Fedhas rework

[gammafunk]

I've pushed a branch (no pun intended) to the repo containing the basic parts of a Fedhas rework. There's a wiki page I've been using to plan my work:

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/wiki/Fedhas-Rework

That page has the commit messages inline in a way that describes all the relevant changes, so I won't repeat them in this post. This post is for discussing the changes, since I think this design needs a lot of work even if we merge a version similar to the current patch in 0.24. I'll continue to update the wiki page as necessary so that the current state of things is described in once place. As always, we're looking for constructive discussion that follows Tavern rules and the GDD guidelines.

Overview

Fedhas is a plant-themed god originally intended to support range combat. The god gives you plant allies that you can move and fire through allows you to create water to impede monster movement. Unfortunately the current design gives access to too many allies that are strong enough to carry the player through much of the game. These are either permanent or long-lived yet are stationary or have movement limitations, things that together encourage the player to lure monsters to specific locations. As a result, Fedhas has a tedious play-style, and this is reflected in the god's usage rate among players. This page proposes some major changes to the god that retains some of idea of supporting ranged combat.

New Fedhas will use only summoned allies and will allow less unfettered use of allies in general. The proposed abilities might not all work, so I've described some of the issues they have below. I'm not strongly attached to any of these individual abilities, but some or all of them could be a part of the rework. Fedhas might need a couple of iterations across versions to get it into a good final state, similarly to how we've done for Nemelex in the past.

Specific issues

Slow movement passive
The passive inspired by Ledas' Liquefaction doesn't really work (and is currently disabled). Removing the movement penalty adds more kiting to the game and creates something close to directly negating slow species' movement penalties. If you do keep the movement penalty, kiting is a bit less of a problem (although still increased), and having the halo grow from a low radius makes the god very bad at low piety. As I mention in the wiki, we could have the halo be instantly at max radius when it becomes available, probably with a radius of 5 or so. This is more similar to how Ledas currently works, but it still has the issue of being a god that directly negates slow movement mutations. Perhaps the Ledas Liquefaction spell is too bad a design fundamentally.

Overgrowth ability
Locking powerful terrain changing abilities behind a god is a fun thing to have in the game, but I don't want it to be excessive. I've kept the ability at 4*, since it's not strong compared to access to an ability at 5* that summons a guaranteed oklob plant. The piety cost is pretty high at 12 to limits its use, and I could see increasing that cost. I'd like it to retain the ability to break non-diggable walls such as stone, metal, crystal to make it more impactful.

Piety gain
In this branch, Fedhas is changed to have normal piety gain through kills. Although I'm not averse to considering alternate piety systems, they must be fundamentally different from normal piety gain. In other words nothing that plays like a more elaborate version of exploration piety. It's not a focus of this rework to make sure this god has a unique piety system.

Overall comments
This is a fairly lackluster god design that just keeps and reforms the most "fun" active stuff of current Fedhas and throws in a couple more useful actives. A rework that incorporated more interesting passives could be great, but of course the challenge is coming up with good ones. As I mentioned in that overview, it might take a couple versions to get Fedhas into a final state more people can be happy with.

[duvessa]

can we also remove Hepliaklqana in 0.24
Mod note: Here is your of punishment, as promised.

[nago]

If overgrowth will be implemented as corruption style, could evoke forest be removed and move the nymph and whatever it does to this ability?

Or just use the fact you're working on plants to remove this spell that shouldn't be really a spell?

[Lacuenta]

Slow movement passive
The passive inspired by Ledas' Liquefaction doesn't really work (and is currently disabled). Removing the movement penalty adds more kiting to the game and creates something close to directly negating slow species' movement penalties. If you do keep the movement penalty, kiting is a bit less of a problem (although still increased), and having the halo grow from a low radius makes the god very bad at low piety. As I mention in the wiki, we could have the halo be instantly at max radius when it becomes available, probably with a radius of 5 or so. This is more similar to how Ledas currently works, but it still has the issue of being a god that directly negates slow movement mutations. Perhaps the Ledas Liquefaction spell is too bad a design fundamentally.

Since you want to keep the ranged combat flavour by impeding monster movement, perhaps its worth changing the aura in one that grows fungi/plants/briars/balistomecytes/shallow water (perhaps have mix scale with invo) on random tiles within its area (which could scale with piety) over time, these will "wither" quickly when a tile is "unlit" for more then X turns. Like Qazlals passive cloudstorm it should probably not work in corridors.

[sanka]

Random ideas:

1. Summons should disappear immediately (or very quickly) outside of your LOS. This would reduce kiting for stationary summons a lot and I think it would make summons better in general.

