The Tavern

(Mod edit: split from GDD)

I wrote this right after a particularly stupid death. Literally if berserk had paralyzed me for 1-3 turns instead of 4 I'd have been fine. Character even had controlled blink and it was just a random "DAMN THE RNG" thing. But, regardless, I've never liked it as a design element, mostly because it makes it so you're MR is too low? ...you die, period. (in like Orc) also since paralysis nulls your EV, it means AC characters are relatively "Safe" from it, but still not "Safe, safe". IDK I prefer banishment, hex that seems like an instant kill in many cases and is very difficult to get to "safe" (0%) levels on many characters (I mean I have had the (6% to paralyze, paralyzed, dead in orc happen before)).

bcadren wrote:There is nothing fun or interesting about dying because something (...) pretty much (...) killed you.

I agree, please remove dying.

You have controlled blink, how can you die? You probably shouldn't have berserked in the first place. "Remove X because I died to it as a consequence of bad play" isn't a good justification for removal in general.

tabstorm wrote:You have controlled blink, how can you die? You probably shouldn't have berserked in the first place. "Remove X because I died to it as a consequence of bad play" isn't a good justification for removal in general.

You know, since I would have survived being paralyzed for one turn, two turns or three turns. Odds of paralysis for 4 turns was 2.5% I entered the fight at full health, I berserked because I couldn't hurt Draconian knights without it or long term kiting with LCS. I'd been doing the same tactic for the previous 4 floors of zot and died because it proced paralysis AND there was too much stuff at once. Uhh...this is kinda like dying because you miscast the same spell three times in a row with 5% or less miscast and calling it bad play is not reasonable.

2.5% chance is non-trivial. (it's also much greater than the 0.0125% chance of miscasting a 5% miscast spell 3 times in a row (2 times is 0.25%, which is still much smaller)). If you play chicken long enough with the rng it'll get you eventually. It's especially noticeable with "high" probability events in the 1-5% range.

So you have a weak character in melee with a lot of enemies onscreen, some of which you can't kill un-berserked, you don't have Trog, and you think "The best thing to do right now is berserk." even though you have LCS AND Cblink. I can't find the morgue so this must be an offline chracter.

That's just straight up bad play.

edit: Ok, I found the morgue now. Let's review what went wrong here.

Before we even get to tactical errors:
-"Brilliance" is not actually a good weapon. Reskilling to maces and flails for it was a mistake. it's a +1 holy (bad) eveningstar of protection (bad).
-Training Earth/Conj just for LCS was a mistake. You only had like 12 dodging and armor, with more investment you could've easily had 25 in both.
-You didn't carry any digging/disintegration to make a tunnel for this type of scenario
-You put all that experience into summoning just to learn abjuration, and didn't invest a bit more for shadow creatures, which would have helped a lot. I can only assume you didn't find the spell.

-10 might potions unquaffed in your inventory and 4 unquaffed agility. Why didn't you use them instead of berserking? You are on zot 5
-You made an error in dumping XP into earth and conj for one of the most medicore highlevel spells, and then doubled down by refusing to cast it because you're lazy. If you want to be lazy, don't put XP into conjurations.
-You could at least look for a corridor to fight in.
-Choosing to berserk was a mistake since you weren't using Trog, especially with weak melee and many enemies onscreen.

In summary, bad strategic decisions and laziness led to a tactical mistake actually killing you. Post-berserk para is unlikely to kill you, but when you dare the RNG to kill you with bad strategic and tactical choices, sometimes it will actually happen.

tabstorm wrote:So you have a weak character in melee with a lot of enemies onscreen, some of which you can't kill un-berserked, you don't have Trog, and you think "The best thing to do right now is berserk." even though you have LCS AND Cblink. I can't find the morgue so this must be an offline chracter.

That's just straight up bad play.

edit: Ok, I found the morgue now. Let's review what went wrong here.

Before we even get to tactical errors:
-"Brilliance" is not actually a good weapon. Reskilling to maces and flails for it was a mistake. it's a +1 holy (bad) eveningstar of protection (bad).
-Training Earth/Conj just for LCS was a mistake. You only had like 12 dodging and armor, with more investment you could've easily had 25 in both.
-You didn't carry any digging/disintegration to make a tunnel for this type of scenario
-You put all that experience into summoning just to learn abjuration, and didn't invest a bit more for shadow creatures, which would have helped a lot. I can only assume you didn't find the spell.

