Species proposal workshop: Scrolls

[Kaelii]

I've seen several unsuccessful proposals for 'scrollless species'. I personally believe it doesn't make a great hook for a species design, mostly because I think it approaches the design goal from the wrong angles. The design gets so focused on "Cut out scrolls", that it forgets there are fun, and even extremely important aspects of scrolls that can be examined or worked into the species until it becomes an afterthought patch for a massive problem that inevitably rears its head -- cursed items are awful when the player has absolutely no response to them.

My response is working on a species with reliable and extended access to the fun scroll effects that either should not be given up, or are necessary to replace.

My thoughts on various scrolls as part of a species hook.

Spoiler: show

Fun and "irreplaceable" scrolls:

Remove Curse/Identify - Having a way to check out if the ring is rPoison or -6 AC without being stuck with the negative forever is absolutely necessary. Nobody is going to have fun in a game where they check for a resist ring and get stuck with absolute shit and have no response. Ever. So any race that ends up lacking scrolls is going to need access to at least one of these effects in abundance. As automatic identification is an ashenzari thing, I would suggest leaning towards access to remove curse effect, or some way of dealing with curses. Attached cost negotiable. Could be nothing, could be a minor thing to limit in combat use like 1-3 MP, or it could be something potentially non-trivial like rotting a few max HP.

Scroll of Amnesia - This is actually one of the more interesting design choices when addressing scroll access. We already have god who gives almost unlimited access to it, and it isn't STRICTLY ever absolutely necessary to find and use scroll of Amnesia as a caster, but a dedicated caster may well WANT to use it at some point. So, lots of possible approaches. I think it is the biggest modification to dedicated casters if a species simply does not have access outside of sif muna -- especially if said race has a non-trivial conjuration or other deity related magic aptitude. Does a caster of this species want to pick a god who directly boosts a strong casting aptitude but strains their spell slot choice? Or does the caster want to be able to play around with their spell slots some like other races?

Enchant Weapon & Enchant Armour - These scrolls act as balancing mechanisms to a widely variable item generation method, and let characters grow their own strength as they progress. Barring exceptional randarts almost everyone can find a use for these scrolls at some point, and be stronger for it. Enchant armour is probably a higher value effect than Enchant Weapon, if only because it allows creation of dragon armours which come with built in properties. Enchant weapon is a bigger deal for lower base damage weapons in mid to late game weapon choice.

Your mileage may vary scrolls:

Scroll of Recharging - Evocations cares about these scrolls. Cares a whole lot. Other power uses are on teleport, haste and heal wounds wands. How much a player actually cares about these scrolls depends much more on what evocation items they have.

Scroll of Brand Weapon - A scroll with wildly fluctuating importance. Sometimes you find artifact +14 high tier weapon of holy wrath and there is no reason to hunt for brand weapon scrolls. Other times you spend six scrolls of brand weapon and end up rolling venom, pain, draining, flaming, freezing, venom on your +9 quickblade for Dudeman Mc Not-a-necromancer the third, when all you want is distortion or elec. If a species has enchant weapon built in to some extent, I personally would like to see some way of being able to reroll brands every so often, but I could see it being a bit stronger than simply enchanting weapons reliably.

Scroll of Magic Mapping - They're nice, but people don't particularly complain about not having them. Adding a mapping effect to a species is potentially a nod towards finding timed portals for slower races or chei worship.

Scroll of disappointment - A nice way of getting a semi-decent armour for slot limited races. Also used to wish for haste/heal wounds/teleportation wands commonly. Giving a player a racial form is a hilarious idea. Implementation and balance would probably be a nightmare unless it borrows heavily from the scroll itself, which wouldn't make it particularly more interesting compared to actually just having the scrolls.

Remaining scrolls, most of these can be replicated by other player choices, and just don't impact play in quite the same way most of the time. I have put a bit less effort into my description of these:

Translocational Scrolls - Evocations and actual Translocations magic do a fair job of being a suitable replacement in mid-late game or certain early game starts. The major loss is in player responses to early outlying enemy generation; but players can live without them. See: Formicid.

Fog - One of the harder defensive scroll effects to replicate, fog is strongest in the later parts of the game where line of sight management is more important due to casting enemies, enemies with screen wide effects, and smite targeted effects.

Silence - Nearly worthless to dedicated casters. Has uses for melee characters. Massively slants the direction of play for a species to suggest unlimited or always active silence, unless you start introducing exceptions in which case its easier to just give an umbra if you care about the stealth/noise or an aura that stuns enemy casters or something. Hexes can also cover this path so limited access it far less interesting.

