What are people's thoughts on this? I'm leaning towards yes. Making them able to be silenced means ranged classes with a silence can kill them with zero risk (assuming they have the means to damage them), and melee classes who are counter capped can likewise do the same via silence. They can't be stunned, I don't think its a stretch to make them immune to silence. Then you *have* to have a way of dealing with their magical damage, either by high resists/reflection or just by having lots of outs (heals + tele/invis) to reset the fight.
I think just making it possible to resist silence would make it OK. Then there would still be that chance of a hilarious "I silenced Dredmor" moment, but Daddy D would have enough magic resist to make it not an iron clad strategy. If he resists three time in a row, that right there can be enough to kill you.
And then, frankly, silence would lose it's one serious use. Because all the little piddly spellcasters die to a ranged attack or two, it's not worth silencing them, so that leaves the big bosses the only ones worth silencing at all, and if you can't do that... well it's kinda pointless. Or all silence spells would have to be reworked to big aoes to have some use at least, vs zoos.
Hmmm, fair point. I just finished a run where, outside of big D, I used my silence maybe half a dozen times all game. Maybe at least making it resistable is a better solution, as somebody else suggested? At least then there's some element of danger, instead of victory being like 100% assured. A bad streak of RNG could put you in danager.
Perhaps make Silence shorter, and make silence apply a buff to Magic Power to the target? Like "Boiling energies are trapped in your body since you are unable to cast". This would mean quite a lot of fun, when LD suddenly casts a Hyperfulminaric Bolt on you, while keeping the spell useful. You'd need a more tactical use then.
On the contrary, it just means that if you want to win by silencing Dredmor you have to build for it. Haywire can overcome spell resistance if you have enough of it. There just won't be any more of this "I use a sonic wand from my pocket dimension and then fling stuff until Dredmor's dead" going on. I have no problem with an emomancer or just a really dedicated magic training character pulling a silence-pummel win off.
Or give him: Revenge is a Lich: 4 Cooldown. You are no longer Silenced. +10+10 for 4 turns if Silence was removed. (or just a 20% chance every turn to Potion of Purity himself)
Would a PoP extinguish fire? He still takes massive damage from flames if he has not been reworked to be immune somehow.
Old burn did damage equal to a % of his health that ignored all resistance and lasted forever afaik. New burn ("On Fire") does 1 for 12 turns, which Dred resists. (it also applies 3-3-3-10-1). A lot of spells that used to apply Burn do not apply On Fire at the moment; and by that I mean I have never seen On Fire in game and do not see a single spell in the wiki that actually uses it. So yeah, fire is not a problem. Bleed still works.
Perhaps each silence on Dredmor only removes his ability to cast one spell? Though, yes, silence is next-to-useless outside of Dredmor right now.
I'd only vouch for the inability to silence Dredmor/Digula IF they add more Endgame-tier Armour for Mages and Rogues.
I'd be in favor of Silence being combined with Blindness or something to that effect. Make it an AoE spell that affects a larger number of monsters, then give it a (50 + ) out of 100 chance of success or some such. A character with that spell could then use it on monster zoos to temporarily blind a group of casters in the back, etc. On success, it prevents casting for that monster and reduces to 1 square, so unless they're right next to you they can't see you and won't give chase. For mages it would be more effective, but still in the realm of "playable" for rogues and warrior-types. That seems quite handy for just about any point in the game, and would make Silence a more attractive option than just using something once for the Dredmor fight.
It might be better to have Dredmor change his behavior on being silenced. Instead of keeping his distance, he'll close in like a melee monster. He could also possibly have a dash attack which is only used if silenced.
Stopping a lich from using magic does seem like it should be darned effective. It is not like lord dredmor is defenseless on floor 15. The pectinous tesseracts would like to have a word with you. In all seriousness, in a game like DoD it really isn't a big deal if the final boss can be beaten cheaply. in fact, it probably is the point that you find some cheap way to deal with monsters, rather than having a bunch of head on fights, given the nature of how attrition works accross the floors.
Hear, hear. A player that's good enough to get to the bottom floor shouldn't suffer a huge jump in difficulty from one monster. Otherwise we'd have nothing but players who get frustrated because they ALWAYS die on level 10 / 15 and nowhere else. Given the nature of Roguelikes, I think that just getting to Dredmor in and of itself is more of an achievement than being able to beat him. Unless we're talking about a game without Permadeath on, in which case the game loses one of the fundamental qualities of a Roguelike. Therefore those players should be punished as much as possible. You can always just load your last save and try again, right?
I've played with and without PD on, and there's something to be said sometimes for playing without it. There are times you want to try out some new skills, and you die to something stupid just before you were about to unlock the new exciting capstone skill you've never gotten to try out before....those are the times it's nice to play without PD.
Liches don't use magic. They are magic bundled up into their phylactery and directed at whatever challenges them. It's not like a walking pile of bones can be propelled by natural forces. You stop them from using magic by smashing them into tiny pieces or completely draining their phylactery of magic. The latter should be about as difficult as the former. More so, actually, as the lich has centuries of experience more than you do using it...
