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Gotta agree here. Right now curses and remove curse scrolls exist mainly as interface screw, unless you're playing Ash. Would probably be simplest to replace non-Ash curses with temporary mutations, which already are XP-gated, and replace remove curse scrolls with a piety cost for Ash.

Not...really? Which is why they're not? There's a reason that there's a significant difference between the difficulty of an early-game Troll (which can basically claw anything to death, regardless of its background) and, say, an early-game Octopode, or Felid (which can basically be one-shotted by an...

Or, I suppose, if people want to lean more into Trog's theme of hating all magic, instead of learning the spells when you pick up a spellbook, Trog grants either a big chunk of piety (if you're at low piety) or a god gift. Makes him less friendly for switching to magic later, but also means that he ...

I'm still not entirely convinced that a clock is needed, given the removal of continuing spawns, and the fact that most scumming behavior is either reliant on edge cases (e.g. endless stair-shouting) or characters who were already able to scum in a food-dependent game (abyss and pan scumming). That ...

I like that.

"Catch!"

Arrows rain from the ceiling!

Grants ammo, does damage to everything on-screen, including the player. Very Xommy.

...thanks, Xom. Really. That was just what I needed.

Edit: Read a scroll of fear and ran like hell for the stairs. He ran, but came back when I was four steps from the stairs. Read another scroll of fear and escaped upstairs!

One issue is how to scale the amount of rot. A level 1 spell like pain would have to rot less than 1hp at XL1. But then you would want the most expensive spells like Necromutation / Haunt to rot a significant amount. Maybe with this change Necromancy should have several spells removed, and the rema...

The reduced cognitive load is nice - memorizing fewer monsters. But it seems like there'd be a couple major flaws. 1. Tedious optimal behavior becomes even more tedious and optimal. Now it's even more optimal than before to lure each individual slime away and engage it by itself. 2. Line of sight. E...

The issue isn't "change is impossible," the issue is that evaluating a change in isolation is not helpful. Doing nothing except changing the map design is not particularly useful, for the reasons Siegurt pointed out. But then, as you said, you have ideas to build on it all. The catch is th...

You should consider the possibility that people really do find the game too easy and tedious as it is and want to improve it. You should probably consider the fact that the average player still never wins a game, and that catering to the handful of people who find it "too easy" is probabl...

I like your idea, but there is still major difference, it is not possible to move a single tile on the same floor and find your are now in the middle of monster pack which you have never seen before, but it is possible after going downstairs. So some kind of stair-dancing should be available unless...

It feels like a lot of people are missing the point, and trying to prevent stair dancing mechanically, rather than trying to address the issues that LEAD to stair dancing. It's the same basic concept as with luring - it's "optimal" to lure monsters back to secure locations, but the solutio...

I just don't know enough about what you're asking to answer this. It's too broad a question.

For example:

The incentives for (even untrained) wand-use in the early-game? In a good place.
The incentives for luring? In a bad place.

This just seems like an impractical thing - a fair bit of work for something that won't solve the problem OP wants. Even if we don't run into issues where it dumps things in deep water/lava, any moderately-sized fight (let alone any fight at a killhole) will just result in piles of gear again. Unles...

That's basically exactly how I'd want a Xom active to work. I figure give people a "Pray to Xom" ability - it might do anything from "nothing" to extremely positive effects, to extremely negative ones. I might even tweak the chances depending on tension (even though tension is a ...

While I would agree that there should be no control over whether Xom is amused, I would like to see some sort of active ability for Xom. Even just "Invoke Xom" - Xom has a random chance to act. If unsuccessful, nothing happens; if successful, Xom does...something. Positive, negative, neutr...

petercordia wrote:If the bits weren't very good, and were only available to ward against terrible RNG, it could be fine/funny?

I mean, that's sorta what GDR does, right? Wonder if they could be un-enchantable 0-AC boots that gave a few percentage points of GDR.

I guess I have a different angle on this. Aside from the part where silence decreases stealth, it all seems pretty intuitive. Divine abilities and wizardly spells are blocked (anything where you'd need to speak a spell or invoke a god), and scrolls (which you'd need to read) are blocked. So no scrol...

I like the idea. Like a lot of the more interesting aspects of the game, it involves a meaningful risk/reward calculation. And I actually wouldn't be against making it Fragile - that makes the calculation all the more important, because you're passing up a lot of potential treasure if you remove it.

Oh yeah, letting serial_shops place on D:1-3 would probably really help too. Sure characters won't really have any gold with which to buy stuff, but seeing a shop is "exciting", I think. And you can change the 20% chance-per-level to a 16% chance so that the total number of shops in Dunge...

Removing fiddly mechanics like the fruit is a definite positive, but particularly when it comes to stationary summons there's still a lot of potential for tedium. It seems like it would be better to have a design where the player is encouraged to use them as-needed to fortify their current position,...

A few thoughts: --- While adding more monster variety to D1 would be good, I don't know if adders and quokkas are the right way to go. They're both straightforward melee monsters, and more importantly, they're both much faster than most player characters. Quokkas are speed 12 and adders speed 13 (pl...

Yup, I'd have to agree: What's the goal behind creating this species? How does it create a different and interesting game experience, compared to playing as another species? Is this a UC-oriented species? We already have ghouls and trolls. Aside from that, the main thing seems to be the elemental gi...

Put me down as "against." One of the key elements of Ds is that you don't get to choose your mutation set.

If people want to reroll until they get just the ones they want, they might as well reroll games until they get the early altar they want, or the D1 CPA.

Have to admit, that's very polite of your character, to make room for the poor distracted hydra so that it can come up the stairs.

