The Tavern

No, seriously, call it Brimstone Hail or something, it fits the brimstone fiends and the Arbalest Brimstone Hail becomes a reference to Vagrant Story.

Mod edit: relocated the endless bikeshed out of GDD

but then it sounds like it's fire related again, which isn't good

You misspelled earth.

dynast wrote:You misspelled earth.

yeah, except for the huge connotation with "fire" that brimstone carriers.

the +6 arbalest "Hellfrost" {iceblast,

brimstone is sulfur which isn't too impressive unless its burning

I think it's actually a reference to tactics ogre isn't it

idk

edit: anyways...

Code:: You shoot a damnation bolt. The damnation bolt hits the deep elf mage!! The damnation bolt damns the deep elf mage. The deep elf mage is severely wounded. The damnation bolt explodes! The damnation engulfs the deep elf mage.

Code:: You shoot a brimstone bolt. The brimstone bolt hits the deep elf mage!! The brimstone bolt blasts the deep elf mage. The deep elf mage is severely wounded. The brimstone bolt explodes! The brimstone engulfs the deep elf mage.

honestly i liked hellfire just fine and i don't think the idea of special infernal fire that can't be resisted like normal fire is too weird an idea for crawl

it's not a weird idea, but seeing "fire" makes pretty much literally everyone instantly assume rF helps

Spoiler: show

If only there was a way to view what an enemy's spell did while in the game, perhaps as an extension of using x->v to examine a monster. This hypothetical screen could tell you important information about the spell, such as that hellfire damage isn't affected by fire resistance or AC.

Hellmonk wrote:If only there was a way to view what an enemy's spell did while in the game, perhaps as an extension of using x->v to examine a monster. This hypothetical screen could tell you important information about the spell, such as that hellfire damage isn't affected by fire resistance or AC.

so you think that a good player would look at every single spell that could possibly be affiliated with an element on the off chance that one of them doesn't actually respect the resistance that it has in its name?

Arrhythmia wrote:so you think that a good player would look at every single spell that could possibly be affiliated with an element on the off chance that one of them doesn't actually respect the resistance that it has in its name?

it's crawl we're talking about so that's a good idea actually

Yeah, I think a good player should check spell descriptions and that ingame spell descriptions should give useful information about the resistances they check (especially for the ones that check AC differently, because that's really spoilery).

Hellmonk wrote:Yeah, I think a good player should check spell descriptions and that ingame spell descriptions should give useful information about the resistances they check (especially for the ones that check AC differently, because that's really spoilery).

you don't think that naming a spell "____ fire" and then having nothing to do with fire is really bad UI?

Arrhythmia wrote:
Hellmonk wrote:Yeah, I think a good player should check spell descriptions and that ingame spell descriptions should give useful information about the resistances they check (especially for the ones that check AC differently, because that's really spoilery).

you don't think that naming a spell "____ fire" and then having nothing to do with fire is really bad UI?

Why the hell does it even matter if it is fire or not? Why is this so like inconceivable that there would be a 'form of fire' or whatever you want to call it from the depths of Hell that cannot be resisted by magical means (rF+).

Oh wait.. but then that would mean only one spell of a damage type is irresistible and nothing else is like that! Inconsistency! :O Literally unplayable!

Dracunos wrote:Oh wait.. but then that would mean only one spell of a damage type is irresistible and nothing else is like that! Inconsistency! :O Literally unplayable!

histrionics aside, yes, exactly.

Dracunos wrote:
Arrhythmia wrote:
Hellmonk wrote:Yeah, I think a good player should check spell descriptions and that ingame spell descriptions should give useful information about the resistances they check (especially for the ones that check AC differently, because that's really spoilery).

you don't think that naming a spell "____ fire" and then having nothing to do with fire is really bad UI?

Why the hell does it even matter if it is fire or not?

Because it's objectively more clear for it to not be

@dynast: sorry about yr thread

@PleasingFungus: perplexed about yr comment

it's not like people are throwing out suggestions like "assblast" and "hellfart"

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:it's not like people are throwing out suggestions like "assblast" and "hellfart"

well NOW i am

Well, sulfur does have a certain smell...

Elemental sulfur smell is actually quite faint and not particularly unpleasant.

I find damnation less confusing than hellfire. Brimstone doesn't really do it for me.

At one point quite some time ago i suggested 'brimstone blast' as its name

Something super-smites you!

In all seriousness, if there's anything anyone can think of that would make the connection to smiting clear, it might make it more obvious to the player how hellfire/damnation works (i.e. always hits, AC doesn't help). One option would be to just make the damage for smiting HD-based, and replace all instances of damnation with it. The only difficulty is with the blast aspect, though personally I don't think it'd be a great loss to get rid of that.

