Give incremental damage to flaming brand?

[RedGem]

What if flaming brand make enemies burn with short duration sticky flame that stacks with high damage limit?

This means:
1. The longer you fight, higher the damage expectation per turn.
2. If you retreat for two or three turns, you lose the damage bonus.

Compare the damage example:
12 12 12 12 12 12 ... 0 0 0
10 10 11 12 13 14 15 15 15 ... 5 5 0

So it's similar to poison but works oppositely. Poison encourages you to run after poisoning an enemy. Burning encourages you not to run and keep fighting.

I think this is somewhat likable for Trog. A mild, passive version of berserking.

What do you think?

[Siegurt]

I've actually suggested something similar for venom-branded weapons, I think making venom be less effective to kite with would be nice.

Anyway (whether venom or sticky flame)

The way I'd do this is you get a counter which determines how "poisoned/on fire" you are every time you're hit with the weapon's brand it increase the counter (possibly proportional to the damage done?), and you do bonus damage commesurate with how high that counter is, the counter passively wears off, and having the counter wind down doesn't do any damage:

To make up some numbers, let's say you do 5 damage per hit, each hit increases your counter by the damage done, and each turn the monster loses 1 counters, and you get 1 bonus damage for every 5 counters you have:

Turn 1: 5+0 damage, 0 counters
Turn 2: 5+0 damage, 4 counters
Turn 3: 5+1 damage, 8 counters
Turn 4: 5+2 damage, 12 counters
Turn 5: 5+3 damage, 16 counters
Turn 6: *miss* 0 damage, 15 counters
Turn 7: 5+2 damage, 19 counters
Turn 8: 5+3 damage, 23 counters
Turn 9: Drink a potion 0 damage, 22 counters
Turn 10: 5+4 damage, 26 counters

etc. you can see that the damage done increases the longer you stay in combat *with that brand*

Anyway, I think that type of damage over time would be more interesting than the current implementation of poison.

[Greyr]

Maybe this type of thing would be more interesting on a weapon base IE staves.

[Roderic]

Interesting, I was thinking of this more or less for mace&flails weapons: the bonus is applied provided you stand on the same place and lost when moving. It reflects the fact you gain inertia as you are swinging the weapon.
It would offer some choice between a better positioning or standing to get more damage and a possible final hit.

I don't want to de-rail, though, but I'd like to see the discussion about some implementation of this mechanic either weapons or brands

[Greyr]

I've seen a "make weapons more interesting" discussion somewhere before, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

As for brands, I dont see the sense in changing anything besides maybe poison as Siegurt mentioned. But, even then it might confuse players. Having a poison brand that functions completely different from a poison spell isn't something the Devs are likely to implement.

[RedGem]

1. I think venom brand now is good as is. It's a nice strategic option for those who can't afford to fight long in melee.
Burning is meant to be used by durable melee fighters. They should work differently.

2. I'm against incremental damage being weapon type feature. Weapon type is very hard to change. It's something you have to live with. Not much of choice.
Brands, on the other hand, is something you can choose easily while playing the game. You can have various brands of your main weapon type and choose one when needed.

Berserk is nice and fun. However, if you can't choose when to berserk, it's a penalty, not an option. I think the same goes to the burning brand.

So I think it should be an option that you can choose when needed.

[crate]

I think that this weapon brand doesn't actually make fights work differently and it seems complicated.

Actually, that's a lie, it does make fights work differently--when monsters use it against the player. In which case it turns into constriction but even more pointless. (Basically it means that against a monster with this brand you attack once, then step back, then attack once, then step back, etc., to prevent the damage buildup. This is not something that should be encouraged.) You could make it work differently for players and for monsters, but then you're adding an inconsistency which is bad.

[Siegurt]

Well, this trades offensive kiting (Poison things and run away until they die) for defensive kiting, (when a monster with this attack brand hits you, it behooves you to not be hit again right away, so either kite it or kill it quickly)

I'm not sure if one is significantly worse than the other, although it could probably be said that you can always offensively kite (since you get to choose your own weapon) and defensively kiting would only be useful in a subset of circumstances.

[crate]

well damage-over-time poison is also a bad mechanic so

[Greyr]

If all monsters were bees there wouldn't be an issue

[jejorda2]

Maybe next April, the Hive will return and replace the Dungeon.

Seriously, I like something like this that potentially changes how you move. I see this working like Song of Slaying, but getting better when you get a hit instead of when you get a kill and ending when you move instead of when your spell ends.

I like making flaming different from freezing, but I can't say whether it is more important than making maces different from swords.

[partial]

stacking poison damage would be great