[crossfire] Maps for spellcasters (and melee vs. ranged attacks)

[Rick Tanner]

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Raphaël Quinet wrote:
> Hi,
> Looking at the current set of maps and especially some of the 
> recently added quests, I see that several high-level maps can only be
> completed using melee. Ranged attacks are useless in many of these
> maps because magic and prayers are blocked, or because the monsters
> reflect spells and missiles, or because they are immune or highly
> protected against most attacktypes or diseases and they are too high
> level to be charmed.

Most likely the maps were made this way to prevent the Charm Monster &
kill pets abuse and the summon earth wall, cast deadly disease and wait
abuse. =-/

> I would like to balance that by adding some quests that can be
> completed without too much trouble using ranged attacks (spells or
> missiles) butare very hard to complete using melee. However... there
> is no easy way to do that. Map designers can easily block magic and
> prayers in a map by using "no_spells" floor, but there is no such
> thing as a "no_melee"floor.

As long as weapons can have nearly any and all attack type, I don't
think there is any way to make a monster immune to melee attacks.

Not an easy approach or change to implement: all attacks get a category;
melee, spell, prayer, missile weapon.  Then monster(s) could get a
category immunity (or immunities) thus making them only take damage from
(i.e.,) missile weapons.

> I have been thinking about various ways to discourage melee, but I
> am posting this message to the list because I hope that some of you
> have better ideas. Currently, the solution that I am thinking about is
> to allow melee but discourage players from using it. For instance,
> the monsters could have very low WC, hitback and a nasty combination
> of attacktypes such as acid + cancellation + weaponmagic. Maybe
> these monsters could also be mixed with other monsters having ghosthit or
> death in their attacktypes. So attempting hand-to-hand combat would
> result in damaged equipment and a high risk of being killed. But maybe
> there are better ideas? Do you have any suggestions?

Some ideas...

Monster has an aura like spell, similar to Flaming Aura - but the damage
is extremely deadly or dangerous to the player.

Upon death the monster "explodes" in a small radius (area of effect) a
very damaging spell.

Nearby bullet or firewalls have an attacktype that the monster is immune
to, but the player(s) will still take some damage from.  For instance, a
immune to hellfire demon in a room that has bullet walls swarming the
area with bolts of bullets with the attacketype hellfire.



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