Early Distortion Brands on Monsters

[Alphaeus]

Sooo...

I've come to realize that Distortion brands are (generally) vastly too powerful for early monsters to have. Generally speaking, to make matters worse they appear in the hands of uniques that also can blink/move fast (Sonja, Psyche, etc), worsening the problem. The brand reliably does ridiculous levels of damage, and even if it does no damage a single hit can hurl a low XL player into the Abyss...which, unless there is a lucky gate spawn, means death.

Now, I like the challenge of meeting monsters too powerful, and having to avoid them or fight them creatively, etc., but I have grown tired of having great builds die because I can't deal with a monster.

Take my last run...Sonja spawns. Fine. I'll move away. Sonja blinks to beside me. Also fine, I'll have to melee. Quaff a potion of agility to make being hit less likely, then use a lucky +5 Morningstar to attack. Despite high skills, Sonja refuses to die, instead doing over 70 damage in 3 hits. I blink away, Sonja blinks. I die from another 20+ damage hit with her shortsword.

Other distortion-branded weapons have meant random and otherwise early deaths to chars (great early char has a random stab from a goblin with a distortion dagger, dies in one hit, etc.).

I don't mind distortion brands, or that uniques have them, but I DO think they should not occur until mid-game at least. If the character could not survive abyss (feasibly) long enough to at least find an exit, then I think a distortion brand means an unlucky doom.

Thoughts on this matter?

[Sprucery]

Take my last run...Sonja spawns.

No hex wands generated? No teleport scrolls in inventory?

Personally, I've had no trouble with early disto once the weapon brand started to be shown automatically.

[braveplatypus]

The uniques that commonly wield distortion are incredibly balanced, with Sonja in particular appearing so late that there's no real excuse for a character that can't deal with her by the time they see her. And working around a monster with the brand even on the extremely early floors is usually very doable, with most classes having some tool to deal with a weak monster holding one right off the bat.
(high defense possibly fast ghosts being a completely different topic)

On the other hand, the first time i got banished, wondered wtf, then went and looked up the mechanic on the wiki was probably the biggest disheartening moment in crawl for me. "Oh this is going to be one of *those* rougelikes" with flashbacks to nethack's small chance of instadeath from every other monster in the dungeon until poison resistance is acquired. Of course it's not *nearly* that bad or bad at all necessarily, but i think there's possibly a discussion to be had, maybe even just the way distortion (banishment) is introduced to the player.

On the other other hand, you didn't even get banished and Sonja beat you fair and square, so this should probably be in Dungeon Crawling Advice

[Alphaeus]

I understand how to deal with these monsters, and usually do without trouble on most runs. Still, I find the power of distortion brands to just be far too high, at least for monsters appearing at the levels these do. Sonja appeared in the first room past the entrance to Lair 1 this time. I usually don't have problems but I do think the chance of outlandish power/death is the problem.

Thoughts on remedy:

1) Let no distortion branded weapons generate except in places lower than: D:12, L:5, Shoals/Swamp/Snake Pit/Spider's Nest: 2, Orc Halls:2. (Vaults with runed doors/one-way teleporters can be allowed to hold them).

2) Drop the power. Banishment should be more rare, the extreme damage bonuses reduced/more rare, etc.

Either 1 OR 2, not both.


As to beating them, that's as straightforward as any other monster with dangerous melee -- kill fast, preferably from range, disable if possible. This usually won't be an issue, but if RNGesus happens to not be on your side, the penalties are just too extreme IMO. They should put you in danger, not be a death-note.

[chequers]

All you need to deal with a distortion wielding monster is a clear path back to upstairs so you can use another downstairs. In cases where that's not sufficient you need a teleport scroll.

Gating distortion to depth 12 or lower is a crazy overreaction. I could see an argument for depth 3+ though.

[Alphaeus]

When I say "D:12" I am saying Dungeon:12.

When you say "depth 12" are you meaning the same thing, or are you meaning ACTUAL "Depths"??

[ion_frigate]

When I say "D:12" I am saying Dungeon:12.

When you say "depth 12" are you meaning the same thing, or are you meaning ACTUAL "Depths"??

Given that Depths is only 5 levels long, he means Dungeon 12. And he's right, D:12 is an absurdly deep cutoff point for distortion - I could agree with removing it from places where it's pretty likely to be a one-hit kill (D:1 and D:2, as he said), but no further.

As for your death here - seriously, you had *2 EV*. What on earth did you expect trying to melee her? You're letting a monster hit you with an average of four AC-bypassing attacks per turn. You're going to die. And a similar non-Gr would likely have died to venom or draining as well, given that those bypass AC partially. You *might* have done okay since you're immune to those, but even then, it's iffy. She's getting 4+ attacks on you every time you swing at her.

