Fear

[twelwe]

Well, I still like the proposal (that you had?) suggesting no consumable use by monsters. I guess that would solve half of the problem here. I can't say I've seen monsters override fear with ranged weapons, though. At the very least, it isn't something I;ve observed and thought "this is unusual."

[crate]

Fear also makes monsters with polearms just reach-attack you once they're two spaces away, though they will continue fleeing if you move out of their reach-attack range.

[TwilightPhoenix]

I haven't looked at the code for this (not that I'd understand a bit of it anyway), but my guess is Fear just puts monsters in the standard "RUN AWAY!" mode. And the coding for that has the monsters use ranged attacks once they get a bit away from you instead of fleeing indefinitely. Now with stuff with ranged attacks that flee naturally, it's kind of cool, such as when a Dragon flees a few squares and then turns around to blast you. But when you use the Fear scroll/spell, yeah it doesn't make as much sense.

[galehar]

The first point really looks like a bug in the AI. Regarding the second, I think it's fine that they use teleport. It's thematic, it's an effective escape option for them and the scroll isn't that valuable. And you can even cancel their teleport with a wand if you really want to finish them now. For blinking, it's not so effective since they just do a random blink which could put them right beside you. Could be fixed easily by making them do SPELL_BLINK_AWAY. But you're right that it discourages the use of fear because of the risk of wasting a very valuable consumable. Maybe limit it to high intelligent monsters?

[BlackSheep]

Also, fleeing in blind, unreasoning panic is not conducive to evaluating all your options and weighing the costs of using a consumable versus saving it for later. The scroll description just says it causes great fear in those who see the one who reads it. Why shouldn't that be gibbering terror instead of "Ahhh! Kill it with fire!"

[jejorda2]

You can even cancel their teleport with a wand if you really want to finish them now.

For some infathomable reason, I always assumed wands of teleport only worked on the player. Using them on enemies could make so much sense sometimes.

[rebthor]

You can even cancel their teleport with a wand if you really want to finish them now.

For some infathomable reason, I always assumed wands of teleport only worked on the player. Using them on enemies could make so much sense sometimes.

IIRC, they can resist it. Very annoying when you point one at a goblin and waste 2 charges instead of just 1.