Fear - A screenwide version of a hex, it might be possible to make a version of this accessible as a species effect. A lot of mechanics could be tweaked for balancing, but making it an interesting player choice would be tricky.

Summoning - The entire summoning school of magic. Of all the scroll effects I would put this at the top of a "Not an interesting effect for a species to have innately" list. Just play a summoner if you want reliable or powerful minions. As a CONSUMABLE, it can fit in as a limited access to a school of magic you might not otherwise train. (Similar to control blink for blinking scroll, and a lesser extent the fear and silence scrolls).

Immolation - Turning popcorn into fireballs is HILARIOUS and fun. I don't think I would particularly enjoy EVERYTHING being a fireball on death. If the player gets to choose when it happens (single target or full screen) it is just inner fire or the scroll. The number of times I stop and say "you know what would make this better? Killing one thing turning the whole screen into FIRE" is pretty much limited to after finding rF+++, or a whole pile of popcorn with one or two threats mixed in.

Vulnerability, Noise - There are edge case uses for vulnerability, and it can certainly be used more if you are a dedicated hexer. Maybe a species with a MR- effect for enemies could be put together. But there are lots of Stealth-Dagger-Hexes species already. Making it distinct from existing ones? Probably going to need something else to hook people in. Noise? I guess a species could have a louder than normal shout. But why? Noise is one of the harder to see effects in crawl. Making a species that causes a big noise optionally or something? Qazlal does the noise all the time thing already. See silence notes for the opposite.

Holy Word, Torment - Barring ACTUAL random uselessness, these scrolls are so often useless that I doubt many people actively carry them. Torment has a nice use for undead species but thats about it. Giving torment as an effect? Zin has the whole easy access 'holy preacher' thing that does bonuses against demons and such. Making a species with access to holyword doesn't seem particularly interesting.

Actual Random Uselessness scroll - WHY would ANYONE want this as a species power? I mean, the scroll just outright tells you that it is basically USELESS.

But enough about SCROLLS, here are the basic functionalities of my work in progress species:

WORLDBOUND, Humans of the Vaults. (For lack of a more inventive background or differentiating characteristics, I am currently thinking these should be fairly close to human in aptitudes and stats)

Species Attributes:
HP: +0%, MP: +0%
Base Stats: Str 8, Int 8, Dex 8
Stat increase: +1 random stat every 4 levels.
Magic Resistance: +3 per level

Proposed 'scroll' effects built into the species:
Enchanting Flesh. Enchant Armour and Enchant Weapon effects on equipped items, occurs automatically as XP is gained. Improving rods over extended use is a possible extension to the same sort of idea. Initial enchantments should be cheaper than higher level enchantments. Ideally the draw of this race would be that they can go through many decently enchanted sets of equipment and still end up with a top tier set of equipment, but every change of equipment has a period where they might be weaker than if they had just stuck with their equipment.

Remove Cursed item. **Has attached cost** Should be a fairly minor attached cost to allow checking jewelry to be reasonable, but it might be worth investigating a cost for armour and weapons such that relying on the ENCHANTING effect to remove non-artifact items may be preferred at some stages of the game. The Draining Mechanic comes to mind as a fairly suitable cost.

Trickier scroll effects in consideration:
Brand weapon. The ability to reliably reroll weapon brands is appealing, but I'm really not sure what sort of cost would be fitting. Letting the player reroll for free may as well let them choose from specific brands instead. Possibly let players grant one of three brands known ahead of time at particular XLs? That way the player can pick a brand of choice, but doesn't let them endlessly swap brands to whatever is most suitable for the current branch.

Recharging. Deep dwarves have access to an ability like this which makes it harder to justify including it. Including an effect that extends the lifetime of wands or increases the power of unidentified wands when they use multiple charges might be a worthwhile direction. Alternatively, the species could have poor evocations attribute complimenting a lack of recharging or identification of wand charges available as part of a drawback.

*Cannot use scrolls*

Aptitudes

  Code:

Fighting: -1, Short Blades: 0, Long Blades: 0, Axes: 0, Maces & Flails: 0, Polearms: 0, Staves: 0, Slings: 0, Bows: 0, Crossbows: 0, Throwing: -1, Armour: 0, Dodging: -1, Stealth: -1, Shields: 0, Unarmed Combat: -1, Spellcasting: -1, Conjurations: 0, Hexes: 0, Charms: 1, Summonings: 0, Necromancy: 0, Translocations: 0, Transmutations: 0, Fire Magic: 0, Ice Magic: 0, Air Magic: 0, Earth Magic: 0, Poison Magic: 0, Invocations: 0, Evocations: 2, Experience: 0

Currently far from a polished species for me to feel comfortable putting this into a GDD species proposal, but I am curious on people's responses to it currently.

