What would make winning crawl impossible?

[Turukano]

Which changes would be necessary to make winning crawl completely impossible?

Alright, hell sentinels guarding all the stairs/hatches/shafts in D:1 would be an idea but this might be too obvious...

[Sar]

Removing autoexplore and autofight.

[XuaXua]

Disabling application start-up and revoking internet access.

[Lasty]

This question has a near infinite number of answers, including obvious ones like:

* Make all monster attacks against the player always hit and deal fatal damage.
* Remove the up stairs on D1.
* Remove all stairs.
* Remove the orb.
* Crash whenever you load the game.

The most minimal change that would make the game impossible to win would probably involve generating all monsters awake and making the player have permanent mark status and also giving some large buff to monsters. If it's possible to sneak, then pretty much no sane amount of monster buffing would make the game actually impossible as opposed to ludicrously hard.

[dck]

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There is a staircase leading out of the dungeon here.

And AK/CK/Fo removed.

[Sprucery]

Removing autoexplore and autofight.

Everything must be so easy for you kids. Now let me tell you about the good old days...

[Magipi]

An improvement of the monster AI would make the game next to impossible. Imagine orc priests smiting every turn, centaurs kiting, summoners always summoning...

[XuaXua]

An improvement of the monster AI would make the game next to impossible. Imagine orc priests smiting every turn, centaurs kiting, summoners always summoning...

When you enhance AI, you also need to set realistic monster limitations, like giving them MP, piety, a loss and recovery rate, etc.

[dck]

AI improved as in when the first hobgoblin spots you he rushes downstairs to call all of the orb guardians

[Zooty]

Replace Crawl by Global Thermonuclear War.

[rockygargoyle]

Removing DD

[XuaXua]

AI improved as in when the first hobgoblin spots you he rushes downstairs to call all of the orb guardians

Don't get me started on how I used to totally screw over all my Advanced Hero Quest players whenever they rolled a room sentinel (the only "monster" that allows the game master to open unexplored doors).

[dck]

k i wont

[XuaXua]

k i wont

Man, they would break into a room and roll that sucker up, and I'd tag the sentinel base with a color and write it down so I knew which one it was, but they didn't and I'd make sure in set-up re-arrangement that he was at or near the door and everyone else was tactically laid out to prevent fireballs, or sometimes I'd put him off to the side and make it look like a non-sentinel was going for the door. Then when the turn came, wham; that sucker'd fly out the door and the elf player would have to run around the outside of the room or through it (if possible) and try to put an arrow in him. Generally I'd get at least one room open; the specials times were when subsequent rooms had sentinels. This one time I freed up 4 of them and we pretty much mapped out the entire dungeon across 2 tables just from them having opened the first room. Flood of skaven on those players. They had to abandon that quest.

Good times.

[Klown]

Which changes would be necessary to make winning crawl completely impossible?

Alright, hell sentinels guarding all the stairs/hatches/shafts in D:1 would be an idea but this might be too obvious...

Formicids could shaft to D:2 though!

[Hirsch I]

yeah, but then you would need to win with a Fo.

[and into]

All backgrounds start with Qazlal at sufficiently noisy piety level. You begin the game at depths 1 and cannot go back to the main dungeon until you have the orb.

[dck]

Give me a troll and a few good hours.

[Hopeless]

Not really sure what the point of this thread is but it seems like the OP was asking for actually subtle answers as opposed to the obvious stuff posted. That said not sure there is a way to make the game technically impossible without being obvious. And I don't have any ideas that differ from what's been posted.

@Xua, sounds like your Advanced Hero Quest game role was more Adversary than Game Master. Not that there is anything wrong with that if that's what your players want. Mine would have mutinied. (And some did complain occasionally when they died to something stupid like entering a dragon's lair they were previously warned about.)

[Patashu]

Make Zot:5 regenerate monsters infinitely every time you uncover or re-uncover (after it has moved out of LoS) every tile in it. You can't lure and kill things one by one from the vault anymore - but it's so jam packed in normal play that the player might not even notice for some time that it's going on!

[wheals]

Make Zot:5 regenerate monsters infinitely every time you uncover or re-uncover (after it has moved out of LoS) every tile in it. You can't lure and kill things one by one from the vault anymore - but it's so jam packed in normal play that the player might not even notice for some time that it's going on!

Disjunction + shatter + vehumet + teleninja?

[tasonir]

All characters start the game with incurable deterioration 3, potions of restore abilities and rings of sustain abilities are removed from the game.

This has the absolutely insidious side effect of making a mummy of Chei the strongest combo in the game. I suppose it would be technically possible to win if you could get to level 13 and restore your stats. But I think that's close enough to impossible to count.

[duvessa]

With deterioration 3 and normal stat recovery you lose an average of 1 stat point every 400 turns; if you are a deep dwarf then it is an average of 1 every 285.7 turns. DD starts with 39 stat points; Sp starts with 36.

285.7*39 = 11142.3 turns
400*36 = 14400 turns

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jeanjacques the Faith Healer (L18 DDHe of Elyvilon), escaped with the Orb and 3 runes on 2013-05-07 22:27:03, with 6429763 points after 9468 turns and 1:48:56.

