[crossfire] combat, spell & monster balance

[Juha Jäykkä]

Just some thoughts on this... First, the script seems very useful.

> - Compared to player level, monsters should generally have similar hp to
> the player - this just is needed to keep player vs player balance - right
> now, most spells do so much damage at high levels (needed because monsters
> have hp), that it will kill another player if hit by it.

This has indeed been a real problem for area effect spells and teamplay. On 
the teamplay topic, there was an earlier suggestion of allowing arrows and 
bullet/missile-type spells pass right through (think of "beside") an ally if 
shot from the next square, that is a fighter could block the monster from 
getting to the archer/mage who could cast stuff from behind the fighter. Is 
this still on the agenda? I think it seems very useful (and easy to 
implement).

> - Related to that, it  means that monsters generally need to have fairly
> similar hp at a given level - this goes backs to spell again.  For example,
> if you have 2 level 5 monsters, one at 75 hp, the other at 25, but of
> similar toughness (due to armor, ac, damage, speed), that second one is now
> easy pickings for a mage, as AC is meaningless for most spells, as is armor
> (may have other resistances, but probably not for everything - and if so,
> why not just give more HP then). This isn't a hard and fast rule, but that

This is not the whole story. There are also monsters with resist_magic +100 
that are very hard to kill for mages but are easy pickings for everyone else 
(beholders come to mind - they are so slow that they are easy kills if you 
have any melee skills). I think this is ok. It should be possible for some 
monsters to be easy kills for mages and some for fighters - it again gives 
more reason for teamplay: let mages handle armour +100 monsters and fighters 
resist_magic +100 monsters etc.

> - More on HP - reducing the dynamic rage also helps out in spell balance
> and spell reduction - with some creatures have 5,000 hp, there really isn't
> any way within the game to have low level spells increase in damage at a
> fast enough rate to keep up with that, so you get higher level spells.  If
> monster HP doesn't rise so dramatically, it may not be possible for things
> like bolt spells to increase in damage enough to still be effective at
> higher levels

This is true.

> - Last note on HP - at the low levels, with the revised starting HP on the
> tavern server, the monsters tend to have lower HP with them catching up to
> the player at higher - I'll have to see how this works with spells, but in
> some cases, it just doesn't make sense/work to have higher hp - for
> example, if a mouse had 20 HP, it would take a character probably 4 hits to
> kill it (and that presumes that mouse has an AC bad enough that the
> character can hit every time) - in that mode, I don't think players would
> ever really be able to clear out those mouse and slime infested areas.  I
> think this may also work better/help balance the mages - their starting
> spell may still be able to kill those first level creatures and not kill
> players, and given they are likely to need to rest often to regain mana,
> that faster kill is likely to offset the time they need to rest.

True, too. I think we need to decide whether we give mages area-effect spells 
or not, because this kind of balance really hinges on the existence of area 
effect spells. I think we should have them, but not like they are now: 
fireballs, for example, are totally useless: by the time they are able to 
kill any monster, you already have much more effective spells. And small 
fireball, when you first can gain it, is not capable of killing anything 
except perhaps mice. This needs to be tweaked.

The problem here is balance between the level you get the spells and the level 
of monster the spell is capable of killing. At 20th level your fireball 
should certainly kill orcs, but then, who wants to go kill orcs at 20th 
level? (Unless the orcs stand in front of some tougher, more rewarding 
target.) On the other hand, if at 5th level the fireball is capable of 
killing orcs, it has to be balanced very carefully: a single fireball could 
easily kill 20 orcs, so a mage able to cast 5 of them quickly kills of a 100 
orcs - it should really take very long to regain those spell points 
afterwards. Ideally, it should take as much time as a 5th level fighter takes 
to kill 100-X orcs, where X is the number of orcs the fighter is able to kill 
while the mage casts the 5 fireballs. Thus when the mage again has maximum 
SP, the fighter has finished off another 100 orcs and thus the mage and the 
fighter are balanced. The numbers used are examples, hope you get the idea.

> - Related to that, and also to other discussions, it would seem desirable
> to me that as creature level goes up, so does its life expectancy, even
> though the player level is higher and does more damage.  A lot of this is
> based on maps - most low level maps are just maps full of monsters, where
> as when you start to get higher, the maps tend to be more sparse.  If it
> took 5 seconds to kill a kobold, that would be really annoying really fast,
> but taking 5 seconds (or longer) to kill a dragonman likely wouldn't.

Agreed. But, then again, it should not take too long. I remember a time the 
only way for my mage to kill cyclops or dragonmen was leprosy... The amount 
of waiting in Meganthrop*'s castle was not fun.

> potions, spells, scrolls, etc to regain HP.  In fact, it seems reasonable
> that at higher levels, there may be monsters who %death > 100, implying
> that a character can not survive a 1 on 1 battle without using magical
> healing

True, but this also applies to lower levels. At 1st level, any dragon is a 
sure death.

> - One way in which i'm balancing monsters is by the speed they have - most
> monsters have a speed of less than 0.25, and many are only at 0.1 -> 0.2.
> Doubling a monsters speed from 0.2 to 0.4 effectively doubles how dangerous
> it is (more attacks in that time period) - I expect that may be a way a lot
> of the more powerful monsters get adjusted to make up for their loss of hp
> (that and increasing resistance values if they are currently low)

That's a nice way, as long as the monsters are not unplayably fast (without 
good reason - some creatures might be ok if there is lore to explain their 
unnatural speed).

>   Just sme random observations and thoughts.

Likewise. =)

-Juha

-- 
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		| Juha Jäykkä, juolja at utu.fi			|
		| home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/		|
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