Crawl 0.15: Terrifying, Ever-Gnashing Radulae

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Crawl 0.15: Terrifying, Ever-Gnashing Radulae

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Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Lightning bolt needs an accuracy bonus against anything in metal armor, or against anything made of metal.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2014 01:23

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 16:48

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Angry Diplomat posted:

I just showed Ferrinus how to access the autopickup toggle menu and he lost his poo poo.
code:
Diplomat: You should set chunk autopickup off if you're permaliching
Diplomat: Save a little dicking around
Ferrinus: i can't do that without saving out and messing with the rc file can i
Diplomat: Yeah dude
Diplomat: hit \
Diplomat: SUCH a quality of life improver
Ferrinus: oh hell yeah
Diplomat: yeah man!!
Diplomat: WANDS OF MAGIC DARTS OH BOY BETTER COLLECT THESE
Diplomat: I love this menu so much
Diplomat: See: ogres autopickuping large rocks
Ferrinus: my god. my god
Diplomat: THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
Ferrinus: i'm zooming paralyzed through a starfield right now
Just in case anyone else doesn't know this, you can hit the \ key to meticulously customize what you do and do not want to autopickup. Autograb every javelin you ever see! Ignore the seventh and eighth and ninth ring of regeneration you encounter! Stop picking up potions of blood what the gently caress you're not a vampire! Ignore wands of magic darts! Collect evokables! Don't pick up scrolls of summoning as an Okawarite! The possibilities are basically limitless, much like the reduction in tedium and annoyance!!

Update: died to a shitload of hellions on Zig 27.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2014 17:39

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

Alright, just ascended a DeCj and I swear I end every 3 rune caster that doesn't stumble upon the gear to just roll over the game with this mental state, so I'ma make a mad post about it since I usually cool down and am less mad in an hour, but right now, I'm really mad, so...

I play mostly spellcasters and I agree that the dynamics of high level magic in the endgame are stupid. It's not just more efficient to firestorm or glaciate a swarm of monsters - it's more efficient to firestorm or glaciate a single enemy, because what if it ends up taking two OODs? An OOD and a mystic blast?

Your mana pool's so small that its actual size is effectively irrelevant - you can either generate limitless MP through some combination of gods and evokables or you can't actually depend on spells, with no middle ground. In effect, your magic is turn-limited more so than mana-limited, where you have to spend a couple turns powering up between each spell, but in a way that can be aggravatingly swingy.

I'd like to see mechanics where like, the better you are at casting the less mana spells cost, such that your weak spells turn into spammable at-will attacks but your strong spells remain costly and difficult to spam, such that even the endgame decision tree doesn't look like "Oh, is there something, anything at all on my screen? Firestorm."

# ¿ Sep 6, 2014 19:02

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Can Ashenzari please let you curse your own bare hands so as to boost unarmed, though.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2014 18:38

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

What if enemy casters had mana pools, straight up, and more powerful ones could spend turns Sif-channeling (or using similar mechanics) to recover it?

# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 01:55

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

apple posted:

That's basically what skill cooldown on enemy casters would emulate I think

It would, but it'd save you from tracking individual spell cooldowns for each and every monster - you could just watch the blue bar under an enemy's tile. If spellcasting enemies had predictable AI same as melee enemies, but a mana bar that limited their actions, you'd get enemies that used spells intelligently but that couldn't literally throw them at you turn after turn after turn.

So, for instance, a lich's AI could be like:

1. if at extreme distance, choose randomly between throwing OOD or taking a step closer
2. if at medium distance or lower, throw LCS
3. if have decided to cast a spell but can't, channel mana Sif-style

You'd end up with an enemy that cast powerful spells but not every round, but more importantly was more logical and predictable in terms of when and where it cast those spells.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 05:52

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

PleasingFungus posted:

Is this good? Is this desirable? How on earth would it make them "more logical and predictable"? To me, it just sounds like an additional layer of complexity layered over the current randomness.

