MAngband

Okay, so on chat, we were discussing this idea of team deathmatch in MAngband (no, seriously). Basically, two teams would start at 50ft and 500ft, and murder each other for our entertainment.
Start:

• Players would start with no gear, and 300 gold
• Dunedan would only get +1 WIS and +3 CON, since they're currently the powerhouses of Angband
• High-elves wouldn't be in the server, since they're even more overpowered
• Dunedan and humans get ten feet infravision (so thy lantern exploit suddenly becomes much less usable)
• Mages would start out with 300% more max mana

General:

• XP caps at 120
• Ghosts appear on revival spots
• You can't run when enemies see you (just like in MAngband)

Weapon:

• BPR nerfed a bit, so weapons like broadswords would be viable
• No ToHit or ToDam bonuses, or low ones, to be more varied

Shops:

• Normal shops would be in the bases, and there would be ones in the dungeon which sell ALL the stuff they can keep, except for really overpowering stuff, like Raal's Tome of Destruction
• Cheap stuff would be 90% their normal price, medium stuff 75%, and expensive stuff 50% normal price
• There would be temporary stat potions you could buy

Classes:

• Miners:
  • Innate +10 to digging
  • Innate spell "Detect Treasure"
  • +2 BPR with digging items
• Scouts:
  • +1 to speed at start, +1 speed per level
  • Innate blink, teleport, recall
  • Replaces rogue

Wow, that summed a lot of it up pretty well. :I

First of all, I have an idea; if we change the class exp penalties around, we can probably make warriors dominate the game less. If we go with these:
Warrior +15% exp cost (human hits level 6 at 115 exp)
Mage -10% exp cost (human hits level 6 at 90 exp)
Priest -10% exp cost (human hits level 6 at 90 exp)
Scout +25% exp cost (human hits level 6 at 125 exp, max level is 5)
Ranger +10% exp cost (human hits level 6 at 120 exp)
Paladin +30 exp cost (human hits level 6 at 130 exp, max level is 5)
Miner +0 exp cost (human hits level 6 at 100 exp)

And make dunadain have +3 CON and +1 WIS, with a +20% exp cost,and make gnomes have +20% instead of +25% then here are the race/class max levels (I think):

Humans: Warrior 6, Mage 6, Priest 6, Scout 5, Ranger 6, Paladin 5, Miner 6.

Half-elf, Half-orc and Hobbit: Warrior 5, Mage 6, Priest 6, Scout 5, Ranger 6, Paladin 5, Miner 6.

Kobold: Warrior 5, Mage 6, Priest 6, Scout 5, Ranger 5, Paladin 5, Miner 6.

Elf, Dunadan, Half Troll, Gnome, and Dwarf: Warrior 5, Mage 6, Priest 6, Scout 5, Ranger 5, Paladin 5, Miner 6.

That way, any race can make level 6 as a mage, priest, or miner. Warrior, who are sort of overpowered, can reach level 6 as humans only. Rangers can make level 6 as humans and the faster learning races. Scouts, who are going to be awesome, have a max level of 5.

Obviously, these ideas need work. We might need to raise the exp penalty of half trolls to +35. That way, half trolls couldn't reach level 6 with mages or priests (to balance the regen), but could still hit level 5 with scouts.

Maybe we could nerf high elves into being an okay race. I'm sure this post is full of errors.

APPROVE!!!
please update this when this is going to happen so I can join in. Right now I cant play mangband at home, so I would have to find a friend's house to play it at.

Oh, and we're eliminating running in view of hostile players, right? Also, dunadan and human should get 10ft infravision to stop them from just pulling the lantern trick.

This sounds really neat! I'm really curious how it'd play, seeing as there's really nothing of its kind in existence.

*on topic*

Will paladins and priests have some healing?
From what I remember, priests and paladins' spell healing doesnt really matter until you got high enough level for heal, because heal potions are always rare. I would think paladins wouldnt matter unless they had a better XP mod.
Also, priests wouldnt have Orb of Draining, so I dont know how viable they would be.

They'll almost definitely have good healing. We should find a way to set up priests and paladins to have useful healing. Potions probably won't be as much of a mainstay, since cash will be sort of short. Do you think cure serious wounds would be useful then?

Also, that's a good point on Orb of Draining. Do you think a sort of nerfed version would make priests on par with other classes?

Yes I think both of those changes would make priests and pallys good enough to compete. That'll turn Paladins into the damage-taker, which is the proper place for it, rather than a "worse warrior with some detection and some bad heals"
I like the idea of priests having a splash attack. That'll be interesting if people keep some distance between each other to prevent priests from being too effective.

If things turn out wrong, you can always tweak it in the next server instance (which will probably be very short term.)

Some posts removed. Play nice, all.

Imho such a TDM thing should be really play with balance of the classes and probably everything should start simply.

start with one race and the classes for example. Allow few "specials" for each class. E.g.

Class Melee Ability
Warrior 5 bpr beserker potions
Paladin 3 bpr weak support spell blessing on party
Ranger 2 bpr strong ranged shot with bow (shots should replinish over time)
Rogue 2 bpr when sneaking invisible if not too close to a player, sneak attack boosts damage ? <-> rogues detect rogues
Priest 1 bpr strong support spell heal, medium offensive spell Orb of draining
Mage 1 bpr weak support spell resistance on party, strong offensive spell (magic missile)

Maybe add a weapon selection later on, or different spells to choose from. Or maybe upgrade different things on level ups. Also for XPs I would not make differences here. Again balance classes... a level 2 mage should be able to beat a level 2 warrior and the other way around if played well. Or jwhile iam thinking on it it might be even better to have some kind of rock/paper/scissor way of working, though i am not sure how that would look like :)

Weapons e.g. could go from light ones in the first levels to heavier ones in the later levels.
For gold players could buy extras like ESP, Armor, enchant scrolls, brandings etc., all kinds of items.,
Also Items should be limited to whats useful. No bad items on the map.

Maybe make it so that level ups may buy additional abilities or upgrade existing ones...
E.g. magic missile upgrade -> lightning bolt , while new ability could be teleport, or doors (these should be locked though) :)
Warriors could get more bprs different potions or extra damage types like bleeding effects on the victim.

But this makes it already very difficult to setup and balance
when this is working and *not* fun then start to modify / add :D

Yeah, it would be nice to have it streamlined eventually.

On the subject of having one race, we probably could do that if the game gets too hard to balance and we need to focus on other things. If we do that, I think we should either go with humans, kobolds, hobbits, or gnomes. Humans since they're the base race, and the others since it would be comical to have kobolds running around killing each other with lightning bolts and crossbows.

It all depends on what you want.... you could also do 2 different teams like dwarf race allowing paladins and priests vs. kobolds who allow mages and rangers and rogues (or whatnot ...:))

I don't see the point here... playing the game with level 1-6 characters which are totally unbalanced in the early game would force you to rewrite 99% of the game engine. Not mentioning all the changes you want to put in that...
Why not simply make a server with characters starting at level 50 (then xp penalty gets out of topic, spellcasters get all their spells), with no maximize mode (all stats max at 18/100 so race/stat bonuses get out of topic) and a standard set of starting stuff? Disable the townies, add 2 buildings in town for bases and you're set!

I saw it, powerwyrm just volunteered to have the server ready by end of next month ;)

Rock paper scissors (alternate):

Melee weapon attacks do high damage to unarmoured (low AC = take more damage)

Magic attacks do high damage to heavily armoured (high AC = take more damage)

Bows do medium damage to both. Maybe slightly less to extremely high armour.