The Tavern

Since all the cool kids are doing it...

Code:: Blade of the Acrobat (+8 triple sword, fullriposte, *Drain, +5 EV) The favored weapon of a legendary warrior-entertainer who fought foes man was not meant to fight while juggling objects man was not meant to juggle.

100% chance to riposte while taking acrobat-kosher actions. Riposting with this weapon does not break acrobat conduct.

Code:: Lajatang of Innovation (+7 lajatang of chaos, -CAST, device surge) Last artifact of a god of progress slain by Zin for unorthodoxy. Its wielders gain proficiency with magical devices at the cost of their own magical reserves.

Surge stacks with and is (far) stronger than MP-powered wands. Unwielding drains your MP. -CAST can be replaced with -WIZ if too severe. Rods out for Pakellas.

Code:: Lehudib's Crystal Arbalest (+8 arbalest of returning, crystallize, +3 Int) The final result of a collaboration between archwizards Lee and Lehudib. Foes killed by its impact are transfigured into durable but short-lived crystal statues.

Statues are analogous to Glaciate's ice and Recite's salt, and count as crystal for LRD purposes. Returning can be removed if the reference to the old unrand is not worth the confusion.

Code:: Tunic of Nessos (+5 leather armor, +Poison, *Poison) A tunic infused with the blood of a poisonous hydra, lost aeons ago by the centaur Nessos. So potent is the venom that it may seep to the wearer's body, spells and weapons alike.

All your melee, missile and spell attacks may apply poison in addition to their other effects. Has a chance to poison you on hit, like *Slow and *Corrode.

Oh fun! Inspired by some weapons I found in-game:

Code:: The demon blade of Louise {+7, elec, int+3, dex+3, fragile}

Code:: Beekiller {+10 Long sword, vamp, rPois}

And something I think might be cool:

Code:: Cloak of Wucad Mu {-3, Archmagi, Spirit Shield}

Code:: +3 Buckler "Maxwell's Battlesphere" {summon Battlesphere, -wiz, MP -9} Maxwell's automatic offense&defense system. The bead moves itself to prevent an attack. This shoots the beam in response to your magical beam. With minor defects, this works by consuming your soul.

Summon one semi-permanent Battlesphere. It is regenerated after several turns even if destroyed.

sdynet wrote:
Code:
+3 Buckler "Maxwell's Battlesphere" {summon Battlesphere, -wiz, MP -9} Maxwell's automatic offense&defense system. The bead moves itself to prevent an attack. This shoots the beam in response to your magical beam. With minor defects, this works by consuming your soul.

Summon one semi-permanent Battlesphere. It is regenerated after several turns even if destroyed.

I like the idea of another Maxwell item, and a shield would be nice. A bit confused by the flavor text, but that doesn't matter much.

The idea of a pretty big sacrifice for a permanent follower is interesting and could be implemented well, but I feel like this really would only affect spellcasters. -9 MP isn't much either. Am I misinterpreting what -wiz means? Whatever the case, it'd probably require a more universal penalty. Obviously, different builds will be affected differently anyway, but perhaps something more important to most characters would sere better.

Not like I'm much of one to judge.

-wiz means a spellcasting penalty, it's the opposite effect of a ring of wizardry. That, and the -9MP, are perfectly fine penalties to this since the battlesphere that you get is only useful to casters, so this wouldn't be anything but a plain +3 buckler to characters who don't cast spells.

You might be unfamiliar with battlesphere? I'm assuming the unrand summons the same thing as the spell, it is not a generic summoned ally, it only copies spells you cast.

tasonir wrote:-wiz means a spellcasting penalty, it's the opposite effect of a ring of wizardry. That, and the -9MP, are perfectly fine penalties to this since the battlesphere that you get is only useful to casters, so this wouldn't be anything but a plain +3 buckler to characters who don't cast spells.

You might be unfamiliar with battlesphere? I'm assuming the unrand summons the same thing as the spell, it is not a generic summoned ally, it only copies spells you cast.

Ah. My critiques seem to be completely invalid. It makes sense now.

Sorry, I'm new. Still a lot about this game I have to learn.

Code:: Iskenderun's Racket (staff of conjuration, MultiOrb) Used by Iskernderun theirself to play wizard-tennis.

Can be evoked to produce 1:D(evocations skill)/3 orbs of destruction. The orbs are randomly placed in LOS, and each orb targets the closest monster to it.

Code:: Helm of Anisotropy (+2 helmet, run NW)

Acts like boots of running, but only when moving northwest. Stacks with boots of running.