2. If you want some movement reduction (supporting ranged combat), you could create a new summoned plant: stationary, and makes movement slow around an aura. This way you can not kite as much, or escape as a slow race, as you can not move the aura, but is still helps ranged combat.

[Siegurt]

Personally, I've always used Fedahs more for confusion stabs than for ranged support, not to say it's bad for that task, I just tend to play more stabbers than ranged combat. I would be mildly sad if Fedhas didn't have some ability to confuse/blind/whatever stuff.

I also feel like the harder-than-piety limit for fedhas's summons, combined with the fixed and permanant nature of Fedhas's current incarnation doubles down on the desirability of kiting. It would still be very powerful to kite things if Fedhas's summons were tied to a renewable resource like piety, even if nothing else changed, it would make kiting not quite as attractive as it is presently.

I do like the "can't move while creatures are in LOS" mechanism, I think it's fun to work with/around, so I'd love it if something in the new paradigm retained it.

[Aean]

Removing fiddly mechanics like the fruit is a definite positive, but particularly when it comes to stationary summons there's still a lot of potential for tedium. It seems like it would be better to have a design where the player is encouraged to use them as-needed to fortify their current position, rather than leading back to a killhole or an oklob farm. Better to minimize kiting and luring, and to have Fedhas as a "summon temporary stationary allies where I am" god than a killhole god or a permanent-allies god.

There are three dials that really need to be considered, I think - power, duration, and cost.

Summoning oklobs, for example, gives high power, but if the duration is long, that encourages oklob farms. So either the duration needs to be short - forcing players to summon them into the battle rather than retreat to them - or the cost needs to be high enough to discourage farms.

In contrast, the ring of brambles is relatively low-power, and rarely needs a long duration, so it can have a very low cost - encouraging players to re-summon them as-needed in big battles, or to summon them often.

Even the overgrowth ability, as you mention, has high power, but if you're loading it up with a very high piety cost, it doesn't matter so much that it can break certain vaults (and others can be adjusted as necessary to prevent access). Alternatively, it can be rescaled to allow regular reshaping of the dungeon, but, say, with long cooldowns, or producing weaker summons than before.
---
Now, aspirationally, I think it could be really cool if overgrowth worked like a slow-growing (literally) corrupt, spreading out from areas that the player walked while the ability was active. This sort of combines the "Summon Forest" notion with corruption, and could transform an area - or even the entire map - into plants and trees and such. It'd need a high cost, and some sort of balance factor to keep players acting instead of waiting out the growth (massive noise, perhaps), but I love the notion of Fedhas reshaping maps with plants as a counterpoint to the corruption-style reshaping.

[byrel]

Now, aspirationally, I think it could be really cool if overgrowth worked like a slow-growing (literally) corrupt, spreading out from areas that the player walked while the ability was active. This sort of combines the "Summon Forest" notion with corruption, and could transform an area - or even the entire map - into plants and trees and such. It'd need a high cost, and some sort of balance factor to keep players acting instead of waiting out the growth (massive noise, perhaps), but I love the notion of Fedhas reshaping maps with plants as a counterpoint to the corruption-style reshaping.

I think this would inevitably devolve into obscure arcane mechanics that noone understands (rather like current ballistomycete mold and spreading.) Crawl's display has pretty limited bandwidth, so if you don't keep the abilities relatively simple you won't be able to telegraph the mechanics well enough.

[bel]

No time to playtest this right now (hopefully soon). But for now, thanks for the Fedhas rework.

[sdynet]

I played this myself through compiles. Below is my opinion.

①Slow movement passive: When a player or allied plant attacks an enemy, it becomes active to the maximum range. It is deactivated after three turns, and the duration may be renewed by an attack.
- Still powerful, but more tactical. (As you intended) To gain enough of its power, the player must launch a long-range attack.
- Even if players run away, but if they want to keep it, they have to hit it once every three turns. Use god's power if the player doesn't want to stop.

②Fedhas protects the player from attack by allied plants and from attack by the player.
- This will prevent the player from being killed by spores. It is also an option for wizards. This presents a new tactic for wizards.

③Allied plants are not summon-creatures but live-creatures. Therefore they are not affected by Abjuration. Instead, they disappear when they get out of the player's sight.
- My intention is to make Fedhas a more powerful presence in defense, and this is the price.

④Overgrowth: Corruption-style LOS application. It also makes players grow into trees. When attempting to move, a warning message is an output, and pressing "Yes" releases the tree form.
- Corrupt supports the escape, but this power supports the defense.