It would replace the random ai. Casters wouldn't pick spells at random, but would not literally be able to cast LCS 1/turn every turn. It's easier to scope out three different liches' mana bars than it is to keep track of which one of them zapped you most recently. Also, enemies having mana bars would give mana drain/burn/whatever effects more to work with.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 14:07

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

PleasingFungus posted:

They'd be able to cast LCS 1/turn for several turns in a row, killing you, and then they'd be out of MP. What a shame. (Unless you want them to have a stiflingly tiny MP pool, at which point why not just put a cooldown on all spellcasting, rather than inventing a complex new MP mechanic?)

It's very similar to a global cooldown, but easier to visualize and better able to handle a monster having multiple spells of varying levels. You could have a guy loaded with both blink and LCS, for instance, whose ai tells them to blink when they've been closed on and either cast LCS or channel otherwise.

Of course, monster MP would have the same problem as player MP, which is that high-level spells are not only dramatically more time-efficient but also dramatically more MP-efficient, and it's actually stupid to cast mystic blast when a glaciate would do. You couldn't really have a guy with both a high level attack and a mid-level attack unless those two attacks had really different targeting modes, because they'd just look dumb if they ever did anything but cast their highest-level attack. That'd still be true for a global cooldown, though.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 14:52

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Crawl should definitely tell me how much damage I do with an action. Hell, it should tell me how much damage I lose to monster AC and resists in the process.

The orc's armor completely blunts your magic dart! (0)

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 20:55

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

I actually really like static discharge, but lightning bolt has no excuse for being as inaccurate as it is given that it's already mega loud.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2014 22:19

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

You can just, like, train Fighting and that'll let you stand next to monsters for long enough to kill 'em dead in two discharges or so. I played a ton of HEAEs recently and was massively stronger whenever I got Discharge online.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 01:15

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Double and triple swords look stupid, they should be buster swords and masamunes.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2014 22:42

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Grand daiklaves.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2014 22:46

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Hydra Form would be cooler if it were "Hydra Aspect" and applied cleaving attack + enemy eating to whatever form you were already in. It sucks that almost all of transmutations is mutually exclusive with itself.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2014 23:47

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Angry Diplomat posted:

I agree with this because I want to be a giant fuckoff stone hydra, or maybe a hydra with swords for faces. Or a many-headed dragon. Or a spider with 20 heads on lizard necks because hail satan

Idea I heard from someone else: you can stack as many transmutations as you want, but you get more and more contamination as you do so.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 00:02

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

PleasingFungus posted:

I'd argue this really isn't true. Hydra Aspect is a charm, a stacking buff. Hydra Form is a transmutation, a single, exclusive tool, locking out certain capabilities and options, appropriate to certain situations. Both have their place, but I think the latter is what Transmutations should be about and should focus on.

Certainly there's a lot of unexplored design space there - right now Tmut is mainly about "trading off [all/most] of your equipment to get better unarmed combat and specific resists", which, I mean, fine, that's a reasonable archetype to support. But there should be more reason for characters who aren't in that very narrow archetype to pick up tmut - more spells a bit like Statue Form and Necromutation, as much of a hot design mess as the latter is.

...hydra form doesn't address that at all, but it seemed like a fun thing to include in the game, so I added it!

Charms don't give you extra body parts. If you wanted to make such a spell Charms/Transmutations I could see the reasoning, but with basically every transmutation of any note whatsoever (including Blade Hands, which just changes your drat hands! come on!) being mutually exclusive with any other except for like stoneskin/statueform and icearmor/iceform, the entire spell school seems to boil down to picking one form and living inside 90% of the time.

It's true that a lot of schools of magic seem to boil down to "ah, at last, I can cast the one good spell, time to wash my hands of the rest of this garbage", but it seems a shame for something as cool as hydra form to just join the rest of transmutations in the pile of stuff you tossed dismissively over your shoulder before taking a deep breath, casting dragon form (or statue form or w/e), and never exhaling.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 01:42

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Thug Lessons posted:

