpse-leaving monster in Slime anyway.

So you can make Zombie Giant Eyeballs

[KoboldLord]

I'm afraid I simply don't agree that there's a problem at all. In the original post, minmay cites spoiler-reliance as the only reason why "fake variety" is a problem, but memorizing the stats of a bunch of re-skinnings of the same general concept is neither particularly difficult nor particularly useful. Useful monster spoilers tell you about monsters with a quirky special ability that requires you to handle it in a special manner. We can throw an arbitrary throng of generic monsters and it doesn't have any impact on the availability or desirability of spoilers. When you're memorizing the spoilers of wolf-class monsters, for instance, you don't memorize the stats of each individual type, you just memorize the generalities that they tend to move in packs and can sense invisible, and make note of the exceptions that wargs resist poison and hellhounds have a ranged fire attack. If we eliminated all wolf-class monsters except the exceptions, we'd need to remember exactly the same amount of spoiler content.

Non-mechanical variety may not have an impact beyond flavor and verisimilitude, but even though flavor and verisimilitude should not take precedence over mechanical concerns this doesn't mean that flavor and verisimilitude are themselves problems to correct. In the absence of a mechanical disadvantage for having flavor and verisimilitude, it is preferable to have flavor than to not have flavor. Accordingly, when cleaning up the monster list we should do so constructively rather than destructively. Replacing gila monsters with basilisks is a constructive change, since basilisks serve an additional purpose that gila monsters did not. Removing brown frogs and replacing them with nothing is a destructive change, and since all it means is that we get more generic yak spawns we might as well have kept the status quo.

Making the game pretty is not very interesting from a coding perspective, but nevertheless it is an important part of game design. Most players prefer fighting a variety of monsters, even if there's not much difference between these monsters under the hood. It's 'cool' to fight your way through an entire throng of demons to get to the summoner, even if most of these 4s and 5s aren't particularly dangerous. It's more fun to fight through packs of elephants, death yaks, blink frogs, and also loads of individual hydrae, black mambas, and spiny frogs than it is to fight through packs of elephants, more packs of elephants, even more elephant packs, plus some solo elephants, some lone elephants, and some elephants that happen to be alone. Even though all of these things are sacks of hit points that have damage output.

[njvack]

An unspoiled player cannot readily identify whether a monster is yet another useless reskin or has some special or dangerous quality. They need to learn that from their experience fighting them, and that's easier if there are fewer monsters.

Three things should clue players in to monsters with dangerous abilities: the difficulty warning should be yellow or red for "dangerous for your level" monsters, special monster abilities should always be at least hinted at in the monster description, and the monster's name, glyph color, and tile should suggest special-ness.

I think we should be able to expect players to read monster descriptions and to be able to guess that a "hell hound" is likely to not just be a reskinned hound.

Where monster descriptions are too opaque or unclear, they should definitely be improved -- and they are as time goes by.

[varsovie]

I do think monsters with similar behavior but not the same strength is good, to scale with the deep of the dungeon (jackal, wolf, barg, yaks, death yak...). Or even the same purpose if they are in different parts of the dungeons for flavor. (orcs as main fighter group type of units in orc, with ogre deeper and skeletons in crypt and elf warriors in elf ...)

But some monsters are irrelevant because actually they are used at the same time as other monsters with the same stats as other monsters generated in the same places (wolf/wardog) or are simply ineffective (I died once by a giant centipede, but it was because of the horde of elephants thumping me next to it, could happen with a bat).

So I agree with the main point of Minmay, too much duplication for nothing is bad, but not because of spoilers, because you don't start memorizing that each kind of rats is weak... you only retain that the orc priest can and will smith you twice.
And your point of making the game easier for spoilerless gamer is undone by the fact that you also suggest adding capacities to differentiate the monsters.

And speaking of capabilities, give the wolf a howl that cause an increase chance of miscasting a spell (with a message like, The howl cover your voice), give the giant toad a reaching thong attack that could rob on of your wands and randomly use it, make the phantasmal warrior totally immune to projectiles, keep the wooden golem only for (possible futur) the wood branch, make the gnoll sergeant a little bit harder (25% more HP), but when killed every gnoll on sight get frightened, the giant amoeba could "learn/absorb" every spell in its view, and release them latter, the giant firefly could have an heal spell (and for flavor/spoil be killed by heal other from evylon)... and for other that we don't find anything to differentiate (toenail golem O_o), kick them.

And I also see in the list a lot of water/based monsters, they should be discussed on another thread because they all need special condition to be interesting.

[jejorda2]

What if there was a monster-ID game kind of like the potion and scrolls game, so spoilers and experience were less useful and nobody would be well served to memorize the monsters or look them up in the bots?

When you come up againast a skagornok, a grizzelboo, and a gloorpy skagornok, you wouldn't know where there's a gnoll, orc warrior, and gnoll sergeant or green rat, orange rat, and grey rat. You'd get to learn it again every time, and there'd be no incentive for tediously learning about which monsters are redundant and which aren't.

Tiles and glyphs can be randomly assigned.

[KoboldLord]

If we're talking about actual new players I was actually disappointed whenever I found a new monster and discovered it didn't do anything cool. When I fought bumblebees for the first time, my thoughts went something like "Wow, what a pointless monster," and it made me think slightly less of the game and its developers. Same for spectral warriors (that's what they were called then), the bears, non-plain trolls, etc.
Obviously not every player has the same experience, but obviously not every player has KoboldLord's either.

