The problems with spriggan druids in Swamp

[ackack]

The summary: Spriggan druids are too powerful to be in Swamp and don't actually result in more interesting play. A proposed nerf is offered.

----------

Spriggan druids are my least favorite monster in the game at this point. They are insanely dangerous in Swamp, and many characters will have no useful way to deal with them. Other monsters that have the capacity for enormous damage output you can (and often should) just step up and kill. Let me outline why this is a very bad plan for most types of characters arriving in Swamp at xl 15:

--- Spriggan druids, being spriggans, have high EV. This was already true in Forest; it's even more true in Swamp, where the relevant skills (melee, launchers, bolty conjurations) are less developed. This makes them pretty hard to kill.
--- In Swamp, the problem is compounded by the combination of Awaken Forest and water. If you don't have flight or the racial ability to fight in water, standing in water trying to kill the spriggan is going to take a lot of turns where the spriggan is doing highly unpleasant things (at speed 16 to boot.) On the other hand, most land in Swamp is adjacent to a tree, meaning you take a very hefty beating from the awakened trees (again, this is worse with Swamp HP relative to Forest HP.) In my experience, it is pretty common to have three or fewer tiles in LOS where fighting the spriggan druid would be "safe."
--- Taking a long time to kill the druid is very risky in an unpredictable fashion, as druid's call can bring wildly disparate types of monsters in on you. Being in Swamp, most of these monsters have serious movement advantages compared to the player, meaning that escape by running from called monsters is often impractical. And things like hydras being mighted expose the player to the very plausible risk of getting one-shotted even if the fight is going well.
--- Because druid's call is not even technically a summon, unlike most other summoners, even succeeding at killing the druid doesn't actually alleviate the danger.The 0.14 change to summoners where summons disappear on death was one of the best recent changes, and that is because it actually gives a meaningful incentive/decision in situations where before running away was unquestionably the best option. Spriggan druids, on the other hand, discourage you from fighting them at all because even the "good" outcome of killing them is often still wildly unsafe.
--- The icing on this cake is that the speed 16 spriggan druid can't even be run away from when hasted by most characters. Other monsters have abilities such that them slowly gaining on you while hasted isn't a big deal. The spriggan druid gets awaken forest so any trees you pass by hit you for goodly damage every turn you run. If you happen to step into water, well now you're just facilitating it (or some of its amphibious friends) catching up.

This last bit is perhaps the biggest problem at all. Compare orc priests, a monster with a very dangerous attack relative to when it first appears. Because you can actually run from orc priests, there is a meaningful decision to make when you encounter them: run or kill? Spriggan druids, on the other hand, most characters should immediately teleport when they encounter. I am not exaggerating, that is really my opinion of what the best course of action is. I cannot think of a single monster anywhere in the game that this is so generically true of.

The exception are people who know Fireball or a cloud spell. For these, spriggan druids are LOL easy because they are spriggans (high EV, low HP.) Other consumable options don't really work on spriggan druids (hexy wands, a popular choice for taking out other sorts of threatening monsters, aren't good on spriggan MR; EV makes launchers and bolt wands grossly inefficient and as explained above turns spent fighting these matters.)

It's okay for certain monsters to be easier for certain types of characters than others. But compare "anti-caster" monsters like ghost moths or silent spectres. Silent spectres give you a huge visible warning, meaning that outside of zigs you often get the choice of whether to engage with them in the first place. Ghost moths are faster than speed 10, but slower than speed 15, meaning you could haste and run from them if they will eliminate too much of your offense. They also usually give you a few turns where you can try to kill them with magic before they drain it all. There are useful options and meaningful decisions for characters that encounter these. I really don't think there are for spriggan druids.

So how would I fix spriggan druids? The best change would be to make them not be spriggans. If they were just speed 10 druids with normal EV (and more HP to compensate), they would still be quite dangerous (awaken forest and druid's call are both very strong). But now there would be decisions you could make. The lower EV means that you might plausibly be able to kill them (although the non-summon nature of druid's call is still a problem here) even standing in water. Now awaken forest is giving you actual decisions about terrain instead of "die here or die there." Also, you now have a variety of options to choose from to run away instead of just tele. Alternative nerfs would be to discard either awaken forest or druid's call.

----------

So that's spriggan druids. I think they are merely the clearest example of recent trends in design that I think are pretty unfortunate, but that's a topic for another post and time.

[pubby]

So how would I fix spriggan druids? The best change would be to make them not be spriggans.

This would work if people thought their spell set was a good addition, but I don't think many of those people exist. I'm in favor of flat-out removal.

