Wrt summons dropping items, being pickpocketable, etc, the solution is (and has been) obvious. Everything should be reverted to its former behavior, except for gremlins. Those are really the only abusable (well, abused) summons and as such they should be nerfed (no drops on dying, no pickpocketing) while everything else should have been left the same.

Surely one doesn't need even more items. All these items GVs already generate and in general is very annoying.

But I agree that those monsters not ever dropping items are also annoying.

So, the solution maybe lies in: bringing item drops/pickpocketability of summons back and then reducing item drop.

Well I definitely don't think we get too many items in ADOM. And I think most people don't think that, either, given that TH is one of the most popular talents. So I say no to reducing item drops.

About summons, I'd keep the pickpocket nerf (it's very exploitable) but maybe keep the item drop nerf only for gremlins.

The explanation given for summoned monsters never dropping items is that they were taken away from their original location and didn't bring stuff with them... for me this begs the question... how do non-summoned rats carry the scale mails they drop because they did hold them? And I think that with the major nuisance some summoners can be, specially if you don't have magic (I'm thinking of spider factories), the item drops are like a "reward" for managing to wade through.

Now, I haven't played the restricted prereleases so I might be saying a bunch of bollocks, but from what I've read here and on IRC, it seems that the restrictions went from lax to too severe.

Maybe (non gremlin) summons could just have a considerably reduced drop rate? Say a third of the regular rate (affecting both TH and non-TH drop checks).

I don't really understand well enough what's exactly been done with pickpockets to say if it needs an adjustment. It seems a bit harder, but it works more or less the same as far as I'm concerned.

I have the feeling from playing that it's only picking pockets on monsters during a fight that is much harder. Picking pockets on monsters that you haven't attacked yet is not so bad.

And personally, I don't have a problem with summons not dropping stuff. By the time I'm hitting the elemental vaults, I don't feel like sorting through big piles of stuff anyway.

I'm ok with the new behavior but I'd be in favor of adding a special message when attempting to pickpocket an otherwise pickpocketable summoned monster. This can be very confusing behavior for an unspoiled player.

Agree 100%.

Spider factories are about 50x worse now, and make the game irritating.

After playing pr13 for a short while, I find I completely agree with Bieks and SirTheta. Yesterday I was swarmed by berserker kings, emperors and white dragons summoned by a lich king in the Griffyard. Those monsters were as tough to kill at that point (I was a level 19 Chaos Knight), but didn't drop anything. Yeah, you still get XP and weapon marks, but that hardly makes up for it.

This change makes summoners more frustrating, even with the uberjackal effect fixed, because you have to wade through hordes of monsters and what do you get? Maybe a few corpses depending on the monster. Before this, at least you'd receive some treasure as a "reward".

Pickpocketing gremlins was the only problem (I've never heard of anyone e.g. deliberately allowing summoners to live just to get more drops), and that's the only thing the nerf in issue 813 should apply to, if that tactic is deemed to be so broken. You'd still be able to kill them for items, but eventually they'd get too powerful, limiting their long-term effectivity as an exploit.

And issue 1204 essentially killed pickpocketing, at least for PCs that don't start with the skill. Now you need to get it to at least 50% before it remotely has a semblance of usefulness, which the initial skill level of 1% and low training dice do not allow to happen so quickly. The result: it's useless early on, when the extra items are most useful, and causes frustration, because you have to 'a'pply it a ton of times (and wasn't part of the idea behind nerfing it reducing button presses?). This makes it as useful as Haggling. :/

Gremlins made itemless was maybe all that was needed. I still think my drift regarding pickpocketing would have worked nicely. Maybe add a greater chance of success for invisible and/or stealthy and/or dextrous PCs. For some players pickpocketing is 'fun', allow them their pleasures.

Another idea, maybe reduce the chance of success/finding an item, the higher the danger level(vice versa). That way it works during early game, but is more tedious/less rewarding or exploitable later.

Also if issue 1116 is implemented properly, we won't see wererats/jackals later.

