NPC AI and ball spells

[donkatsu]

Now, I don't know too much about how the AI works, but it seems that if a non-boss NPC is unaware of a player, and gets hit from out of line-of-sight by a ball spell, it will just sit there and take it until it dies. With some means of detection, suitable terrain, and a lot of time, this allows the player to kill enemies with no risk of retaliation. I've used this to trivially clear things that are supposed to be challenging, such as the Room of Death and High Peak stair guardians. If this is intended, it is boring. Could rare/elite/unique enemies be given boss-like telepathy to prevent the player from cheesing them to death?

[jenx]

Telepathy? Too strong. But an attempt to find the source of damage would be fair

[supermini]

Bosses and random bosses already know where you are afaik. Extending this to elites would be...meh. In some levels you would get swarmed by elites from 5 adjacent rooms. Imagine if there's 3 rare elites within 10 tiles from the spawn point, on 3 different sides. No telepathy means you can take them one by one, telepathy means you're most probably dead.

Mobs running to the point of origin of the aoe might be better.

[donkatsu]

I meant they would "wake up" upon taking damage, like a lot of bosses do already. Like The Shade, for example. Running to the origin of the ball spell would work too, I just imagine that just plain telepathy would be easier to implement, while still not being too hard to deal with as a player. It's not like bosses are impossible or even difficult to run from.