-10 might potions unquaffed in your inventory and 4 unquaffed agility. Why didn't you use them instead of berserking? You are on zot 5
-You made an error in dumping XP into earth and conj for one of the most medicore highlevel spells, and then doubled down by refusing to cast it because you're lazy. If you want to be lazy, don't put XP into conjurations.
-You could at least look for a corridor to fight in.
-Choosing to berserk was a mistake since you weren't using Trog, especially with weak melee and many enemies onscreen.

In summary, bad strategic decisions and laziness led to a tactical mistake actually killing you. Post-berserk para is unlikely to kill you, but when you dare the RNG to kill you with bad strategic and tactical choices, sometimes it will actually happen.

I should have done Zot before reskilling for extended (so I could use a pained weapon on the remaining living things)...sure...rest no. Just no. I didn't train Conj for LCS, I trained it for Freezing Cloud I just didn't see the need to reskill since I could already use LCS and P.Arrow with the amount of Conj I had. (Trained earth for LRD to get into Tomb and had CLEARED TOMB with the mace you are calling bad). I have more deaths in Zot than anywhere else in extended and this is the most BS feeling one ever...or no, second most BS one, the most BS one was the guy that was annihilated during orbrun by a really horrible rand PanLord (it hasted itself, Tormented once in one turn then cast Glaciate). [That latter case is about why I never do pure meleeists it was a MiMo, pure fighter type and it couldn't do anything in that small amount of turns, even if first action was to read tele (though I wouldn't have known that PanLord was that bad on the first turn) orb run delay would have delayed it too much. IIRC what I did do was read all my Holy Word, but this was back in the period when the scroll didn't really do much.]

So your paralysis was from voluntary berserking? And you're complaining? I agree with Tabstorm.

If Brilliance is good in Tomb it does not mean it is good in Zot (except as a switch for holy-vulnerable enemies)...

Sprucery wrote:So your paralysis was from voluntary berserking? And you're complaining? I agree with Tabstorm.

If Brilliance is good in Tomb it does not mean it is good in Zot (except as a switch for holy-vulnerable enemies)...

It worked well enough on the rest of the floors and the thing I was using BEFORE tomb was a Demon Blade (Protection) [with E Wounds] switched for the eveningstar, and could have kept a DWhip (Venom) to use with E Wounds, but didn't because it wasn't being hard anyways...then suddenly it was. (too much at once). Though I had used Berserk for most of tomb, and the rest of Zot...had a really bad roll there.

Other players are telling you that you could have avoided this death. And they're telling you how. You can either choose to learn how to avoid the death in the future or continue to make the same mistakes (no comment on what they are) again later. But complaining that the death is unfair won't help you get better at the game, especially since this isn't one of those literally unavoidable deaths.

Edit: grammar/spelling

tabstorm: Very impressive analysis, that's absolutely thank-worthy.

I am actually happy with thankless tavern, but posting like yours would make me reconsider. Keep it up!

bcadren: It's important to listen and to learn. tabstorm's point about Might & Agility over berserk is very important, and also about tunnels, digging/disintegration. Don't only come here to vent frustration, be happy that people spend their time to talk to you!

Alright calmly. Switching to the eveningstar wasn't a quick decision, it was mostly for extended, Holy Wrath instead of Pain etc. After the switch I could have kept a Demon Whip and still used pain for a bit, but Eveningstar > Demon Blade in extended (though a Eudemon blade from Holy Pan could be better couldn't assume I'd get it early in) and as a small race I couldn't use anything much heavier than an Eveningstar. I shouldn't have reskilled for extended then immediately done Zot anyways. Should have gone into pan with what I had, etc.

There are lots of pieces of advice in Tabstorm's post you should follow but I feel like you're ignoring the big one, which is that berserking is what killed you and it could have done so even with fewer turns of paralysis

You even know the berserk was the final nail in your coffin

edit: it's literally the first famous last message

I do agree that paralysis after berserk shouldn't be a thing. I think slow+exhaustion are sufficient penalties to berserk without adding random paralysis. I can't answer the question: "why have a chance of paralysis after zerk, with special casing for Trog and mutations and *rage", with anything but "why not?"

xentronium wrote:I do agree that paralysis after berserk shouldn't be a thing. I think slow+exhaustion are sufficient penalties to berserk without adding random paralysis. I can't answer the question: "why have a chance of paralysis after zerk, with special casing for Trog and mutations and *rage", with anything but "why not?"

Yes please.

If you die past stupid early game, you are completely wrong.

radinms wrote:If you die past stupid early game, you are completely wrong.

Disagree...sometimes something completely unfair happens. Formacid meets berserking Minotaur (Labyrinth). You go to another region of pan and land on hellion island or in melee range of Lom Lobon, surrounded by other demons. Do down the stairs into melee range with a unique, or something OOD for your level (Tmon, Hill Giant)..just shit like that.

