Remove the xp penalty for summon damage

[Hellmonk]

The exp penalty for damaging things with summons either decreases your ability to win or doesn't decrease your ability to win. If it decreases your ability to win, it is optimal to tell any existing summons to stop attacking and use 0 skill melee/ranged for full damage against every trivial enemy for the entire game. This is a tedium versus power tradeoff, so the summon exp penalty should be removed. If it doesn't decrease your ability to win, then the stated reason for the penalty's existence (to balance summons) is wrong. There is no other apparent reason for the penalty to exist, so the summon exp penalty should be removed.

[chequers]

It uses loss aversion to discourage players from using summons for every fight. This encourages hybridisation, which makes Crawl a more enjoyable experience.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Summoner is one of the least fun background currently. A few players enjoy pressing tab dozen times when they might kill the monster with a single spell cast but don't want to do it because of XP penalty. Tedium vs power, there is no fun in the equation.

[Siegurt]

I still dont understand how 'zb........' is any more or less tedious than '<tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab>' (Or my personal preference which is 'zb<tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab>')

[VeryAngryFelid]

I still dont understand how 'zb........' is any more or less tedious than '<tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab>' (Or my personal preference which is 'zb<tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab>')

IMHO you have just identified another problem with summoning spells. If "zb........" kills the monster, we effectively have something like Tornado except it is often more powerful (works in corridors, provides a meat shield, can be cast multiple times, is not level 9).

[Siegurt]

I still dont understand how 'zb........' is any more or less tedious than '<tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab>' (Or my personal preference which is 'zb<tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab><tab>')

IMHO you have just identified another problem with summoning spells. If "zb........" kills the monster, we effectively have something like Tornado except it is often more powerful (works in corridors, provides a meat shield, can be cast multiple times, is not level 9).

I suppose that means that searing ray and OTR (All poison really) are fundamentally flawed because it takes a . and not a z<x> for subsequent rounds of damage? Or is it a matter of how much damage is done per MP spent?

[VeryAngryFelid]

Neither of those spells provide meat shield.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Conjurations deal damage, confusion makes monsters waste turns, smart positioning allows to make free attacks. Summons do all of this simultaneously and from turn 1 without much thinking.

[bel]

The exp penalty for damaging things with summons either decreases your ability to win or doesn't decrease your ability to win. If it decreases your ability to win, it is optimal to tell any existing summons to stop attacking and use 0 skill melee/ranged for full damage against every trivial enemy for the entire game. This is a tedium versus power tradeoff, so the summon exp penalty should be removed.

Killing trivial enemies by using melee does not grant enough XP to make it worthwhile. Tedious things which give no (or negligible) advantage are ok.

If one builds up one's melee capabilities to put more enemies in the "trivial" category, the mechanic has already done its job by encouraging hybridization.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Killing trivial enemies by using melee does not grant enough XP to make it worthwhile. Tedious things which give no (or negligible) advantage are ok.

If it's negligible, let's remove XP penalty for killing trivial monsters with summons. Nobody tries to kill dangerous monsters with unbranded dagger just to earn more XP.

If one builds up one's melee capabilities to put more enemies in the "trivial" category, the mechanic has already done its job by encouraging hybridization.

I don't see why "pure summoner" is undesirable character type. If it's too powerful, summons are unbalanced and should be nerfed in some way. XP penalty is not a good way IMHO. Decreasing max HP (or AC/EV) by N% when there are summons on screen would be better because they would not require boring tactics in previous fights.

[bel]

It makes no difference whether or not you kill a "trivial" monster with summons, because the XP is negligible. There is no need for the game to define "trivial" exactly and special-case it so that these monsters give full XP.

You can play a pure summoner if you wish, nobody's stopping you. Indeed, it might be the best course of action for, say, a DESu.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Properly summoning a creature requires infusing some of your own lifeforce into it in order to (even temporarily) bind it to your realm. All summoning spells now also cost HP equal to their MP cost and the summon XP penalty is removed. This is affected by Deep Dwarf damage shaving a la Pain.