⑤Grow Oklob: This power and Grow Ballistomycete mechanism are too similar. Change its mechanism to Battlesphere. It fires spit acid at targets that the player attacks.
- If a player wants to maximize the power of Oklob, the player must attack without running away.
- (As you intended) To gain enough of its power, the player must launch a long-range attack.

I don't know if you like it. What do you think?

[gammafunk]

If overgrowth will be implemented as corruption style, could evoke forest be removed and move the nymph and whatever it does to this ability?

Or just use the fact you're working on plants to remove this spell that shouldn't be really a spell?

Didn't have any plans to remove Summon Forest, but I suppose if something similar to it became part of Fedhas' abilities, it could be. What that spell does is a kind of mix of stationary things (berserked trees) and non-stationary ones (the dryad and its vines). The rework has summons that are stationary or stationary in LOS of monsters so far, which isn't a requirement, but it's a nice unifying theme. But if you think Summon Forest shouldn't be a spell, I'm not sure that there's a gameplay argument that it works as a god ability either. Is retaining only the compelling parts of the spell (e.g. making berserked trees) what you're after, or is this more of a flavor thing?

Overgrowth currently has an "LRD-style" 3x3 targeter . Reticule not shown, but center of targeting is tile at SE, SE, then S of player:



result:



A Corruption-like ability is more fidgety in terms of requiring the player to stand close to which tiles they most want transformed. Requiring the player to be next to areas about to be transformed to have the best chance of success is interesting in some ways, but communicating the chance for a square to be transformed isn't really possible. The non-targeter approach requires less UI, but this ability can't be used too frequently due to piety costs as it is.

[gammafunk]

Slow movement passive
The passive inspired by Ledas' Liquefaction doesn't really work (and is currently disabled). Removing the movement penalty adds more kiting to the game and creates something close to directly negating slow species' movement penalties. If you do keep the movement penalty, kiting is a bit less of a problem (although still increased), and having the halo grow from a low radius makes the god very bad at low piety. As I mention in the wiki, we could have the halo be instantly at max radius when it becomes available, probably with a radius of 5 or so. This is more similar to how Ledas currently works, but it still has the issue of being a god that directly negates slow movement mutations. Perhaps the Ledas Liquefaction spell is too bad a design fundamentally.

Since you want to keep the ranged combat flavour by impeding monster movement, perhaps its worth changing the aura in one that grows fungi/plants/briars/balistomecytes/shallow water (perhaps have mix scale with invo) on random tiles within its area (which could scale with piety) over time, these will "wither" quickly when a tile is "unlit" for more then X turns. Like Qazlals passive cloudstorm it should probably not work in corridors.

Something like passive "mundane" plant growth had occurred to me, but passively making firewood plants in random spots is not likely to be useful. It could make them near the player in a pattern designed to impede movement, but this would require a bit of subtlety. Passively making stationary summons is also likely to add a lot of frustration, as the saga of Demonspawn's Demonic Guardian has shown. For damaging summons like ballistos, oklobs etc, we don't want to have too much overlap between the other abilities; I've tried to keep that minimal so far.

[gammafunk]

Random ideas:

1. Summons should disappear immediately (or very quickly) outside of your LOS. This would reduce kiting for stationary summons a lot and I think it would make summons better in general.

They are presently normally expiring summons with duration that range from shortish (wall of briars) to long (oklob plants). Obviously there is still some luring that can be done unless the duration is very short, but players tend to find very short durations like Summon Hydra to be annoying. I was most interested in limiting the most egregious luring you get with permanent allies.

2. If you want some movement reduction (supporting ranged combat), you could create a new summoned plant: stationary, and makes movement slow around an aura. This way you can not kite as much, or escape as a slow race, as you can not move the aura, but is still helps ranged combat.

Sounds like you're proposing an active, and I don't think it's actually better than just copying the Ledas' Liquefaction approach: use the ability to create a duration-based aura. I was most interested in having non-active things given how many of those we have. A passive but not always on version of the aura could potentially work if it were short enough duration and there was a good triggering condition, though.

[gammafunk]

I will post some additional replies to things in this thread later when I have more time, but until then here's a commit I made in the branch:

Rework damage of ballistomycete spores

Currently the spore damage is fixed at 3d15, which is pretty high when
the 3* Grow Ballistomycete becomes available. This commit incorporates
Invocations skill into the spore explosion damage and decreases the
initial damage.

The new explosion damage is 3d(5 + spore HD), with spore HD ranging from
1 at 0 Invocations to 28 at Invocations 27. Hence the max damage at 27
Invocations is 3d33, which is very similar to max spell-power Fireball.