[ackack]

So how would I fix spriggan druids? The best change would be to make them not be spriggans.

This would work if people thought their spell set was a good addition, but I don't think many of those people exist. I'm in favor of flat-out removal.

I would be fine with that but I don't consider it a likely outcome.

[Siegurt]

Just an FYI:

  Code:

commit b750380a6ace8cbff6683595cfd404412f80b07a
Author: DracoOmega <draco_omega@live.com>
Date:   Tue Feb 11 19:07:37 2014 -0330

    Nerf spriggan druids a little
   
    Reduce Sunray damage somewhat, remove Haste Plants (since druids
    no longer spawn alongside plants, making its use more rare, and the
    few that it might run across in Swamp are comparatively more
    threatening even when unhasted than they were in Forest), and make
    Druid's Call only have a 50% chance of calling an additional low-HD
    monster if the first is low-HD (which will also dilute its chances
    of summoning high-HD things across multiple casts).
   
    I have left the code for Haste Plants at the moment, even though it
    is unused. There might well be some other situation it could fit.


I don't know if that addresses your concerns, but at least demonstrates some awareness that the situation is suboptimal.

[dck]

Quite frankly that commit addresses none of the common problems with spriggan druids.

[ackack]

I don't know if that addresses your concerns, but at least demonstrates some awareness that the situation is suboptimal.

That commit actually made me very irritated because it sorta acknowledges that they need to be scaled back but then elects to do so in a manner that addresses essentially nothing.

[n1000]

Thanks for this post, ackack. I appreciate your compiling many of the complaints which have been expressed on irc.

My post is not meant to be a rebuttal, but rather an alternative perspective on the monster in question.

After reviewing a small selection of tvs from recent swamp deaths, discussing spriggan druids with several players and developers, and having finally encountered them myself, I now welcome these tiny menaces to the Swamp. The Lair branches have long been the object of scrutiny and have drawn criticism for being a weaker section of the game. The rune lock, and now the Forest dispersal are two projects which, if nothing else, have resulted in substantial changes to the character and gameplay of 3/4 Lair branches. Among the monsters inherited form Forest are spriggan druids, who provide a climactic, but not imbalanced, threat, are a unique monster, and fit quite well thematically.

From viewing some games which ended at the hands of a spriggan druid or one of the monsters convoked by the "Druid's Call" I suspect many players are underestimating how threatening these monsters are supposed to be. As ackack has rightly pointed out, they've got plenty of strengths which make them very dangerous. Several of the players either failed to recognize how dangerous enemies with the might status could be, or perhaps they simply didn't notice the called creatures were mighty at all. This is a bipartite issue: The Druid's Call spell now summons monsters with the message, "X answers the druid's call!" but I suggest the message is changed to make the monster's might more apparent. Second, on console, monsters having might is not indicated without examining them.

Spriggan druids are not unreasonably dangerous, however. They have very low HP, and if engaged favorably, can be killed very quickly in melee even by characters with fairly mediocre melee skill. In the case of unfavorable engagements, danger can mount quickly, but this is a common theme among top-tier threats in Crawl. It bears emphasis that druids are, and are intended to be, climactic, top-tier threats in Swamp. They appear infrequently, on average slightly less than once per branch. As such, I think it's instructive to compare druids to uniques who might show up in the branch. There are many instances where a first-turn teleport feels like the best move when I run into Nikola or Mara. It is not infrequent for me to escape an encounter with one of these uniques, never to feel well-equipped to return to fight them. They appear in Swamp, which we must do at XL 15, and I don't think it is a controversial claim that they are considerably more dangerous than a druid.

The addition of spriggan bands to the branch fits, and even improves Swamp's flavor. It's destined to be a somewhat repellant, gloomy mire. Now instead of stomping through the Everglades in some sort of selfish misguided rune-obsession we infiltrate the putrid domain of spriggan magic. It elucidates some spriggan lore, as well. Instead of reading that they're somehow in-tune with nature, we see them inhabit this dank wetland...okay enough cheese, but it's another justification!

[ackack]

They appear infrequently, on average slightly less than once per branch.

How is this data being gathered? That seems low to me (particularly since I thought some endings were altered to give a high chance of placing them), but maybe I'm just running bad.

As such, I think it's instructive to compare druids to uniques who might show up in the branch. There are many instances where a first-turn teleport feels like the best move when I run into Nikola or Mara. It is not infrequent for me to escape an encounter with one of these uniques, never to feel well-equipped to return to fight them. They appear in Swamp, which we must do at XL 15, and I don't think it is a controversial claim that they are considerably more dangerous than a druid.

