Don't close the door on Uglúk, the uruk!

[artes]

A well-known trick to heal up during a fight with a monster capable of opening doors, e.g. an orc, is the following: Flee trough a door and close it. When the orc opens it, close it again in his face, and repeat this procedure until fully healed.

This is probably an unwanted exploit. In reality most monsters would be stronger than the player, and able to hold the door open. The exploit also makes iron spikes and locking doors with lock-picking unnecessary.

My suggestion is that the player should not be able to close a door if there is a monster adjacent to the door. I think I saw this in a variant, but I don't remember which one.

[Derakon]

It's been awhile since I used this tactic, but I seem to recall that the monster would eventually bash the door down, breaking it. Is that not the case?

[artes]

In the code it seems like it will not bash the door if it can open it. I just tested it with a Forest troll, and it did not try to bash the door even if I repeated the procedure for a long time. When I instead jammed the door with a spike, the troll bashed it immediately.

A monster that has a speed of more than 1 can move on top of the door after opening it when the monster gets a double move.

Anyway, I see the using the trick as an unwanted exploit, and I think it would be not so difficult to write a patch to disallow it.

[fizzix]

I've used this trick with Sauron. The (simplest) solution is to have a monster attempt to bash a door instead of opening it 1 in every 5 attempts.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by fizzix

I've used this trick with Sauron. The (simplest) solution is to have a monster attempt to bash a door instead of opening it 1 in every 5 attempts.

How about making a counter for tries, and if it (successfully) opens a door in five turns a row then it bashes it instead. Any monster that can open a door should do it.

I would see monsters able to bash doors get at least slowed down by jammed door. One reason why nobody uses that is that it is completely ineffective against door-bashing monsters.

[bio_hazard]

If you wanted to change door behavior instead of monster behavior, you could give doors a chance to break every time they are opened or closed.

"You close the door. The door falls off its hinges!"

I don't see it as that abusive though, at least no more than endless pillar dancing. But I suppose any improvement to AI is welcome.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

How about making a counter for tries, and if it (successfully) opens a door in five turns a row then it bashes it instead. Any monster that can open a door should do it.

I would see monsters able to bash doors get at least slowed down by jammed door. One reason why nobody uses that is that it is completely ineffective against door-bashing monsters.

Yes that's better. But it's a bit more difficult. Yet another thing for the game to keep track of...

bio_hazard's solution is also ok.

I thought there were recent changes to door-jamming making it more effective. I still don't wind up using it because I dive through those levels...

[buzzkill]

I see two possible, easy solutions here, not that ones already mentioned wouldn't work.

1. Halt natural regeneration upon aggressive or non-restful actions. Active combat is the obvious one, but you could add opening and closing doors to the list assuming manipulating a heavy wooden dungeon-style door requires more effort than a gentle push.

Well, just one. As it turns out my other ideas were cumbersome and ineffective.

[Derakon]

I kinda feel like this doesn't need fixing. It's an exploit, yes, but it's not a huge exploit, and the punishment to the user for doing it (in terms of tedium) is enough to make it so that you'll usually want to just be better prepared rather than resort to it.

That said I wouldn't mind having monsters that can bash doors randomly decide to bash instead of open if they have both options available to them. And possibly making OPEN_DOOR imply BASH_DOOR.

[artes]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

I would see monsters able to bash doors get at least slowed down by jammed door. One reason why nobody uses that is that it is completely ineffective against door-bashing monsters.

They are slowed (in the newest versions). For every spike that has been put into the door, it takes one extra successful bash to bring down the door. For the weakest monsters it can take a long time. I just tested it.