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Darkness as a permabuff

PostPosted: Friday, 12th July 2019, 15:30
by damerell
Stoat Soup has permabuff spells. Should Darkness be one? Now, I know the vast majority of the people reading this don't play Stoat Soup, but I'd like your advice anyway (on the assumption that permabuffs in general are a good thing) - I have had Darkness castable about twice in my Crawl-playing career, so I don't really have a sense of how it works.

I can think of the following arguments:
* No, it would be much too powerful.
* But there's nothing stopping you casting it every time it expires in vanilla. That would consume most of your MP regeneration, but the Stoat Soup permabuff implementation means it will consume just as much of your MP regeneration.
* Then it will be much too fiddly. You'll keep wanting to turn it off to recover the MP supply, then turn it on again.
* Is that really more fiddly than repeated recasts if it's not a permabuff?

Any thoughts?

Re: Darkness as a permabuff

PostPosted: Friday, 12th July 2019, 16:15
by petercordia
It's more powerful when it's not a permabuff, because currently you can cast it to help you run away. You gain 2 squares in 1 turn.
Also, a character with darkness is likely to have enough stealth to be able to cast darkness after spotting an enemy. (Without being noticed himself)
The extra info you get from extra LOS is helpful imo.
The only situations where I'd want perma-darkness, are if I have Ash style monsters sense, or if I'm using darkness to help with glaciate. (Darkness + Glaciate rocks)
In other situations I'd turn off darkness after resting.

Re: Darkness as a permabuff

PostPosted: Friday, 12th July 2019, 20:24
by pedritolo
petercordia wrote:It's more powerful when it's not a permabuff, because currently you can cast it to help you run away. You gain 2 squares in 1 turn.


Being a permabuff also gives you the option of casting it to get away as long as you remember to just turn it off when you are not using it.
It's actually better, since it won't expire, so the monster won't become visible again after a few turns.

petercordia wrote:Also, a character with darkness is likely to have enough stealth to be able to cast darkness after spotting an enemy. (Without being noticed himself)


If you spot an enemy without being noticed and you are under the effect of darkness, it's true that you can't make it go away by casting the spell. On the other hand, you can just simply step back 1 square and achieve the same effect.


On the other hand, play styles that benefit from perma darkness would be boosted if this became a feature.

Re: Darkness as a permabuff

PostPosted: Saturday, 13th July 2019, 18:57
by tealizard
Permadarkness has one significant problem your efforts could address: There is potential value in toggling it. In general, you don't want there to be any advantage in toggling. There are other hellcrawl permacharms where you could make an argument re: toggling, but probably darkness is the biggest offender. The easiest and most general way to deal with this would be long delays for activation and deactivation, similar to changing armor.