Stun resistance

[teachu2die]

that's true. if a major makeover were to be considered, what about having some kind of 'stun meter' - in angband doesn't stun increase spell failure rates, and when it reaches a certain point, knocks you out?
stuns could last longer, and incrementally reduce speed and chance of drinking potions, eventually leading to being knocked out.

[Zonk]

I figure zero chance of magical devices or scrolls - when stunned it should be basically impossible to do complex things, and difficult to do simple things.

Another thought for nerfing stun - each turn you're stunned you get a repeated saving throw to snap out of the stun. Not the stun resistance throw, but the physical or magical throw (or maybe a separate Willpower test). This means that weaker monsters and players are stunned for longer, but tougher monsters are harder to abuse with this status.

If stun were nerfed I'd suggest many existing monsters have their current 100% resistance to stunning reduced somewhat.

I suggested something like this before.

Basically - stun (and maybe knockback)resistance - both % resistance and saves- would be checked for EACH individual turn of stunning.
Let's say you are attacked with an 5-turn stun attack, the game makes 5 resistance/save checks. If, for example, you pass 3, you are only stunned for 2 turns.
This basically means hat attacks that stun for 'X turns' would then stun 'up to X'.

[Elliott]

We had this discussion a while back, and the big stumbling block was that the game is designed for characters and monsters to be "the same" in terms of abilities. Playing on Normal, the character is considered to be elite status (same as elite monsters and maybe bosses, I forget) which conveys a variety of benefits. The issue with some of the solutions people list is that the same system would apply when you tried to stun a monster. If you're a melee character trying to kill Bill, good luck killing him when level-appropriate with severely nerfed stun effects.

Regarding Free Action potions, I agree that they are theoretically useful, and I've used them for certain boss fights, but wow are they resource intensive to use. Instead of wearing that rough leather armor of stability (is that still in the game? I haven't seen a suit this beta) you can wear your mithril plate armor of uberness, but in return you essentially take a 25% hit to your speed, because you have to give up 1/4 of your moves to repeatedly quaffing potions of free action. That's a pretty gigantic penalty.

Also, when you're getting ready to face the Master, picking up a bunch of FA potions at 7g a piece is a pricey but worthwhile investment for a tough fight (just hope it doesn't drag out too long. Its not reasonable to have the spare gold to pick up more than 10-12) but that's for a small handful of specific fights. Later in the game you have more money so the cost is less prohibitive, but even if it were worthwhile to pop one or two every single time you ran into a monster that could stun you, you'd have to be carrying 20-30 at least every time you went into a dungeon, because you'd use them more often than healing potions. The game economy simply isn't set up for you to be popping one or more 7g potions every half-dozen fights.

The only real solution I can see is to significantly increase the number of items that grant stun resistance. Virtually every artifact should be chipping in 10-30% stun resistance and most high quality items as well. It shouldn't be completely trivial to get stun immune, it should take some thought and consideration, but it also shouldn't be "I have to designate half of my gear for resist stun, even over pieces that are otherwise 10x as good, because otherwise my risk of randomly getting stunned and dying is too high". Also, stun-resist pieces should be generally available earlier.

A good tradeoff would be a piece you'd really want anyway (Like Ringil) only giving 10% stun resist. So its still helping, but you might have to adjust a piece elsewhere, rather than having both your ring slots taken even over artifacts for the foreseeable future.

[Dervis]

I suggested something like this before.

Basically - stun (and maybe knockback)resistance - both % resistance and saves- would be checked for EACH individual turn of stunning.
Let's say you are attacked with an 5-turn stun attack, the game makes 5 resistance/save checks. If, for example, you pass 3, you are only stunned for 2 turns.
This basically means hat attacks that stun for 'X turns' would then stun 'up to X'.

I agree that this would be the most elegant way to tackle this issue. This way stun resistance would still be important but no longer the "90% isn't enough, I need to get 100% or murphy's law will get me eventually". Add a few more egos with small amounts of stun resistance and the system would be fine in my opinion.

My limited lua skills managed to edit Stunning blow to do this so I think it would be easy enough to implement:

Code: Select all

		-- Try to stun !
		if hit then
			local st = 0
            for i = 1, 2 + self:getTalentLevel(t) do
                if target:checkHit(self:combatAttackStr(weapon.combat), target:combatPhysicalResist(), 0, 95, 5 - self:getTalentLevel(t) / 2) and target:canBe("stun") then
                st = st + 1
                end
            end
            if st > 0 then
            target:setEffect(target.EFF_STUNNED, st, {})
			else
			game.logSeen(target, "%s resists the stunning blow!", target.name:capitalize())
			end
		end

[Mithril]

This thread should likely be moved to the Ideas section.

I agree that stun currently is a problem (likely instant death if you do not have stun resistance, makes other armor except stability pretty useless).

Also agree with the objection that nerfing stun will also nerf several classes that uses stun as their primary tactic against tough monsters. Not sure that they will be playable then unless boosted in other ways.