Moreover, you had plenty of other ways to deal with her besides swinging that flail at her. You could have hit ?tele as soon as you saw her - eight turns from first sighting to death means you would have escaped. You could have had at her with that wand of disintegration or that wand of iceblast: both are EV-bypassing attacks that she has little/no resistance to, and given her low HP she would have gone down in just a couple hits.

So you had two very effective ways to kill her, and one pretty good way to escape. Instead you chose to swing a 10aut/attack weapon at a 24EV character that will easily get four attacks in on you per swing, all while having 2EV. The result is not surprising. It also does not point to any necessity to move the distortion brand later.

EDIT: Adjusted for Gargoyle immunities

[Alphaeus]

^If you checked further, you would have noticed that was from an emergency quaff of a potion of lignification at <10 HP with no heals left, and dying while rooted and melded in Tree Form from said potion.

Standard EV for me was around 15, as 25 dex (+ 35 STR) in only med armor (with nearly 10 armor skill) would demonstrate. I was not going to die -- I was mowing through enemies without issue. Especially in a place where -- aside from uniques -- I would meet no casters/dagger wielders.

Without evocations, those wands were useless. 1-2 Invocations of Slouch would have killed her, and that was my mistake -- most chars, however, won't have that Invocation.

D:12 may be too deep, very well. Just tossing out a number.

That said, my personal incident here is somewhat irrelevant, and the fact that people keep focusing on this is a bit annoying. It was YASD, but the point remains that distortion is equipped with ridiculous powers.

I happened into Lair 1 after going deeper into the Dungeon. Ostensibly someone could hit Lair 1 at well under lvl 10. At that level you would be no match for a unique equipped with that weapon (or with curare needles, for that matter), unless you managed to time things right.

[watertreatmentRL]

The worst distortion death I ever saw was a kobold on d:1. It was a totally avoidable death, but the player didn't notice the distortion message and went ahead and engaged. If there's a problem with distortion, it's that its existence requires you to pay more attention to monster equipment than would be best.

Sonja is an extremely bad example of an "unfair" distortion death. Sonja often spawns with distortion. She has well-known weaknesses and appears late enough in the game that you should almost always be able to deal with her if you know what you're doing. I think people are reading this as a case of an inexperienced player making overdrawn claims about game balance with good reason.

[Blomdor]

As much as I personally dislike the distortion brand and the Abyss, I have to agree with the opposition here. Distortion's no worse really than electrocution in terms of instantly murdering weak characters early on, and even draining or venom can be almost as fatal on D:1 or 2. You could ask the broader question of whether monsters should spawn with any sort of disproportionately dangerous weapon before, say, D:4, rather than singling distortion out.

Getting abyssed by distortion annoys the hell out of me too, and it was one of the single most hated things in the game for me when I was starting out, but usually distortion is avoidable as long as you pay attention. Sonja has terrible MR; even at 0 evocation skill, you can paralyze, polymorph, or confuse her with a wand roughly half the time you zap it. If you don't have that, you can net her. Reflection sometimes causes her to curare herself to death. And she's fragile enough that you might even be able to just iceblast her to death or kill her with other damaging wands. You don't need evocations to make some use of them against flimsy, unresistant opponents.

I find banishment as a spell to be much worse, after getting Abyssed while autoexploring because of it more than once. *That* is rather unfair.

[ion_frigate]

Standard EV for me was around 15, as 25 dex (+ 35 STR) in only med armor (with nearly 10 armor skill) would demonstrate. I was not going to die -- I was mowing through enemies without issue. Especially in a place where -- aside from uniques -- I would meet no casters/dagger wielders.

I admit I didn't notice the lignification, but it doesn't change my argument. Even 15EV against Sonja is suicidal when she can hit four times as fast as you with a distortion weapon. Yes, you were "mowing through enemies without issue." Sonja (and many other uniques) are designed to to be the enemies that you can't "mow through without issue." Learning to recognize when you're in danger is a major skill in Crawl.

Also, wands aren't great with no Evo, but they are far from useless. Iceblast would have done something like (3d23)/3 damage per shot. That would have taken out Sonja in 2-4 hits, and to her it's undodgeable and irresistible.

Honestly, I don't really agree with the arguments people make about removing popcorn (I don't think popcorn monsters are as boring as they do), but you're making me at least see their point of view. Sonja is always an order of magnitude more dangerous than the crap you were tabbing through, and the ease with which you were killing popcorn-y monsters before that seems to have obscured that fact for you.