Yes, DCSS is a very unfair game, in early game, you are stupidly weak so many times die, in mid and late game, you are stupidly strong so no-brainer.

tabstorm wrote: If you want to be lazy, don't put XP into conjurations.

I wish I could thank your post just for this.

I do wish that paralysis from hexes was reworked, it is not fun to die to a paralysis hex on a character that simply couldn't find MR.

I wish paralysis hexing worked off of more than LOS but had a higher proc chance. LOS can be hard to manage sometimes, but if paralysis targeting was more easily managed by the player but with higher penalties for failure, people would feel more like it's their fault and less being gypped by the rng.

For example, maybe something like radius 3 smiting with a proc chance of 10% with MR++++, and a guarantee the monster won't use the spell the first turn it enters LOS. I'm sure there are better implementations, but that's the general idea.

It is an important characteristic of paralysis-users that almost none of them are actually going to kill you in one paralysis if they paralyse you from the edge of los. This is part of why Grinder is a badly-designed enemy (blink + paralysis is a thing that should not be allowed on the same monster). There is more than just "don't get paralysed" as counterplay to paralysis.

I agree with what crate said. I very rarely die to paralysis, even though I often do Vaults with only MR+, and that's because if there's a paralyzing enemy around, I try to avoid putting myself into a situation where paralysis will kill me.

Out of my 605 online games, I've been killed while paralyzed 11 times in total: by Grinder three times, by Xom twice, by chaos twice (an apocalypse crab and Crazy Yuif), by paralyze-casting enemies twice (an ancient lich and a vampire knight), by a hornet once, and by berserk exhaustion once. In the latter two situations, I would have been killed even without paralysis in the picture.

bcadren wrote:Formacid meets berserking Minotaur (Labyrinth).

Dude, if you take a Fo into a lab there are like a hundred ways the minotaur could paste you. I'm not saying there aren't unavoidable deaths in Crawl (and some of them feel unfair!) but "I went into an optional portal where my one method of escape doesn't work and where the one monster I know I'm going to meet can spawn with any loot in the game"... it's pretty avoidable actually.

bcadren wrote:I have more deaths in Zot than anywhere else in extended

That's really surprising. When you are strong enough to get 15 runes Zot:5 shouldn't be that hard. Imo you can only fail if you are not careful enough or are very unlucky on the orbrun. I agree that berserking on Zot:5 is usually a bad idea.

xentronium wrote:I think slow+exhaustion are sufficient penalties to berserk without adding random paralysis.

Those are demonstrably not sufficient penalties.

Berserk provides a tremendous increase in damage output, and slow is not a particularly problematic debuff. Berserk is equivalent to might + haste. The reduced damage output by the post-berserk slowing (in the event you even have survivors to worry about) is offset by the haste, meaning the might bonus becomes free (technically, it's a free (might * 1.5) since the haste multiplies the effect of the might by giving you more swings, and the might isn't similarly offset by a post-berserk dam reduction -- only the reduction in dam output implied by slowing).

It would become trivial to hammer berserk on every fight, and in the (extremely unlikely) case that post-berserk slowing introduced a serious threat, pop off a random teleport. If you aren't willing to commit to Troglodyte status, you absolutely need a chance of losing a few turns after your berserk to stop you immediately teleporting, blinking, etc. Berserk is already extremely powerful even with existing penalties.

Doesn't Trog pretty much makes the paralysis chance non-existent?

He makes it completely non-existent.

Sar wrote:Doesn't Trog pretty much makes the paralysis chance non-existent?

It varies with piety:

Code:: // Note the beauty of Trog! They get an extra save that's at // the very least 20% and goes up to 100%. if (have_passive(passive_t::extend_berserk) && x_chance_in_y(you.piety, piety_breakpoint(5))) { mpr("Trog's vigour flows through your veins."); }

JFunk wrote:
xentronium wrote:I think slow+exhaustion are sufficient penalties to berserk without adding random paralysis.

Those are demonstrably not sufficient penalties.

Berserk provides a tremendous increase in damage output, and slow is not a particularly problematic debuff. Berserk is equivalent to might + haste. The reduced damage output by the post-berserk slowing (in the event you even have survivors to worry about) is offset by the haste, meaning the might bonus becomes free (technically, it's a free (might * 1.5) since the haste multiplies the effect of the might by giving you more swings, and the might isn't similarly offset by a post-berserk dam reduction -- only the reduction in dam output implied by slowing).

It would become trivial to hammer berserk on every fight, and in the (extremely unlikely) case that post-berserk slowing introduced a serious threat, pop off a random teleport. If you aren't willing to commit to Troglodyte status, you absolutely need a chance of losing a few turns after your berserk to stop you immediately teleporting, blinking, etc. Berserk is already extremely powerful even with existing penalties.