Nikola and Mara you can actually run from without tele, if you needed to. That's a big deal! Mara vs. a druid is an interesting question, but I would say that on average I do consider Nikola less dangerous than a spriggan druid. Nikola's big threat can be nullified in a couple of ways (summons, !resistance, rElec item); for druids your option is silence, which is comparably a quite rare consumable.

[Siegurt]

Nikola's big threat can be nullified in a couple of ways (summons, !resistance, rElec item); for druids your option is silence, which is comparably a quite rare consumable.

Minor point, but summons don't help avoid Nikola's big threats. Chain lightning and lightning bolt aren't slowed down by summons in the least.

[duvessa]

the damage you take from chain lightning is dramatically reduced by there being other monsters nearby
summoning makes other monsters nearby

[Tedronai]

for druids your option is silence, which is comparably a quite rare consumable.

Did the new swamp twice now. Curare works fine against druids and takes a lot of the danger away.

[crate]

I don't think spriggan-type enemies work as high-tier threats very well honestly. Tiny HP coupled with enormous EV just means you use specific attacks that never miss, or you don't fight them. If they're supposed to be a high-tier threat they should probably actually be a threat to characters who pick up wands of fireball or know battlesphere.

6 evo fireball wand kills them reliably in 4 uses (4 turns) (some of this might be steam damage since I happened to test this in a vault with shallow water, but since we're talking about them in swamp...). Battlesphere + magic dart at 6.5 spellcasting/10 conj/6 charms and whatever hucj starting int is is about the same (5 turns if you don't have battlesphere pre-cast). 14 skill/10 fighting +4 vorpal lajatang melee on the other hand takes on average something like 6-7 turns (I mean turns not attacks here), plus however long it takes you to get into melee, and then additionally this is significantly more variable than the other options so if you're unlucky you're possibly in a world of hurt. So it's pretty clear that using attacks that can actually miss at all is just a waste of time.

Of course if they're not supposed to be a high-tier threat but instead are supposed to drain 4 charges from your wand of fireball when you see one (and randomly burn scrolls of teleport if they mightrecall a hydra) then well good job on making them that monster.

(I will note I haven't actually fought a druid in .14 outside of wizmode; I'm just summoning them to see how they die. Also the druids I'm testing with are old enough that they still have the .13 spellset, but I checked and their defenses are the same, except I guess maybe mine have 25 EV instead of 20. That obviously doesn't affect how quickly fireball/battlesphere/mdart kill them though)

edit for funsies: Freeze kills spriggan druids in about 7~8 turns at max power. Compare to lajatang above. Challenge mode: try not to laugh when you do this.

[claws]

High-tier support monster is what results when one can kill it easily with a variety of differing tools but otherwise can get unlucky and get hit extreme damage, which is why they call over a floor spawn, come with a band naturally, and appear alone in the Swamp rune vault ~20% of the time. It means that those spriggan riders or the hydra swarm or the might'd alligator or whatever can continue to hit the player when said player tries to escape or focuses on the druid with whatever they have available.

[and into]

@claws:

But the summons aren't summons and don't disappear (or get auto-teled or something) when you kill the "summoner." The "variety of differing tools" seems rather narrow. Due to their speed, when you run away, you do so with teleport. When you kill them, you use an EV-ignoring attack, or silence I guess. (Maybe an s. blade berserker could take them out fairly safely with a quick blade?) Obviously Chei dudes can hilariously slaughter them by relaxing but that's rather a niche case.

These enemies are dangerous and they do force a response, sure. I just don't know how interesting that response is.


Here's my [not so] simple solution: Give it the vaults treatment.

Right now the spriggan druid are kind of like vault wardens (difficult to escape, alters terrain, can force teleport) plus convokers (brings in allies) plus preservers (can be difficult to kill, and buffs dudes around it)—all rolled into one.

So I'd propose breaking the almighty spriggan druid into its constituent parts. A guy that has awaken forest and water ("geomancer"), a guy that has recall and can buff allies ("druids"), a guy that can use sunray (I dunno, "phototurge"?) and maybe heal allies. The spriggan bands nearly always spawn with one of the above, and rarely with two. The enemy that is currently called "spriggan druid" can be renamed "spriggan archdruid" or something, which gives a better sense of its difficulty, anyway, and have its domain strictly limited to the Forest.