Thoughts?

[Siegurt]

Properly summoning a creature requires infusing some of your own lifeforce into it in order to (even temporarily) bind it to your realm. All summoning spells now also cost HP equal to their MP cost and the summon XP penalty is removed. This is affected by Deep Dwarf damage shaving a la Pain.

Thoughts?

This unfortunately disproportionately hits low level characters much more strongly than high level ones, which is probably the opposite of what one would want here.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Doesn't that feel like a proper tradeoff though? In the early game (say, pre-Lair) most summoners are going to have access to spammals, imps and dogs. Maybe Ice Beast if you push it hard. That's a 1, 2, or 3 point HP drain, which is likely less damage than you would take trying to melee the enemy in question - and your summon can melee them repeatedly, and bodyblock for you, preventing more HP damage. This seems like an easier malus to deal with than Pain's constant drain damage as a low level necromancer, which I don't usually see people complaining about.

Higher level summons will cost 6 or 8 or 9 HP but give you more return on your cost by summoning more creatures at once, which does make it a bit easier in the lategame, but I'd expect a lategame summoner to have an easier time summoning than a novice, wouldn't you? Making the HP cost any higher than that starts to seem prohibitive though, and starts to cancel out the benefits of summons in the first place. Dragon Call taking MP per summon will cause it to also take HP per summon, meaning it becomes significantly more dangerous and less of a no-brainer than "dump my mana bar into thirty dragons and hide behind them", making it even more suitable to being the highest tier summoning spell.

[Realz]

Is it not possible to balance the output power of summons so that the current (or any proposed) tradeoff is not necessary?

[bhauth]

Is it not possible to balance the output power of summons so that the current (or any proposed) tradeoff is not necessary?

Players fighting a group of enemies can pull them into a choke and fight one at a time.

Summoners fighting a single strong enemy can choose to fight in an open area and surround the enemy with summons.

This asymmetry means summons must be very strong against single enemies to be useful against groups.

[chequers]

Summons allow effectively unlimited fight resets, which is very bad.

[duvessa]

This asymmetry means summons must be very strong against single enemies to be useful against groups.

Summons don't need to be useful against groups. Almost every attack in DCSS is most effective when fighting a single monster, it's fine if the same is true for summons.

[Siegurt]

Hm, I wonder if simply letting monsters swap freely with summons (so they can't be used as easily to block movement) would improve things, that would reduce the effectiveness of summons in a lot of ways.

[bel]

Summons allow effectively unlimited fight resets, which is very bad.

That's mostly a result of having upstairs; it's not really a problem with summons per se.

Summons can be thought of as a damage over time mechanism (summons beat up enemies), together with a kiting mechanism (summons reduce effective enemy movement speed because the enemy is fighting your summons). The overall result is similar to poisoning at range: if done carefully, the mechanic is very powerful, and very boring.

Therefore, mechanisms that encourage fighting together with your summons are a fine thing, in principle. I don't know if this XP penalty manages to achieve this result, but it's worth trying and has no real downside.

[duvessa]

It does have a downside, it introduces the tedium vs. power tradeoff mentioned in the OP.

[chequers]

That's mostly a result of having upstairs; it's not really a problem with summons per se.

Upstairs are waaay more core to DCSS than summons are. And also that's not true, since you can swap places with a summon, you can infinitely pillar dance with them without needing to use stairs.

[bel]

It does have a downside, it introduces the tedium vs. power tradeoff mentioned in the OP.

I already explained (twice) why I think that there is no (or negligible) power tradeoff.

That's mostly a result of having upstairs; it's not really a problem with summons per se.

Upstairs are waaay more core to DCSS than summons are. And also that's not true, since you can swap places with a summon, you can infinitely pillar dance with them without needing to use stairs.

I don't know what you're saying here. Pillar dancing does not require summons. Anyway, this is a rather minor point, and not related to the OP, as far as I can see.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It does have a downside, it introduces the tedium vs. power tradeoff mentioned in the OP.

