ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This can be done in Derth and Last Hope, but it's really egregious in sun wall.

Step 1: be a sun paladin.
Step 2: find a blue named NPC in sunwall.
Step 3: Drown them.
Step 4: Congratulations! You're now level 3 and have a nice tier 3 item.

I'd just prevent blues from spawning in town, or make them not drown, or make them automatically step out of water, or something.

Until this is fix, I will continue to drown sun paladins since I have no self control.

But seriously I'm just drowning everyone up in here.

Commiting a heinously evil deed that provides a roleplaying outlet just because you have no self control is not an excuse to completely rewrite a portion of the game. You're commiting human sacrifice for greater power, like every evil villain ever written. I hear if you sacrifice children like this, you get a Hadoken.

If you want a serious response, roguelikes are about optimization, resource allocation, and longterm planning. If I can get an early game advantage from this why not. Crawl learned this lesson, which is why there's no scumming in crawl beyond Pan where it no longer matters.

And ToME certainly embraces this, what with no re-spawns. Better to remove sources of tedious scumming altogether.

As for roleplay, I'd be more interested in that angle if there was any gameplay effect. In Incursion, plenty of consequences for evil acts. Even in ADOM, if my crowned L+ paladin kills beggars, I'll eventually become a fallen champion. But in ToME, I could team up with the grand corruptor as a sun paladin and the only consequence would be some flavor text at the end.

Anyway yeah the ability to drown named npcs is silly game design and should be removed. It adds nothing to the game.

Alright, first of all, there is no scumming involved. This choice is one-time, since there are a finite number of enemies, and sometimes, there are no rares at all. No farming, no scumming. Secondly, if you're running sunpallys/anorithils that start in the east, that boost REALLY helps, where you have a ridiculously difficult starter, made worse when you THEN have to fight a boss in the middle of a dungeon, spawning right next to you, with almost no decent loot, and often while trying to protect an escort. Your start is HORRIBLE. Second, you tend to get crap rare loot. Yes, an onclass weapon at tier 3 would be nice, but you tend to get this or better anyway from some gold chests before too long anyhow. You really aren't getting any unfair advantage, if anything, you're getting an early penalty with a minor chance for a decent item to make up for it.

However, I would be in favor of fixing the ability to drown Areyn. That breaks the game. (But is worth NINE levels....) That is more reward then seems reasonable, and crosses the line into abuse. (Granted, as I said, it also breaks the game.)

Also, No scumming in crawl? Ever played a mummy? They're BORN to scum, and go miles out of there way to do so, given how hard they are to get rolling.

Of course it's scummable. Start a sun paladin, drown a fool. No blue spawns? Drawn yourself and restart. 90 second investment of time. Only takes 2-3 times usually to get a blue.

I find the celestial start pretty easy, certainly easier than a yeek, and Anorithil's have little problem with the boss if you properly use your skills.

You are aware that if you get yourself extra levels, the enemies in the starter (and the boss!) also get extra levels, right? The only potential unbalance might come if you got a stupendous rare that was on-class loot, AND had requirements low enough for you to wear before reaching the boss. The odds of that are... almost non-existent. If someone wants to reset a few hundred times to get exactly that, more power to them. Any other character can do the same thing by starting a character, leaving starter, and walking into maze/old forest and claiming a gold chest. Guarded? Enemies? Oh well, start over. For that matter, rares on Trollmire 2 have dropped items with HUGE gains on a tier 2 rare, for characters at level 1. The only real issue here is that you are getting a free level, maybe 2/3 depending on race/exp penalty.

Is that really helping your character, when all the enemies have suddenly leveled too? Not hugely... Maybe you have a tad more health, slightly stronger spells, but so do they. Tome is remarkably balanced, and you won't get enough rares EVER to reach a level that could be abusive (Areyn, however, is another story.) Stat requirements control high-tier items, so that isn't a balance issue either.

Player level progression outclasses monster one however.

Also, the way I see it the traditional understanding is that it's up to the playerbase strives to munchkin the everliving crap out of existing game mechanics whilst the current developer tries to deprive us of nice things in order to keep things interesting. Relying on gentlemens agreements for game balancing is pretty much a slippery slope to failure seeing as the game is largely balanced around the player trying to out-mechanics it. Personally, I'll take the extra loot and xp any day of the week before seeing what rares I end up spawning next to in the west thank you very much.

Just have townspeople give no xp and/or items. Exploit solved.

From what I've heard, offing townspeople for xp is vital to being able to get Yeeks of the island in Nightmare or Insane.

Yeeks just dominate there way to a win with stair-scumming.

offing townspeople for xp on nightmare (at least) ~is~ insane. You want to clear the ritch tunnels without gaining too many levels so that murgol is not full of psions and electric eels :p

The level of the dungeon is set on entering. Plus any interesting loot is on creatures, in vaults, or in chests. Start critter, check for blue, step into and out of both dungeons, then drown the rare :p

skein wrote:The level of the dungeon is set on entering. Plus any interesting loot is on creatures, in vaults, or in chests. Start critter, check for blue, step into and out of both dungeons, then drown the rare :p

That way you may get weaker foes, but also less powerful loot.