[dynast]

Recreating effects that you are trying to remove from a species sort of defeats its purpose imo.

[Pollen_Golem]

Yeah, the reason for a scroll-less race is to make you do without. The whole point is that it will play differently. Now, you can give the species something else to help them deal with the lack of scrolls. Usually it is unlimited or, in the case of DD and Mu, it permanently gimps your character a little when you use it.

Remove Cursed item. **Has attached cost**

The Draining Mechanic comes to mind as a fairly suitable cost.

Why attach a cost? Curses are no big deal once you have a couple remove curse scrolls. It only affects the re-cursing *curse items in terms of swapping.

Draining mechanic might replace ?rc for everybody in the future, in which case such a species would not require a special case anyway.

[dpeg]

Thanked for the really solid analysis. I am not sure the basic premise will work, but I can imagine it might. As I see it, the main appeal is in automatically improving gear. I think this could be a really fun concept. As so often, it could also work on a god. I don't think that branding/recharging/etc. is necessary at all: makes it more interesting to make do with the brands you find and so on.

Another upside: it's a pretty simple suggestion (in the technical sense). Actually simpler than an equivalent god would be. If implemented, I'd try it!

[Pollen_Golem]

By the way, a species with unlimited enchant scrolls should have relatively good throwing/UC/dodging apts, otherwise you're making it a doubly obvious choice to just go with enchantable weapons and enchantable armor, but those are the exact skills you slapped with -1 apts.

[Rast]

When I saw the thread title I hoped this would be a proposal for a playable race of scrolls.

[Pollen_Golem]

Don't worship Zin, because scrolls are consumables and Zin doesn't like cannibalism.

[bcadren]

Not to criticize; but I submitted Silent Spectre around the same time and it was liked. It's also a scrollless species.

[Kaelii]

Recreating effects that you are trying to remove from a species sort of defeats its purpose imo.

Removing scroll access is not the design focus, it is done mechanically to prevent redundancy.
If I were to allow use of scrolls, the species would probably ONLY have enchanting, and in a less powerful form. And it would be less interesting because the species will still find enchant scrolls. As dpeg put it, the idea here is a species that improves the gear they wear as they go along, rather than needing to find enchant scrolls. Their defenses would not undergo radical upgrade at the finding of a suitable dragon hide as is currently common.

Remove Cursed item. **Has attached cost**

The Draining Mechanic comes to mind as a fairly suitable cost.

Why attach a cost? Curses are no big deal once you have a couple remove curse scrolls. It only affects the re-cursing *curse items in terms of swapping.

Draining mechanic might replace ?rc for everybody in the future, in which case such a species would not require a special case anyway.

Remove cursed item is in my mind not remove curse. It would be clearer if I had written it as "Unequip Cursed Item" instead. The differences are subtle, but important primarily for jewelry and ashenzari.

By the way, a species with unlimited enchant scrolls should have relatively good throwing/UC/dodging apts, otherwise you're making it a doubly obvious choice to just go with enchantable weapons and enchantable armor, but those are the exact skills you slapped with -1 apts.

As similar as throwing and launcher ranged options are, swapping to and from a ranged launcher is a non-trivial time commitment for a melee character. Regardless, a -1 aptitude is unlikely to be sufficient to universally or even frequently deter melee characters from training throwing as an optional ranged response.
Compared to the choice between caster and weapon specialist, I doubt a -1 aptitude in doding and 0 aptitude in armour will significantly influence skill investment choice for a species.
Of course, we also have species like Trolls who have claws AND unarmed combat as their best weapon aptitude making a giant neon sign reading "Use unarmed combat", I think lightly encouraging the play to make use of equipment for a race with increased access to scrolls is not totally unreasonable. Thus, a very minor aptitude shift across aptitudes encouraging equipment use.

[Pollen_Golem]

"Unequip Cursed Item" instead. The differences are subtle, but important primarily for jewelry and ashenzari.

primarily for ashenzari and for self-cursing items if you do not worship ashenzari. Note that if you cannot read scrolls, you cannot curse uncursed items with ashenzari. What makes jewelry special? I don't get it.

Of course, we also have species like Trolls who have claws AND unarmed combat as their best weapon aptitude making a giant neon sign reading "Use unarmed combat"

Yeah and that's not a good thing overall. Trolls at least have a lot of flavor supporting them. And I guess there's space for a species with easy strategic decisions. But note the nature of rare weapons means that even a troll can be tempted to use a weapon instead. Wouldn't it be nice for your species to have something similar: "Sure I could carry a weapon and have it guaranteed to go up to +9 at some point, but I have this really good UC aptitude..."