I already explained (twice) why I think that there is no (or negligible) power tradeoff.

Double explanation does not mean everyone (or even anyone) agrees with you. As far as I know monster XP is not displayed even in trunk so player is still encouraged to kill every monster without summons.
Also I am not sure why you are talking about trivial monsters only. When playing summoner I am often trying to kill a dangerous monster on my own in corridor while having a summon behind me. If the fight goes worse than I expected, I just retreat behind the summon and reset the fight (or just let the summon kill the monster if I feel tired to try killing it without summons). Typical tedium vs power tradeoff. Please don't tell me I am losing piety/food etc. There are multiple gods without piety, there is enough food and ultimately just XP matters (at least in 3 rune game) provided I don't need consumables (and with summons I don't need them indeed).

[bel]

I did not say that everyone agrees with me about X. I was simply saying that it doesn't make sense to simply quote me and assert that X is false. That's not going to lead anywhere.

As for why I am talking about trivial monsters, that's because I was responding to the OP's point, which was talking about trivial monsters.

[Sprucery]

Counter proposal: increase the xp penalty for summons and remove the 't' command (or only leave the command for attacking a selected monster).

[Realz]

Counter proposal: increase the xp penalty for summons and remove the 't' command (or only leave the command for attacking a selected monster).

If this isn't a troll response, can you explain why this would would improve the game?

[Sprucery]

It would make the xp penalty meaningful and you couldn't tell your allies to stop attacking to avoid the xp penalty.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Doesn't that just exaggerate the original issue without solving anything?

[TeshiAlair]

Remove all summons that summon multiple of a monster that is capable of doing damage.
Make it so you can have only X summons active at once, or possibly just one summon + a utility summon such as guardian golem.
(Rebrand them as "familiars" or something idc)
Make every monster interesting as far as what it enables you to do independent of what it is doing (applying slows, dps, shielding, mana discount, etc).

[duvessa]

Doesn't that just exaggerate the original issue without solving anything?

Eh, removing the 't' command does solve a problem: the 't' command existing. Increasing the xp penalty wouldn't solve anything though.

Anyway if you want to have the xp penalty on allies without encouraging degenerate gameplay, it can be done. Just make it so that the first time you create an ally by any means (spells, god abilities, enslavement, whatever), you get a permanent 50% XP penalty for the rest of the game, and that penalty is retroactively applied to your experience level and skill points. So you no longer get more xp by killing trivial monsters yourself, and it's retroactive so that a character that starts summoning on D:2 doesn't have an advantage over a character that starts summoning on D:1.

(It can't really retroactively improve your piety gain, since piety is capped. But, since piety is capped, this isn't a problem for non-gifting gods.)

[Shtopit]

You can just have an XP cost for summoning creatures.

As I often say, I hate how allies are implemented in this game, and I think that they only belong to gods and should cost piety and be limited in time, because the mechanic itself is boring to me, and it's only fun if it doesn't cover the whole game.

[bhauth]

Refund the "lost" XP if a summon that did damage expires instead of dying?

[dfinlay]

So I was reading this and thinking about why summoning has always been kind-of off in Crawl but works so well in Demon (an ally-based roguelike for those who don't know) and while the obvious answer - that Demon was built from the ground up to make this kind of play work - isn't going to help Crawl, I think there are a few things that Demon does with summons that might be worth thinking about.

1. You can only have one copy of each summon out at a time and only a limited number of summons out total. This prevents you from just flooding the area with a large number of summons, completely preventing summons from getting to you.

2. Summons dying is bad. In Demon, if a summon dies, you lose that summon, which obviously is not a solution that would work for Crawl, but perhaps the summon could temporarily be disabled until you get enough XP or some other debuff or cost could be applied. Not sure what would work, but what this means is that you actually have to monitor your summons, protect them and dismiss them before they die.

3. HP is tied to the summon even when it isn't out, so you can't just dismiss and resummon them to refill their HP. This means that summons aren't a way to just turn all your mana into a nearly infinite well of meatshield HP.

