[Balance] Bosses upgrade
issueid=1237 09-08-2012 11:22 PM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by _Ln_: 97
[Balance] Bosses upgrade
Nerf several techniques for boss incapacitation

Since we are creating a bunch of balance threads, I've decided to throw in some suggestions. Now I've recently said that trying to remove non bug-related tactics (gremlin bomb in that context) doesn't make any sense, so this can seem somewhat hypocritical. In my defense, I believe tactics I'm about to discuss are more game-breaking than Pick Pockets, gremlin bombs etc.

The major point of this is that there are several ways you may employ to significantly lower boss fight difficulty. This is not bad by itself and actually good as players are expected to utilize everything they have to get an upper hand. The catch is that the majority of these techniques work on everything moving them to somewhat game-breaking levels. And that makes them a target for rebalancing. So, here's the list:

1) Potions of blindness/confusion.
Game-breaking traits:
a) Work on almost all living creatures. Since we don't have powerful unlife unique monsters (aside from Emperor liches, but those are not guaranteed).
b) Always hit.

Possible nerfs:
a) Grant resistance to boss monsters/powerful creatures (discretion is advised)
b) Add miss chance/use standard missile system

2) Webs.
Game-breaking traits:
a) Yet again, work on almost everything.
b) Can (actually should) be prepared beforehand

Possible nerfs:
a) As usual, ignore webs for bosses (discretion is advised)
b) AI enhancement to search web-avoiding paths. This is probably too complex to implement, but can be a viable strategy which also makes sense

3) "Meat shields"
a) Allow Stun Ray/wand of stunning/wand of paralysis abuse
b) Effectively negate ranged/magic attacks
c) Extremely effective for mindcrafting with Greater Telekinetic Blast.

Possible nerfs:
a) Swap priority for bosses/powerful creatures: there is already a swapping mechanic, which is unfortunately limited to 2 or more spaces from PC area. I would like to see ACW/greater moloch changing places with a rat currently trying to bite through my 50ish PV armor.
b) Add dynamic hostility between monsters, so that more powerful creatures may just obliterate everything in their path to get to you. This will probably require careful planning, as chaos archmage shouldn't kill his summons for example.

I think that covers the majority of over-powered strategies, that I think should be balanced some way or another. Suggestions from fellow forumers are welcome and encouraged.

P.C. Some minor things close to the topic in question:
1) Make Andor Drakon resistant to paralysis
2) Add miss chance for PoCCs on Andor Drakon
3) Make Ancient Karmic Wyrm (Sharad and wished-for) see invisible. Killing him is fun tactic, extremely loved and powerful, but we should still consider it
4) Alright, this is by far not a minor suggestion implementation-wise, but still:
Enhance AI so that it won't abuse attacks that do not deal damage to PC. Archmage is most guilty of it in my view, happily throwing fireballs at a fire-immune PC while being peppered with humanoid slayers.
Issue Details
Issue Number 1237
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category Other (please specify)
Status Implemented
Priority 5 - Medium
Suggested Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 3
Implemented Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 7
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 5
Votes against this feature 6
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




09-09-2012 05:22 AM
Ancient Member
Enhance AI so that it won't abuse attacks that do not deal damage to PC. Archmage is most guilty of it in my view, happily throwing fireballs at a fire-immune PC while being peppered with humanoid slayers.
This one needs a little care, IMHO. For example, if a blue dragon uses lightning on an immune PC, he may not do damage, but he can still destroy items on the ground or in the inventory, which I think should be kept.

09-09-2012 09:45 AM
Ancient Member
Instead of making the ancient karmic wyrm see invisible, I'd prefer to see a change to how magic missile + invisibility works out in general. As it is, a monster that can't see you will just stand still without doing anything at all while he is being missiled to death. So a level 1 wizard with invisibility and magic missile can kill the AKW without any risk. At the very least, the monster could start hitting in random directions around him, or panic, instead of just standing there doing nothing.

09-09-2012 09:54 AM
Ancient Member
You have seen that I'm in favour of many "nerfing" suggestions (such as most of the scumming-related ones). But I strongly oppose this one, sorry. Or at least most of it.

I think something great in ADOM is the feeling that you are a weak mortal fighting a very powerful ChAoS creature that is much stronger than you, but by cunning and intelligent use of items you can defeat them.

I also love the fact that things that you typically think are useless when you first find them, like a wand of webbing, can be the most powerful resources when used well.

Making the bosses immune to this sort of things would turn boss fights into what's already pretty common in other roguelikes or RPG's worse than ADOM: just grind to gather lots of healing stuff, and bolt-bolt-bolt-heal-bolt-bolt-bolt-heal, or melee-melee-melee-heal-melee-melee-melee-heal until the boss is dead and you're alive because you had more healing than him. That is: it would make boss fights more typical and more boring IMO.

It would also make items like wand of webbing, potion of confusion, potion of blindness, etc. rather useless. Like Death Ray, if they only work on run-of-the-mill monsters but they don't work on really strong monsters like bosses, most people won't bother to seriously use them. Because for run-of-the-mill monsters you're already OK with bolting.

Maybe I would apply very small subset of what you suggest, for example Andor Drakon is not a normal boss, he's THE boss, so it would make sense for him to have a couple of useful immunities or a percent chance to negate webs/paralysis/blindness/etc. I'd also wouldn't mind giving the AKW see invisible, because summoning that guy for XP is scummy in my book. But making bosses immune to webbing, blindness, paralysis, etc... no, I don't like that for the reasons I mentioned.

09-09-2012 10:08 AM
Ancient Member
As I mentioned in my post, discretion is advised - I don't think granting all resistances to all bosses is the way to go. For example, archmage can see in the dark, so why would potion of blindness work on him? Getting stuck in webs for him may just be okay for a couple.

And speaking of thrown potions I prefer miss chance actually, because it makes sense - want to throw it directly into someone' eye? Better have a high Dex. Maybe I should have put it as nerf a)

09-09-2012 10:55 AM
Senior Member
Missing chance for potions is OK. Other things will, as said before, make boss fights uninteresting.

09-09-2012 10:59 AM
Ancient Member
Grant random resistances to the bosses each game. They are cHaOs creatures after all.

Also please let the Ancient Karmic Wyrm see invisible. That business is just silly all around. There's still the emperor moloch wish if people want xp so badly.

09-09-2012 02:05 PM
Ancient Member
You should split this sort of thing into several posts - I agree on some points but not all and I should be able to just up vote what I like instead of engaging in petty debate. Specifically there's a difference between abuse of easily attained resources and clever use of rarer items in dangerous situations.

09-09-2012 02:44 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Grey
You should split this sort of thing into several posts - I agree on some points but not all and I should be able to just up vote what I like instead of engaging in petty debate. Specifically there's a difference between abuse of easily attained resources and clever use of rarer items in dangerous situations.
TB mentioned something about creating a subforum for such things, I didn't want to clog the tracker with multiple threads and was actually interested in some opinions.

12-11-2012 01:06 AM
The Creator
Applied several enhancements to bosses (and monsters in general).

12-11-2012 01:10 AM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by adom-admin
Applied several enhancements to bosses (and monsters in general).
as above, don't go over board on this. the wyrm at the top of the ToEF is tough enough as is, unless you plan to implement some quests in the level 17-22 range to allow players to get there with a few more levels under their belt.

06-20-2013 12:37 PM
Senior Member
" Votes for this feature 4
Votes against this feature 5 "

Can't really see why this was implemented... :/

06-20-2013 05:10 PM
Ancient Member
Because TB thought it was a good suggestion?

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