rFear and rBlind -- high resists or random powers?

Currently, Fear and Blind are not damage attacks. Perhaps they should not
be considered high resists. In particular, it is easy to buy potions granting
temporary immunity to fear. It seems to me that rFear is very similar to SI.

Should we move rFear and rBlind into the random powers category granted by
items like blessed weapons? Would that make it harder or easier to cover
rBlind? I'm not sure how it would change game balance, since I find blindness
too tedious and so I primarily play dwarves.


For historical reasons, this has not been feasible with the code as it is
currently written. However, I'm unifying the object flags into a single
construct rather than the 3-group construct currently in use, so it will be
trivial to do if I ever get my patch finished.


Perhaps we should also remove FeatherFall and SlowDigestion from the category
of random powers since they are so useless. That shouldn't matter one way or
the other to the implementation I have planned.


Eddie

hzergel901 RemoveThis @gmail.com wrote in
news:1adc56b7-76c4-433c-be8e-18b23217d238@s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com:

> On Feb 1, 6:26 pm, Nick <nckmccn... RemoveThis @yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>> On 2008-02-01 23:03:01, Eddie Grove <eddiegr... RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Currently, Fear and Blind are not damage attacks. Perhaps they
>> > should not be considered high resists. In particular, it is easy
>> > to buy potions granting temporary immunity to fear. It seems to me
>> > that rFear is very similar to SI.
>
> My own preference is for shifting rblind to being an ability, but
> maybe actually adding fear damage to the game. Imagine being breathed
> on by a Great Wyrm of Terror for 400-odd damage and inability to hit
> it back in melee!

I should point out that some races have intrinsic rblind (dwarves; one
reason I LOVE playing dwarves!) and warriors in general attain rfear at
clevel 30 (at least in some variants; I believe this is universal, but
of course, could well be wrong). Dunno how that affects your reasoning.

> ...make FF more useful in some other way --
> perhaps providing some protection from gravity and inertia attacks
> (e.g. from the slowing -- right now the slowing is unresistable;
> perhaps having both FA *and* FF should grant protection, or at least a
> saving throw; perhaps also from the stunning from gravity, as it no
> longer slams you about quite so hard when you have FF, though rsound
> also protects there).

I LOVE this idea. Gravity attacks are ferocious and there's not even
partial resistance: I don't like the idea of attacks that can't be at
least partially resisted (well...mana storms are like that, and I think
disintegration is as well, but a FEW are okay).

Just a personal preference, of course.

-JAH