Remove Curses

[amaril]

Huzzah, another meme reform! Throughout most of the game, curses are literally just an inventory management/wear-iding inconvenience. The only time curses matter is in the very early game when you can get randomly screwed over if you decide to use the shit you find on the floor without having a certain scroll id'd. This is a noob trap--I would hazard that a player looking to streak would never wield a glowing dagger/sling or an unidentified ring without a remove curse scroll handy, because the possibility of 'just losing' because of a -3 cursed sling or ring of tele is not worth the on-average minor boost to power. Why is it bad for the player to use what they find? If the removal of curses would be too big of a buff in the early game, item generation can decrease a little.

I do think that the experience of 'getting-stuck' with an awkward weapon/item of teleport is sometimes memorable and interesting, but this is already accomplished by artefacts with brands such as *contam* *faith* *fragile* distortion etc (*drain* is bad and should be removed as well). So what if you get stuck less often? If curses were gone, wear-iding early artefacts would be a more unique flavorful gamble.

Another reason that curses are still in the game is Ashenzari, who I (and others, presumably) enjoy. However, Ash could still be the god of curses in an otherwise curseless game. If the player had to sacrifice a scroll of id instead of a scroll of remove curse in order to curse/uncurse a slot, the cost of ash's ability would be more meaningful than it currently is. Ash could even keep her item identifying passive ability so you aren't too strapped for id scrolls. Other people have suggested an xp timer or piety cost for 'curse/uncurse item' and these would be apt replacements that would keep ash gameplay mostly the same.

[KoboldLord]

Just remove the scroll. It exists to make curses irrelevant, and it does that job incredibly effectively. Curses should time out through either tiles explored or xp gained, because either of these conditions force you to play with the cursed item rather than just paying a consumable tax. Ideally cursed items should be culled until they are limited to ones that do an interesting but hazardous thing, and the boring vanilla weapons and armor can be culled.

Forcing the player to spend a couple dungeon levels with teleportitis is fun, in moderation. Forcing the player to slowly poke jackals to death with a -3 weapon is boring, particularly at a point in the game where the player does not yet have any other options.

[Siegurt]

Just remove the scroll. It exists to make curses irrelevant, and it does that job incredibly effectively. Curses should time out through either tiles explored or xp gained, because either of these conditions force you to play with the cursed item rather than just paying a consumable tax. Ideally cursed items should be culled until they are limited to ones that do an interesting but hazardous thing, and the boring vanilla weapons and armor can be culled.

Forcing the player to spend a couple dungeon levels with teleportitis is fun, in moderation. Forcing the player to slowly poke jackals to death with a -3 weapon is boring, particularly at a point in the game where the player does not yet have any other options.

Of the two, exploration sounds more fun, running away from strong things with a cursed weapon in hand while trying to explore new areas sounds more interesting than retreating up to a safe depth and slowly bashing away at unchallenging things with your -3 blowgun until you gain enough xp.

I am not really convinced there is av problem with the current implementation, it isn't as cool or interesting as it could be, but it also isn't broken.


Fwiw i once purposed that the *curses themselves* be the interesting things, that they provided some sort of power bonus in exchange for risk, and while you could forgo the item entirely, if you used it, you could not ameliorate the risk, remove curse would then be not just removing a down side, and it's use would provoke some thought.

[Leszczynek]

Of the two, exploration sounds more fun, running away from strong things with a cursed weapon in hand while trying to explore new areas sounds more interesting than retreating up to a safe depth and slowly bashing away at unchallenging things with your -3 blowgun until you gain enough xp.

What this actually would do though is make you never wield any blowgun or a ranged weapon until you saw them being swapped in the hands of a monster.

[Siegurt]

Of the two, exploration sounds more fun, running away from strong things with a cursed weapon in hand while trying to explore new areas sounds more interesting than retreating up to a safe depth and slowly bashing away at unchallenging things with your -3 blowgun until you gain enough xp.

What this actually would do though is make you never wield any blowgun or a ranged weapon until you saw them being swapped in the hands of a monster.

Well, yes, generally removing remove curse scrolls result in it being very very suboptimal to ever risk the possibility of being cursed, resulting in more extreme curse avoidance methods.

All i said was that *among* those proposed ways to remove curses if we remove the scroll, i think exploration is the more interesting result. It isn't any less risky or awful to wield a possibly cursed blowgun if the way to remove it is to gain enough xp, rather than exploration.

I don't know that i am in favor of removing remove curse scrolls at all, but if we do, and we go with one of the mentioned ways to remove curses, the one i think works out better is exploration (the ways in which it is awkward and awful are not as bad, imo, as the ways xp gain is awkward and awful)

[KoboldLord]

Curse blowguns are boring and should be removed regardless of whether curses in general are reformed.

This extends to all cursed items that don't do anything but add a small negative to a hidden number. A -1 weapon is probably impossible to make interesting even in contrived corner cases.