All of these spells have their unique advantages and disadvantages. Blade Hands makes gives you some of the most damaging melee in the game at the cost of no wands and melding your shield. Statue form gives you an AC bonus and great melee damage, but also melds most of your armour and slows you down, which makes it a great option for character that lack another source of AC (felids and octopodes in particular) but bad for characters that are getting a lot of AC (and potentially resists) from the armour it melds. It's also a significant xp investment, at lvl 6 with two schools. On the other hand, it also improves melee damage with a weapon, so there's a reason to take it even if you aren't a UC character, and I've used it many times on EEs. Dragon form is a huge investment and destroys your AC/EV but gives you +50% HP, incredible melee and some useful resists, which synergizes well with berserking but is sort of lackluster IMO. You probably never want to use all of these spells at once, (with the exception of blade hands and statue form, which I actually did use at the same time on my FeCK depending on whether I wanted to haste myself to deal with the statue form slowdown or not), but there is definitely a strategic, character-development perspective in choosing which you're aiming for. Rather than letting them stack, (which would be a total disaster because it would either make UC+transmutations even more OP or force a nerf), it would be better to add new synergies and new spells that could supplement existing transmutations in inventive ways.

Not sure about hydra form but it sounds like it's actually moving the school in the direction you want - it's not something you'd walk around in 24/7 but rather something you'd pick up and use situationally when you want a cleaving attack and innate vamp rather than the straight damage blade hands or statue form offered.

I don't think all transmutations should become literally stackable, but it'd be nice if they had weaker, stackable modes. Like, the first transmutation you cast works completely, but then if you also cast spider form you get the poison brand, or if you also cast hydra form you get a cleaving attack that hits only two additional targets, or if you also cast blade hands you get a slaying bonus, or something.

So, yeah, I really like Hydra Form's situational-ness, but it seems like it'd go to waste since eventually you'd never dare leave statue (or dragon) form anyway, ever.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 14:04

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

BigFactory posted:

That seems cool but really overpowered.

And casting spiderform should give you poison, but also make you tiny. You could be a little, poisonous hummel figurine. Or teensy dragon.

You'd build contamination or something by stacking forms, such that the more you do that the less safely you can use Haste/cBlink/whatever else.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 14:31

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

BigFactory posted:

So like statue form and dragon form would be instant yellow glow?

It depends on the effects. If a "layered-on" transmutation was weaker than a "base" transmutation - like, casting Statue Form second would just be an AC bonus that slows you down, and casting Dragon Form second would just be flight and an HP bonus - you wouldn't have to make it mega punitive.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 14:52

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Araganzar posted:

SA Crawl, featuring people complaining about :
- A hat with all resists + rmut + rcorr because it's -2
- A spell that makes you a goddamn cuisinart because you can't do it in hydraform
- The ability to put regen on the most-likely-situational equipment slot because MAH RINGS
- developers that are both both present and unceasingly civil because LAZY IDIOTS

Could you possibly act more entitled? This is a free game that continually updates and adds and adjusts content, and you only need a web browser to play it. The people controlling it have made it open source and given ANYONE permission to make suggestions and improvements. Their comments on tavern threads and in Mantis tickets are admittedly sometimes sardonic or cynical, but they always show someone actually thought about it.

When I made a small improvement to webtiles I was impressed by how congenial the two devs I worked with were and with the changes they suggested - changes I knew I probably should make but was too lazy to put in. The devs can be stubborn and unfriendly to iconoclasts, as are many developers. But the only reason you know this is the almost unsurpassed access you have to them and to the internal workings of the game. As a unit they tend to make good decisions and the rare inexplicable one is usually harmless. It is very rare that a change with demonstrable merit is denied.

The game remains one of the most stable I have played despite multiple daily patches. Four servers are active, all privately funded and provided with no advertisements or tracking, with a slew of previous major releases represented. They run an astoundingly complex and deep tournament with every release. And whatever frictions and factions erupt in the userbase or core of developers, these day-to-day tasks and responsiblities are always handled competently and professionally.

And no one has ever dreamed of charging you a penny for any of this.

It's understandable to get made at a game. Games provide distraction and stimulus by getting us emotionally attached to our successes and failures without presenting real risk. But if you allow yourself to get so worked up over stuff like the above to the point that you say the things you are saying about and TO people like this, you need to examine your priorities. It's unappealing even on a forum practically dedicated to pedantic bitching. It rightfully paints you as someone who sits on their rear end and complains about the hard work of others.

