Could this work as a species trait?

[Lasty]

Bear with me for a second here: could there be a species who only moved in semicontrolled blinks? It would only be able to move every 2-4 turns or so (short exhaust timer?), and when it did, it would specify a direction and blink that way-ish. Of course, that would make landing on specific tiles (corpses, etc.) and autoexplore a nightmare, so let's say it would only apply when a monster is in view.

Interface-wise, the movement keys would turn into blink direction keys with a monster in sight, so that you wouldn't need to repeatedly go into an ability menu to activate combat movement.

It would be radically different gameplay, but I think there might be some interesting material there. Anyone want to second that? If so, I'll start considering how that could be fleshed out into a playable species.

[KennySheep]

If you want to play this character right now, give a naga warper of chei a whirl. Or anyone with blink, controlled teleport and high piety with chei really.

[Lasty]

The question isn't "can someone play this way," but rather, "would this be an interesting trait for a species to have?" I want to know if this is an idea that catches anyone else's fancy, or if it only seems like a potentially good idea to me.

[Mankeli]

No IMO. Reason: autoexplore.

Edit. Re-read it, I see you notived AE as well, sorry. However, why would you want include this kind of trait, isn't chei of naga enough?

[IronJelly]

No IMO. Reason: autoexplore.

Edit. Re-read it, I see you notived AE as well, sorry. However, why would you want include this kind of trait, isn't chei of naga enough?

I would say no. Chei changes much more about gameplay, and doesn't force the blink effect on you.

Anyway, I think it's interesting, but probably would be more tedious than fun in practice, and lead to too many deaths that, against crawl's philosophy, would not have been preventable. Even if you dissalow move-blinking into lava/deep water, you still can't even make minor tactical movements without possibly putting yourself further from your target and maybe alerting something else to your presence.

Stabbing would become impossible completely.

control teleport would break the species. so, i think, would stasis.

But the biggest factor for me is that in all the levels of the game, there are a LOT of situations that overshooting a blink by even one tile can be your fatal mistake. having that risk any time you try to move sounds like a disaster.

[indspenceable]

No IMO. Reason: autoexplore.

Edit. Re-read it, I see you notived AE as well, sorry. However, why would you want include this kind of trait, isn't chei of naga enough?

I would say no. Chei changes much more about gameplay, and doesn't force the blink effect on you.

Anyway, I think it's interesting, but probably would be more tedious than fun in practice, and lead to too many deaths that, against crawl's philosophy, would not have been preventable. Even if you dissalow move-blinking into lava/deep water, you still can't even make minor tactical movements without possibly putting yourself further from your target and maybe alerting something else to your presence.

Stabbing would become impossible completely.

control teleport would break the species. so, i think, would stasis.

But the biggest factor for me is that in all the levels of the game, there are a LOT of situations that overshooting a blink by even one tile can be your fatal mistake. having that risk any time you try to move sounds like a disaster.

I had been thinking about a somewhat similar idea - a mushroom themed race. Essentially, taking the "rooting" idea to it's furthest reach - act like a wandering mushroom which can't move when there is anything in LOS. Or, maybe you can move, but it costs large amounts of health or mana to do so? Other possibilities are self-inflicted blindness (reduces LOS to 1 square, all monsters are invisible - although because of the reciprocal nature of LOS this might be problematic) or transmuter-esque switching between forms (wandering mushroom, oklob-esque corrosion type dude, dryad) although that idea is admittedly vague and half baked.

[Lasty]

Even if you dissalow move-blinking into lava/deep water

I saw that as a given, since no other form of movement or blinking inflicts it.

you still can't even make minor tactical movements without possibly putting yourself further from your target and maybe alerting something else to your presence.

Yeah, that's what I see as being one of the main interesting challenges. The corresponding bonus is that if you need to escape, you can do so faster but with less precision than normal.

Stabbing would become impossible completely.

Not really. EH/petrify/paralysis/needle stabbing would all still work. Approaching a sleeping monster to stab would be different, but not necessarily worse: blinking towards it might or might not place you next to it. If it did, then it would be much better than normal, since it would only take one action. If it did not, you'd need to wait a couple turns to try again, comparable to the amount of time spent by a stealthy character approaching a monster while using terrain to block LOS. If that also failed, then you'd have a third try that would take about as long as approaching a sleeping monster from full LOS. If that failed, you'd be taking more time than a full LOS approach. If the monster woke up in any of those attempts, you could potentially exit LOS faster than other stabbers.

control teleport would break the species. so, i think, would stasis.

The species intrinsic blink is already effectively a control teleport blink, so I don't see how that breaks anything. Stasis might break the species, unless their default movement was special-cased to ignore it.

But the biggest factor for me is that in all the levels of the game, there are a LOT of situations that overshooting a blink by even one tile can be your fatal mistake. having that risk any time you try to move sounds like a disaster.

In a lot of levels of the game, walking slower than normal can be a fatal mistake. Nagas are still pretty good.

A species with this ability would radically shake up how players of the species approach tactical movement, positioning, and escape -- everything that movement does. Some of those things would be harder, and others easier. What constitutes danger would be different. That's why I think this could make for a good species.

[TwilightPhoenix]

It sounds like an interesting idea, but perhaps no delay on the movement and instead reduce the max possible range of the blink? It'd make it easier to control and easier to handle from both an adjustment perspective and an auto-explore perspective.

[XuaXua]

Blink Fjoads

[MDvedh]

I suggest a sixfirhy-ish feat for ds mutation: short bursts of fast movement, say 4 steps at 2 delay, then 1 turn with 30 dealy.

rElec at rank 3 probably?