Brainstorm Thread: Diversifying Translocations

[mechanicalmaniac]

Translocations is in a weird place: everyone invests in it, and it's hard to justify giving it more utility than it already has, but the spell list feels redundant. I guess there's only so much you can do with moving things to different places.

After thinking about things for a moment, I realized that he's right. Passage, cTele and cBlink are all capable of performing roughly the same thing (instantly moving you a distance of more than one square with some degree of control). Only 2 spell schools overlap with Tloc: Summoning (recall, malgate) and charms (shroud, wrWpn). All in all, Tloc is a pretty homogenous spell school.

I believe this is a problem that could use fixing.

Potentially horrible ideas:
-make Dimension Anchor a player spell, Tloc/Hexes.
-give Apportation a chance to disarm (loljk)

What ideas do you have, tavern?

[jejorda2]

-Make the Necromancy Embrace armour spell use tloc as well, since it is transporting carrion?
-Pick a few damage spells (Icicle? Iron Shot? The L2 fire/ice conjurations?) and replace the conj. school with tloc, as if the elemental projectiles were created and then translocated.
-Make Enslavement Hex/Tloc, as if you were magically moving the targets' limbs instead of altering its mind.

I'm not sold on any of these.

[nagdon]

Don't forget Force Lance (it's a great Conj/Tloc 4 spell in recent versions), Summon Forest (Summ/Tloc 5) and Singularity (Tloc 9 damage-dealing spell)!

If more diversification is needed, I would like to try Distortation Bolt (Conj/Tloc 6) and player-castable Blinkbolt (Tloc/Air 6). These are already coded, for details see https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commit/d7c9e79116c82156ca26d0866d8b6eafdc08974c and https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commit/fe7aa9db8661d5ae1ca1af44229e509410c9ef74.

[bel]

Tloc seems fine to me. Force Lance is conj/tloc, shroud is charms/tloc. And of course there is Gell's Gravitas and Singularity now. Seems a decent variety to me. Also phase shift.

[mechanicalmaniac]

Force Lance is Tloc now? I did not know that.

[comebackshane]

Funny, I always thought of Tloc as one of the more diverse skill sets... Apportation, Blink, PPj, Shroud of G, Passage of G, Force Lance, Warp Weapon, Summon Forest, Force Lance, Gell's Gravitas, Malign Gateway, Singularity...

I can see where you're comming from though, Controlled Blink is essentially an improved blink, Control Teleport let's you do a makeshift improved blink and there is sort of an evolution chain (not really, but you know what I mean)
of teleport other->Dispersal->Disjunction.
Really, those 3 need some serious love, especially teleport other which no one ever learned ever (please don't come with the "but in an absolutely niche sitation that has the same chance of of happening as me being attacked by a land shark and then struck by lighting where it MAYBE, with a stretch of the imagination, and by the will of some supernatural entity, be useful" examples this time). Also Disjunction, which feel very underwhelimg for a level 8 spell, also dispersal or controlled blink are more likely to get you out of a messy situation anyway. No wonder it got replaced by singularity as the "ultimate" spell of the translocation school.

One thing to consider is, where do you draw the line? Many spells move something from A to B in some way or another, but are they translocations because of that? The argument could be made that every summoning is a translocation, moving a creature from world A to world B.

The other thing is, translocationn can easily be a gamebreaking/storybreaking power.

I guess there's only so much you can do with moving things to different places.

The problem is that actually you can do too much with it. "I just teleport to zot 5, apport the orb, and teleport back to the surface." "I just open a gate to another dimension and close it behind me." "I just teleport that big uber monster over a volcano (take a hint, teleport other. Nobody loves you!)".

Thirdly, some of the cooler things that came to mind when thinking about tlocs are proprety of Lugonu (tm).

Btw, dimensional anchor, apportation changes and vault-warden-like door locking abilites have all been suggested before, let's just say it didn't end well.

"I just open a gate to another dimension and close it behind me."

Hm, for a moment I thought I had an idea, Plane Shift, but it sounds too much like Death's Door/Step from Time, oh well, maybe I come up with something overnight

[mechanicalmaniac]

May I ask what the problem is with dimensional anchor?

[tasonir]

1) I feel like translocations has already been receiving a lot of additional diversification over the last couple of versions, and now has a lot of spells that do more than just blinking/teleporting monsters. So a lot of this has been done with the spells others have mentioned. If you want to add another one, I'd focus on just proposing one thought out spell rather than a brainstorming thread, because several have already gone in, and the more obvious design space is filling up.