God, I, just... I just can't believe how worked up people who aren't the writer of this post have been getting. It's crazy.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 16:13

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Floodkiller posted:

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=ffa9e12ba4ab0b3d08e39e66995e41462952b2b0

code:

Don't meld octopode rings in most forms

General feedback is that these weren't very usable for octopodes,
and op being extra-suited to tmut (in a sort of roundabout way)
isn't unreasonable - especially considering that they lose their
constrict while in these forms.

Bonus removed annoyance:, it made the first two ring slots
'special' (since those were the ones that wouldn't get melded)
and encouraged fiddly shuffling.

Ice, Dragon, Tree, and Fungus Form no longer meld op rings. Bat,
Pig, Wisp and Porcupine still do, since they also merge all other
rings.

New octopode Tm supremecy :getin:

Oh hell yes. Hell freaking yes.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2014 23:58

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Since Irradiate is supposedly transmuting your own skin to energy, it could cost health instead of upticking contamination (or at least uptick contamination very slightly instead of severely).

# ¿ Oct 14, 2014 16:38

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Casting sticks to snakes while under the effects of a potion of lignification permanently changes your race to naga.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 12:16

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

"Spells" (just plain powers, really) that depend partially or completely on weapon rather than elemental skills would be pretty cool.

Also there should be a conjurations/translocations Distortion Blast spell.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 00:05

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

PleasingFungus posted:

Sure, but how do you make it not eat into Lugonu's niche too badly? Banishment used to be a player spell, but now it's Lugonu's Thing...

Lugonu could give wizardry/spellpower bonuses to translocation spells.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 00:18

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

You could turn blink into a single spell that's smite-targeted with a yellow AoE, and you're guaranteed to land somewhere in the AoE. The higher your spellpower, the smaller the AoE and the farther you can move the targeting cursor from your own position.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 00:46

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

A Time Stop spell should put everything but your character in absolute stasis - nothing can affect monsters, or doors, or items on the ground, or walls, or w/e because no time is passing for anything to happen in. You'd still be free to cast spells on yourself, walk around, drink potions already in your inventory, etc.

(Consequently it wouldn't necessarily have to be level 9)

# ¿ Dec 7, 2014 18:50

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

So does Gell's Gravitas check against MR to determine if it manages to pull/damage, or only if the pull/damage manages to confuse?

Also, can Warp Weapon buff a staff of energy or similar quasi-weapon?

Also, is Summon Forest any good?

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 17:39

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Gell's Gravitas might've been worth it if it was castable on empty space, smite-targeted, or both. As is, what the hell is this crap.

Also, are they going to get rid of the XP penalty for kills via summoned monster any time soon?

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 15:10

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Feature request: XP penalty for killing monsters with ranged spells or weapons, given that you're keeping yourself out of harm's way.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 15:16

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

apple posted:

Didn't summoning get pretty massive nerfs? My memory's a little fuzzy but there was a time mummies summoned indiscriminately as long as they could channel with Sif, and now after a certain number of summons based on the spell one of your previous summons gets its duration reduced. Was there a tradeoff to getting # of summons soft-capped or was that it?

Yeah, that's what gets me. Each spell now has a cap on how many creatures it can sustain and summons only attack stuff if both the summon and the target are in line of sight. If this is still supposed to be OP compared to every other conceivable means of killing monsters, why not actually bring it into line rather than slapping you on the wrist for doing it?

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 15:41

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Okay, so why does a summoner played as a hybrid class get 75% of the XP that a skald or conjurer or whatever played as a hybrid class does?

Are summons so much better than non-summons that you simply have to be penalized for using them in order to justifiably avoid them?

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 18:17

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Okay, but on the other hand, a conjuration or a high weapon skill are also a massive damage buff. Statue form or just a decent armor rating are sources of massive damage mitigation. Stealth lets you stab stuff. None of those things vanish after a time limit or have a chance to turn on you either because you accidentally hit them or just as an innate risk of using them at all.

