New race: Down dwarf

[sanka]

New race: Down dwarf.

• Cannot use upstairs and upwards hatches.
• You are immune to shafts.
• You cannot teleport (but can blink).
• If you stand on a downwards stairs or a downwards hatch or branch entrance the first time, you get a special ability:
  
  1. - Costs nothing, takes 20 turns, damage interrupts it.
     
  2. - You teleport to the other side (down end) of the stair/hatch/entrance..
     
  3. - Once you see the position where you would land you lose the ability. So you can only use it once, and if the upstairs come into view you lose the ability to teleport there.
• The orb gives you mysterious magical powers, and turns you into an Up dwarf. You can use upstairs and hatches now, but cannot use downwards stairs or hatches.

Any other thing I missed?

EDIT: hatches corrected to shafts

[Sorcerous]

New race: Down dwarf.

• Cannot use upstairs and upwards hatches.
• You are immune to hatches.
• You cannot teleport (but can blink).
• If you stand on a downwards stairs or a downwards hatch or branch entrance the first time, you get a special ability:
  
  1. - Costs nothing, takes 20 turns, damage interrupts it.
     
  2. - You teleport to the other side (down end) of the stair/hatch/entrance..
     
  3. - Once you see the position where you would land you lose the ability. So you can only use it once, and if the upstairs come into view you lose the ability to teleport there.
• The orb gives you mysterious magical powers, and turns you into an Up dwarf. You can use upstairs and hatches now, but cannot use downwards stairs or hatches.

Any other thing I missed?

I do have questions about the concept:
1) How would these dwarves claim branch runes outside of the endgame? The three runes in L and the one in V:5 all require descent and ascent.
2) How would this affect disconected vaults with up/down stairs? *I know not every floor must be explored 100%. Just curious.
3)

Cannot use upstairs and upwards hatches.
You are immune to hatches.

What does this mean?

[runewalsh]

Obviously, he meant immunity to shaft traps.

[sanka]

1) How would these dwarves claim branch runes outside of the endgame? The three runes in L and the one in V:5 all require descent and ascent.

You can leave any level by using your special ability as long as you have seen a downward stair you have not explored yet somewhere.

[sanka]

I realized that the teleport to downstairs ability is still not a good solution in this form. You can trap yourself by not exploring a level fully, therefore not finding some downstairs, and then leaving the level.

So I propose a replacement: You do not get the ability by standing on a downwards stair. Instead, you get the ability to teleport to the other side for all downstairs/hatches/branch entries on a level once you leave the level. You can use downstairs and hatches and branch entrances normally.

[tealizard]

A reasonable way to avoid the downstairs -> trapped scenario would be an ability that allows you to "rotate" stairs by going up, so going up has the effect of replacing you on a different staircase on the same level.

There are other issues with eliminating stairs in dcss, which have been worked out reasonably well in hellcrawl. The first big one is identification -- now you need to check or carry every potentially useful item before leaving a level. This is not such a problem in hellcrawl because you know what everything is and if you have some experience with the game, you have no problem deciding what you need before leaving each level. You could fix this by giving "down dwarves" innate identification of weapons and armor (obv consumables are not part of this narrow issue). The next big one is shops. Hellcrawl deals with shops through a special bazaar portal that recurs throughout the game and spawns new shops with each visit while keeping the old ones. This works perfectly well for keeping the traditional shop functionality more or less intact. A cheap solution for the case of "down dwarves" would be remote access to shops, perhaps via upstairs, but then the question is why not let all species do this?

[sanka]

Thank you, very good suggestions!

I like your version of going upstairs teleports you to another downstairs. However, it does not solve the problem of branch entrances and locking yourself somehow in a situation where you cannot reach any level anymore.

Good point about identification, I will add innate identification of weapon/armour/jewellery (but not potions/scrolls).

About why not give it to every race: I think not only the shop ability would be better for other races as well, but the whole "cannot return to levels" conduct.

[delarado]

orb run?

[tealizard]

Orb run is addressed in the OP, though I would see no problem with ending the game when the player gets the orb. That would be an interesting species distinction.

With the "stairs rotation" ability, you would have to think about the new stair dancing possibilities, probably place some clever limitations to stop stair dancing and prevent getting stranded

[Magipi]

Am I the only one who doesn't understand the special ability?

[sanka]

I guess I worded it badly. The idea is that you can reach the other side of the stairs anytime later (but not as escaping from combat).

Since you cannot use upward stairs, you may end up in a dead end: branch end without entry to an other branch, or simply a disconnected part of a level without a downstairs. So I aimed for an ability that lets you visit levels roughly in any order that you can visit them now, just you cannot return to an already visited level.

I was not succeeded though. Not connected levels really complicate this.