[gammafunk]

Personally, I've always used Fedahs more for confusion stabs than for ranged support, not to say it's bad for that task, I just tend to play more stabbers than ranged combat. I would be mildly sad if Fedhas didn't have some ability to confuse/blind/whatever stuff.

The reworked Fedhas has Grow Ballistomycete to produce spore explosions that apply confusion to living creatures. I'm a little reluctant to expand on this unless the god loses some of its other summon abilities.

I also feel like the harder-than-piety limit for fedhas's summons, combined with the fixed and permanant nature of Fedhas's current incarnation doubles down on the desirability of kiting. It would still be very powerful to kite things if Fedhas's summons were tied to a renewable resource like piety, even if nothing else changed, it would make kiting not quite as attractive as it is presently.

The move to piety as a cost instead of food and use of summons over permanent allies in the reworked branch will help reduce kiting, and I'm definitely not considering any ideas that go against that reduction.

I do like the "can't move while creatures are in LOS" mechanism, I think it's fun to work with/around, so I'd love it if something in the new paradigm retained it.

While I never found the movement limitation for wandering mushrooms to be very compelling in practice, it is retained to some degree, since those can be created by Overgrow. Placing mushrooms where the wall tiles are transformed is likely to put them in or near melee distance of vault monsters revealed by wall destruction, for example.

If you're talking about that limitation applied to the player specifically, nothing in the current proposal does this. I't wouldn't work well as any kind of passive without a carefully thought out triggering condition. And it would need to feel properly differentiated from just quaffing a potion of lignification, for example the qualities of whatever kind of plant you turn into could change based on something (e.g. invocations skill or the number of plants in LOS).

[gammafunk]

One issue with the current branch is that we still have conducts against corpse-violating spells as well as restrictions against ghouls worshiping. These were based on the strong connection Fedhas previously had with corpses and the thematic idea of "maintaining the natural cycle of life and death". Now that Fedhas doesn't care about corpses, the corpse theme doesn't exist and the conduct doesn't make sense.

My initial thought was to simply remove the conduct and species limitation, since they're ultimately not too interesting. Obviously Necromancy is a strong school, and the current conduct excludes some of the stronger spells in the school, but it's such a minor conduct overall.

I know some are keen to find interesting conducts for gods, so I'll offer two possibilities. The first is to retheme the conduct so that Fedhas now cares about maintaining the natural cycle of life and death and hence hates all of Necromancy and all undead species. Necromancy spells are hated because they prevent natural death or disturb the natural decay of the dead. Undead species are hated since they're not in the ground being dead like they should be! The new conduct is similar to the current one, just a little stronger and less arbitrary.

The second possibility is a bit more drastic: theme Fedhas as a good god. The god already has a natural feel of "goodness" since it's about supporting nature. I'd not up front that disallowing cannibalism doesn't make much sense on Fedhas and is an annoying that I'd not want to see expended by adding it to this god. Fedhas could have all the usual anti-evil conducts, however. It would expand the limitations a bit, making them more impactful. It would additionally include Fedhas in the good god conversion system, allowing some interesting god changes.

[Hellmonk]

As a god of nature, Fedhas should hate global warming and therefore oppose the use of fire magic

[Siegurt]

The reworked Fedhas has Grow Ballistomycete to produce spore explosions that apply confusion to living creatures. I'm a little reluctant to expand on this unless the god loses some of its other summon abilities.

Well, currently I use mushrooms as a weird confuse-stab source, Ballistomycete's have always been kind of a mess, particularly targeting-wise, so as long as the confusion applied is something I can actually take advantage of, I'll feel satisfied

While I never found the movement limitation for wandering mushrooms to be very compelling in practice, it is retained to some degree, since those can be created by Overgrow. Placing mushrooms where the wall tiles are transformed is likely to put them in or near melee distance of vault monsters revealed by wall destruction, for example.

Well, what I found interesting was controlling monster LOS to get mushrooms fixed in advantageous positions so that I could exploit the pathing of monsters to maximize the mushroom utility, while minimizing the amount of damage they took, probably not something that most people find terribly compelling..

If you're talking about that limitation applied to the player specifically, nothing in the current proposal does this. I't wouldn't work well as any kind of passive without a carefully thought out triggering condition. And it would need to feel properly differentiated from just quaffing a potion of lignification, for example the qualities of whatever kind of plant you turn into could change based on something (e.g. invocations skill or the number of plants in LOS).

I wasn't talking about "player being transformed into a mushroom" effects (which is currently available as a badform, and is fine for what it is).

