Monster Resistances
issueid=121 04-11-2010 07:57 AM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by JellySlayer: 114
Monster Resistances

This isn't strictly speaking a bug, but is something sufficiently exploitable to warrant consideration:

Virtually no monsters have resistance to confusion, blindness, stunning, poison, or paralysis. These include all 5 orb guardians and Andor Drakon. Considering how easy some of these effects are to produce (particularly confusion and blindness can be achieved from common potions), this makes for a very easy way to dispatch of many of the game's most dangerous opponents.
Issue Details
Issue Number 121
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category Unknown
Status Fixed
Priority Unknown
Affected Version Unknown
Fixed Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 7
Milestone (none)
Users able to reproduce bug 4
Users unable to reproduce bug 2
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




04-11-2010 09:25 AM
Ancient Member
Well, although I agree about other unbalancing issues (such as the greatly overpowered darkness), I can't agree with this one, I think it's fine as it is. These potions actually make the game more balanced IMO. For some chars (like a human merchant) it would be all but impossible to defeat foes like the ACW without extensive scumming, were it not for these techniques. They also make for good roleplay (exploiting the weaknesses of the enemy, being clever and so on), not like darkness which kills immersion the way it works now.

04-12-2010 04:47 AM
Ancient Member
The problem I have isn't so much that these abilities work, but that they work all the time. Why should thrown potions always hit, even though all other missiles can miss? Why can monsters resist mindcraft but not confusion due to ventriloquism or thrown potions of wonder? Why doesn't Andor Drakon wear an amulet of free action?

04-12-2010 02:50 PM
Ancient Member
"Fancy tricks won't work on bosses" is an element of pretty much any CRPG out there; often you're reduced to spamming your most damaging stuff in order to force your way through, and level a lot to be able to get enough damage to spam. I like that you can do it differently in ADOM. On the other hand, I may not be degenerate enough to fully use the spectrum of nasty tricks that are available to me; I've never killed a single orb guardian in Darkness for instance (except Nuurag-Vaarn, who can see in the dark anyway).

My vote would be to have all the orb guardians see in the dark at the very least. Paralyzation resistant, I don't think so; the current mechanic of shrugging off makes them powerful, but they're at least a finite resource. (Though immunizing Andor wouldn't be out of line, I guess.)

The main balancing technique I would use, however, is enforcing that these "bosskillers" become truly finite resources by weakening the effect of the item scumming techniques currently used to get large numbers of these items. Would keep the boss battles a lot more interesting than "Boss will hit you, you don't do enough damage, you die".

04-18-2010 06:18 PM
Member
Agreed that there should be options to dealing with bosses other than hack and slash. Only thing needed really is that potions used as missiles don't always hit. Perhaps a bit more varying resistances so that the same trick doesn't work on every boss, but every boss should have a weakness. Confusion isn't too overpowered imo for melee classes since if I'm standing next to the archmage in a corridor he frequently still wonders right at me and does all his attacks (too frequently if you ask me, but I might just have been unlucky when doing this).

About Andy I can't really say since I've never faced him, but from what I hear he seems to be too easy if you know what you're doing. This should be the ultimate boss and a challenge for the most powerfull of PCs. Give him immunity to all elements (including acid). Give him strong resistance to all special attacs (no immunity, but resistance). Make it so that no matter how buff and overpowered you char is and how well you know Andy you will never know if you will be able to defeat him. This will be very difficult to balance since he must at the same time be winnable with unscummed (but still extremely tough, you're aiming to be a god after all) character. Getting to him should be (and is) a great challenge. Winning him should be an achievement every single time and not something that just wraps up the win without even thinking about it (like D50 is and imo should remain for an experienced player with normal ending).

That being said these are opinions on game design and as such they shouldn't be decided by our opinions but Thomas' and his alone

04-28-2010 04:51 PM
Senior Member
Confusion, blindness, stunning, poison, or paralysis - that's five. Am I the only one that thinks that giving each of the five orb guardians one of these as a weakness would be an interesting approach? Perhaps they could each be weak to one, and partially resistant to two, while being immune to another two.

Looking through the orb guardians, I'd suggest the following:

Snake from Beyond - immune to poison (duh) and blindness, weak to confusion
ACW - immune to confusion and stunning, weak to blindness
ASB - immune to paralysis and blindness, weak to stunning
Yulgash - immune to stunning and poison, weak to paralysis
Archmage - immune to confusion and paralysis, weak to poison

Why this set? Picture a pentagon. On each vertex, in clockwise order, put confusion, paralysis, blindness, poison, and stunning. Now, each one is weak to one point, and immune to the two that are "opposite" it, while resisting the two adjacent to it. I specifically chose the archmage to be weak to poison because magic users tend to have low toughness and high willpower. I also specifically made the snake immune to poison and the stone beast immune to paralysis.

I'd then make Andy strongly resist, but not be immune to, all five.

Beyond that, I'd make it so that potions are only 100% accurate when used on non-hostile or tame creatures - if the creature is hostile, perhaps it's controlled by "thrown rocks and clubs" in combination with dexterity and luck? This would ensure that you can still use potions on pets and non-hostile NPCs without the accuracy loss, but reduce the accuracy against foes.

04-29-2010 12:18 AM
Senior Member
There's lots of options here, and in general I'd like to see some more middle ground - e.g., monsters that are easier to fight in darkness, but don't just sit there while you smash their faces. This makes things more interesting and combat more tactical; instead of winning because you know the monster's weakness, and you try different options but none of them make the entire fight trivial.

12-11-2012 12:47 AM
The Creator
I have added some of these options to spice up the game.

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