Hellmonk is right. Also, it's worth noting that even if you only play Fighters, you can (and should) pick up a few low-level spells once you have your main offensive/defensive skills in place. The utility they provide is well worth the XP cost.

1. Disagree here. The whole thing behind scarves is basically "more powerful egos than cloaks, but no AC benefits." I'd even be in favor of expanding that concept to the hat/helmet realm, since right now hats are mostly just "helmets with less base AC that more characters can wear.&qu...

While it probably doesn't have every detail (I haven't been keeping up with every commit either), this may help:

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/wiki/0.2 ... lease-Plan

It'd probably be less than optimal in the long term, but it'd at least be an interesting, sometimes-optimal tradeoff, in the same sort of way as Formicid stasis. After all, that much extra AC on D1 would do far more for your chances of getting the Orb, since it'd carry you through the more dangerous...

Iskendrun's Mystic Fast: You gain "Fasting" status that prevents you from eating or drinking, but acts as a manual for spell skills. Animate Bread: Turns your bread rations into dancing blunt weapons. Weapon type dependent on spellpower. Deportation: Sends target back to where it spawned o...

Yeah, for what's basically a permanent loss of the ability to read scrolls, you'd need a serious benefit. We're talking less "+3 AC" and more "+23 AC."

But what standard are we using to claim something is "broken"? Some consistency in this evaluation would be useful. "Sometimes this is better than alternatives" isn't what I'd define as "broken". To me the obvious candidates are no-brainers w/o significant opportunity ...

Well, now that's an impressive amulet.

I definitely like the idea. It doesn't need to be done for every unique, necessarily, but it's still a good idea. It's a nice bit of flavor that adds to gameplay, rather than detracting from it, and it also works really well from a new-player perspective: you encounter Asterion I, so when you see As...

I've read through the idea a few times now, but I still can't find a good way to make contamination a good replacement. At best, it seems like you could make it so it works basically like food, except more punishing if you overdo it within a fight, and less punishing if you can rest away contaminati...

Probably make the most sense to just change which properties can generate on which types of items, even artefacts. After all, we already have settings so that, say, running doesn't generate on rings, and guardian spirit doesn't generate on weapons. So make it such that defensive properties only gene...

Hm. Good thought. Maybe a penalty to current health on equip, too, though, to discourage "Identify it, keep it in inventory without equipping it, and swap to it at the last minute." That way you actually have to put it on (thereby locking the amulet slot) before going into battle, you can'...

Maybe even an item that prevents any damage, but reduces MaxHP by X% of the damage prevented.

Ooh. Or could even work inversely proportional to current health, so if it prevents damage when you're low on HP, it takes a big chunk out of your MaxHP, but only a small chunk if you're at full HP.

Nagas definitely could do with a couple extra points of AC or something, just to get them over the initial "slow and helpless" stage. Whether constriction would be too much of a buff really just depends on where people think they should be on the difficulty scale. It'd make them significan...

I suppose it could work like chequers suggested. Maybe as an unrandart - amulet of the Felid lich (felich?) or something. One extra life, Felid-style, but some severe drawback (permanent -30% maxHP when worn or whatever).

But it'd still be an unrandart, and not even generate in most games.

Wide Broading in DCSS will make you get killed later on or at least make you course more. If you're dumb about it, sure. If you spread your XP over several three different melee weapon skills instead of focusing on one, you're wasting XP. If you train something besides a melee weapon, that will enh...

gods or items or spells don't compare to a PERMANENT stat gain be it a no-use/wasted STR for a wizard. I think this is one of the points you're missing, though: There's no such thing as a useless stat, just a stat that you don't use. If you got high strength as a spellcaster, for example, you'd be ...

After having followed bel's post through to the philosophy of Nethack4 vs that of Crawl, I have to wonder if you perhaps migrated here from there. The former is very much in favor of being able to customize and control every aspect of your character, given time; Crawl is in favor of character custom...

A few thoughts: - Nethack focuses on flexibility above all else. This is a direction that Crawl has been moving away from, with the notion that those things that are useless 99% (or 100%) of the time should be cut away as needless bloat, rather than valuable choice. I think there needs to be a balan...

So basically all the same arguments still exist. Pros: Interesting mechanic Changes tactical behavior Cons: Encourages tedious/degenerate behavior Has a lot of weird, broken interactions (speed, flying, swimming, conjure flame, etc.) I'd have to put myself in the "replace reaching with somethin...

Idea 1 is purely flavor-based: "I did exercises, so I get strength." Differentiating games - even a little - is better than changing things purely for the sake of flavor. Idea 2 is victory dancing 2.0: "I need to kite every bit of popcorn so I can kill it with a spell, so I don't get ...

See also, for example, scrolls of acquirement, often not-so-jokingly referred to as "scrolls of disappointment." There's a reason that the scrolls allow you some specificity, but not absolute choice. After all, it would be stupid if you could, say, use them as a mummy and get unlucky enoug...

So I'm not sure what seems to bother you. 1. Is it that it's flavored as stat gain? It could always be reflavored as a descriptor in the species screen, since that's what actually determines what random stat gains you might get (e.g. Trolls are strong brutes, and may gain strength as they level) 2. ...

The problem with including time is that it's less representative of skill, and more representative of a good RNG string. I've had games that lasted more than 6 hours, where I successfully pulled a tough character out of a lot of bad situations. I've had games that lasted less than an hour, where I b...

I'd have to agree with the people who've suggested removing time from the equation - be it turns or auts or seconds. Pros: - Removes breadswinging and similar gimmicky methods of time-saving and their effects on score (e.g. apporting items to save turns). - Removes cases with species/gods/etc. that ...

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