2) If you do want to propose a thought out design, I'd suggest starting from the question "What movement pattern is there a need for in the game that isn't currently available?" At least if you're going for a pure translocations, and not a summon forest type spell. I think this makes the problem more immediately noticeable - movement is already pretty well covered by the existing spell set, and any other spell is going to overlap quite a bit. One pattern that isn't available in spell form, for example, might be a blink-to-monster spell. Melee would love that, stabbers would love it, it would be like a controlled blink but with a drawback - going into combat only, not usable for escape in general, so maybe it's a level 4 or 5 spell? Is that really different enough from blink/(semi-)controlled blink? You could argue for it if you went back to .13 or so, but now with Dith's shadow step ability, I think it's pretty clear that this design space is probably covered up for good now. An alternative version where you pull the monster towards your space might work, basically giving players a version of blink other close (which is a monster spell). I've argued for things along this line before, but it's a tough sell.

In short, I think all of the purely move-things spells that we need in crawl are already in crawl. I wouldn't mind being able to pull monsters towards me in spell form, but I think that's not very likely to catch on.

[comebackshane]

Probably horrible idea:

Backtrack - Teleports you back to the entrance of a branch that you already visited. Cannot open gates to the Abyss or Pandaemonium or any-non permanent branches. This ability is blocked under -ctele.
Cannot be activated while enemies are in LOS.
Costs: Sets HP and MP to critical (10/5%), Hunger.

Possible Portals:

-Temple
-Lair
-Orcish Mines
-Elven Halls
-Lair Branch 1
-Lair Branch 2
-Dephts
-Vestibule of Hell (but not directly into one of the 4 Hell Branches)
-Crypt
-Tomb

[duvessa]

Why is diversifying spell schools considered a good thing in the first place? Should spell schools all be the same? I don't think they should. Why even have different spell schools at that point?
Obviously a significant portion of the devteam disagrees with me on this since the new tloc spells were added, but a few versions ago there was effort put into making weapon types not all the same and at least a few changes aimed at making elemental schools not all the same. Not to mention a lot of attempts at making races/backgrounds/gods more differentiated even at the cost of balance. So it's very odd to me that making a spell school less focused would be seen as inherently good.

There are already two schools (necromancy, hexes) that are "collection of unrelated spells"; would it be an improvement to the game to add more? Maybe. But if so, why are you restricting the discussion to translocations? How is translocations as "school of moving around" any worse than conjurations as "school of doing damage" or summoning as "school of making allies"?

[bcadren]

I once suggested what was basically Telefragging as a spell and it was shot down. [Teleporting to the center of the target to cause damage, but hurting yourself in the process. Pitched it as Level 8/9 Tloc/Necro; affecting everything that wasn't a demon and causing non-fatal (but extremely severe) pain to use.] At the time the reason it was shot down was that Translocations -shouldn't- cause direct damage, but apparently someone threw that out the window, since we now have Gell's and Singularity. *shrug*

I still say Tukima's should make the move to Tloc, since no one really uses it in Hex and Teleport other is the only MR checking spell in Tloc. *shrugs*

[Berder]

In a real battle between soldiers, the ability to control the position of yourself and your allies at will would be powerful, in ways that it isn't powerful in crawl. I think crawl should add some of these ways, instead of doing what it has been doing, which is just diversifying tloc to make it more like other schools (with direct damage like singularity and force lance).

- If in a real battle you could reposition your enemies, you could put them in a line in front of your machine guns for enfilading fire. The idea here is concentrating enemies in a place where they can be blasted more easily by spells. It would be good to have a crawl spell that pushed enemies together so they could be blasted more easily by area attacks or by enfilading ranged physical attacks (yes like gell's gravitas except gell's gravitas is shit and has a tiny area of effect and is useless for this purpose - like a much larger radius gell's gravitas that packs enemies together over much larger distances, and doesn't necessariliy damage them).

See also this other thread for changing singularity to be more synergistic with battlefield positioning. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=15234

[bcadren]

- If in a real battle you could reposition your enemies, you could put them in a line in front of your machine guns for enfilading fire. The idea here is concentrating enemies in a place where they can be blasted more easily by spells. It would be good to have a crawl spell that pushed enemies together so they could be blasted more easily by area attacks or by enfilading ranged physical attacks (yes like gell's gravitas except gell's gravitas is shit and has a tiny area of effect and is useless for this purpose - like a much larger radius gell's gravitas that packs enemies together over much larger distances, and doesn't necessariliy damage them).