EDIT: and a few to bring out mechanics that I do not understand:

Code:: Shield of GDR (-15 shield, GDR)

No actual shielding but increases your GDR

Code:: Fancy scarf (scarf, fidget) A scarf with colorful tassles that you can fidget with

Can be evoked at no cost to do nothing... extremely quickly! This counts as a player action for batty monsters, and can be used to make your friendly harpies move around faster.

Code:: boots of bumbling escape {ponderous, +blink, +tele, -2EV}

I hope the -2EV would make this slightly less good than +2 boots of running.

tasonir wrote:-wiz means a spellcasting penalty, it's the opposite effect of a ring of wizardry. That, and the -9MP, are perfectly fine penalties to this since the battlesphere that you get is only useful to casters, so this wouldn't be anything but a plain +3 buckler to characters who don't cast spells.

I think these are pretty horrible penalties. I could nearly cast a normal battlesphere and then another one when it runs out for the 9 MP the buckler costs me, I could choose in each encounter to spend my 9 MP on something else if I didn't think 2 battlespheres would help, and I wouldn't have to deal with the -Wiz. In return for which what it offers me over a normal +3 buckler is... I save 5 spell slots?

The +3 trout mask {swim, dex +7}. This hat lets you swim quickly (like a merfolk) and changes your tile to the big fish tile.

Make bolts fired by Damnation only explode if they actually hit a monster. This way using it wouldn't involve so much targeting with '.' and changing the target from the default.

Get rid of Bloodbane or give it a real gimmick, there are several more flavourful *Rage unrandarts already.

Make +Rage/*Rage work like +Inv/+Fly: if you remove the weapon, the berserk ends. Prompt the player for this of course.

Make Sniper a regular triple crossbow; nevermiss isn't so great that it needs an attack delay penalty attached to it. If the resulting item is really too strong, it's better to lower the enchantment than screw with the base type.

Give Maxwell's Etheric Cage a much higher enchantment or a much much higher MP bonus or something, it's an awful newbie trap right now.

Remove "stat stick" bonuses from weapons (resistances etc.); they just cause more swapping. Keep that stuff on armour. Buff Elemental Staff's melee ability so that the item doesn't just become useless.

Make Firestarter provide immunity to inner flame explosions instead of just rF++.

Remove Undeadhunter. There's a reason disrupt was removed before y'all brought it back for this unrandart; it has the holy wrath problem times three.

Pick just one failure effect for Wucad Mu instead of having 3 of them. Consider giving it an intelligence-based enchantment again to make meleeing with it more worthwhile.

Use something other than tension for Singing Sword. Tension isn't appropriate for gameplay-affecting stuff. (An observation: if you get rid of the ability to turn your allies hostile, Singing Sword can simply use the number of monsters in LOS.)

Limit the +Fog on cloak of the Thief more. A hunger cost is not enough. Unrands are rare enough that it's not a problem for them to be ultra powerful, but it is a problem for them to promote tedious gameplay, which unlimited fog definitely does. A cooldown might be enough; alternatively, you could replace the cloak with an unrandart XP evoker that makes fog.

Give Ratskin Cloak a summon cap, or summon the rats when you take damage (Jiyva-style) instead of being evokable. Right now you can just kill everything with 10 hell rats all the time.

Make Dyrovepreva actually differ from a regular helmet of intelligence. Or just remove it and replace it with etheric cage in that one vault.

Remove or greatly buff Robe of Misfortune. Harm is much worse on armour than it is on an amulet as it takes 10 times as long to remove, and then it has the utterly crippling *Slow property attached on top of that, making it a remarkably terrible item.

Remove the NoPotionHeal from Robe of Vines. It would still be worse than archmagi and right now it's usually worse than nothing.

Make Amulet of Vitality less of a worse version of guardian spirit. Its existing bonuses could be increased, or it could get additional bonuses, or you could just remove amulets of guardian spirit.

Give ring of the Mage something unique; right now it might as well be a randart. Perhaps it could have MP cost reduction like Vehumet used to.

duvessa wrote:Make bolts fired by Damnation only explode if they actually hit a monster. This way using it wouldn't involve so much targeting with '.' and changing the target from the default.

Get rid of targeting with '.' for physical projectiles altogether. What are you doing, throwing javelins at the monsters' feet?

Limit the +Fog on cloak of the Thief more. A hunger cost is not enough. Unrands are rare enough that it's not a problem for them to be ultra powerful, but it is a problem for them to promote tedious gameplay, which unlimited fog definitely does. A cooldown might be enough; alternatively, you could replace the cloak with an unrandart XP evoker that makes fog.