4. Support spells are an important part of summoning. There are a lot of summons that buff you in various ways and a lot of ways you can buff, protect and heal your summons. This means that the player is constantly involved in the battle in a way that's more interesting than just using t.

[amaril]

Xp debt is an incredibly stupid punishment for degenerate play, especially in a branching dungeon. Trying to optimize player kills vs. nigh-impossible-to-control-ally kills is just about the most tedious thing imaginable. If the player 'should be' incentivized to hybridize, wouldn't it be better if gameplay itself encouraged hybridization? If the tools you have don't carry you through every situation, you will need to pick up more tools. Summons are just so powerful rn that a level appropriate summon spell is often the most effective way to deal with any dangerous situation your character may encounter.

Remove allies is the obvious answer to the problem, but an alternate solution: Decrease summon duration! This makes micromanaging summons less effective but keeps summons distinct from conjurations. If summons expire in a few turns, you have to be thoughtful about when you cast them (instead of just spamming whenever anything enters los) because the mp costs actually matter. They will still be powerful, as short-term impediments that deal damage over the course of several turns.

[bel]

Here's a simple experiment:

Suppose you create a character (say, a MiFi, to make things easy). You get to Lair (or Temple or any other arbitrary but fixed point). You count up the XP of all kills of "harmless" monsters (as shown in x-v screen), and compare it to your total XP.

What would be the result?

---------------------------------

I did spend about 15 minutes on this experiment. And I'll tell you the answer, if people care to guess first.

[pedritolo]

I'd say 80%, perhaps more

Edit: no wait, misunderstood what you meant by harmless. In that case maybe 40%?

[amaril]

bel, by lair you can a) kill or deal damage to many non-harmless monsters, even with no non-summon offensive weapon trained, and b) even if you were xp deprived, is that a desirable outcome? you still have broken summons but now must strafe the edges of l:1, o:1, and d:12 in search of monsters you can farm for xp so that you can cast slightly more powerful summons and progress with the game. the only part of xp deprivation encouraging anything beyond nominal hybridization is the fact that the player might feel frustrated by the hassle of playing so as to optimize xp gain!

(but a summoner might, for example, pick up and train a polearm because they will be made more powerful by doing so in a way that summons can't approximate. this is how hybridization should happen, and it already does happen, just to a lesser degree with summons because they are so powerful and versatile)

[bel]

I'll allow 3 guesses. Anyone else?

To amaril, what would you consider a "trivial" monster? The "harmless" threat level allows a quick-and-dirty calculation. The threshold is definitely something lower than "easy" -- hobgoblins on D:1 are "easy", but nobody would claim that it is "optimal" to fight a hobgoblin on D:1 without spammals. If you don't like the current "harmless" threshold, it's easy to change the code to put more monsters in the "harmless" category.

Also keep in mind that I'm definitely underselling my point, because packs of "harmless" or "easy" monsters are by no means trivial. For instance, in my game, I had a big orc vault with about 20 "harmless" orcs together with some orc priests and warriors. The orcs are definitely not "trivial" here, but I count them as such anyway. Similarly, a pack of four "harmless" jackals is not "trivial". If anything, I'm overestimating the "trivial" category, not underestimating it.

[amaril]

a trivial monster depends on what you've found/ what you started as. packs can be broken up. obviously if the situation is actually dangerous you can cast summons and win easily. the sort of play you are advocating involves separating an individual orc from the pack, trying to kill it with tomahawks or something, and if it gets close to you walking away using your spammals to give you space, while micro-managing (using knowledge of ally behavior or t commands) your quokka so that it doesn't kill the orc so that you can reroll the battle when you are healed, when you could have just killed the orc in the first place with your spells. the orc is never actually a threat, but killing it yourself is 'best-practice' and the more dumb non-threats you can endure killing the 'best-practice' way the more powerful you will be later in the game.

if this sounds fun to you, i have some other suggestions to encourage the player to hybridize:
weapons break over time
monsters corrode armor or burn your scrolls when they damage you in melee
hunger cobs
drain that permanently lowers your xl
spell hunger
etc

[VeryAngryFelid]

So I was reading this and thinking about why summoning has always been kind-of off in Crawl but works so well in Demon (an ally-based roguelike for those who don't know) and while the obvious answer - that Demon was built from the ground up to make this kind of play work - isn't going to help Crawl, I think there are a few things that Demon does with summons that might be worth thinking about.