(Presumably these rustic swamp-druids, being so far removed from the Enchantress and her powerfully magical forest, are somewhat less advanced in their arcane arts. They do their best, no doubt; however, the marsh-based life forms are harder to domesticate, and the terrain is unsuitable for conducting high level courses in natural magick. It did not help matters that, shortly after their migration to the swamp lands, one of their oldest and wisest druidic professors was, tragically, eaten by a particularly ornery swamp worm.)

As far as game play goes, the upshot to the "vaults treatment" is that it would be easier to balance each component part in terms of power of effect, HP, HD, and EV, in order to give it the right scariness level for Swamp, and (like with the special Vaults dudes) you will leave open more room for random variation to create interesting and novel tactical situations, rather than a single enemy that makes you ask, "Do I have silence? No. Can I two or three shot this thing with EV-ignoring attacks? No. Okay, read ?teleport and get away from trees until it kicks in."

[WalkerBoh]

I don't know that I'd call your solution "simple" and_into, but it certainly does have appeal.

[Amnesiac]

Even riders alone are bad news, it seems. They hit painfully, they see invis, they are very resistant to enchantments. And then druids make it all even worse. Of course I could probably deal with them if I change the sequence of clearing the game, but it's too drastic of a change, imo, comparing to the old swamp, which was the easiest Lair branch.

[dck]

I find several core issues with the design of spriggan druids (in fact with a number of spriggan enemies) and I don't think a good way to make these ones in particular either more interesting or less binary in the reactions they cause in players is to split them into a small band of new spriggans that mimic the behaviour of other enemies from other branches.

[and into]

I find several core issues with the design of spriggan druids (in fact with a number of spriggan enemies) and I don't think a good way to make these ones in particular either more interesting or less binary in the reactions they cause in players is to split them into a small band of new spriggans that mimic the behaviour of other enemies from other branches.

To the extent that the behavior of other enemies is being mimicked, that's already the case with druids. The analogy I drew was at a certain level of abstraction; I think they could be adequately differentiated, in the same way that plenty of other enemies that are redundant at a certain abstract level are nonetheless meaningfully different in practice throughout Crawl. Aside from the recall thing, there isn't actually any direct overlap with the vault guards; perhaps recall should be removed from spriggan enemies for this reason.

Of course, all the new spriggans could just be removed from Swamp. But, short of removal, what would you recommend? Or do you think removal is the only good option here?

[duvessa]

I don't think any of the spriggan enemies are interesting. Crawl does not support high monster EV at all and if you take that out you're left with what are mostly melee centaurs, non-demonic executioners/blizzard demons, an 0.13 summoner that makes you burn down all the trees in vaults, and the complete design insanity of the spriggan enchanter monster. Removal is certainly attractive to me.
Not to mention that the amount of monsters added in the last few versions has been absolutely crazy compared to the tiny number that have been removed, it's hard to believe Crawl cares about clarity at all if the total number keeps going up so much.

[Amnesiac]

I think a few should stay for variety, but not be common.

[Brannock]

I went through Swamp 5 today on a HuWn and was caught off guard by a spriggan druid accompanying a pack of 20-25 hydrae/dragons and a couple thorn hunters. After fighting and teleporting away a couple times and trying to draw out the druid I realized that thanks to its speed and convoking I wasn't going to be able to successfully draw it out to duel it in favorable circumstances. I briefly considered luring it to a corner, teleporting away, and grabbing the rune, but after seeing that the vault had emptied out and spread out throughout the entire level I rejected that strategy. I thought the chances of me getting stuck in a fight and having the druid show back up were too high. I ended up buffing myself and rushing the druid to beat it to death before teleporting out and doing the rest of the level normally.

It was one of my more enjoyable Swamp: 5 experiences. That said, I'm not a fan of its convoked minions sticking around even after its death -- especially since they stay mighty. Is it possible to have the convoked monsters "snap back" to their original positions once you kill the druid, or to purge buffs originating from the druid on its death?

Not to mention that the amount of monsters added in the last few versions has been absolutely crazy compared to the tiny number that have been removed, it's hard to believe Crawl cares about clarity at all if the total number keeps going up so much.

What new monsters are indistinct/unclear? In my experience almost every new monster type I've ran into have given me a moment of "Oooh, so that's what they change about my tactics. I should deal with them differently if I see them again."

[and into]

It was one of my more enjoyable Swamp: 5 experiences. That said, I'm not a fan of its convoked minions sticking around even after its death -- especially since they stay mighty. Is it possible to have the convoked monsters "snap back" to their original positions once you kill the druid, or to purge buffs originating from the druid on its death?

Killing the druid could cause all the enemies to lose buff and also lose half their HP, become stunned for X number of turns, etc.