If Summoning 27 is just inherently better than Translocation 27 or Conjuration 27, that should bear on the mechanics of specific summoning spells, not on the XP yield of summoning spells. Otherwise, poo poo, why bother buffing or nerfing anything else? Just give more XP for killing with weak options and less XP for killing with strong ones.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 19:36

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

IronicDongz posted:

When someone says "X skill has this negative effect because it does so many things well", saying "but these skills don't have the negative effect and just do one thing well" isn't much of a counterargument

Those skills also don't have summoning's drawbacks. Summoning isn't as good as Conjurations at killing everything onscreen. It isn't as Fighting or Armor at keeping you alive. It's slow and fiddly and can go wrong in ways more straightforward skills never can.

Now, maybe even with all the nerfs and changes it's had from its original "just summon sixty rats and let them kill things offscreen for you" form, it's still literally the strongest thing in the game. I seriously doubt this - you always hear about high level 15-rune mages spamming Fire Storm, not Horrible Things (maybe you should lose 50% of the XP from kills you score via Fire Storm) - but it's possible.

Why doesn't it get brought in line with other schools of magic, rather than just shrugged XP-drained? How come other things don't get that treatment? They buffed Force Lance recently - why not, instead, leave it in its previous lovely state but make killing things with it worth more XP?

Sage Grimm posted:

Response to Ferrinus' post

Because it also has to take into account other forms of allies. Do you allow Beogh's perma-allies give you full experience for kills? What about Yred's undead army? Fedha's shrooms and oklobs? Evokers? It's not as simple a solution as you may think it is.

Is Yred's undead army stronger than Sif Muna's endless channeling and infinite library or Cheibriados's invocations? I don't think so.

Even if it is, who gives a poo poo? How come you don't lose 25% of all XP for playing a gargoyle or berserker?

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Feb 19, 2015

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 19:55

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Rotting chunks weren't a huge deal either. Where did they go?

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 19:59

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Rotting chunks literally didn't do anything except sometimes appear on the inventory screen, and be an interface nuisance to new players who didn't set auto_drop_chunks, unless you played as one of a few races. The XP thing does do something, however small, as it incentivizes actually fighting side by side with your summons and not just hanging out in the back (otherwise a really boring but perhaps optimal way to play summoners). I agree not much would be lost if the penalty went away, but I doubt it's something you would even really notice if you weren't told about it so don't stress it.

No, rotting meat did things, too. It differentiated between ghouls and other races and it gave you inventory problems to deal with in combat situations - you'd sometimes find yourself unable to grab something and run in the middle of a fight because there was suddenly rotting meat clogging your inventory up. A tiny bit of tactical/management pressure was lost with the loss of rotting chunks - you no longer have to be careful about just chopping everything you see, carrying piles of meat around, etc. It was worth it, though, because the behavior being removed was largely annoying rather than challenging - which is also true for being careful to order your summons to retreat before every kill in order to step in, last-hit, and slightly increase your XP yield.

In general, Crawl - especially recently - has been characterized by never shrugging and going "eh, it's not that big a deal" about tossing distortion weapons into lava or throwing rocks at items to check for mimics or stopping to pray over every single corpse, so I don't understand why this particular annoyance gets a pass.

It's only optimal to hang out in the back if summons are your only real combat skill. If they're not, it's not optimal to just wait in the back and let your summons kill everything, because they frequently can't. Depending on what you're summoning and what you're fighting, your summons can easily just die uselessly unless you're there to tank for or otherwise support them. After all, you can't have infinitely many out at a time any more, and many of the powerful ones last for very little time before vanishing.

If summons are your only combat skill, then they should probably be a match for whatever you fight, in the same way that your conjurations or sword swings would be a match for whatever you fight if you A) are putting all your XP into them and B) are getting the drops (e.g. weapons or spellbooks) you need to put those XP to work.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 20:33

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Oh, I thought you got the entire 100% if you last-hit the monster, but if you didn't last hit the monster then you got a value between 50% and 100% weighted by your total damage dealt.

It is definitely an annoyance like those things, though, because it still mandates a certain kind of careful, micromanagement-intensive playstyle for the sake of eking out small advantages that accumulate over time. Summon as little as possible, summon high-damage as opposed to high-defense creatures as little as possible, order your summons to retreat if you're winning a fight without them, find a non-summoning means of doing damage as quickly as possible. All for... around two levels.