[VeryAngryFelid]

By the way it would be good to display average damage in wand description. I believe it is easy provided the formula is linear and depends on Evo only

[MainiacJoe]

For a while recently I had this in my rc file:

  Code:

force_more_message += distortion

This was effective at notifying me when I first encountered a distortion-wielder, but it got really spammy during actual combat with that monster. So I changed it to

  Code:

flash_screen_message += distortion

and now I still get the warning without bogging down combat with extra keypresses. Sure it flashes a lot during combat, but really that just reemphasizes the danger without adding any tedium.

[TeshiAlair]

While I disagree with the OP, there might be ways to make the brand more interesting/feel less unfair.

What if, on each hit, you got a stack of translocational energy. 0-2: blink or damage. 3-4 stacks: blink, tele, -player tele, or medium damage. 5+ stacks: blink, -player tele, high damage, or banish.

[MainiacJoe]

While I disagree with the OP, there might be ways to make the brand more interesting/feel less unfair.

What if, on each hit, you got a stack of translocational energy. 0-2: blink or damage. 3-4 stacks: blink, tele, -player tele, or medium damage. 5+ stacks: blink, -player tele, high damage, or banish.

Except that this would suck as a player-wielded weapon.

[PlatinumSpider]

While I disagree with the OP, there might be ways to make the brand more interesting/feel less unfair.

What if, on each hit, you got a stack of translocational energy. 0-2: blink or damage. 3-4 stacks: blink, tele, -player tele, or medium damage. 5+ stacks: blink, -player tele, high damage, or banish.

Except that this would suck as a player-wielded weapon.

Distortion already sucks as a playerwielded brand. Who wants to chase around blinking enemies, or find them somewhere on the whole level? Add to that the unwield penalty and loss of xp when you banish instead of kill. It's only good in the hands of specific characters who build for it otherwise it's only something to boost enemy threat to onobservant players.

[Alphaeus]

I think people are reading this as a case of an inexperienced player making overdrawn claims about game balance with good reason.

I could have killed her easily -- evo and other tactics aside, I had Slouch a min-fail and considering Sonja's speed it would have taken only 1-2 Invocations to solve my problem. So yes, this was YASD on my end of things; I also make no bones that while I'm not "inexperienced" I'm also not a particularly good player yet.

That said, I don't think my claims are overdrawn too much. Though my original (and YASD-frustration inspired) idea of pushing them back to deeper Dungeon is foolish, they should still be at least Mid-Dungeon or later, IMO.

This, honestly, reflects the larger problem that surviving the early-game is (largely) a matter of RNG -- if you get bad RNG, chances are you die. Obviously better players can minimize this, but even they have it happen; moreover, by-and-large most players are new-ish players like myself that won't always see the super-tactical way out of a certain-death situation.

Regarding disproportionate spawns, my OpTm earlier today rounded a corner on D:1, and met an ogre who had apparently spawned fully awake. Died in one hit. It's elements like this (or Grinder, Natasha, AND Sigmund spawning in the same room at the same time all awake on D:2 like I had happen once) that can really hurt the game's appeal to new players. Seasoned veterans might be able to make it through (or not -- some deaths are simply unavoidable), but a good game doesn't cater to the skill of the top-tier players only.

Overall, after more thought I can rephrase this topic to say that I think that D:1-4 needs to be re-calibrated to have less "Start game, play for 2 minutes, die terrible death" factor. By D:5 most players have had time to build up a few survival skills, gather/identify scolls and potions, get spells online, have better combat skills, etc. If they die then, that places more burden on them than on RNG.

As to the last point, Distortion brands are, indeed, generally bleh for players. Honestly, I do like the idea of a "stacking translocation" damage, since that would prevent the "one-hit-wonder" effect from monsters.

[NhorianScum]

While I disagree with the OP, there might be ways to make the brand more interesting/feel less unfair.

What if, on each hit, you got a stack of translocational energy. 0-2: blink or damage. 3-4 stacks: blink, tele, -player tele, or medium damage. 5+ stacks: blink, -player tele, high damage, or banish.

Except that this would suck as a player-wielded weapon.

Distortion already sucks as a playerwielded brand. Who wants to chase around blinking enemies, or find them somewhere on the whole level? Add to that the unwield penalty and loss of xp when you banish instead of kill. It's only good in the hands of specific characters who build for it otherwise it's only something to boost enemy threat to onobservant players.

Distortion is pretty strong.

Wielded by the player the effects read "instant kill, effective instant kill, so much damage it's pretty much an instant kill, blink other"

[TeshiAlair]

Yeah I'm of the opinion that player disto could use a nerf

[edgefigaro]

Rolling through dungeon and lair with an lightly trained +2 spear of distortion and feeling like the king of all you see is pretty amusing. Distro daggers are good but spears are amazing.

[svendre]

While I disagree with the OP, there might be ways to make the brand more interesting/feel less unfair.

