Drops to benefit monsters before they die?

[Chud]

This is probably an impractical and difficult idea, but...

As I understand it now (from what people have said; I have not looked at the code for this myself), item drops are generated at the time a monster is killed, correct?

How difficult would it be to change that so that drops are generated at the time the monster is generated, and then at least certain benefits of whatever it's carrying might apply to it?

Thus, for example, you're wondering why your fire bolt has no effect on that Swordsman, and then he drops Firestar and it makes sense... or, Boldor is moving faster than you know he's supposed to, and he drops a whatever of speed.

I have a hunch that this would be a major re-write to implement, and perhaps difficult to balance also, but it would add some fun realism and unpredictability. Although I know why this happens, I've still thought on occasion "the novice priest was carrying *that*?? And he didn't think to use it against me???"

Of course, certain possibilities could make already-difficult monsters much more dangerous than they already are, too...

:-)

[Derakon]

NetHack has this, which leads to the infamous "Gnome with a Wand of Death" issue. Angband of course doesn't have wands of death, but it does have players with far fewer hitpoints than monsters do; a monster with a wand of firebolt is far more dangerous than a player with same. There's also the question of sorting out what creatures can use what items. Can dragons wear helms? What about crowns? How many amulets could a hydra wear? (Ignoring for the moment that hydas only carry cash)

That said, I'm not opposed to the concept on principle. I just think it'd be a loooot of work, and almost certainly variant territory. But if you implement it, let us know so we can try it out!

(A notional object-oriented implementation of Angband would probably be better-suited to this as presumably both the player and all monsters would be descended from a root Creature class with an inventory and equipment slots)

[Atarlost]

You can also look forward to never ever finding healing potions because the monsters you've been fighting drank them all.

[Adley]

Originally Posted by Atarlost

You can also look forward to never ever finding healing potions because the monsters you've been fighting drank them all.

You don't need healing potions. Morgoth will have 10 rods of *healing* and 10 of speed

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Adley

You don't need healing potions. Morgoth will have 10 rods of *healing* and 10 of speed

I'm thinking more likely he will have scrolls of banishments and rods of teleport other. *destruction* for emergency.

[NotMorgoth]

And what if Sauron has the One Ring?

[Derakon]

Oddly enough, the One Ring won't make Sauron that much stronger. His speed would increase by 17%, his melee attacks would do ~25% more damage on average, and he'd patch his acid resistance hole, but that's about it.

[Atarlost]

But patching his acid resistance hole is almost like increasing his hitpoints by 50%. Possibly more if you've got a big non-slay weapon like the Glaive of Pain or a dearth of high level slay evil weapons in your randart set since slay evil isn't available in rings like acid brand is.

[EpicMan]

I think it would be a lot easier to code (add pointer to item array, give monsters powers of carried gear) than it would be to balance.

It would also require additional AI to use activations, devices and the like.

Angband as-is is probably too long a game for "the uruk reads a scroll of *destruction* - more - you die"

I think a monster-uses-drops variant would either need a shorter dungeon or be balanced around an ironman-style "don't go back to the previous floor" so that total play time is shorter.


Such a game would be brutal, but crazy fun. Kind of like the earlier versions of Zangband.

Hmm, maybe I need to download Git and try this out...

[Adley]

You die?
Uniques don't die by destruction. they get WOR.