If you aren't supposed to "main" summoning spells as a killing tool, then they should delete things like Summon Hydra and leave in things like Guardian Golem. It's obvious, though, that you are meant to be able to use summoning instead of conjurations as your chief means of engaging with enemies, and given that summons aren't actually better than conjurations it does not make sense to give summons a weird, lingering, gameplay-distorting penalty.

If summons are too much better than conjurations, make them commit a portion of the mana you spend to cast them or be unable to be recast immediately after death or whatever. The drawbacks of summoning should be built in to the mechanics of summoning, not deducted from your future skill points.

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Feb 19, 2015

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 20:57

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

PleasingFungus posted:

You can in fact play pure summoner. I can and have. Summons really are So Powerful* that, even though you get ~50% XP, you can win the game (3 or 15 rune) just with them. Hell, you can speedrun as pure summoner. (One of the devs is on a perpetual quest to get the High Elf racial high score as a Summoner of Sif Muna.)

That's true for almost any strategy. Most successful combat strategies are, when you get down to it, so powerful that you couldn win the game even if you got 50% XP while executing them. Could my firestorming deep elf still have won with a few fewer levels of Fighting or Dodging or whatever as they picked up their fifteenth rune? Yeah, sure.

The question is, since when is Crawl in the business of ad hoc balancing in-game tactics via XP? Where's my XP penalty for zapping a wand of heal wounds? Where's my XP bonus for killing things with Throw Flame? How come I don't only get 100% XP for killing a monster I'm adjacent to, while losing ~5% per square I'm distant from them as they die? Why do I get full XP for killing a monster via a second, confused, enemy monster?

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I wouldn't say that it's optimal to tell your summons to fall back such that you can last-hit, either - if the opponent is any kind of threat, you'll take damage, which is generally considered Bad. If not, they're not worth enough XP to bother with. Combined with the fact that ordering your summons around creates noise, which can draw in further enemies at a time where your MP and now HP are potentially depleted, last-hitting becomes 'optimal' only in a purely theoretical sense. (It's still a good idea to pick up a polearm and do some low- or no-skill reach attacks over your summons' heads, but that would be true regardless of how XP worked...)

It totally is. There are plenty of situations in which you've managed to bring a fight down from threatening to trivial and are in the process of doing cleanup. It's common and easy to have your summons fight for you for a while... and then step straight into one to displace it away from your enemy as soon as you're sure you can just blast or stab your enemy to death. As-is, it's currently rewarding in the long-term - and therefore secretly mandatory, according to the hypothetical autistic man design sensibility which I agree with - to minimize the amount of actual damage your summons deal to enemies. It's not always possible or easy, but, hell, it wasn't always possible or easy to chuck a rock at every piece of equipment lying on the ground, either.

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I'd like to remove the partial XP system for that reason - but serious rebalancing of summons will be needed to compensate. It's a big project.

e: there was a discussion of trading the reduced XP from summons for making summons always 'expiring' when not in LOS of enemies, thus killing two shrikes with one stone (the other problem being the current buff-like optimal behaviour of constantly recasting a summon-buddy while exploring). there are issues with that, but some variant might work.

Here's my claim: you don't need to rebalance summons for the XP penalty at all. The XP penalty is invisible except in the long term and even in the long term the difference it makes is small. Due to their existing limitations, summons aren't actually better than conjurations or enchantments or just a huge drat sword or something. It feels really strong to be able to stay back while an eldritch tentacle mangles everything in sight, but it also feels really strong to stand back while an orb of destruction splatters something or whatever the highest tier of crossbow is called impales it.

I haven't actually been playing by constantly recasting a summon-buddy while exploring, because 1) that'd be annoying and mana-intensive and 2) I'm currently leaning on Malign Gateway and Summon Hydra, both of which just aren't possible to keep "up" in a sustainable way. In general, if there was less pressure to do that with e.g. imps or shadow creatures or whatever, that'd be a good thing.

