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I like the idea. Despite the sense that DD is one of - if not the - strongest races to play, I really don't enjoy playing them in their current design. Right now, they have an easy early game with the damage shaving and healing, and then go all-in on the existing healing mechanisms (Makhleb, vampiri...

One point I'll add that I didn't see mentioned above: At that depth, fire and cold resistance are much more useful to have on than poison, and rCorr is only usually worth putting on if there's a particular corrosive enemy threatening you. Odds are a ring of cold resistance and a ring of fire resista...

So isn't the real problem the opacity of defensive stats? I think this is basically it, yes. When it comes to AC, EV, resists, you name it. Consider a new player against a hypothetical monster. Player examines it, and finds it can hit for up to 32 damage (average 16), and that it can cast a firebal...

There are sorta two elements to this. First, most people agree that it's too long. Much like Lair and Vaults were shortened, Hell could be shortened without losing anything of value. Second, Hell has the Slime problem: There aren't just numerous floors, there are numerous floors that contain little ...

As people have pointed out in the past, even if you could toggle it off, it would be a bad idea. Any hit big enough to deplete the large pool of MP you use as a primary spellcaster would devastate the (far smaller) pool of HP you use to keep your character alive.

As I understand it, Dith's shadow mimic isn't meant to distract the enemy. It mimics your attacks/spells sometimes, so you basically get extra attacks/casts, but it doesn't give you any defensive benefit. So unless I missed the ability recently being changed (which is possible), your experiments are...

One of the major criticisms seems to be from the stat perspective - the whole "winning an X" thing. I wonder if this could just be mitigated by making piety gain very slow (or the piety cost of abilities quite high) for Ixool. If you usually only reach max piety late in a 3-rune game, for ...

I like it! It's got a flexibility and (especially with the passive) unpredictability, but with active tools instead of the straight chaos of Xom. Though I have to think that it'd be a nightmare to try to get working, considering how many masks/situations/etc. are available. As a 3* ability, I sugges...

If swamp drakes don't get removed, I would love for something to be done about how you basically just cannot take beogh orcs into swamp because if they ever get confused(highly likely) they will probably wander into water and instantly die Seems like the easiest fix for this would just be to replac...

It does seem like naga-type monsters work much better as band leaders than individual enemies. Nagas with ranged weapons/spells/abilities and swarms of snakes shielding them or something. Though I suppose you'd have to make sure that you couldn't easily separate them from their escorts. And I defini...

There are other games with very similar combat damage mechanics that provide clean, readable digests of such data. I have no idea what currently active developers think about this issue or whether it's even on the radar, but my impression in the past has been that there was opposition to providing ...

duvessa wrote:Kinda weird that the ego is called positive energy though. Robes of fire resistance aren't called robes of cold.

From hereon out, robes of cold resistance will be called "warm robes."

I'll toss another alternative into the mix: Move negative qualities like *Slow, *Corrode, *Drain, etc. from "item properties" to "curse effects." You could even pair these effects with beneficial ones, like Ponderous gear already does. Say, you find a +12 Ponderous plate; wear it...

On one hand, simplicity is a virtue; on the other, having more skill should never be worse than having less skill. It seems like a reasonable change would be to: A) Give every weapon, whether ranged or melee, a base noise that it makes when used, with larger/heavier weapons making more noise. This n...

It seems like a lot of this could be smoothed out by tweaking the monster gear probabilities. For example, great maces are pretty common, because they're used by (at least) orc-type monsters (e.g. warriors, knights, warlords), ogre-type monsters (fairly high probability), and vault-guard-type monste...

I am not saying this will make winrates skyrocket for the average player (when I say good player, I meant really good player, the sort of player that can get 6+ streaks on a variety of backgrounds). I am asking if the goal of these changes is to try delete the possiblity of loss when playing optima...

I'd suggest that giving them a consumable is not a bad thing - more options makes for more interesting gameplay, fewer stupid deaths, and, frankly, more players who are likely to stick with the game instead of quitting after the third time they splat on D1. Lignification would be a good example. Amb...