You can do that with Tloc already really. Use cBlink to run away with enemies following you into a hallway their AI is daft enough to just bloody follow you into the choke point of their own free will. Also Digging (Spell) was removed for being too powerful a means to do this...

[Berder]

You can do that with Tloc already really. Use cBlink to run away with enemies following you into a hallway their AI is daft enough to just bloody follow you into the choke point of their own free will. Also Digging (Spell) was removed for being too powerful a means to do this...

That's assuming you have cblink, a hallway, and a safe retreat behind the hallway. It's not usable in the same situations as a wider-radius enemy-packing gell's gravitas would be.

[mechanicalmaniac]

Why is diversifying spell schools considered a good thing in the first place? Should spell schools all be the same? I don't think they should. Why even have different spell schools at that point?

Caution: slope may be slippery.

There are already two schools (necromancy, hexes) that are "collection of unrelated spells"; would it be an improvement to the game to add more? Maybe. But if so, why are you restricting the discussion to translocations? How is translocations as "school of moving around" any worse than conjurations as "school of doing damage" or summoning as "school of making allies"?

As oft-maligned as it is, hexes is, by my reckoning, a well-designed school in terms of striking the balance between providing a decent variety of effects and still sticking to its primary purpose as the "school of weakening monsters". That is, if we discount things like prism, which are debris from the hexes/charms split. If you want an example of a real grab bag spell school, look at the old enchantments school. It not only covers all of what is now hexes and charms, but also things like create noise/projected noise that simply don't fit anywhere else. Even most necromancy spells fall into one or more of three categories: usage of corpses, negative energy damage and torment, or unholy defence and healing.

Now, translocations as "moving around" (at least as it is now) is different from summoning as "making allies" and conjurations as "doing damage", because those two categories are very broad -- definitely broader than "moving around", anyway. Summoning is broad because Crawl has a varied bestiary -- imps are very different from rats and bats, so Call Imp feels very different from Summon Small Mammal. Conjuring is broad because blasts come in many different shapes in sizes. Anybody play bullet hell games? The primary gameplay difference between one 2hu and the next is the pattern in which their bullets fly.

[duvessa]

how can prism be debris from the hexes/charms split, it was added like 5 versions later

[Sandman25]

- If in a real battle you could reposition your enemies, you could put them in a line in front of your machine guns for enfilading fire. The idea here is concentrating enemies in a place where they can be blasted more easily by spells. It would be good to have a crawl spell that pushed enemies together so they could be blasted more easily by area attacks or by enfilading ranged physical attacks (yes like gell's gravitas except gell's gravitas is shit and has a tiny area of effect and is useless for this purpose - like a much larger radius gell's gravitas that packs enemies together over much larger distances, and doesn't necessariliy damage them).

Try Freezing Cloud + Force Lance combo.

[mechanicalmaniac]

how can prism be debris from the hexes/charms split, it was added like 5 versions later

Good point. Now I'm inclined to think that maybe Prism is half hexes as a nerf, and that hexes was chosen because conjurors already have Spray in their starting spellbook...

[bel]

- If in a real battle you could reposition your enemies, you could put them in a line in front of your machine guns for enfilading fire. The idea here is concentrating enemies in a place where they can be blasted more easily by spells. It would be good to have a crawl spell that pushed enemies together so they could be blasted more easily by area attacks or by enfilading ranged physical attacks (yes like gell's gravitas except gell's gravitas is shit and has a tiny area of effect and is useless for this purpose - like a much larger radius gell's gravitas that packs enemies together over much larger distances, and doesn't necessariliy damage them).

Try Freezing Cloud + Force Lance combo.

Freezing Cloud + Force Lance rocks.

[Speleothing]

how can prism be debris from the hexes/charms split, it was added like 5 versions later

Good point. Now I'm inclined to think that maybe Prism is half hexes as a nerf, and that hexes was chosen because conjurors already have Spray in their starting spellbook...

Prism, Battlesphere, Dazzling Spray and Force Lance (at the time pure Conj and only level 2) were all added at the same time when the conjurer starting book was redone to remove its elemental spells.