However, doing that isn't actually overpoweringly strong. It's just dull. If you wouldn't charge someone experience points for casting stoneskin during autoexplore, you should not charge them experience points for casting Summon Imp during autoexplore.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2015 05:37

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

You can aim an orb of destruction, though. You can cast a second one without overwriting your first. You can shoot things at, past, or through your orb of destruction without prompting it to turn around and come straight at you. You don't have to worry about it deciding to aggro on you out of the blue because of an unlucky die roll somewhere. And this is OoD we're talking about, which actually can backfire in a few ways and is quite slow to act compared to crystal spear or fireball or something. Summons have a bunch of salient problems drawbacks that mean they're not actually best-in-slot in all cases.

Having mostly played conjurers, I can tell you that the main thing that impresses me about summons is how mp-efficient they are - you don't have to spam summon forest the same way you have to spam bolt of draining. But, on the other hand, you cast bolt of draining, and you are immediately going to get a bolt of draining where you want it when you want it. You cast summon forest, you're now going to spend a few turns fighting or running just while the spell gets in gear - and a dryad, unlike a bolt of draining, can just get murked and leave you stranded with the inability to recast.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2015 07:32

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 16:48

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

PleasingFungus posted:

Crawl has been in that business since sometime around 1999, I think. And your set of examples is funny - you don't actually get full XP for killing a monster with a confused monster, you get 50% (or more if you damaged it first), same as with summons.

The XP penalty isn't just a summons thing - it affects all allies, including confused and enslaved enemies, Yred minions, Beoghite armies, mercenaries, etc.

Out of those other cases, I'd only really be really concerned about the effects on Yred of removing the XP penalty (since Yred is already extremely strong in a 3-rune game), but honestly Yred's ally system probably needs a rework anyway. (Megane had a proposal for making Yred give you a sort of perma-cycling fixed-size 'ally squad', with strength based on piety and level - it never went anywhere, but I don't think that was due to any active opposition.)

Crawl's been in the business of penalizing you for using allies, but it has not been in the business of penalizing you for using effective tactics. I get 50% XP if my summoned rat kills something, but I get 100% XP if my confused enemy wanders into lava, or if my iron shot kills something, or if my blessed triple sword kills something.

What I'm saying here is that "X is really strong" does not and should not lead to "you get less experience points if you choose, in-game, to do X". Lots of other things are also really strong and don't leach experience points from you whenever you use them.

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An orb of destruction doesn't block a crystal spear to the face; a crossbow doesn't stop you from getting banished. Summons do. (Well, not reliably, in the case of crystal spear, but they help quite a lot - both by serving as ablative anti-lich armour and by distracting enemies.) Summons are really strong!

Yes, but my orb can't turn on my. My orb appears and acts immediately. My orb can't be abjured. Again, I'm not denying the salient benefits of having summoned creatures around, but I just finished a ziggurat and while my summoned butterflies were definitely invaluable to me I don't think my dragons and abominations were somehow twice as good as just a regular old firestorm would've been. Yeah, they distracted stuff and got in its way, but they also left it onscreen for way longer than classic Book of Annihilations stuff would've. All those shining eyes and smiters and things that luckily never chose to get me on the rare occasions that they had clear line of sight would've just been loving dead if I wasn't a summoner.

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For the XP penalty, it's irrelevant until it's not, I suppose.

Would be interesting to play through a su game with the penalty removed, just to see how much of a difference it makes - pity that crawl takes so long, otherwise testing would be much easier!

The specific proposal that was being discussed* would make casting summons just before battle (e.g. after seeing an enemy and stepping back around the corner) slightly worse, which is probably more of a real nerf than the discouragement of the Hypothetically Optimal Behaviour.

You're probably right, though; these proposed changes don't have any real tie to each-other.

*in this thread; it's worth a skim, since it covers a lot of the same ground that we're going over here.

Making out-of-LoS kills award less XP would make a lot more sense, although malign gateway aside I'm pretty sure that summons don't really enable those any more, do they? It's Veh-extended fireballs and, most recently, singularity that lets you do that stuff. I've actually been able to just cast singularity, close a door, and then sit and wait for the screams to die down.

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Feb 21, 2015

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 14:17

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Crawl 0.15: Terrifying, Ever-Gnashing Radulae

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