This post is incorrect in almost every way possible.
Slow is very much an extremely problematic debuff. It's not just about the reduced damage output, it's the fact that you can't really escape. It's not about the pack you berserked on, it's about the pack that heard the noise and came over to investigate. If you needed to berserk to kill the first gnoll pack, how are you going to kill the second gnoll pack while slowed?

Secondly, as has already been pointed out, trog berserkers are in no way balanced by a chance of losing a few turns after berserk, because Trog prevents that. Yet it's commonly advised to trog followers NOT to berserk on every fight, because of the post berserk slow.

A tiny chance of a tiny chance of killing you is a bad way to balance a powerful ability anyway. If berserk is too powerful, killing 0.1% of the people who use it isn't an effective way to balance it. If the most sensible advice for an ability is "Never use it because there's a tiny tiny chance it will kill you" the ability probably should be rethought.

So, I'm in agreement with bcardren, the paralysis chance after berserk should just be removed. Slow does a fine job creating a potentially fatal drawback to a powerful ability, without the tiny chance for an RNG screw. Plus, there's an element of spoileryness, because I suspect most people don't even know berserk can paralyze you.

dowan wrote:
JFunk wrote:
xentronium wrote:I think slow+exhaustion are sufficient penalties to berserk without adding random paralysis.

Those are demonstrably not sufficient penalties.

Berserk provides a tremendous increase in damage output, and slow is not a particularly problematic debuff. Berserk is equivalent to might + haste. The reduced damage output by the post-berserk slowing (in the event you even have survivors to worry about) is offset by the haste, meaning the might bonus becomes free (technically, it's a free (might * 1.5) since the haste multiplies the effect of the might by giving you more swings, and the might isn't similarly offset by a post-berserk dam reduction -- only the reduction in dam output implied by slowing).

It would become trivial to hammer berserk on every fight, and in the (extremely unlikely) case that post-berserk slowing introduced a serious threat, pop off a random teleport. If you aren't willing to commit to Troglodyte status, you absolutely need a chance of losing a few turns after your berserk to stop you immediately teleporting, blinking, etc. Berserk is already extremely powerful even with existing penalties.

This post is incorrect in almost every way possible.
Slow is very much an extremely problematic debuff. It's not just about the reduced damage output, it's the fact that you can't really escape. It's not about the pack you berserked on, it's about the pack that heard the noise and came over to investigate. If you needed to berserk to kill the first gnoll pack, how are you going to kill the second gnoll pack while slowed?

Secondly, as has already been pointed out, trog berserkers are in no way balanced by a chance of losing a few turns after berserk, because Trog prevents that. Yet it's commonly advised to trog followers NOT to berserk on every fight, because of the post berserk slow.

A tiny chance of a tiny chance of killing you is a bad way to balance a powerful ability anyway. If berserk is too powerful, killing 0.1% of the people who use it isn't an effective way to balance it. If the most sensible advice for an ability is "Never use it because there's a tiny tiny chance it will kill you" the ability probably should be rethought.

So, I'm in agreement with bcardren, the paralysis chance after berserk should just be removed. Slow does a fine job creating a potentially fatal drawback to a powerful ability, without the tiny chance for an RNG screw. Plus, there's an element of spoileryness, because I suspect most people don't even know berserk can paralyze you.

Yep. I was surprised by the paralysis, because I haven't really berserked much on a non-Trog character. And this paralysis might even discourage berserking when you're not a follower of Trog.

One could argue that Slow isn't sufficient because it can be countered by Haste, but I think berserking and having non-consumable (spell) Haste is rather uncommon.

Berserk ability description wrote:Sends the user into a berserk rage. Going berserk temporarily increases health, speed, and damage dealt in melee. It will time out quickly outside of combat, but may be extended by multiple kills. While berserk, almost all actions other than movement and melee combat are prevented. Such a rage is followed by deep exhaustion, during which the user is slowed and cannot berserk again, and occasionally may even pass out.

It is noted in the game, for what that's worth. It's possible Trog's "Powers" tab should describe the fact that he protects followers from this paralysis, and perhaps "pass out" should be changed to "become paralyzed with fatigue."

Or alternately it actually become sleep, which is pretty much paralysis, but you wake up when you are hit once.

Sleep would be better, and fits the description of passing out from exhaustion, but even still, it just seems silly to have a very small chance of this effect in the first place. With the possibility of this effect, should anyone ever use berserk outside of an emergency situation where for some reason they can't run or teleport away? It's certainly nice for killing a tough early player ghost or unique, but it is ever the right decision to make, instead of just avoiding those enemies?

