Overpowered random enemies

[HousePet]

The difference it would make is letting us see exactly what about the npc was so broken.
It is very hard to fix something, when you don't know what it is that is broken about it.
There are a variety of different things that can allow it to one shot you.
Knowing whether it was because it was silly high talent level, mindpower, damage modifier, resistance penentration or critical modifiers doesn't help you, but it does help with fixing the problem.

[bpat]

By the way what difference it would make ? You cant block mind damage (well i could block ! but i dont carry +mind res shield with me ) and this guy eat my whole psi + 400 hp + 800 heroism hp with spammable mind sear despite forge shield, close to max 'all' resists and maxed solipsim. Obviously he had great mind penetration and super high crit multiplier but this info doesnt help me at all. I already invested in dex and you cant use treants to block beams. It wasn't random autoexplore death. I was buffed and this guy still one shoot me.

There is simply no way tank those guys. You have to play specific classes that ignore dmg or be perma invis / stealth / out of los.

You actually can block mind damage. I recommend picking up a Warding Wand, Totem, and Torque. Between them, you can block any type of damage except arcane. It wouldn't be helpful in this instance since you were ambushed, but it can save you in places like the Dark Crypt and the Prides since you know what kind of damage to expect. Aside from that note, I completely agree that being killed like that is pretty ridiculous. Deaths like that are the reason the only classes I seriously attempted were Corruptor and Marauder after getting destroyed by High Pyromancers and High Cryomancers in Vor Armory with a Summoner.

[Mankeli]

*Sigh*. Once again, two of my three latest higher level characters have been introduced to the wonders of random incredibly stupid TOME damage spikes: The other one took over 700 damage from a normal shadowblade striking from stealth without a chance to react or see the monster in Reknor but miraculously lived after being left with like 17 HP. The other one met a temporal stalker rare in Dreadfell that hit for over 700 damage and instantly killed the character from full health again before any chance to react or even see the monster. Both of these where while autoexploring and on normal roquelike. You remember normal, right? The difficulty level that some people in this very thread claim is perfectly balanced and one-shot free.

In addition to this my earlier character got one-shotted in Hidden tunnels. I think it was a trap or something in the last level after I had already killed the Assassin. It was much less frustrating, however, because I hadn't invested hours on that character yet. But frustrating nevertheless.

I was going to make a comparison between legendarily stupid ADOM early game one-shot stone block traps and TOME damage spikes as in trying to make a point how bad this is from a design point of view before I realised that TOME is actually much worse. That is because at least the traps in ADOM only randomly killed characters from full HP in the beginning of the game.

The difference it would make is letting us see exactly what about the npc was so broken.
It is very hard to fix something, when you don't know what it is that is broken about it.

Eh, not really because you already know how critical multiplier and strikes from stealth, talent levels etc. work for player characters. If you have a rare that has GWF 8, flurry 8, stealth and big critical multiplier etc. then the chances are that the monster is going to hit very hard. This much should be obvious.

I think it would be a huge improvement to simply make it impossible for invisible/unseen monsters to one-shot you before you see them or at least greatly reduce the chances for it through taking away their stealth/overall crit multiplier as they seem to have one like players do. There are less stupid ways to make invisible monsters interesting than one-shotting so they can be buffed in some other way if necessary. Alternatively, the stealth/invisibility behaviour of monsters could be changed so that they would only enter stealth/invisiblity after the player character has spotted them. At least in this way, you could expect that there is possibly a horribly damage spike coming and act accordingly (flee, kill now with AoE etc.)

Most of my one-shottings have been from invisible/stealth monsters so I think addressing this issue would help a lot.

[kyuubee]

In addition to this my earlier character got one-shotted in Hidden tunnels. I think it was a trap or something in the last level after I had already killed the Assassin.

same happened to me, it was a lvl 20 necro on normal roguelike with full hp and blurred mortality, the alarm trap spawn one shot it before i could react, not one shot actually, it got slowed and then killed by the whole spawn in 2 turns, anyway i couldn't react because they got 2 turns on me and neither i had any way to prevent it

i even took a screenshot of the log


edit: fixed, it was alarm trap spawn

[Mankeli]

I feel for you.

Here is the encounter with the shadow blade that miraculously did not kill my character. It was even worse than I remembered because it seems that is was over 800 points of damage from stealth while autoexploring and the place was AER (so even before Reknor).. This was with mail armour. And a regular non-vault shadowblade that you see in hidden compounds/maze and all that onward.

