Blackguards: 4.2.0 to 4.2.1

[DavidMedley]

Anyone like this for "Seek Battle"?
if (monsters)
msg("These monsters could provide good sport.");
else if (context->aware)
msg("You smell no fear in the air.");

The previous versions were
if (monsters)
msg("You sense the presence of fearful creatures!");
else if (context->aware)
msg("You sense no fearful creatures.");


Losing a bit of specificity in favor of atmosphere, but the help text on "Seek Battle" is pretty clear:
Detects all monsters susceptible to fear in the immediate area, for one turn only.

Once upon a time this spell was called "Smell Fear" and was in the Fear and Torment book, but we moved it up and renamed it. There's a lot I like about both ways.

[DavidMedley]

New description for "Combat Regeneration"
You draw power from the thrill of combat, represented by
Spell Points (SP). You gain SP when damaged by an enemy or
when you attack in melee. As your blood cools your power fades;
you lose SP at half the rate other classes gain them.
When you spend SP by casting a spell you regain some health, and
fading SP replenish your health even more efficiently. The more damaged
you are, the bigger these health gains will be.

I included the term "fading" as helpfully suggested by Eric in this thread.

Here's the old version for comparison:
You draw power from the thrill of combat. This power is represented by
Spell Points (SP). You gain SP in combat when damaged by a monster or
when you attack in melee. When not in combat you *lose* SP at half the
rate others gain it, and you gain hitpoints (HP) at only half the normal
rate. When you spend SP by casting a spell you regain some HP, and
unspent SP replenish your health even more efficiently. The more damaged
the character is, the bigger these HP gains will be.

[archolewa]

Originally Posted by Cuboideb

Leap into battle should go through closed doors

Smashing through a door and tearing into a monster before they even know you're there would be EPIC. It would also open some more tactical options, like allowing you to get into melee range with fortuitously positioned Q's before they have a chance to summon, or closing a door and waiting for your enemy to get right behind it. A Blackguard's very own version of the hockey stick (that only lasts until you smash through the door, but meh).

I'm a sucker for new tricks of abusing LOS, and leveraging the dungeon to your advantage, and I feel like this has a chance of letting you do exactly that.

Or maybe it wouldn't really matter most of the time because you can just leap into battle, and you probably won't have the SP to ambush monsters anyway.

But still, if it wasn't too hard to code, I feel like this could be a fun little nook in the Blackguard's mechanics.

[DavidMedley]

Originally Posted by archolewa

allowing you to get into melee range with fortuitously positioned Q's before they have a chance to summon

The "leap" code has very simple pathfinding, and isn't meant to allow a lot of directional changes. Each step has to be the most direct path (diagonals preferred) or 45 deg either way. Also, you have to be aware of the monster somehow.

I don't remember doing this myself, but you should be able to do it around a U bend (player could be one space further back, but Q could not)

####
.Q.#
##.#
.@.#
####

Another possibility:

#####
###Q.
###..
###..
.@...
###..
###..
#####

[DavidMedley]

Like this:

####
Q..#
##.#
.@.#
####

You get the very unsatisfying result of the player using a turn and 4 SP, moving one space to the left, then being told "the way is blocked." It's definitely an area for improvement, but not today.

[DavidMedley]

Hmm. Leaping through doors and passable rubble seems to already work. I guess Nick fixed that...?

[Diego Gonzalez]

Originally Posted by archolewa

Smashing through a door and tearing into a monster before they even know you're there would be EPIC.

Too much work for a feature that would be used just a few times.

The BG is a very joke-friendly class for me... Love it.

[DavidMedley]

Originally Posted by DavidMedley

- Make Venom cost less, fail less
- Small increase in Taunt duration
- Any flavor text I can improve
- - Better wording for Seek Battle / Detect Fear (emotion, feeling, rage, anger)
- - Reword "S" text
- - Anything else I see along the way
- Remove minimum mana decrease (will make SP last longer at lower levels especially)
- Remove any extraneous comments I've left in the code (I think Nick did this for me when he merged)
- Leap into battle takes direction for adjacent monster (arrow)
- Whirlwind needs no target
- Leap into battle should go through open/broken doors

I've accomplished everything on the list except Leap accepting a direction key for targeting. Done some testing, too, and seems good. Will do some more testing in the next several hours.

I committed what I have here:
https://github.com/angband/angband/c...medley:patch-1

[DavidMedley]

OK, got all these and a few more tweaks in, pending approval. Thanks everyone!

[Eric]

Big fan of the new flavor texts

Looking forward to my next blackguard with more reliable Venom!