Furthermore, monsters get removed all the time for redundancy (plain bears, giant toads, etc.) so this isn't exactly inconsistent with development goals.

Oh, I agree that many of the monsters in your list are pointless inclusions. I just disagree that the problem is serious enough to focus on correcting, and I strongly disagree that cutting random monsters is an effective way to do that.

Yes, when you run into a semi-obscure monster that doesn't do anything special, it is certainly reasonable to decide that the monster is obscure because it is lame. It's also reasonable to decide that the monster is interesting because it is obscure. Ultimately, that reaction is going to come down to the player's personality and mood, which is going to be different for everybody.

However, ultimately there's going to be a lot of monsters in the game that don't do anything interesting for a given character. That won't always be the same monsters; a hydra is a dire threat to an axe-fighter and probably the highlight of that particular level of Lair, but that hydra is still nondescript roadkill to an ice elementalist. Even as an ice elementalist, I'd rather see some non-threatening hydrae mixed into the elephant packs because endless waves of elephants get boring after a while.

Furthermore, interesting monsters are interesting at least in part because they do something that the player doesn't have to deal with every fight. Cutting out all the mundane monsters just sets whatever is the most common encounter of the monsters left over as the new mundane. Orc priests are interesting because they do their quirky attack that ignores line of effect, but if we took out all the mundane ranged attackers that don't ignore line of effect, smiting would be the new baseline. Players might kvetch about how unfair it is that all monsters seem to shoot right past their allies when the player hardly ever can, but they'll adjust their play and orc priests will lose their specialness.

[XuaXua]

Gimmie a monster and I'll tell you how to fix it. One monster at a time.

Start with Big Fish.

I already started with fireflies (above).

For big fish, make them like catfish, where their entire mouth can take in and hold a limb. If the player is attacked by one it has specialized constriction where it randomly incapacitates an arm (or leg in water) of the player who cannot move away from the water without strength. Even with strength, the fish might be dragged along. This makes the fish dangerous with groups. The limb is swallowed, but not severed, but it is rendered useless. Big fish can eat a buckler arm or a small weapon arm or an unhorned head or a leg. The player pretty much has to attack the fish and nothing else.

Next.

[Zelkelion]

I don't see the problem here. When I run into a group of gnolls and a gnoll sergeant, that in itself is interesting. Because I almost never see them. It doesn't need to have a special ability or dangerous spells, it's just nice to see a little variety. For me, I just assume that it's a gnoll leading the pack of gnolls through the dungeon rather than a bunch of gnolls wandering around.

When I first found and defeated a bumblebee, I didn't think "Wow, that was boring", I thought, "I am so glad that wasn't a swarm of killer bees".

The Big Fish is actually one of the toughest things some of my characters fight in the Sewers. It seems to have good defenses in comparison to other critters at that point and it will flee and hide when in danger.

I could understand if this was a game-breaking issue, but this is just not something I would ask other people to work on when there are other things they might like or want to work on. This seems like work for the sake of working.

[rebthor]

Maybe Giant centipede should appear earlier than lair, where poison can actually be dangerous? Alternatively it could hide under items and attack with strong poison when you pick something up.

[Not named John]

I agree with KL that there is something to be said for flavor as such.

It would be nice to have more variety and mosters with cooler abilities, but, failing that, having different monsters is better. I think that viewing this as a "spoiler problem" completely misdiagnoses the problem. The real issue is the lack of variety, although superficial variety is better than no variety at all, which is why simply removing creatures will only make the problem worse.

And superficial variety doesn't just mean "Yak with a different name," but also stuff like "Yak with a different name and a flame-branded attack that does 10 damage more if you don't have rF." Shoehorning small differences in damage doesn't add good variety, which consists in monster abilities that make you change tactics. A "Fire Yak" is still gonna get blasted by mages and hacked by fighters. But if, instead of a flame-branded attack, the "Fire Yak" sometimes exploded with a Scroll of Immolation-style effect when killed, or automatically counterattacked (as a free action) ranged spells and weapons with a flame blast which it otherwise didn't use, suddenly our Fire Yak is tactically interesting.

If we are going to spend the time reviewing monsters and considering changes, then let's make sure we have monsters that add deep variety. Varsovie's ideas (like a wolf howl that disrupts spellcasting) are great examples, or rebthor's idea about having giant centipedes appear (like trapdoor spiders) when you pick up items. (Maybe they get a free attack when they appear, as well, and can stack poison damage more quickly than they do now?)


Another idea to consider is adding more attributes that affect "sets" of monsters. For instance, maybe all "metal" monsters (golems, iron dragons, etc.) leave corpses that make traversing the tile they died on more difficult (strength check as you "climb atop the rubble heap" or "climb down the rubble heap"), until they naturally rot, or they are hacked up, or blown apart by something. (Of course, in order to hack them up if you have to climb on them first, then "c"hop." This won't work for Iron Imps, but those guys should stay on the basis of the fact that they are somewhat meaty guys that players and enemy spellcasters can attain with the spells Summon Imp and Demonic Horde.

(And this points to another important fact that we should be sensitive to: some monsters earn their place in Crawl not by being different compared to other enemies like them that can spawn in the same place, but by filling a different kind of niche. Removing Iron Imps would make certain enemy and player spells less interesting, for instance.)