cold drakes

[Final Master]

No... no. 'Braving the dangers' isn't really that big of an issue. Most characters of varying races and classes can take down a horde of chain summoning, it will just take hours upon hours (and that's without stair dancing). There doesn't need to be a reward, it just needs to be toned down. I really don't think that having to (literally in some cases) hack through several hundred hatchlings that have done nothing but completely block my path to or from a level dungeon just because 20 or so were summoned in one turn. Fix the bug of summoning groups of summoned groups and limit the amount of how many 'of the same class' of summonables there are and we should be good.

[Lailoken]

I actually find them to be quite dangerous. They summon hatchlings around me so I can't escape then then pummel me with breath weapons. I suppose if I really hunt around for lots of cold resist before I go in, the breath weapons wouldn't get me but I try to avoid grinding if I can (that includes shop scumming). And once my golem is dead, they multiply much faster than I can kill them.

[paboperfecto]

Could their summons have a time limit like our summons do?

[Final Master]

Could their summons have a time limit like our summons do?

They don't have a limit, but they do have a cool down! Guess what it is. Ready? It's 1 !

[Lailoken]

Well at least it would be easy to adjust.

[paboperfecto]

I thought it was a cooldown of 4 looking through the code. Anyway, I was talking about the automatic death of my summons after 10 turns or so.

[Fela]

After having had some more experiences with summoners, i seriously think the concept needs some remodeling.

The main problem is not the summoning ability per se, it's that - contrary to vanilla angband, I suppose most of us know anti summoner digs - it is much more difficult and often impossible to create efficient LoS breakers.

Just to give you an idea what this means: I'd say we all consider ghouls comparatively low thread? I do anyway . So as an experiment yesterday my SB left a ghoul king alive for a few turns in Tol Falas, let it summon some stuff, which also included ghasts. I retreated into a hallway, but had 3 or more ghasts in LoS and ended up in a situation where half the level was swarmed with various ghoul types. I had to reposition/flee via PD a few times to at least limit the number of ghasts in LoS and specifically start targeting those (i think i killed the ghoul king before the situation escalated beyond repair) to clean up that mess, which took at least half an hour. The only damage i had to worry about was from diseases, which still used up the majority of my potions.
Now imagine it had been a Wyrm instead.

To give this some perspective, I also opened a vault with a Cold Wyrm, also in Tol Falas. By the time i made it to the stairs, there were also 2 Cold drakes and various hatchlings. Problem: the corridor was quite long. Now, a fighter would have had no chance in this scenario, but i was able to PD the Cold Drakes and Wyrm to my side to kill them off, so the summoning stopped. Still needed some stair scumming because of the shield damage. The Drakes and Wyrm were kept out of LoS by hatchlings until i could PD them, so i could kill them separately. Took me 20 minutes to kill off all those hatchlings to get the biggies in sight for PD and clean up afterwards and we're talking 1-2 shot monsters.


Possible solutions:

1. Why not treat NPC summoners similar to players and put a limit on how many summons they can have active at the same time? So a Wyrm could summon either 2 drakes or 1 drake and 3 hatchlings and from that point on only replenish the fallen - best would be only replenish full sets, which would further limit scenarios where hatchlings block access to wyrms or drakes. This could still cause problems with infiinite summons where you can never reach the summoner, but they might be a bit fewer. Also, open space might now even be beneficial since you could try to specifically go for the big summoner. Anyway, this would mean max 2 drakes and 6 hatchlings (then summoned by the drakes) at the same time, per wyrm.

or

2. Severely increase summoning cooldowns.

[Shoob]

hehehe, my current char (somewhat abusing known bugs), got up to 95% cold resistance before he went to carn dum, that combined with an exceedingly high AC/DF (well, normal fighter AC/DF) made me try to get cold drakes to summon crazily, I probably gained a couple levels each time I saw a cold drake.

[Fela]

And that cold resistance would help you how exactly if said fighter was stuck in a corridor with 2-3 cold drakes in LoS and no teleport scroll left? I've seen even a single drake keep my melee char (projeted) infinitely busy until i PD'ed that sucker out of LoS.

Going back to the last depth and spending time there to reset a level might be a valid option, but doesn't seem like a desirable solution in my book.

[Final Master]

A cold resist that high (better at 100%) would mean that if the hatchlings couldn't deal physical damage to you, then you could just hold 'x' in whatever direction you want to go and you'll get their eventually, because of no shield damage, no breathe damage and no physical damage. The only time you may have to stop and actually do something is if you are next to a drake or a wyrm.

[Fela]

A cold resist that high (better at 100%) would mean that if the hatchlings couldn't deal physical damage to you, then you could just hold 'x' in whatever direction you want to go and you'll get their eventually, because of no shield damage, no breathe damage and no physical damage. The only time you may have to stop and actually do something is if you are next to a drake or a wyrm.

You do realize that for any finite constant value k, 0*k is still 0? That's your progress towards the Drake after k turns.

[Final Master]

That is only if they summon the same amount at the same rate that I kill them. Now that it's been knocked down to 3 hatchlings a summon instead of 9. At times the drakes can't keep up at all, especially with reposte and being surrounded on all 8 sides. It will still take several minutes, but you WILL get there.

[darkgod]

Maybe we can make Summon have disminishing return, or rather the more they summon the longer their cooldown gets, so eventualy it's so long it wount be much a problem

[yufra]

I like the diminishing returns idea.

[Grey]

Yeah, that definitely sounds good. Would take away the whole infinite summons problem without reducing the initial threat of a summoner.