Another solution would be to ensure that everyone acquires stun resistance after a while. One possibility would be that the armor talents, that everyone can get in Minas Tirith, also give stun resistance. So if you have 5 in an armor talent you get 100% stun resistance. Another possibility is a special "Stun resistance" talent. Still another possibility, in order to attempt to try to limit this to melee classes, would be that when you get 10 in a weapon talent, except distance weapons, you get stun resistance. This would make the Shield Wall talent comparatively less useful so maybe the resistance there should be changed to partial elemental resistance or something else.

This has the advantage of removing the problematic effects of stunning after a while. Also, when designing the later part of the game one can assume that everyone, or at least melee classes, have stun resistance and make the later part of the game challenging in other ways.

[darkgod]

Maybe every 10 points on Constitution should give 0.05 stun resist ?
So at 60 CON you'd get 30% "free" stun resist, making equipment juggling easier

[Mithril]

Maybe every 10 points on Constitution should give 0.05 stun resist ?
So at 60 CON you'd get 30% "free" stun resist, making equipment juggling easier

This would affect monsters also? Which would nerf those classes using stuns as their primary tactic against tough monsters?

[darkgod]

Yes, but not many monsters levelup their CON actually, they just have higher life ratings.
And the few that do, they deserve stun resist

[Susramanian]

I'm not in favor of building stun resistance into Con, since almost every class maxes con by the end of the game already. It's just handing out free stun resistance to everybody. Also, Con is plenty important already. No need to make it even more so. Sprinkling more stun resistance around on artifacts and ego items is the way to go, I think.

Another interesting option would be to give every class access to a tree with some sort of sustained defensive ability that includes a degree of stun resistance. Some classes already have this, like Fighters and Anorithil. Ideally, there would be some sort of tradeoff associated with these talents, like the offensive penalties of Shield Wall or the loss of other powerful hymns when using Hymn of Perseverance. Some classes already have sustains that could justifiably get stun resistance tacked onto them, like Berserker. I'd vote for implementing something like this in addition to more common stun resistance on egos and artifacts.

[Mithril]

I'm not in favor of building stun resistance into Con, since almost every class maxes con by the end of the game already. It's just handing out free stun resistance to everybody. Also, Con is plenty important already. No need to make it even more so. Sprinkling more stun resistance around on artifacts and ego items is the way to go, I think.

Same final effect, just different implementation. But I agree the CON is very powerful already.

[Grey]

We had this discussion a while back, and the big stumbling block was that the game is designed for characters and monsters to be "the same" in terms of abilities. Playing on Normal, the character is considered to be elite status (same as elite monsters and maybe bosses, I forget) which conveys a variety of benefits. The issue with some of the solutions people list is that the same system would apply when you tried to stun a monster. If you're a melee character trying to kill Bill, good luck killing him when level-appropriate with severely nerfed stun effects.

Personally I think it's cheap that a rogue can stun an enemy and have his stun ability come back from cooldown before the enemy comes out of the stun. Stunning and freezing are very cheap effects and it would be nice to see them as less 100% guaranteed to kill, against both players and enemies. Slightly nerfing stun is likely to benefit players more than monsters anyway, as players can abuse the ways out easier. It would also be nice to see more bosses and dangerous enemies that aren't 100% immune to the condition either - currently they're like that because the attacks are too cheap.

Also players and enemies aren't identical, as enemies can't drink potions. Give the option to drink potions when stunned (with 50% failure) and the player will at least have the chance of trying to escape the condition in a supremely dangerous situation. (Well, free action potions would have to be changed to cure stunning as well as preventing it.)

I'm personally very opposed to the player being put in a situation of being 100% unable to act. It's quite horrible actually, especially in a game that's otherwise very focused on tactical play. Stun and freeze attacks might as well be renamed "death ray" for the effect they have.

[Mithril]

Another possibility would be that all armor (helmet, gloves, body, etc) gives stun resistance which is wholly or mainly dependent on the material. So the worst material, say leather, gives 5%, mithril gives around, 35%, and so on. All artifact armors give some stun resistance. It should be fairly easy to get 100%, since this is currently an essential resistance, once good armors are created regularly.

[Mithril]

Personally I think it's cheap that a rogue can stun an enemy and have his stun ability come back from cooldown before the enemy comes out of the stun. Stunning and freezing are very cheap effects and it would be nice to see them as less 100% guaranteed to kill

Stun attacks are not guaranteed to hit and I think there is a chance to resist the stun regardless of stun resistance, So it is certainly not without risk for the classes depending on it as their main tactic.

[edge2054]

If cold resist was also freeze resist (with 100% being immunity) players could have a second way of gaining at least partial stun resist (to frozen but not stunned).

The reason I suggest this is because most ranged classes really don't have an issue with stun like they do with freeze.

Then for melee classes we could do as Sus suggested and sprinkle some stun resist on other talents (berserk would be a good candidate for stun and daze resist).

[darkgod]

Berserk just got stun & pin resistance (10% per effective talent level)