What if, on each hit, you got a stack of translocational energy. 0-2: blink or damage. 3-4 stacks: blink, tele, -player tele, or medium damage. 5+ stacks: blink, -player tele, high damage, or banish.

Except that this would suck as a player-wielded weapon.

Distortion already sucks as a playerwielded brand. Who wants to chase around blinking enemies, or find them somewhere on the whole level? Add to that the unwield penalty and loss of xp when you banish instead of kill. It's only good in the hands of specific characters who build for it otherwise it's only something to boost enemy threat to onobservant players.

Well stated. Additionally, you have the penalty of not being able to swap weapons without getting banished (unless of course you worship Lugonu.) Normally, i would be of a mind to say that it's not that dangerous on monsters, except just recently I had a very promising fairly low level character come down a set of stairs right next to a hostile with a wielded distortion weapon who sent my character on a one way death trip to the abyss. It was annoying. It's not as bad as getting paralyzed+killed coming down stairs though.

[Siegurt]

Well stated. Additionally, you have the penalty of not being able to swap weapons without getting banished (unless of course you worship Lugonu.) Normally, i would be of a mind to say that it's not that dangerous on monsters, except just recently I had a very promising fairly low level character come down a set of stairs right next to a hostile with a wielded distortion weapon who sent my character on a one way death trip to the abyss. It was annoying. It's not as bad as getting paralyzed+killed coming down stairs though.

Note that you *always* get the first move the first time you come down stairs, if you come down stairs and something has a dangerous weapon, just go back up and come down a different way, avoid said creature if you can't kill them at range...

[edgefigaro]

Please note that player early player wielded distortion weapons is tremendously powerful. As in way better than early game elec powerful. As in a trash teir base weapon with distortion can stabilize your character through level 20 where the abyss is not intimidating powerful.

For most players it is more infuriating than it is powerful.

If you rid yourself of the senseless need to kill things and become one with the divine crawl, you too will learn of it's abyssal might.

[svendre]

Well stated. Additionally, you have the penalty of not being able to swap weapons without getting banished (unless of course you worship Lugonu.) Normally, i would be of a mind to say that it's not that dangerous on monsters, except just recently I had a very promising fairly low level character come down a set of stairs right next to a hostile with a wielded distortion weapon who sent my character on a one way death trip to the abyss. It was annoying. It's not as bad as getting paralyzed+killed coming down stairs though.

Note that you *always* get the first move the first time you come down stairs, if you come down stairs and something has a dangerous weapon, just go back up and come down a different way, avoid said creature if you can't kill them at range...

The part where you are saying come down a different way, how are you proposing to avoid being banished on that portion of your remedy? It's not uncommon for the first attempt coming down stairs to be too dangerous to cope with.

[Sprucery]

You go back up and come down using a different set of stairs. Of course, you don't have the guaranteed first move anymore then, so hopefully there's nothing too dangerous immediately next to you there...

[Siegurt]

Well stated. Additionally, you have the penalty of not being able to swap weapons without getting banished (unless of course you worship Lugonu.) Normally, i would be of a mind to say that it's not that dangerous on monsters, except just recently I had a very promising fairly low level character come down a set of stairs right next to a hostile with a wielded distortion weapon who sent my character on a one way death trip to the abyss. It was annoying. It's not as bad as getting paralyzed+killed coming down stairs though.

Note that you *always* get the first move the first time you come down stairs, if you come down stairs and something has a dangerous weapon, just go back up and come down a different way, avoid said creature if you can't kill them at range...

The part where you are saying come down a different way, how are you proposing to avoid being banished on that portion of your remedy? It's not uncommon for the first attempt coming down stairs to be too dangerous to cope with.

In my experience the first way you decend being too dangerous happens roughly once every three to five games or so, (with sufficient variance that you will see it more than once or even twice in a given game ocassionally, and not see it at all for long stretches sometimes)

I would categorize that, personally, as unusual, having it happen twice on the same floor i would call "very, very rare" and having a creature with a disto weapon being the dangerous thing that second time, having it be exactly next to you, and having it be awake when you descend, and have enough energy to take a swing at you, connect, and roll the banishment effect is very unlikely, certainly it has a chance of happening, but it is going to be rediculously infrequent.

If it does happen (and you don't get a chance to react) obviously there is no way out, but if you have an action there is often something you can do (blink away, use a hex wand, etc.) It is obviously time to use a consumable if need be, and you have them available.

One thing you do have under your control is how frequently you double dip on a floor, if a given down stair situation isn't ideal, but can be solved with say, stair dancing, using a comsumable, evoker charge etc. It is usually worth dealing with a known hard-but-solvable first staircase than it is using a second staircase where you don't have that first turn advantage. While comsumable items are limited in availability, at least in the short term, control over what happens on your first descent down a staircase is one time only, and very powerful.