Flavor: Describe the buff as a "spiritual link" that, once severed, traumatizes the beasts that were under its influence. Seems fitting for a druid.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

What new monsters are indistinct/unclear?

Having more monsters necessarily makes all of them less distinct.This is a problem that has plagued Zot's draconians for a very long time. Monsters with crystal spear and hellfire(!) should easily stand out but because there are a couple dozen different "combos" of draconian to deal with they get lost in the shuffle.

Spriggan monsters have a similar problem. Apparently I am supposed to care about defenders and berserkers and enchanters or whatever, but what actually happens is I select targets arbitrarily because I have no idea what they are on about, and none of them are terrifying enough to demand knowing what they are on about.

Ultimately a bunch of meatsacks with weapons are better for the game than having a zillion varieties with minor abilities, because all the minor abilities accomplish is annoying the player and making it harder for major abilities to stand out.

Also like others have said, monster spriggans are terrible due to EV and speed 16, and given the choice I would remove probably all of them, and sunray has never struck me as a sane thing for spriggan druids to have anyway.

[Amnesiac]

Ultimately a bunch of meatsacks with weapons are better for the game than having a zillion varieties with minor abilities, because all the minor abilities accomplish is annoying the player and making it harder for major abilities to stand out.

This sounds boring...

and given the choice I would remove probably all of them

There is no reason not to leave at least one pack as uniques. Or we could as well remove all uniques, especially quick ones: Mennas, Agnes, Aizul, Nessos, etc.

[Galefury]

I agree that spriggan monsters don't play very well, mostly due to the low HP + high EV combination. In theory it could be an interesting way to change the value of attacks, like resistances. But unlike resistances it's more like an extremely specific vulnerability, which in addition is hidden. EV and HP are not in monster descriptions, and even if they were the power of attacks against high EV threats is much less clear than it is for resists. And spriggan monsters even get high MR and see invis in addition. The combination of all that makes them awkward to fight and pretty spoilery, and their high speed makes them hard to escape. I really think the best option is to remove spriggan monsters (possibly just change their species), since I cant see a way to make them good while keeping consistent flavor with player spriggans.

One problem I see with the new monsters is that lots of them seem to be designed to either be a top tier threat or powerful support for other monsters. This is understandable, after all there are already lots of simple filler monsters, but it seems like a classic case of power creep. I think all these changes are interesting, but between depths, rune lock, forest dispersal and the V:$ changes 0.14 sounds a lot harder than 0.13. It's probably fine since the midgame was kind of boring, but worth keeping in mind.

[Amnesiac]

0.14 is harder, but it's quite fun, imo. I think Spriggans were ok later for Forest, since you have enough defences by that time. Getting hit by different kinds of needles it fun, too. As for Swamp, if there are just a few, one vault maybe, I guess it would be nice for a change.

[ackack]

One problem I see with the new monsters is that lots of them seem to be designed to either be a top tier threat or powerful support for other monsters. This is understandable, after all there are already lots of simple filler monsters, but it seems like a classic case of power creep. I think all these changes are interesting, but between depths, rune lock, forest dispersal and the V:$ changes 0.14 sounds a lot harder than 0.13. It's probably fine since the midgame was kind of boring, but worth keeping in mind.

I agree this is an issue. I'll probably write in more detail about this later, but I've found thus far that making the midgame "more interesting" has resulted in it being less fun. It's not exactly a difficulty issue, it's the way the difficulty is paced. I feel the density of difficult fights has grown excessively high, leading to prolonged periods of little progress that feel grindy to me. (This is IMO the same sort of problem that a lot of people have with encompass vaults.) It's a tricky balance. You don't want the periods of low difficulty to be too prolonged (because that is just a different kind of boring), but I think the game benefits from having such stretches as a stress relief mechanism.

[tompliss]

It was one of my more enjoyable Swamp: 5 experiences. That said, I'm not a fan of its convoked minions sticking around even after its death -- especially since they stay mighty. Is it possible to have the convoked monsters "snap back" to their original positions once you kill the druid, or to purge buffs originating from the druid on its death?

Killing the druid could cause all the enemies to lose buff and also lose half their HP, become stunned for X number of turns, etc.

Flavor: Describe the buff as a "spiritual link" that, once severed, traumatizes the beasts that were under its influence. Seems fitting for a druid.

I think the loss of might, and maybe gettign a "weak" debuff (or a Fear effect) might help.
Loosing HP may be too much : I know it's meant to affect as the summons disapearing, but the convoked monsters still give XP; so I prefer the Fear effect for this.