I didn't bother with the temporal stalker because I just thought to myself "not this shit again" and murdered the character.

tome-1.1.5-1396900096.jpg (232.13 KiB) Viewed 6110 times

[HousePet]

[quote="Mankeli]Eh, not really because you already know how critical multiplier and strikes from stealth, talent levels etc. work for player characters. If you have a rare that has GWF 8, flurry 8, stealth and big critical multiplier etc. then the chances are that the monster is going to hit very hard. This much should be obvious. [/quote]
That is obvious, but without exact details, how can we determine which talent/combination of talents is causing the problems?
We can easily list a few talents that are going to result in huge spike damage, but that doesn't help.
In the screenshot above we can discount GWF and Flurry. It looks like you were hit hard by a dual wielding shadowblade using Shadow Step. Since both hits were crits, we can safely assume it was using Stealth and Shadowstrike. They also appear to have an abysmal Shadow Combat, so that isn't the problem here.
So we can narrow the issue down to one or more of these options:
1. Stealth too high.
2. Base weapon damage too high.
3. Shadowstep multiplier too high.
4. Base crit multiplier too high.
5. Shadowstrike multiplier too high.
If we had the talent numbers, it would be easy to determine the value of each of these factors and work out which one is scaling too well.
Another option is the combat data in the log file.

[yabluchko]

The problem is not in some talent combos. One-shotting happens because monsters and player have same stats and same skills:

If player can one-shot monster then monster can one-shot player.
If player cannot one-shot monster - monster killing becomes too slow.

I think best solution would be to increase player and rares and bosses HP to something like x5 of current level, leaving damage untouched. This would prevent being one-shotted by anything and would lead to more long/interesting boss fights.

[The Revanchist]

The problem is not in some talent combos. One-shotting happens because monsters and player have same stats and same skills:

If player can one-shot monster then monster can one-shot player.
If player cannot one-shot monster - monster killing becomes too slow.

I think best solution would be to increase player and rares and bosses HP to something like x5 of current level, leaving damage untouched. This would prevent being one-shotted by anything and would lead to more long/interesting boss fights.

I'd be interested in testing this. Just saying...

[bpat]

The problem is not in some talent combos. One-shotting happens because monsters and player have same stats and same skills:

If player can one-shot monster then monster can one-shot player.
If player cannot one-shot monster - monster killing becomes too slow.

I think best solution would be to increase player and rares and bosses HP to something like x5 of current level, leaving damage untouched. This would prevent being one-shotted by anything and would lead to more long/interesting boss fights.

This sounds nice but it practice it wouldn't work well. The reason for that most classes would be able to survive just by stacking health (not requiring great defensive talents) but some classes have far higher damage than others. For instance, it would take a Solipsist or a Wyrmic forever to kill anything compared to a Corruptor or Arcane Blade which could still kill most enemies in a single turn. Additionally, fighting regular enemies with this would just be tedious since there's no way for you to lose to them with their now-negligible damage but they would still take a while to kill with many ranged classes. I do agree that boss fights would be more interesting but overall I don't agree with this solution.

With all the comments I hear about getting oneshot I feel like everyone must be playing Yeek Paradox Mages or something. If getting oneshot is really such a common occurrence, just stock up on health items from shops and don't play Yeeks. Also, farming Zigur Patrols at level one gets you incredible loot at level 1 (often including strong defensive items) and although you have to be Shalore or a magic user to farm them, these are the characters that tend to have relatively low base health.

[Baldu]

I had made such a mod a few months ago when I played this game frequently, it increased my starting hp and mana by 100, doubled levelup hp gains, and gave an extra starting 5 talent and 5 generic points, and it made the hard difficulty pretty balanced and exciting. Still lots of challenge and some places were definitely off limits (girlfriend area), but I never got 1shot, I'd say that was the most fun I've had with this game.

I stopped playing the game for a while and had deleted the mod, but now I'm starting to play again I might write it again, I'll post it if I do.

[ZyZ]

Also, farming Zigur Patrols at level one gets you incredible loot at level 1 (often including strong defensive items) and although you have to be Shalore or a magic user to farm them, these are the characters that tend to have relatively low base health.

Every class / race except antimagic followers with at least 11 (?) magic can wield basic staff.

[bpat]

Also, farming Zigur Patrols at level one gets you incredible loot at level 1 (often including strong defensive items) and although you have to be Shalore or a magic user to farm them, these are the characters that tend to have relatively low base health.

Every class / race except antimagic followers with at least 11 (?) magic can wield basic staff.

That's true, but since level 1 Zigur Patrols have an amazing reward/risk, you'd want to get one as early as possible. This is a bit luck dependent unfortunately, especially since any race except Shalore and Higher will need a Magic boosting item to use a staff.

If you can equip a staff early, then farming Zigur Patrols is a good idea on any ranged class (except maybe Archer, I haven't tested to see how much armor these enemies have on Normal but Archers definitely can't do it at all on Insane).

Also pick up a Mindblast Torque from Zigur if you plan on farming these. It's pretty ironic but very effective.

