Lair Larrikin
Posts: 17
Joined: Sunday, 27th February 2011, 06:34
Monday, 22nd August 2011, 18:51
Immobilize (an irresistable buff spell)
From a design perspective, what is useful about an irresistable debuff?
* An irresistable effect is consistent. The player can plan ahead under the assumption that the effect will go through; this rewards a player who is willing to jump through hoops to make the effect useful.
* An irresistable effect is much stronger than a resistable one; thus, cool but weak effects can be made viable if they are irresistable.
A good example here is Leda's Liquefaction, which is situational and has lots of downsides (symmetric, so the player can't use it to escape; ineffective against ranged attackers; doesn't work on fliers) but is still a good level 4 spell because when it works, it works all the time.
This spell has been bouncing around in my head for awhile, and I think it's a good example:
Immobilize
Hex/Tloc 3
A single targetted opponent is immobilized, preventing them from moving. The target is not prevented from attacking or casting spells. If the caster makes an MR check, the target immobilized for 3-5 rounds; if they fail, the target is immobilized for 1 round.
The idea here is to make a reasonably cheap spell which is useful, but situational. On success, Immobilize compares unfavorably to Confuse; the duration is shorter, and a confused enemy poses no threat, while immobilization almost makes spellcasters more dangerous (since they'll cast spells instead of moving).
On failure, Immobilize gives the player one turn with a single monster frozen in place. This is usually bad against multiple monsters, and even against a single monster it usually won't get the player anything (the monster at best loses a turn, and the player loses a turn casting the spell). But holding a melee threat in place can have its uses, especially when some other force (a conjured flame, summons, poison damage, etcetera) is being brought to bear simultaneously.
The only thing I'm worried about here is being able to get extra actions and kite a monster using Haste, but I hope that will be so MP-intensive as to be impractical.
Even if Immobilize is a bad idea (and it might be, I'm pretty biased), I think Crawl could benefit from more small, tactical, irresistable effects like it: and like Leda's Liquefaction, and Alistair's Intoxication, and probably others I'm not remembering.
* An irresistable effect is consistent. The player can plan ahead under the assumption that the effect will go through; this rewards a player who is willing to jump through hoops to make the effect useful.
* An irresistable effect is much stronger than a resistable one; thus, cool but weak effects can be made viable if they are irresistable.
A good example here is Leda's Liquefaction, which is situational and has lots of downsides (symmetric, so the player can't use it to escape; ineffective against ranged attackers; doesn't work on fliers) but is still a good level 4 spell because when it works, it works all the time.
This spell has been bouncing around in my head for awhile, and I think it's a good example:
Immobilize
Hex/Tloc 3
A single targetted opponent is immobilized, preventing them from moving. The target is not prevented from attacking or casting spells. If the caster makes an MR check, the target immobilized for 3-5 rounds; if they fail, the target is immobilized for 1 round.
The idea here is to make a reasonably cheap spell which is useful, but situational. On success, Immobilize compares unfavorably to Confuse; the duration is shorter, and a confused enemy poses no threat, while immobilization almost makes spellcasters more dangerous (since they'll cast spells instead of moving).
On failure, Immobilize gives the player one turn with a single monster frozen in place. This is usually bad against multiple monsters, and even against a single monster it usually won't get the player anything (the monster at best loses a turn, and the player loses a turn casting the spell). But holding a melee threat in place can have its uses, especially when some other force (a conjured flame, summons, poison damage, etcetera) is being brought to bear simultaneously.
The only thing I'm worried about here is being able to get extra actions and kite a monster using Haste, but I hope that will be so MP-intensive as to be impractical.
Even if Immobilize is a bad idea (and it might be, I'm pretty biased), I think Crawl could benefit from more small, tactical, irresistable effects like it: and like Leda's Liquefaction, and Alistair's Intoxication, and probably others I'm not remembering.