Sac speed like this should be at least an "incredible" sacrifice, if not more.

...also, if you sacrifice a hand, eye, and leg, you should totally be able to get a parrot familiar that decreases stealth, but adds an auxiliary attack.

It also has the issue of becoming a way to game the system. Just like Gnolls aren't given the ability to sacrifice skills, Demonspawn shouldn't be given the ability to sacrifice their mutations. A Gnoll could actually benefit not only from the Ru gift, but by concentrating its XP on more useful skil...

Alternatively, simply make the spell expire if you swap any piece of armor. This is probably the simplest fix. Gear-swapping to make a spell castable and then swapping back to something else after casting is the sort of "optimal" behavior that should probably be discouraged. The same prin...

A unique movement mechanic could definitely make for an interesting new species. That said, I have to agree that this one looks like it might well lead to rapid tedium, due to all the additional commands involved. Plus the complexity of how much you can turn how fast and which directions you can att...

It sounds interesting, and I'll have to give it a try! It would be good to have an "intro caster" race - as any experienced player knows, despite initial appearances, deep elves are definitely not a good intro race. If you haven't already, I suggest looking at the testing thread for Faerie...

I'd have to agree. Unrandarts are rare to begin with. Most games, particularly most 3-rune games, don't spawn more than a couple. Now consider that a lot of the time, the ones that spawn aren't useful. Some are basically useless because they're meant to be - e.g. the Robe of Misfortune. Some are bas...

Seems like the easiest fix there would just be having the "worst" gods refuse worship at a faded altar. Get Trog on a book background? Trog is furious at your profaning of his altar with your magicalness! Get Gozag on a ghoul? Gozag scoffs at you "You know you can't actually eat money...

Wouldn't that logic also support removing racial restrictions on worship? As people have pointed out in the past, though...would that be an entirely bad thing? For the most part, these restrictions exist for the sake of flavor, not for any particular gameplay reason. Beogh would lose some flavor if...

though it's a little embarrassing to see that ironbrand convokers and shadow demons have only 1, considering how many you'll run into. Convokers are also likely to kill you indirectly, rather than directly (I don't know if shadow demon's summons count towards the shadow demon's kills directly for t...

Interesting that Mara and Mnoleg, despite being "normal" enemies (as opposed to polymorphed, or random pan lords) only have one kill each. Plus, Mara is generally considered one of the more dangerous enemies! Wonder how much of that is due to people not running into him, and how much is pe...

In no particular order... 1. Crimson imp. Basically harmless, but annoyingly hard to kill for its level (especially for fire elementalists), and blocks autotravel. 2. Red devil. Crimson imp v2.0. Tougher, and can drop a nice trident, but still much more annoying to kill than actually harmful. 3. Gol...

It's actually Spriggans for me. Not because they're hard to win with, but because their main gimmick is "tiny, fragile and fast," which means far more situations where the right thing to do is run away and reset the fight. Every species has to do a certain amount of retreating and repositi...

Passive freeze would be fine as the first level of a mutation, where it might realistically roll early and be powerful (or at least useful). But it DEFINITELY shouldn't be the capstone of any DS mutation, let alone a tier-3 facet.

The better explanation for that is Mantis registration keeps getting disabled for periods of time (at least, it was the last time I glanced at ##crawl-dev). This is because it is getting hammered by bots and anti-bot mechanisms are failing to keep them out. I think many potential new registrees hit...

I know it'd be introducing another gimmick, but I wonder if it might be most effective just to give them a mutation that'd let them ignore a single hit every now and then. Say, once every 100 turns or so. Provides that important "won't die because I stepped around a corner and was face-to-face ...

Pros : -Race that can't use scrolls. We don't have one, and it could be interesting. -Small race that isn't pushed towards stealth -Interesting combat style -Interesting amulet option Cons : -Pigeonholed in playstyle (Summoning, Necromancy, or dodging-focused melee) -Scrolless conduct means very li...