I have summoned monsters in the dwarven graveyard and pickpocketed them and petrified them in hopes of finding a wand of wishing. That was tedious and un-rewarding, but definately no scum/exploit in my view.

I agree that waddling through tens if not hundreds of powerful emp/king lich summons without them dropping a single item is unfair.
After all, no matter if the monster is generated normally or summoned, it presents the same level of threat.
I'd say summoned monsters should have maybe 50% HP of the randomly generated ones and should be limited to ~lvl20.
This would go along with the notion that they have been summoned from their place of rest where they don't need any items and have no natural enemies to gain experience on.
It would offset their lack of drops. But this is still a secondary solution to simply restoring normal item drops to all summoned monsters except multiplied gremlins.
As it is right now, any character I play that is not either a wizard (or another very powerful caster with ball spells) or a high-lvl archer, will omit GUV due to inadequacy of rewards to effort put into clearing one.
Perhaps I would be more inclined to attempt to clear such vault with other chars if I knew that all the summons could drop some nice things.
Rewards in this case would be greater overall and would prompt me to consider the effort and potential gains. Even if the artifacts were average, other items dropping at this level of CoC might be useful.

So, in essence, I'd skip the vaults anyway. 100 vs a 5000 items. Most of which aren't going to make much difference. Only add more corruptions, turncount, xp and tedious mindless bashing, with 'Something seems to attack your mind!' spam. Even giant vaults are tedious. At least in dragon vaults most of the items gets destroyed.

And being able to say you cleared a greater undead vault. :D

That should definitely be an achievement, once they begin to get implemented.

I think reverting summoning monster how they were previously wasn't all that bad - I agree that exploitations need to be addressed and agree with removing drops/pockets on Gremlins, but having played a bit of p13 I'm not crazy about the lack of drops on summonable monsters. Pickpocketing is only really useful in the beginning of that game - it is tedious and is only worth doing when you really need the items; around the time I reach ToEF I rarely use it if ever.

As for summonable creates not dropping loot; I think lore-wise they still should. They are being "summoned" (i.e. pulled) from wherever they were and brought to the caster, not being conjured out of thin air - at least that's how I picture it. To balance abuse I would suggest maybe making summons not able to be pick-pocketed, but it wouldn't make much sense for them to drop items and not able to be pickpocketed. Regardless, I think this change should apply only to gremlins as that is what was abused the most - I've never heard of creating a necromancer/skeleton wish-engine.

After clearing yet another Greater Undead Vault, I'm gonna bump this.

This is all you gremlin bombers fault. :p

http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=813

This is one of the several cases where TB made a change no one asked for and things go downhill. Surprisingly I even defended gremlin bombing in that thread (despite never using even casual pickpocketing). I knew all along that RFE was no good :D

I also want to once again support this notion of un-nerfing summoned monsters' drops.
Just cleared TWO GUVs with a high-end GE wizard and it was a nightmare. So many summons that all dropped after 1-2 hits of AotME.
I acid balled things with 48 willpower, I was aged 300+ years, I was drained by the lich royalty and the rewards? Thunderstroke in one vault, bugbiter in the other.
If all those summoned monsters dropped stuff like in the old days, it would have (to some extent) made up for the sub-par artifacts I got there.
If nevertheless, summoned monsters still don't drop items then please, at least reduce their numbers to 3-4 per summon and 3-4 summoning sessions per monster.
That also applies to spider factories, werewolf kings summoning werewolf lords summoning werewolves summoning wolves and dire wolves...
It's just sooo tedious and additionally does not improve the game in any way.
I'm not asking to have an easier time getting heaps of items, just to have a more streamlined gameplay.

Just gonna quote the correct™ solution here...

Well, my thoughts are still the same wrt gremlin bombing, if the player is clever enough to figure out how to abuse gremlin replication to his/her advantage why should (s)he not be rewarded. e: No, no, no, the monsters are replicated. Items should not come with replicated monsters, this includes jellies and worms and spawns.

I still do agree though that gremlins do not have a pocket.