This thread seems to agree that berserking in zot should never be done, due to a 2.5% chance of a 4 turn paralyze (Is it really that high?) What about depths? That's still a very bad place to get paralyzed for 4 turns. Vaults? Lair branches? D1?

i thought the general advice to berserk was "use it when you know it will end the fight" regardless of depth?

But how do you know another enemy isn't about to come around the corner, and murder you while you're passed out for 4 turns? How do you know you're not going to miss 20 times in a row, and have berserk run out with blork the orc in your face?

you don't, you plan your escape or whatever contingency you have for the occasion before berserk runs out if it's becoming apparent that the fight is not going to end favorably before you are out of steam. if the fight *is* over and your berserk is running out you move away from where monsters are more likely to come afterwards. i mean, you *are* hasted after all.

and "but you might miss X times in a row" could be said about anything in the game so i don't think it holds much water.

if you go berserk in a situation where you don't have a viable way out if things are going poorly it's entirely up to you going berserk when it wasn't safe...

I agree that, in general, paralysis (and to a lesser degree hexing in general) can lead to some unfun, mostly-unavoidable dumb deaths. It's my opinion that confuse, for instance, should have the same sort of one-turn-repeated-attempt immunity that paralysis has (so you can't get permaconfused to death by Mennas or golden eyes as you fruitlessly quaff curing and proceed to die without a chance to take any actions.)

Paralysis in general feels like an unfun mechanic (and by unfun, I don't mean "it kills me", I mean it's non-interactive). Non-interactive mechanics are boring at best and funkilling at worst. A good example of a well-designed, interactive, and still quite deadly effect is petrification. You get a turn to do something about it - meaning you can't just get instantly hosed by it. If you die because you got petrified, there's really no arguing that it wasn't your fault. Paralysis isn't like that; sure, you can argue "just don't go into places with paralysis if you don't have MR lol", but the game can sometimes simply not give you MR. Moreover, there are sources of paralysis that ignore MR -- it's pretty lame to me that it's conceivable to step into depths, see a pack of deep trolls just chilling with a giant eye, get paralyzed, and die.

Basically, I believe the best way to fix paralysis would be to make it more like petrify - give it a turn to "set in" just like petrification, with an effect that can be quaff-canceled.

As for your specific death: sorry, but this one is definitely your fault, as you chose to drink it and knew the consequences beforehand. Berserk potions are inherently dangerous and I tend to avoid using them for this exact reason. I see them as big-risk, big reward - sure you can rage down that annoyingly defensive ghost, but do you really want to risk the possible paralysis that comes afterwards?

Petrification is not paralysis.

Paralysis is a good effect. If you actually think there's nothing you can do to mitigate paralysis other than get MR, you are wrong. Positioning is very important for paralysis (except for bad paralysis-using enemies like Grinder). The effect you are confusing it with--something that is preventable only with MR, has an immediate effect, and does not depend on positioning--is banishment.

Also giant eyeballs do not generate randomly, so all paralysis outside of summon eyeballs (which, since the eyeballs are summons and slow gives you about 3 turns before you can possibly be paralysed) is line-of-fire, which gives you a couple more ways to deal with it.

I would agree with making paralysis not nuke player EV/SH but this is more of a GDD topic at this point so this post is all I am going to say on paralysis in this thread. If you wish to continue, perhaps use the part of this thread remaining in GDD.

this one time some tengu started throwing magic darts at my brother, so i zapped him with a wand of paralysis, and then i stabbed him in the cloaca with a rapier of electrocution

crate wrote:Petrification is not paralysis.
I would agree with making paralysis not nuke player EV/SH but this is more of a GDD topic at this point so this post is all I am going to say on paralysis in this thread. If you wish to continue, perhaps use the part of this thread remaining in GDD.

I will post a reply there, you've brought up some interesting points that I'm interested in discussing further.

I love how someone said that Pokémon paralysis gives you a 75% chance not to act in that ancient thread

man

wouldn't that be something

Pokemon paralysis is not the same thing as roguelike paralysis.

Anyways, pokemon paralysis is 25%, and that's actually a side bonus to the main effect (unless you're going for the paralysis/confusion tactic), which is that the paralyzed pokemon's speed is reduced by a factor of 4.

yes I am aware believe it or not

my paraflinch togekiss from gen iv is all about that nonsense

yes I know jirachi does it better but I don't believe in that crap

ON TOPIC paralysis is fine. it kills you when it's supposed to. it's killed me several times (because I am bad at crawl) so that's neat.

The Tavern

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