Although frankly, hellfire not respecting rF+ was no more confusing than Bolt of Magma and Throw Icicle only partially respecting rF+ and rC+, or Airstrike and Sandblast rolling AC multiple times, etc. I think the source of the confusion was more the fact that the player (almost) never uses hellfire, and therefore was much less likely to read the description. So obviously the best solution is to introduce player-castable hellfire. /s

Hurl damnation seems OK because it suggests line of fire.

Perhaps instead of 'burst' we can have 'call down' damnation?

Hellstorm? Hellrage? Makhlefun?
"The Power of Hell is Invoked Upon You!"

I totally get the reason for the change, and I can't think of anything better, but I do find "damnation" a bit awkward. I mean... when the game tells me a demon shot hellfire at me, that's something I can sort of picture. When the game says a demon shot damnation at me... I certainly don't picture a big purple blast. Another issue is that "damnation" is "unholy" and therefore someone might expect rneg to work, as it works against some other "unholy" damage, like drain.

Unfortunately, I can't come up with much of an alternative, and I completely see the problem with "hellfire", even though I was used to it, and it certainly sounds better than damnation.

In Final Fantasy, an attack like this would probably be "dark" element, however we already have negative energy, which seems to be the same basic thing.
Final Fantasy also had "holy" attacks. Crawl already has something along these lines, in the form of dispel undead, and holy branded weapons, although this isn't something the player can acquire a resistance to. Telling the player the demon shot a blast of unholy energy at them is better to me thematically, but then, one might expect negative energy resist to work here... They might also expect undead to be immune to it...

Chaosblast seems almost decent, but of course in crawl evil and chaos are two separate things, and there are certain expectations when it comes to chaos related stuff.

What if it were just called "Destruction"? Is that any more clear than damnation? It feels more powerful to me, but that's just subjective. I do think it avoids anyone expecting rneg to work against it, and a blast of destruction seems to make more sense than a blast of damnation. It loses a little of that 'evil' flavor, but then, that flavor has the same problem as hellfire, there are certain expectations of an evil attack, while nobody would expect anything to be innately resistant to pure destruction.

I dont give a flying fuck to what the player might think about the attack's element or holiness, he will do that regardless of its name, thats what players are supposed to do in games like this. You can go back to calling it hellfire and make fire resistance decrease its damage for a maximum of 5% and pretend its like torment.

It may be worth mentioning that the confusion caused by the name "hellfire" is not hypothetical. Perhaps Tavern posters are more aware of these things now, but a couple of years ago it was not too uncommon to read something like, "I have rF++ so I should be covered against hellfire" in a post in Advice or YAVP. It did cause confusion and presumably meant some players were doing things like swapping jewelry to get rF+ against hellions. Not the biggest problem in Crawl, sure, but on the other hand it was easy to fix with a very minor cosmetic change.

V Off topic edit:

Hey Arrhy — short version: got really busy, moved, went cold turkey on DCSS for a while, got less busy, downloaded Crawl again and played occasionally, eventually checked out Tavern, saw post about Hellfire and decided to come out of retirement

whoa welcome back and into where have you been?

and into wrote: a very minor cosmetic change.

Minor? I can accept if some don't understand quite how much cooler hellfire is than damnation..

But do you realize we are going to be arguing this change for versions to come?

It simply wasn't worth it, the loss was far too great.

All for the sake of helping players carelessly tab a bit harder without being cautious and hitting v (in a game where playing carefully and examining your enemies is extremely important and encouraged, no less). So they can grow even further complacent and then find other inconvenient-to-tabbing things to complain about!

Dracunos: This is a past-centered point of view. For a new player, it does not matter whether it's called Hellfire or Damnation. (I assume here that both words catch the meaning "evil effect" reasonably well.) *You* feel a loss, because you've witnessed the change.

I think in cases like this, it is always better to think of, or design for, a hypothetical new player.

Personally, I find the phrase kinda funny. I mean, "The damnation unfurls!" is so negative, I can't but think of the PC screaming "Oh noes! The damnation!".

dynast wrote:I dont give a flying fuck to what the player might think about the attack's element or holiness, he will do that regardless of its name, thats what players are supposed to do in games like this. You can go back to calling it hellfire and make fire resistance decrease its damage for a maximum of 5% and pretend its like torment.

classic tavern dynast

dynast, you sort of forgot to tell us in your OP why "damnation" ought to change. Is it a gorgeous, perfect name that lends itself well to creating beautiful prose in the game's messages? Eh! Does it succeed in a) not referring to "fire" given that it has nothing to do with fire and b) not confuse the player with anything else, dowan's musings aside? Yeah, basically.

e: btw, I'm not locking the thread yet, but if y'all don't behave so help me I am going to turn this car around

Its not on the op but on my third post, damnation text is so awful to read and should be replaced with something else, if thats not a good excuse then i got nothing and you can lock the thread.

creating beautiful prose in the game's messages?

come on with this lol

dynast wrote:Its not on the op but on my third post, damnation text is so awful to read and should be replaced with something else, if thats not a good excuse then i got nothing and you can lock the thread.

damnation scans pretty badly and should be changed to a noun that comfortably sits in the grammatical position of "object", i agree.