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qwqw the Bewitcher (L14 SpEn of Jiyva), escaped with the Orb and 3 runes on 2010-08-31 23:55:18, with 4299119 points after 14318 turns and 1:39:33.

[savageorange]

Come on, where are the interesting suggestions?

* Sudden death mode : the player and all monsters have exactly 1 HP.

[mopl]

With deterioration 3 and normal stat recovery you lose an average of 1 stat point every 400 turns; if you are a deep dwarf then it is an average of 1 every 285.7 turns. DD starts with 39 stat points; Sp starts with 36.

285.7*39 = 11142.3 turns
400*36 = 14400 turns

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jeanjacques the Faith Healer (L18 DDHe of Elyvilon), escaped with the Orb and 3 runes on 2013-05-07 22:27:03, with 6429763 points after 9468 turns and 1:48:56.

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qwqw the Bewitcher (L14 SpEn of Jiyva), escaped with the Orb and 3 runes on 2010-08-31 23:55:18, with 4299119 points after 14318 turns and 1:39:33.

Your maths seems to rely on two mistakes :
- you don't need to get all your stats drained, one is enough to be very painful
285.7*36 = 10285.2
400*33 = 13200
- stat drained are random, a SpWz could see only str drained...

Moreover having all stat to 0 doesn't mean you can't win, theorically...

Great build idea ever : Naga of Chei with all stats drained, that means speed 22.4 speed delay SLOUCH !

[tasonir]

I intentionally came up with something that would appear to be possible rather than "hell sentinels on d:1" because it's more interesting. Also, you'd be able to actually start playing before it slowly became increasingly impossible and eventually died. I don't think he would be able to keep up the same progression and win the game in 9k turns with deteriorating stats, especially if one hits 0 considerably earlier as mopi said. To be fair, pacification doesn't rely on stats and so it would be one of the best ways to deal with the deterioration.

I think the thread's more interesting if you're a bit more underhanded and devious about the premise

Also if it wasn't clear we'd remove the restore stats from ely's purification - the goal was to remove any way to restore stats, I didn't cover all of the cases in the above. Mummy self restore is funny because you're a mummy, but if you really wanted to make it impossible they would have to have that removed too

[and into]

Mod note: After receiving a report, deleted an uncalled for comment in an otherwise good post. Even CYC has (some, low) standards.

[duvessa]

that post is meaningless without the joke...now it just looks like the worst post in this thread, even worse than yours. delete the whole thing next time please

[Arrhythmia]

"joke"

[and into]

I thought folks could delete their own posts, if not report it with a deletion request and I'll be happy to do so (even if this makes my post the worst in the thread!). However, when deletions are called for, I generally try to be as parsimonious and narrow as possible, and that's unlikely to change in the future.

Can this go back to being just another goofy thread in CYC instead of a goofy but oddly flame-y thread, now?

EDIT vv Huh good to know. Well if anyone wants to delete one of their own posts but can't for whatever reason, just report your own post and say "delete" and mods will do it pretty soon.

[Arrhythmia]

I thought folks could delete their own posts

They can, but there's some opaque restrictions on it. I think it either needs to be the most recent post, or needs to have been made no more than X minutes ago, or something like that. It never really says.

e.g. I can't delete this post, but I have deleted posts before.

[Siegurt]

I'm pretty sure it's "You can't delete a post that has been viewed by anyone else."

[XuaXua]

@Xua, sounds like your Advanced Hero Quest game role was more Adversary than Game Master.

Plain Jane GM'ing AHQ is like playing chess solo against a team of 3-4 other players at once, but with more pieces, and we all agreed playing strict to the die roll. They got plenty of treasure due to my mistakes failing to play intelligently, so when I got thrown a bone, I ran with it. I set the anti-cheat rules so that when I played as a player and someone else GM'd it, the system in place worked (tagging a base of a special character, and writing it down on a sheet put to the side before room arrangement began).

The Skaven Dungeon Flood was one of those experiences that we talk about more, years later, than ever finding any part of the goal amulet or challenging the Lich King. And it taught all of us lessons - sentinels kick ass, so take out anything that runs (or even fake runs) to the door, and abuse the heck out of it if you can. It's an in-game mechanic and you're supposed to use it as such, especially when 4 overpowered heroes break into a room of 3-4 under-armed lowly rat people. Power in numbers.

[LJFCAT]

An improvement of the monster AI would make the game next to impossible. Imagine orc priests smiting every turn, centaurs kiting, summoners always summoning...

When you enhance AI, you also need to set realistic monster limitations, like giving them MP, piety, a loss and recovery rate, etc.

Still a very interesting thought, though. How I loath Orc Priests, but less than I used to.

[Patashu]

How has no one brought up 'by playing Zermakocrawl' yet?

[stickyfingers]

Doesn't qw win at that sometimes?

[Patashu]

Doesn't qw win at that sometimes?

Exhibit A:

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 40453 | Depths:1 | 40453 ||| INVOKING BIA.

Exhibit B:

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 zermako[17/27]: <Zermako> nothing i could do  <cptwinky> bros in arms?  <Zermako> i keep forgetting about it

I rest my case, Your Honour