It could surely remain a cloak but recharge like an XP evoker.

damerell wrote:It could surely remain a cloak but recharge like an XP evoker.

Then it would often be optimal to swap to a different cloak while it's inert, which would be bad.

Get rid of targeting with '.' for physical projectiles altogether. What are you doing, throwing javelins at the monsters' feet?

Projectiles fired or thrown in an arc will have a pretty similar effect to pressing "."

This gets increasingly silly from an IRL physics perspective as the monster approaches the player, but so does throwing the javelin at all.

~~~

I had a game a while back where the etheric cage was my only viable source of rElec (the alternative was a really bad unrand ring). That thing is not fun to wear. There are worse choices, but that doesn't mean it's good.

TheMeInTeam wrote:
Get rid of targeting with '.' for physical projectiles altogether. What are you doing, throwing javelins at the monsters' feet?
Projectiles fired or thrown in an arc will have a pretty similar effect to pressing "."

The mystery of Shoals aside, one would imagine the ceiling rather precludes plunging fire, leaving aside it being much less accurate than just throwing the javelin in a shallow arc.

damerell wrote:
TheMeInTeam wrote:
Get rid of targeting with '.' for physical projectiles altogether. What are you doing, throwing javelins at the monsters' feet?
Projectiles fired or thrown in an arc will have a pretty similar effect to pressing "."
The mystery of Shoals aside, one would imagine the ceiling rather precludes plunging fire, leaving aside it being much less accurate than just throwing the javelin in a shallow arc.

Even "better": '.' means throwing in a high arc, so the attack becomes smite-targeted.

damerell wrote:
TheMeInTeam wrote:
Get rid of targeting with '.' for physical projectiles altogether. What are you doing, throwing javelins at the monsters' feet?
Projectiles fired or thrown in an arc will have a pretty similar effect to pressing "."

The mystery of Shoals aside, one would imagine the ceiling rather precludes plunging fire, leaving aside it being much less accurate than just throwing the javelin in a shallow arc.

We don't know how high the ceiling is. We can't even make decent estimates since character moving with nothing in view vs running from an ogre is the same speed, so comparing horizontal to vertical move times is questionable. It isn't just shoals that is a mystery! Lair seems to have all kinds of plant life (sunlight? magic?), the dungeon is generally visible, and there are extremely large wide open spaces in depths. Maybe the ceiling in crawl is always at least 20m high or something. No wonder the monsters don't want to follow you upstairs!

That said, even if you are extremely strong there is an upper limit to how far you can throw a javelin in a straight line compared to how far it can be thrown with an arc, and supposedly we're training skill at it so arc'd shots are nothing out there compared to other crawl feats. Max distance is thrown ~45 degree angle (though this might be impractical for some species). Note that this also does weird interactions with the penetration mechanic.

Different types of floor would make what happens when it hits the ground vary a lot too. Dirt would likely let javelin penetrate into the ground w/o too steep an angle. Stone would carry it further or break it.

But if we're going to talk realism, any object that hits the monster would in principle be stuck in the monster, not bouncing back or going through several others like it's some kind of armor piercing non-explosive tank round.

I'm happy to cut realism in favor of avoiding tedious gameplay, like constantly repositioning to avoid throwing javelins into the water.

TheMeInTeam wrote:I'm happy to cut realism in favor of avoiding tedious gameplay, like constantly repositioning to avoid throwing javelins into the water.

I think from my POV doing "f." is more tedious than repositioning. Repositioning might present some sort of actual tactical challenge - perhaps there are other reasons it would be unwise to reposition or to spend the turns on doing so. If so, is this enemy worth potentially mulching a javelin on?

so make ammo always mulch and increase ammo stack sizes to compensate. this has nothing to do with unrands and isn't why using '.' is optimal with damnation.

duvessa wrote:so make ammo always mulch and increase ammo stack sizes to compensate.

Thus removing any possibility of having to think whether it's worth repositioning?

this has nothing to do with unrands and isn't why using '.' is optimal with damnation.

It would solve the problem that using '.' is optimal with Damnation.

damerell wrote:
duvessa wrote:so make ammo always mulch and increase ammo stack sizes to compensate.

Thus removing any possibility of having to think whether it's worth repositioning?
this has nothing to do with unrands and isn't why using '.' is optimal with damnation.

It would solve the problem that using '.' is optimal with Damnation.

Using . with damnation is optimal because you can control exactly what squares it hits. Damnation is pretty much unresistable fireball but with lower skill requirements and it never fails, firing damnation with ff means you might miss your target and hit weird squares, firing it with . means you'll always hit what your aiming for, because explosions can't miss, and damnation always explodes at it's terminus, even if it didn't hit something (You can target empty squares when it's optimal to do so with '.' too)

