YASD! DgAs with boots of flying drowned at Shoals

[hannobal]

You may wonder how a character with boots of flying can drown.
Especially if the character is standing on solid ground.
Well that's exactly what happened... I'm sort of embarrassed.

http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/hannobal/morgue-hannobal-20160309-151340.txt

  Code:

Wear which item? (? for menu, Esc to quit)
Keep disrobing?
You start removing your armour.
You continue taking off your +1 pair of boots of flying.
The manticore flicks its tail.
The volley of spikes misses you.
You continue taking off your +1 pair of boots of flying.
The wind drake exhales a fierce blast of wind!
The wind drake summons a great blast of wind!
You are blown backwards! The griffon is blown away by the wind.
You continue taking off your +1 pair of boots of flying. x2
The manticore flicks its tail.
The volley of spikes hits you!
You finish taking off your +1 pair of boots of flying.
You float gracefully downwards. You fall into the water!
You sink like a stone! You drown...
You die...

So i was standing on solid ground, fighting a manticore and wind drake.
I was barbed by manticore, and wind drake was blasting me away from them so i could not melee continuously, and ranged wasn't working well either because of wind drake having Dmsl.
I decided to take off boots of flying, to avoid getting airstriked by the wind drake at least.

Next thing, character is drowned (he was on solid ground while i started to remove boots, then during boots removal which takes couple of turns he was blasted by wind drake to deep water)

Iirc player is warned about removing the boots if they are above deep water when they start removal
However prompt does not appear if they are moved above deep water during the removal process.

This could have been easily avoided of course, i should have used "stop flight" ability, instead of swapping boots.

My expression when the "You die..." appeared:

[Turukano]

My condolences.

One of my chars drowned in shoals as well, maybe last year. I have a warning in my rc-file but I was so busy about everything going on (lots of foes and actions) that I failed to read the warning that my flight spell expired.

This could have been easily avoided of course, i should have used "stop flight" ability, instead of swapping boots.

"I should have" is very well known as famous last words.

Better luck / more care next time!

[Turukano]

And your post reminds me that I've seen Skrik - "The Scream" - several years ago in Oslo when I've been in holidays in Norway!

[nago]

Probably this is worth of embarrassing deaths db's entry.
One of the best death I've ever read here!

[Blade]

Probably this is worth of embarrassing deaths db's entry.
One of the best death I've ever read here!

I concur, and so I added it. This is a death worth remembering.

[hannobal]

Yes more thinking and less action next time... As a positive side, it's good people find it worth remembering

[lethediver]

My expression when the "You die..." appeared:

I experienced a sympathy cringe. Nice death though.

[MainiacJoe]

So it was because he was flying that the drake could push him over the water? IIRC if you are not flying it shoves you against it like deep water is a wall. And then he stopped flying ...

[CanOfWorms]

You don't actually need to take off boots of flying to stop flying, there's an ability you can use to stop flying when you're wearing them.

Edit: I just noticed the last line in your post.

[MainiacJoe]

But the stop flying ability isn't multi-turn, so you don't get a death for the ages

[duvessa]

why does player flight have active disadvantages in the first place
it's the "get over water and lava" ability, it doesn't do anything else useful. is using flight while not over water and lava - in which case it isn't doing anything beneficial anyway - something so horrendous that the game needs to actively punish players who do it?

[prozacelf]

Presumably it's there to punish the one redeeming feature of tengu, since apparently their low hp isn't punishment enough for having permaflight that gives them speed 11 and bonus EV.

[Hurkyl]

I had merely presumed it just inherited the quality from player airstrike.

That said... is player airstrike really so strong it needs to lose a third of its damage to non-flying enemies? My impression is that its damage to flying enemies is somewhat weak for a lvl 4 spell, rather than so strong it needs to be limited like that.

[duvessa]

I had merely presumed it just inherited the quality from player airstrike.

flight also makes you take more knockback from wind gusts etc

[njvack]

fr: remove drowning

[dowan]

I second njvack's fr. The only times I have drowned are when whathisface the pan lord tornadoed me through a wall, then I drowned, or the time I removed a ring of flight when I was over water. While the second example was obviously hilarious, I don't really see what actual purpose drowning serves.

[Leszczynek]

I wasn't around for the older versions, but I believe you used to be able to stumble into deep water while confused, right? (And monsters still do it for some reason.) If you can't anymore, why can you keep removing boots of flying while above deep water?

[crate]

Amusingly, had you never been flying in the first place, you would not have drowned. Shoals cannot drown you if you are not able to survive over deep water at all.

But yes, make flight actually a good status and not a bad status please. Or get rid of it entirely, though that's probably unfortunately too much work to actually happen at this point.

[hannobal]

Disclaimer: Despite this suggestion, I still blame only my stupidity for this particular death.

I recall seeing a thread earlier about removing drowning, there the idea was to make it like shallow water, but just worse.
For example twice the penalties of shallow water for small/medium creatures and regular shallow water penalties for large creatures.

In some vaults it's used to prevent access to areas, but if penalties are big, it would still serve same purpose, because it would be very dangerous to move around/fight in deep water if non-trivial enemies are present or can wander to LOS.
Ending up accidentally in deep water would not be insta-death, because you could still get out by walking (albeit slowly...) or faster with teleport. But each turn spent there would be a bad idea.

It probably would not make game any easier, because like this one, 99% of drowning deaths are stupid (maybe even 100%).
You could not drown enemies either anymore (by confusion or other means). AI should still avoid deep water so it won't be too tempting tactically to lure enemies to deep water.
Some people (newbies) might not realize the danger of moving around in deep water, so players should still be warned about deep water.

It's actually quite similar idea compared to zero stat death removal - not an insta-death, but a very, very bad situation which can lead to rapid death if player does not take immediate corrective action.