Don't worry, I played in the DCSS tournament myself. I hadn't played much in almost two years, wanted to see what had changed... that and the buddies I used to play with wanted me on their "we're gonna do our best" clan. (Our best, as it happens, is about 34th on the clan rankings. )
I can commend them for some changes, such as getting rid of monster-induced item destruction (which largely resulted in obligating the knowledgeable player to do annoying interface dances) and starting to provide more information about what monsters do.. but I don't think they've gone far enough on what info they provide yet, and they still refuse to fix some ridiculous things like the utter tediousness of the Abyss.
Anyway, enough about DCSS.
Snuff Out is really fun. I've gotten in the habit of teaching it to characters who have even semi-reasonable Magic scores and otherwise don't use a lot of SP: the AI's fairly good about knowing when to use it... unfortunately, that does apply to enemies too. Not that I like seeing players die or anything (at least, not more than the average roguelike dev), but I am glad that low level monster encounters are sometimes still challenging.
Breath skills are tough to use, and they are tough to tweak AI for too. Basically, the AI hates "wasting" AEs and it also hates "wasting" cooldown abilities. What it ends up working out to in a breath attack's case is, the AI probably won't use it unless it's going to hit 3+ targets. Some mitigating factors can change this however: AIs at low health stop caring much about wasting cooldowns, for example, and AIs always love to land killing blows if possible, for another example.
Orb/Mind/Frost is a solid start. I suppose in theory zombies would be an issue, but zombies are never really an issue, and not much else naturally resists both Ice and Mind. Indirect + can't miss attacks are fun, especially AEs that are somewhat or completely ally friendly.
Sorry you never caught uniques to use the Golds with. I agree Slap Silly > Headless though. Getting something like that worked into the DNA pool of your party is fairly game-changing, probably the equivalent of scoring a really good character-appropriate artifact early in DCSS.
Low Profile shouldn't be letting enemies shoot over allies... however, any Dodge/Miss result (not just a Dodge caused by Low Profile specifically) allows a projectile to continue, so if your allies had other Dodge abilities or high Agility, those would still let projectiles through.
Chain "kill 1 enemy quickly" capturing probably needs to go. It gets used like this with Haietliks and Zombies too. I have a small system idea for stopping it... but I loathe adding even a small system just to address a problem with 3 captureables. I''m more likely to just tweak those captureables so they operate a bit differently in a way that diminishes the ability to "catch and release" them over and over when they show up in groups.
Thank you very, very much for the feedback about the new maps/encounter system. I'd been wondering how it was working out in the wild, and it's a difficult thing to pick up on from the limited metrics I get back with the scores.
As for what stats do what and where:
If it does damage (including instant death) it will check Strength or Magic depending on whether it is Slash/Impact/Pierce or Fire/Ice/Elec/Body/Mind/Light/Dark. Note: No stat reduces damage taken for the target.
If it applies any kind of effect other than immediate direct damage or instant death it checks the user's Cunning, and is resisted by the target's Vitality.
Both of these rules apply regardless of the composition of the ability. Infectious Bite checks Strength for the damage and Cunning for the chance to Infect. If Blood Rot triggers, that also checks Cunning.
Some other things worth noting:
* Level is a significant factor in damage & healing dealt.
* Items ignore all stats... both the attacker's and the defender's. However, they tend to have unusually high Power and chances to land status effects, in effect making them act like abilities used by very high Strength/Magic/Cunning characters, regardless of the actual stats of the user. (Resistances and Heroic Defense still apply, however.)