Move away from the hell/demonic theme with something recognizable from other RPG contexts. Something like a meteor strike.

that's so lame

also why wouldn't meteors be resisted by AC

They're magical pain-freeze meteors.

Why wouldn't anything related to hell be resisted by rF, especially when it looks and acts a lot like a fireball? I mean, do we actually know that "damnation" has reduced confusion on this point? I don't think we do.

As far as AC is concerned, it really doesn't make sense for anything not to be resisted by AC in Crawl, but that has nothing to with the thread anyway.

archaeo wrote:dynast, you sort of forgot to tell us in your OP why "damnation" ought to change.

because "damnation" sounds nothing like the thing it's describing. It stretches credibility that such an effect would continue to be called "damnation" even if its inventor insisted upon it. It would just be changed in some way, perhaps through jargon, like "Hellblast", that eventually becomes its de-facto name. Especially since it's common wherever it can occur, requires immediate attention, and "damnation" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. "Burst" was also a bad name, I still can't remember whether it means smite-targeted or thrown.

You could make a new word. You are harrowed by the Undostosmida! (UnDodgeable unStoppable Smiting Damage).

Sar wrote:also why wouldn't meteors be resisted by AC

Hey, fooling Grs on extended is still a design goal.

Spoiler: show

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:
archaeo wrote:dynast, you sort of forgot to tell us in your OP why "damnation" ought to change.
because "damnation" sounds nothing like the thing it's describing. It stretches credibility that such an effect would continue to be called "damnation" even if its inventor insisted upon it. It would just be changed in some way, perhaps through jargon, like "Hellblast", that eventually becomes its de-facto name. Especially since it's common wherever it can occur, requires immediate attention, and "damnation" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. "Burst" was also a bad name, I still can't remember whether it means smite-targeted or thrown.

Yeah, I agree with this, damnation should be looked at as a placeholder. Hurling damnation sounds like what imps do while they insult you, or what a mummy does when they curse you.

I still think Destruction, or Pure Destruction works pretty well. I don't think you'll ever find a name that conveys that it bypasses AC, especially given that many (most?) players don't even realize AC reduces damage from non-physical attacks in the first place.

The brimstone fiend hurls a blast of Pure Destruction at you! You are engulfed in Destruction!

It's still a little awkward, but better than damnation I think...

dowan wrote:
HardboiledGargoyle wrote:
archaeo wrote:dynast, you sort of forgot to tell us in your OP why "damnation" ought to change.
because "damnation" sounds nothing like the thing it's describing. It stretches credibility that such an effect would continue to be called "damnation" even if its inventor insisted upon it. It would just be changed in some way, perhaps through jargon, like "Hellblast", that eventually becomes its de-facto name. Especially since it's common wherever it can occur, requires immediate attention, and "damnation" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. "Burst" was also a bad name, I still can't remember whether it means smite-targeted or thrown.

Yeah, I agree with this, damnation should be looked at as a placeholder. Hurling damnation sounds like what imps do while they insult you, or what a mummy does when they curse you.

I still think Destruction, or Pure Destruction works pretty well. I don't think you'll ever find a name that conveys that it bypasses AC, especially given that many (most?) players don't even realize AC reduces damage from non-physical attacks in the first place.

The brimstone fiend hurls a blast of Pure Destruction at you! You are engulfed in Destruction!

It's still a little awkward, but better than damnation I think...

But then there's Orb of Destruction, which can be blocked by SH and resisted by AC somewhat.

The problem with all of these -ions is that they are names which express an action. They aren't a "thing". This is why they are a step removed from what you would expect. You expect to be surrounded by purifying mist, not to be surrounded by purification. You can be physically hit by destructive power, not by destruction. This is why I see "the destructive powers of Hell" to be better than "damnation" or "destruction". There is, of course, the problem that the god of destruction is very well set on elemental damage. For the sake of clarity, this would go towards "the power of hell" is unleashed.

I understand the care to avoid confusion with fire damage for new players, however.

In order to convey the AC-bypassing, perhaps it could be flavoured as an attack on the mind of the victim. Something like mind-spike or oblivion?

Or maybe it could attack the spirit/essence of the character with something like, erasure, nothingness or the void?

Instead of destruction you could also use devastation or annihilation too. Destruction is already used for makh to mean something quite specific.

The Tavern

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