Combine "Harm and "Inacc

[genericpseudonym]

Inaccuracy is the only remaining strictly-bad amulet (so it mostly exists as a scroll tax and a base item for the amulet of the air). Harm technically has an upside but its downside is dangerous enough that players almost never want to use it.
SOOOO, I suggest combining them. The Amulet of Recklessness would reduce accuracy with attacks and spells but in exchange would improve your damage with them. (Harm's +30% would be a bit too much here, maybe 10-15% instead?)
I'm not sure whether the damage bonus should affect spells without an accuracy component like freeze though.
Its anti-swapping mechanic could just be a longish delay while the damage bonus ramps up (with the accuracy penalty still at full strength).
Oh yeah, and it can keep inacc's chance to be cursed since the accuracy penalty can still cause trouble, especially for early characters.

[tabstorm]

Just remove harm. Please. It is bad.

[Magipi]

Just remove harm. Please. It is bad.

That is why it is in the game, it is like potion of degeneration.

[tabstorm]

No, I mean, not only is it bad, it is bad at being a bad item. Please remove it.

[Shard1697]

I basically just wear ID all amulets and take it for granted that at some point during my game I will get drained and temporarily be sorta less effective

[PleasingFungus]

harm is good

[Sar]

can somebody explain me the harm hate? I don't use it personally but it could probably be worth using at some damage to you/damage to mons percentages

plus, it's a newbie trap, everyone loves those

[Implojin]

harm is good

Look PF you're usually pretty on point but everyone should know that this is a foul untruth

I'm not going to support this assertion because this thread is in CYC and I assume tabstorm or minmay will bust out a diatribe on why they don't like it shortly

[Sandman25]

Harm is bad because it is good only in situations when there is only one monster who attacks player. Player does not need help in such situations. Player needs help when it is surrounded or when it is attacked by a pack of Yaktaurs etc.

[Sar]

Sounds like somebody is bad at luring and splitting packs :^)

[Shard1697]

it's not good to take more damage, it's not good to get drained(but rarely meaningful), and it's... really annoying to have 1 bad amulet with a semi-lasting downside when you remove it. like, I'm using my ID scrolls on my potions, I'm not going to also use them on every amulet I find for the 10% chance that it's harm... so I'll just get drained every game at a semi-random point I guess. at least faith is powerful so I can just leave it on, and eventually I can take it off and the downside just makes it a wash.

[Sandman25]

Sounds like somebody is bad at luring and splitting packs :^)

Why? Packs are bad with the amulet, most monsters are trivial 1 on 1 even without the amulet, singles which are dangerous and where the amulet would help should be avoided instead. I played Tr today and it missed quokka 7 times in a row on D1, just imagine what would happen if I had amulet of harm equipped

[Sandman25]

What is current mechanic for harm? 30% outgoing damage, 20% incoming damage? We can check how often characters with any amulet die while attacked by a single monster and how often by multiple monsters.
Assuming monsters are equal in damage to player, if two equal monsters deal +20% damage each, player gets 240% damage instead of 200% while dealing only 130% damage instead of 100%.
Also overkills happen when player attacks but never when player is attacked.
I mean player can deal more damage but still it can take the same number of attacks, amulet should save time to be useful. But when monsters attack, their increase in damage is always meaningful.

[Sprucery]

I don't mind the effect of harm (although I haven't used it ever), but I dislike the draining effect with unequip. It is just annoying. If the draining is supposed to prevent swapping, a better solution imo would be to make it autocursing.

[goodcoolguy]

Harm is never good. The worst thing about it is that even if you could switch it on and off all the time, it still wouldn't be good. It's just a purely obnoxious item.

[vergil]

Harm is a bad thing, learned that a hard way in Tomb. Getting tormented to half of hp just from 1 torment wearing rN++ is a bad stuff. I wish it gave immunity to torments. Would've made it such solid amulet option.

[Sandman25]

I don't mind the effect of harm (although I haven't used it ever), but I dislike the draining effect with unequip. It is just annoying. If the draining is supposed to prevent swapping, a better solution imo would be to make it autocursing.

That's not enough. You might easily use the amulet to cast fireball or whatever as caster and then spend a turn reading scroll of remove curse since you don't have anything better to do anyway. The scroll is not supposed to be a buff.

I believe devs might check if any attacks were done with the amulet and avoid draining if none. Then it would not be annoying to use-id while still preventing abuses.

[Sprucery]

That's not enough. You might easily use the amulet to cast fireball or whatever as caster and then spend a turn reading scroll of remove curse since you don't have anything better to do anyway. The scroll is not supposed to be a buff.

Well, the idea was that you could only do that as many times as you have scrolls of remove curse. They are a limited resource anyway.