[Replikant]

Hi, just registered to comment on this.
First some background info: I stumbled across TOME some time ago and I have not yet been able to finish the game, even on normal. My best attempt, a summoner, lost a his last lives against that spellcaster dude in the slime tunnels, can't remember the name. Shadows got me, IIRC. My rogues (first class I've played) never got to the east, too much of a glass cannon, I guess, and even less experience on my side, currently I enjoy playing anorithils.

Now, I can see the following problem with any solution to the high variance/damage spikes of TOME:

1) There are very good players out there, who have studied the game mechanics and have enough experience. They are willing to spend time hunting for the best equipment, to farm and to optimize their character. They will very rarely be one-shotted in normal and enjoy nightmare and above for the challenge. They don't mind the damage-spikes so much as they are prepared for it.
2) There's players like me. I haven't studied the game-mechanics in detail (damage calculation and mitigation, the order in which effects are applied, etc.). I don't know every tree of every class by heart, let alone know what each talent can do in practice. I have some experience in roguelikes, I like the challenge of having limited lives, and I prepare my characters before entering vaults, I scout and buff on boss-levels, etc. But I am also a bit lazy, I don't visit shops often enough to optimize my equipment and I probably don't have the optimal combination of infusions, equipment and skills. Random high damage-spikes or annoying status-lock talent combinations are much more likely to get me killed.
I open most vaults I encounter (I opened the Room of Death in the armoury with my summoner, not knowing what it was, and, astonishingly, only lost one live while clearing it out), instead of leaving them sealed and coming back to them at higher levels.
3) There's probably other players who have an even more casual approach to the game.

It's very difficult to make the game challenging for all player types. Even without one-shotting, without optimal equipment/infusions/playstyle you can easily get status-locked and get killed in a fight that a more experienced player would see as mildly entertaining or downright boring.

One reason for this is escape options with cooldowns, I think. In nethack/slash'em, I have teleport scrolls, cursed potions of gain level, wands of digging, etc. as an emergency exit if I run into a dangerous situation which I probably can't handle. But since my escape options have limited uses/charges, I don't spam them, I have to think about using them. In TOME, I can, in principle spam them. Therefore they are not guaranteed to work to keep them from being OP. Thus, I may not have a working "Oh, shit" button, if with my lazy play-style (which used to be "shoot it first, and look at its stats/talents later" until recently) gets me into trouble.

Anyway, my wish-list for improving the game would be:
1) keep the difficulty level up, it's refreshing to have a game which is not dumbed down.
2) reduce the variance in damage too keep it fair
3) make standard fights a bit more challenging, to keep you on your toes, or reduce tedium by cutting filler levels of dungeons
4) I still like the idea of an early warning system: If you approach a rare, autoexplore could stop with a short message. Then I would proceed with more caution, probably. Maybe make it an option in the menu.

Oh, one more thing: Would it make sense to have a depletion zone around random rares to suppress the likelyhood of facing two rares at the same time? IIRC I nearly lost my anorithil to that detachable-tentacles monster in Lake Nur all-the-while running from another rare (luckily a rather immobile one).

[Razakai]

It would be nice if the difficulty of the game was smoothed out so that regular fights would present a small challenge, rather than 'lets bump attack my way through yet another crowd of bears/wolves/slimes'. I think a lot of the difficulty spikes come from the sheer number of nonthreatening trash mobs that lull people into a false sense of security, followed by something genuinely scary. Not that every mob should be Worm that Walks/Multihued Wyrm/Lich/Forge Giant tier, but at least moreso than now.

[Snowflake]

Posting here just to give a counterfeeling, if not counterargument -

(also, to note there's another class of players beyond the ones mentioned by Replikant - mainly us "average" players, not superskilled, nor new or ignorant)

So I'm an average player, with average experience at ToME, and some but not that much in roguelikes in general.

I don't dislike the scouting skills. I don't meticulously use them either, except when entering areas I know to be of high risk, like vaults. I don't find them (scouting skills) tedious, i.e. I don't attach that mentioned "RL cost" to them, when I manage to get them I find them nice to have, and sometimes I wish I had used them when I auto-explore my way into offensive spells (why do the mobs get that "free round" even when I see them in time, though?) but I don't fret much about it.

I auto-explore a lot, and only play on normal (for now) - I am not a player that looks for a mighty challenge. But I do not mind powerful bosses at all, and in my few hundreds of hours of playing I have not met any unseen deaths. Someone mentioned that them being "rare" is no excuse, I feel it is. Development/tuning always comes with a cost, and getting something "pretty good" is often better than "perfect" - as you can do something else with your resources then.

But, as said, I don't strive to argue any point. Just giving voice to that side of the issue that does not really mind the way things are at the moment.