ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Currently you're fighting an enemy at full health and suddenly you're dead. Looking back through the logs you find out that you were frozen or stunned and then beaten to death over a period of turns. It's a horrifically deflating feeling, since you just get "You have died" out of nowhere and only get the full picture later.

I suggest that the player have to rest on the spot to advance time when stunned/frozen. This takes away the feeling that you just die out of the blue. It also adds some extreme tenseness to times when you get stunned or frozen, your buttocks clenching ever tighter with every click/keypress, watching in agony as your HPs decrease and hoping against hope that you'll recover next turn.

I also think that both statuses should be nerfed to allow some action, since they kinda ruin the whole tactical feel of the game when you are rendered utterly unable to act (whilst also making many monsters too easy). It also severely favours certain equipment set-ups to get 100% resistances, making all other options instantly worthless. There's some interesting discussion about nerfing stun in this thread: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=23171

A few thoughts:

1. Remember that if the stun ability is weakened, it also weakens fighters and rogues, since they rely on it.

2. I like your idea (in the other thread) about being able to drink potions while stunned, with a risk of spilling them.

3. Ditto your idea about being able to stagger -- perhaps you can move in any direction, but with a chance going the wrong way. e.g. if you try to move S, there's a 25% chance you will move SE and a 25% chance you will move SW.

4. Perhaps being frozen should (a) increase your AC, and (b) end early if you take damage. Say, every melee hit reduces the freeze countdown by 1 turn. Hits by fire magic end being frozen immediately. I believe "frozen" means "encased in ice", so it doesn't make sense that you can take any actions.

5. Strength >= 70 could make you immune to freezing.

Repton wrote:4. Perhaps being frozen should (a) increase your AC, and (b) end early if you take damage. Say, every melee hit reduces the freeze countdown by 1 turn. Hits by fire magic end being frozen immediately. I believe "frozen" means "encased in ice", so it doesn't make sense that you can take any actions.

(b)or perhaps the duration is reduced by damage received, ie, for every 50 damage you take, the duration is decreased by 1, except for fire (20) and cold, which increases it by the same (muahahaha)

Repton wrote:5. Strength >= 70 could make you immune to freezing.

I am not sure if it should make you immune to freezing, but maybe have a chance with high levels of str (60+) to break free (counts as a turn), chance increases with shorter durations.