Siegurt wrote:
damerell wrote:
duvessa wrote:so make ammo always mulch and increase ammo stack sizes to compensate.

Thus removing any possibility of having to think whether it's worth repositioning?
this has nothing to do with unrands and isn't why using '.' is optimal with damnation.

It would solve the problem that using '.' is optimal with Damnation.

Using . with damnation is optimal

I understand why it is presently optimal (and tiresome). My proposal eliminates this characteristic of Damnation.

damerell wrote:I understand why it is presently optimal (and tiresome). My proposal eliminates this characteristic of Damnation.

Well, to be fair it eliminates the *possibility* of firing projectiles in a controlled way, while it does eliminate the possibile tedium involved in using damnation (Which is an edge case in the greater field of projectile usage) it also eliminates the control excersized when you want to say, kill one thing that has something you *don't* want your projectile to possibly hit behind it (friendly monster, useful LOS blocker, deep water etc.)

Since those other uses of . as targeting are important, but not useful "each and every time you want to used a ranged attack" they bring more to the table than they bring extra work. You propose eliminating that altogether, effectively throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Duvessa's has a much more limited effect and addresses the one errant case, instead of throwing out a mechanism which is actually beneficial for the game in the name of reducing tedium for one specific (rare) case.

Siegurt wrote:
damerell wrote:I understand why it is presently optimal (and tiresome). My proposal eliminates this characteristic of Damnation.

Well, to be fair it eliminates the *possibility* of firing projectiles in a controlled way, while it does eliminate the possibile tedium involved in using damnation (Which is an edge case in the greater field of projectile usage) it also eliminates the control excersized when you want to say, kill one thing that has something you *don't* want your projectile to possibly hit behind it (friendly monster, useful LOS blocker, deep water etc.)

Indeed. I think that having that control of physical projectiles is inappropriate. It doesn't make a lot of sense from a Watsonian POV, and from a Doylist POV ranged attacks are already very good and it would not ruin them if using them with something you didn't want to hurt downrange was difficult. It would also eliminate a lot of boring-but-optimal fiddling with the targetting interface, including the specific example of using Damnation, and I think it would also lead to more interesting questions around positioning and terrain. In your terms, I don't like the baby and want to throw _that_ out. Getting rid of the bathwater is just an added bonus.

damerell wrote:it would not ruin them if using them with something you didn't want to hurt downrange was difficult.

I disagree.

sdynet wrote:
Code:
+3 Buckler "Maxwell's Battlesphere" {summon Battlesphere, -wiz, MP -9} Maxwell's automatic offense&defense system. The bead moves itself to prevent an attack. This shoots the beam in response to your magical beam. With minor defects, this works by consuming your soul.

Summon one semi-permanent Battlesphere. It is regenerated after several turns even if destroyed.

argonaut put it on a staff instead

"." aiming can me macro'd if you just want to shoot the nearest target with something like damnation centered on it. I argue this is strictly less tedious than repositioning because you have fewer inputs. Though if the enemy's in water with non-water behind (reasonably common in swamp or shoals) you're going to either reposition or fire with ff anyway.

If you want to aim more precisely, "f." is not particularly more tedious than most AoE spells, or using ff aiming to maximize the number of enemies hit by the penetration brand.

Code:: +5 Boots "Fireball" {+Fire step, rF+}

Blink to space within adjacent to a target creature and creates a damaging 3x3 fire explosion(Accompanied by Sticky Fame) wherever you land. Cost: 5 MP, exhaustion.

Code:: +9 Triple sword "Space cuter" {Singularity, Shroud of Golubria} This weapon cuts space and creates a singularity. At the same time, this force will bend the trajectory of the enemy's attack.

The wielder gains a Singularity and Shroud of Golubria for a short period after hitting with the weapon.

Code:: +10 Quarterstaff "Edification" {Electrocution, Enslavement} A stick that has edification many criminals.

Rename the Trident of the Octopus King to the Octodent of the Octopus King, make it two-handed, and increase its base damage and delay to 24 and 18 respectively.

duvessa wrote:Rename the Trident of the Octopus King to the Octodent of the Octopus King, make it two-handed, and increase its base damage and delay to 24 and 18 respectively.

Is this some kind of pun? It sounds like a significant buff (comparing with the other 2-handed polearms)

The Tavern

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