Arbolian (Race Concept)

[bcadren]

We were talking about the tactical idea of a super slow race that can't move while enemies are in LoS (same as Wandering Mushrooms) in the IRC channel...so I made a rough draft.

Arbolians

[amaril]

Precise casting is dumb. Not only do i not understand how it works based on your blurb, but it seems like it would be a drawback a lot of the time and would encourage weird optimal skilling.

What do you do when an orb spider comes into view?

[tasonir]

I understand if you like pretty word documents for your own purposes, but you're posting a link to text on a forum which usually has people post text to it

Arbolians

Short Description:
A race of gigantic trees, which move very slowly. Extremely hardy, but unable to move while enemies are in sight.

Weirdness/Mutations:
Plant Holiness - You are a plant and are therefore immune draining and torment and do not have to breath.
Barkskin - 3 AC at start, with an additional AC every 3 levels.
Fire Vulnerability - “Made of Wood”. (rF-)
Super Slow - You cannot move while any awake enemies are your LoS (Paralyzed, Sleeping and Petrified enemies don’t count) though you can melee, Blink, etc.
Huge Size - Can use Giant Clubs and Giant Spiked Clubs, some 2H weapons are 1H, armour slots restricted, can walk through deep water.
Armour restricted to robes/dragon armour, hats and cloaks.
Dire flails, Battleaxes and Great Swords may be used 1H.
Precise Casting - +Wiz, spells take longer to cast to decrease fail rates.
Not spelling out exactly how this works, but essentially the more Wiz a spell needs to be safe to cast, the longer it takes to cast, up to 3.0 Aut instead of 1.0; spells that are already safe to cast (below yellow miscast AND 30% fail) are unaffected.

Stats:
STR - 14
INT - 12
DEX - 2

Gains 1 STR or INT every 3 levels.

Aptitudes:
Ar: Fighting: 3!, Short: -2, Long: -1, Axes: -2, Maces: -1, Polearms: -1, Staves: -1, Slings: -1, Bows: -2, Xbows: -2, Throw: -1, Armour: -3*, Dodge: -3*, Stealth: 5!, Shields: 2, UC: 0, Splcast: 2, Conj: 1, Hexes: 1, Charms: 1, Summ: 1, Nec: 0, Tloc: 0, Tmut: 0, Fire: -1, Ice: 0, Air: 0, Earth: 1, Poison: 0, Inv: 2, Evo: 1, Exp: -2*, HP: 5!, MP: 2!

I think it's worth emphasizing that this race has +50% hp. And +3 fighting. You might want to take that fighting aptitude down a notch or three.

What you intend with precise casting is clear to me, but is going to need a lot of testing/tweaking and may ultimately be a bad design. How much "bad casting" can be overcome by casting slowly? Let's say you have a grey miscast and 25% fail spell - it casts in 10 auts as normal. Then you have a yellow one with 35% fail, so it takes 15 or 20 or whatever auts...How far up does this go? Can I cast a dark red spell at 95% fail if I wait 5 turns? What's to prevent me from expecting to cast a spell in 1-2 turns and then suddenly dying because I inadvertently gave every monster in LOS 5 turns to kill me for free?

In short it's a rather complex mechanic which doesn't have fully clear results beforehand - the player isn't going to know the exact casting time unless they know the formula/breakpoints ahead of time, aka spoilery. And honestly between the huge hp, no walking in combat, plant holiness, barkskin, etc...This race has enough already going on that they don't really need precise casting.

Edit: the above is my criticism of the race: overall impression is that I like it though. I doubt the final form (if this had any chance of getting in, which I assume it won't) would probably be significantly different. I assume that rF- might not last, and the 50% hp apitude and very strong spellcasting and mana aptitudes would also need to go. This race would be absolutely ridiculous with statue form (You could easily break 500 hp and you're immune to torment, ha!), and having any sort of full LOS attack (bows, crossbows, magic, etc) or even just lesser beckoning will get around most of the no-movement issues. I don't think it'll likely make it to trunk, but it's an interesting concept.

[Implojin]

The iteration currently linked in the doc reads as "Equip a launcher as soon as possible and don't ever stop using it. Use summons or other allies. If the species is redesigned to be unable to use launchers, use any of the game's several other forms of direct ranged damage. Don't use autoexplore (because it will leave you in terrible locations from which to begin fights), and try to hug walls."

Playing this race doesn't sound fun.

Poor players will tank a bunch of hits. Better players will use ranged damage, allies, and some stealth to tank fewer hits. Players of all stripes will be encouraged to not use autoexplore, without which DCSS floors are too large by something like 3x. Players will be encouraged to use allies and ranged attacks to play this race -- combat options which result in the least interesting combat in DCSS. From a further metadevelopment perspective, adding a race that is encouraged to use summons to survive would give weight to arguments against removing summoning, which is probably bad for the game.

I can understand the design interest here, but I don't think that the concept as currently written would be a good addition to DCSS.

[le_nerd]

>Dire flails, Battleaxes and Great Swords may be used 1H.

Historically, crawl has moved AWAY from using weird arbitrary species/weapon dependent hard-to-intuit rules. See: removal of 1.5 handed weapons, recently allowing evening stars/double swords to be used 1-handed by spriggans etc.

If you want to have a giant huge race, give it some consistent and easy to discern system for wielding big weapons. Whats wrong with Formicid/(Ogre/Troll)-wielding systems?

Your current design has too much going on as-is.

[mattlistener]

The "don't use autoexplore" criticism could be addressed by giving this race its own autoexplore behavior. Autoexplore already gives different behavior with changes in LOS so this doesn't seem much of a stretch.

eg something like "hug walls as long as possible, then add N to min wall distance while exploring, repeat" -- where N defaults to 2 and is a configurable option.