1. You can only have one copy of each summon out at a time and only a limited number of summons out total. This prevents you from just flooding the area with a large number of summons, completely preventing summons from getting to you.

2. Summons dying is bad. In Demon, if a summon dies, you lose that summon, which obviously is not a solution that would work for Crawl, but perhaps the summon could temporarily be disabled until you get enough XP or some other debuff or cost could be applied. Not sure what would work, but what this means is that you actually have to monitor your summons, protect them and dismiss them before they die.

3. HP is tied to the summon even when it isn't out, so you can't just dismiss and resummon them to refill their HP. This means that summons aren't a way to just turn all your mana into a nearly infinite well of meatshield HP.

4. Support spells are an important part of summoning. There are a lot of summons that buff you in various ways and a lot of ways you can buff, protect and heal your summons. This means that the player is constantly involved in the battle in a way that's more interesting than just using t.

Also Demon has better AI and monster abilities. No random actions (if enemy deals most damage to you with some ability, it will use it every time until it can no longer be used), more enemies have smiting and AoE attacks, monsters are never distracted by other monsters. DCSS is kind of gambling game comparing to Demon, this can be seen from turn 1: Dcss places summons in random tiles.

[bel]

Well, only one person came forward with a guess (thanks to pedritolo).

Unfortunately, they were off by a factor of around fifteen or twenty. The answer is that the "harmless" monsters form about 2% of the total XP gained (details are in the spoiler tag below).

Spoiler: show

I played the char till D:9, till I got to Orc. Here's the list of "harmless" monsters I killed.

d:1
Frilled lizard.
d:2
bat
goblin x 2
hobgoblin x 4
kobold x 2
cockroach
d:3
rat
cockroach x 3
goblin x 3
quokka
hobgoblin x 3
kobold x 2
leopard gecko
bat
frilled lizard
d:4 (temple)
leopard gecko
jackal x 2
cockroach

d:5
cockroach
leopard gecko
orc x 2
d:6
leopard gecko
orc x 2
d:7
leopard gecko
orc x 4
d:8
orc x 2
howler monkey skeleton
hound skeleton
leopard gecko
d:9 (orc)
orc x 34
adder zombie
leopard gecko

From morgue, a list of all vanquished creatures:
3 two-headed ogres
A hippogriff (D:9)
3 yaks (D:9)
A steam dragon (D:8)
8 orc warriors
3 ice beasts
4 ogres
2 phantoms
6 centaurs
A crocodile (D:7)
4 bullfrogs
A water moccasin zombie (D:6)
2 scorpions
9 killer bees
8 wights
A howler monkey (D:5)
4 crimson imps
7 hounds
10 orc priests
2 bullfrog skeletons
A jelly (D:8)
2 orc wizards
An iguana (D:7)
4 worker ants
2 hound skeletons
3 gnolls (D:6)
A howler monkey skeleton (D:8)
12 adders
2 shadow imps
An ooze (D:1)
An adder zombie (D:9)
4 worms
A dart slug (D:3)
7 leopard geckos
51 orcs
A ball python (D:1)
8 giant cockroaches
8 goblins
7 hobgoblins
5 jackals
2 quokkas
3 bats
3 frilled lizards
10 kobolds
A rat (D:3)
221 creatures vanquished.

[pedritolo]

wow that was a lot less than I imagined

[duvessa]

It's a cool experiment idea, but... the "harmless", "easy", "dangerous", and "extremely dangerous" labels are based exclusively off how much experience the enemy gives. Of course the "harmless" monsters don't give much XP, that's literally the only thing the "harmless" label means!