Given the low winrate overall - let alone that among new players - we don't need to tighten the game restrictions in that fashion. Most "clocks," to the best of my understanding, have always been more an attempt to safeguard against veterans abusing game mechanics than restricting new play...

The terrors of a D3 centaur, complete with distortion, and far from any staircase. A centaur comes into view. It is wielding a falchion of distortion. The centaur unwields an uncursed falchion of distortion. Its appearance distorts for a moment. The centaur wields a shortbow. The centaur shoots an a...

To the best of my knowledge, the usual x->v is the only way to show panlord abilities, unless you're diving into the source code or something. But it won't show the specific set for a given panlord until they've used that power at least once - otherwise it'll just give you the usual "It may pos...

I see why you think it could be useful, or the situations in which you might like that bump of piety. I'd guess that the lack of such potions comes down to three elements, though: 1. Flavor Yes, there's always a flavor element, even if flavor is meant to take a backseat to gameplay. Why are gods giv...

Hm. It's an interesting idea to be sure. I have three observations, and a question. 1. At least part of the piety-gain system seems flawed. As long as enemies are in sight, there's a constant chance of gaining piety because there's a chance of Iacchus acting. This incentivizes some scummy behavior, ...

Welp. Not technically an unavoidable death. I could have quaffed invisibility before stepping through that first transporter. It might have bought me at least A turn to act. But still...eesh.

With regards to balancing the gods, I see it a lot like balancing weapons within a type. Is a whip of venom supposed to be balanced against a giant spiked club? The whip is better early on, the club is better later on. And then there are options like the morningstar which may be worse early on than ...

One of the major issues I see here is that it's a design that encourages using tedious behavior to game the system. With this design, a player can game the system by keeping track of one's kills and dipping into and out of Gehenna/etc. Drop in, kill monsters until you start losing a bit of health, l...

1. Animating uniques is a favorite for me - if Sigmund was hard to kill it's all the more fun to make him fight for me. Bonus points for animating things with distortion or chaos weapons and seeing them banish/paralyze/etc. your enemies. 2. Natasha must always be hunted down all three times. Bonus p...

Seems like there are two key points here: 1. Paralysis is good, because it can pose a real danger to any character. Makes sense - whether you're a low-level character who found some good items, or even an overpowered character in, say, Pan, you can be put in real danger by paralysis. Though admitted...

-Relative value/effects of AC and EV. Some enemies/spells/attacks are relatively harmless if you have high AC, some if you have high EV, and an unspoiled player can only guess at which might be which. You can figure it out with trial-and-error, but it's certainly never made clear, especially with re...

Doesn't really count, since it's Xom, but...

Code:: 5 hogs and Kirke come into view. Kirke shouts! The hog squeals angrily. x4 "Hum-dee-hum-dee-hum..." Kirke evaporates and reforms as an iron giant!

Yeah...nope. Nope, nope, nope.

I'd actually argue just the opposite: Ds spirit shield is far more interesting on casters than on non-casters. Much like the shared "essence" of defunct species like Djinni, or the innate spirit shield of the Vine Stalkers, it makes for a much more complex series of choices and decisions. ...

Why would you play to win all the mutation options? Far, far less important than different races/gods/backgrounds. Also even trying to win all race+background combos is way too large of a time investment to be reasonable, which is why the only accounts anywhere near that are accounts multiple peopl...

At least when it comes to realignments, I think it might be better if you avoided the realignment charges - unpredictable change means far less when you can opt out of a realignment you dislike at the cost of a "charge." Instead, allow the player to realign (or prevent realignment) for som...

Iron dragons are massive, slow, and tough, plus they show up late enough in the game that any armour they drop has to be a powerful one. Maybe make them in the mold of FDA/IDA - powerful, but with a drawback. Say, give them higher AC/GDR than even CPA, but give them an innate Ponderous ego (1.0 move...

I like the idea. Strikes me as a version of Wanderer that I'd actually want to play. Often you run into randarts in the early-to-mid dungeon range, but don't use them because they're not powerful enough to justify a major shift in your playstyle. Yes, there's a randart mace, but a +2 mace of drainin...

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