ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Have bosses where lore permits them to leave, be able to chase the player up/down stairs. Should put an end to stairscumming. (Weirdling Beast wouldn't be able to, Z probably wouldn't, but most of the others would.)

*hides from all the stairscummers*

What do you mean stairscumming? The game already prevents things from being regenerated when you go up/down stairs. I know that includes monsters and believe it includes items too. Even if it didn't, very few items found on the ground are worth anything anyways. So there's no need to have monsters follow you. This would instead make some boss battles far harder than they already are.

Stairscumming by leaving, healing fully, then returning, to fight on a level that no time has passed on, including leaving monsters at their locations and health levels.

In some cases this would just make stair-scumming more time-consuming, since the entrance to the world map would certainly be impassable for bosses. I'd rather bosses see the tactical advantage of stairs, and try to move to intercept a fleeing player. Further, unless a knockback effect is instated, the player could just rest on top of the stairs.

catwhowalksbyhimself wrote:What do you mean stairscumming?

I meant:

lukep, eh? wrote:Stairscumming by leaving, healing fully, then returning, to fight on a level that no time has passed on, including leaving monsters at their locations and health levels.

This behavior is taking advantage of the way the game handles regeneration. It isn't realistic, and I've yet to encounter a boss that I could not beat without stairscumming. But yeah, it would need a "@Boss@ grabs you and stops you from leaving!" message if you tried to flee to the worldmap using the stairs. If not letting the boss follow you, then perhaps let the boss regenerate its health for the number of turns you spent away? (Only regen, don't let it go through a bunch of turns unloading all its damage on the player, heh)

I am definitely against not allowing the player to escape if he find out that the boss is beyond his current abilities. I suppose if you want to allow the boss to heal when you do, fine, but I'd rather have the stairs remain an option for beating a strategic retreat.

I think it'd be fair enough if the hero returned from downstairs to discover the boss took the opportunity to heal up while he was away.

A simple way to do this would be to have all enemies heal fully when you leave/enter the level. This wouldn't fully prevent stairscumming, but would put a huge damper on it, while maintaining the viability of stairs as an escape route.

Stairs should remain an option for escape.
A key roguelike feature is knowing when to run away, permanently.

I am making full use of stair-fighting (I prefer this term to stair scumming, which sounds to much like level-scumming, something which is of course not possible with persistent levels), and would b disappointed if enemies healed while I was away, but it would make thematic sense. I'd far rather that course of action was taken than eliminating stair-fighting(scumming) altogether. I'm a rubbish player and might stop playing if someone implemented that!

Even if they only healed 50% of the damage they'd received it would be an improvement on the current situation.