[luckless]

Harm is fine. It's niche, but so are lots of amulets, and serves two worthwhile purposes:

(a) it's worth wearing if you have great defense but bad offense
(b) it can make for interesting randarts

I kinda wish harm just reduced your max HP instead of making you take more damage, but recognize balance issues with deep dwarves.

[Sandman25]

Well, the idea was that you could only do that as many times as you have scrolls of remove curse. They are a limited resource anyway.

They are not as rare as brilliance and I imagine dealing +30% damage to hydra and alike can be better than what brilliance can do.

[Sandman25]

Harm is fine. It's niche, but so are lots of amulets, and serves two worthwhile purposes:

(a) it's worth wearing if you have great defense but bad offense
(b) it can make for interesting randarts

I kinda wish harm just reduced your max HP instead of making you take more damage, but recognize balance issues with deep dwarves.

(a) means the player is quite bad with skilling IMHO
Also (c) speed up kiting, perfect amulet when you take no damage because you are not attacked (CeHu, you even have nice HP pool to help with situations when you are actually attacked).

[Arrhythmia]

Q for people who hate harm and are good players:

What level of damage in vs. damage out would make harm good*? Like, if you did an extra 100% damage but took an extra 5%, that'd be a really good item, IMO. Where do you guys draw the border line?


*Useful. Let's talk about whether or not the concept of harm is well designed some other day.

[Sandman25]

Like, if you did an extra 100% damage but took an extra 5%, that'd be a really good item, IMO.

I wouldn't use the amulet with many combos, crawl is "balanced" around being able to one-shot Fe and Sp. It is better to retreat and try again.

[goodcoolguy]

I would accept 10%/30% on some characters and 20%/50% on somewhat fewer.

I hear some players saying harm can be good sometimes. This thinking comes from an average damage centered perspective on crawl combat. The problem is this perspective is basically wrong. The quantitative aspect of crawl combat that's actually important is spikes, outlier rolls. Making those outliers 20% bigger is way more than 20% deadlier to the player. Meanwhile, if you're having problems putting out enough damage to kill things, you're just building your characters wrong.

[Shard1697]

I said it already but by issue with the amulet is less that it's not an amulet I use, and more the draining. Obviously I could use ID scrolls on amulets, but am I really gonna use ID on amulets when I have potions to ID? When it's only a 10% chance of being harm? It just feels like such a waste when 9/10 times it's something I'd be better off just putting on.

[Sandman25]

There is another solution to "ID amulet" problem - equipment has 10% chance to be destroyed when equipped without using scroll of ID first.

[Magipi]

There is another solution to "ID amulet" problem - equipment has 10% chance to be destroyed when equipped without using scroll of ID first.

In what sense is it a solution to anything? What is the "ID amulet problem"?

I am confused, but that is because some people think that harm is a useful item. I am waiting for the next topic: "Why potion of degeneration is good".

[Sandman25]

I was talking about previous post

Obviously I could use ID scrolls on amulets, but am I really gonna use ID on amulets when I have potions to ID? When it's only a 10% chance of being harm? It just feels like such a waste when 9/10 times it's something I'd be better off just putting on.

With my suggestion it might make sense to use scrolls of id on amulets.

[Lasty]

Right now the upside to "harm is similar to the upside of haste, but for damaging actions only. In some cases, it's better: damaging evo/invo do more damage per resource used as well as per time; clouds and other DOT effects do more damage per time elapsed. The downside is similar to frail 2. Is perma-haste-for-damage that stacks with everything, including haste, worth frail 2? IMO sometimes it is.

Subjectively, I've found it to be fairly effective for some of my characters. When I wear ID it I usually keep it on.

[Sandman25]

FR: Add "amulet used" to action table in morgue file, then we can analyze how often each amulet is used.

[luckless]

why not just lower the draining, say to 1 skill level?

that would probably be enough to discourage swapping, but wouldn't screw over starting characters who put on "harm by accident and then have to survive the next two levels with like no skills.

[Lasty]

IIRC it was 1 level-ish initially, but it got made more consistent with the *Drain negative artefact property for consistency. That said, I don't think it's a problem:

1) It creates a cost other than one ?rc to wear-IDing amulets, which opens up the possibility that you don't want to wear every amulet as soon as you find it and have 1 ?rc.
2) If you do wear-ID the amulet you aren't forced to take it off immediately. Think of distortion -- you could choose to unwield distortion every time you wield it by accident, and then some of your characters will die. Alternately, you can choose not to do that, and deal with the benefits and drawbacks of distortion until you decide you're ready to take it off.

[Sandman25]

2) If you do wear-ID the amulet you aren't forced to take it off immediately. Think of distortion -- you could choose to unwield distortion every time you wield it by accident, and then some of your characters will die. Alternately, you can choose not to do that, and deal with the benefits and drawbacks of distortion until you decide you're ready to take it off.

If character cannot afford being drained, it is very likely that it cannot afford getting 20% extra damage either.