Furthermore, IMO even if you only got 1% more xp for subjecting yourself to tedious behaviour, that would be a problem. Call it a negligible benefit all you want, it's still a benefit. And the reality is that you get much more XP than that.

[bel]

Well, nobody in this thread has defined what "trivial" means, yet they make claim that the XP is not negligible. As Voltaire is alleged to have said: "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms".

I would suggest that one definition of "trivial" would be, if you did not train weapon skill (at all), and did not train defensive skills (much), then you should be almost always able to kill the monster one-on-one. Try killing some of the "easy" monsters and tell me how you fare. As I said, a hobgoblin on D:1 is "easy". A jackal pack on D:1 is "easy", and might well be "harmless" depending on when you encounter it. Kobolds (even with a dagger of venom) are "easy". Gnoll packs are typically "easy" when you encounter them. Bee packs are often "easy". Does anyone hold that the right way to deal with these monsters is to melee them with zero weapon skill and no summons?

As for the experiment being true almost by definition, that's not true. One can design XP systems where "harmless" monsters give a non-negligible proportion of XP. There's no Commandment that says that an Ogre should give a hundred times more XP than a goblin, or one which fixes the proportion of "harmless" monsters. And, as you can see, at least one person was vastly misled about the XP "harmless" monsters give. This is because, as a number, there are lots of "harmless" monsters (about a third of all monsters killed, in my example), but they give very little XP.

As for whether even 1% more XP is intolerable, one should look at the counterfactual. The counterfactual is not "you get more XP for free", but that you kill the monster more slowly and with more tedium. It is quite possible that some other non-"trivial" monster walks in while you're dispatching the "trivial" monster, or when you're recovering your HP from a "trivial" fight. The "optimal" way, in the vast majority of the cases, would likely be to kill the "trivial" monsters ASAP.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Does anyone hold that the right way to deal with these monsters is to melee them with zero weapon skill and no summons?

Yes. I have already described in this thread how I fight "dangerous" monsters in corridor while having summon(s) behind me to protect me if needed.
I have never played a version with victory dancing but the XP penalty reminds me about it, why does it make any difference how I killed a monster??? It should not matter, for players sanity.

[Siegurt]

Does anyone hold that the right way to deal with these monsters is to melee them with zero weapon skill and no summons?

Yes. I have already described in this thread how I fight "dangerous" monsters in corridor while having summon(s) behind me to protect me if needed.
I have never played a version with victory dancing but the XP penalty reminds me about it, why does it make any difference how I killed a monster??? It should not matter, for players sanity.

I'm pretty sure if you killed it without the sanity reducing method (aka summon stuff and bash on the thing with your weapon to kill it quickly and easily) you would not notice any significant difference in your power level even late game.

While there's probably *technically* a problem here, optimal play in this case is not going to make a significant enough difference that it should discourage you from playing summoners in a non-tedious way (after all this is a game that you should enjoy, not a problem to solve the outcome of which is critical to human survival, stressing about it probably reduces your enjoyment)

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be fixed, only that anyone who actively worries about the lost XP is only harming themselves

[Stonar]

But that feels like a good reason for its removal, in and of itself - If the argument is "This mechanic doesn't matter," why not remove it, if for no reason other than cleaner code and easier mechanics explanations?

[bel]

The argument is not that the mechanic does not matter. The argument is that killing trivial monsters in melee does not matter. So, there's no (or negligible) tedium-power tradeoff, and hence the OP is wrong.

The mechanic itself does matter, because you have an incentive for training more weapon/defensive skills (hybridize) to get more XP (which will allow you to hybridize further). Regardless of whether you think this is a good idea, the argument is not that "it doesn't matter".

[Stonar]

But say you do hybridize - isn't the optimal behavior still to summon, let your summons beat the dangerous thing, order them to back off, then kill the thing? Isn't that still weirdly tedious? If the problem with summons is that they make you invincible, shouldn't that be solved, rather than some weird spoilery mechanic that can still be abused by tedious play?