If "wandering mushroom style player movement" was to be a thing, the only thing that comes into my head which would be substantially different would be "take control of a walking mushroom and have it walk around until it was spotted, and them pop out of it to return to myself" which sounds a little too awkward, and far too out there for Fedhas, but would be a somewhat interesting ability, I suppose.

[Sorcerous]

I know some are keen to find interesting conducts for gods, so I'll offer two possibilities. The first is to retheme the conduct so that Fedhas now cares about maintaining the natural cycle of life and death and hence hates all of Necromancy and all undead species. Necromancy spells are hated because they prevent natural death or disturb the natural decay of the dead. Undead species are hated since they're not in the ground being dead like they should be! The new conduct is similar to the current one, just a little stronger and less arbitrary.

The second possibility is a bit more drastic: theme Fedhas as a good god. The god already has a natural feel of "goodness" since it's about supporting nature. I'd not up front that disallowing cannibalism doesn't make much sense on Fedhas and is an annoying that I'd not want to see expended by adding it to this god. Fedhas could have all the usual anti-evil conducts, however. It would expand the limitations a bit, making them more impactful. It would additionally include Fedhas in the good god conversion system, allowing some interesting god changes.

The first reads more thematically appropriate to me. Would it also introduce extra piety for destroying undead and necro-casters? Reinforcing the species/spell school lock is fine imo. I disagree with the idea for Fedhas to be a part of the "good" group. While nature has all sorts of nice things, it is also composed of terrifying things. For every verdant field and lush forest there is also a zombifying fungus or aggressive weed or poison flower or whatever else. Another thing I generally don't like about expanding the "good" group is how changing a deity (for extended, mostly) defaults to TS1 or Zin even when including wrath. It's "worth the cost". Putting Fedhas in the same basket would only encourage more monotonous gameplay decisions.

[TheMeInTeam]

As a god of nature, Fedhas should hate global warming and therefore oppose the use of fire magic

But fire magic is local warming!

Good god conduct is interesting, I expect we'd see a ton of Fedhas --> switch for extended like that though.

[tasonir]

If the slow movement/ledas abilities can't be made to work, an alternative option would be to have some form of a "pin" ability. A monster that is pinned can take all actions except movement, so they'd be unable to get closer to you. If they have any ranged abilities, they'd continue to use them. It'd have to be a fairly short duration, likely only around 2-3 turns, to prevent trivializing monsters without a ranged attack entirely (although to be fair, they're already fairly easy in many cases).

This could be an active ability (probably best) or even a passive that randomly pins a monster in LOS from time to time. I think making it an active works better though as otherwise it's rather similar to Gozag's gold distraction. If it is passive, you'd probably want the duration to be limited to only 1-2 turns. A passive also runs the risk of encouraging kiting.

[2tousent]

I think Rain had a niche, especially for Merfolk...

It may not be very important, but that leaves characters with no reliable way of making water (right?), so even if most people don't use it, it's a bit sad to see go

[gammafunk]

Quick update, Fedhas rework is merged in trunk as of this commit. It will take a while for all servers to rebuild, but CKO and CPO have it right now.

The only substantive change from my last post about the ballistomycete spore damage is that I went with removal of Fedhas' corpse violation conducts without replacement, see discussion in this commit. This means that undead species can now worship Fedhas. As I mention in that commit, I'm open to going with a conduct if it works and details can be hashed out. The switch of Fedhas to a good god probably won't work at all, but it's possible that there's a no-necromancy conduct that could exist if the justification and definition of that is fully worked out. In any case, any new conduct needs to be substantively stronger than no-corpse-violation was.

[2tousent]

I was just thinking, if the problem with the slow ability is that it leads to kiting, but the god is still focused arround ranged attack, why not make the slow movement affect the player more than it affects the enemies?

The idea is that the player cannot run away, but if they are standing still, the enemies will take longer to reach you while you shoot at them, but i don't know if that's the same problem as "kiting"

For flavor reasons, you could say that the roots and vines that are snaring the enemies are coming directly from the player's feet, hindering the user's movement

[petercordia]

I was just thinking, if the problem with the slow ability is that it leads to kiting, but the god is still focused arround ranged attack, why not make the slow movement affect the player more than it affects the enemies?

The idea is that the player cannot run away, but if they are standing still, the enemies will take longer to reach you while you shoot at them, but i don't know if that's the same problem as "kiting"

For flavor reasons, you could say that the roots and vines that are snaring the enemies are coming directly from the player's feet, hindering the user's movement

That could be very interesting. For mages etc too. I think the slow penalty to the player should be identical to the slow penalty to monsters though, otherwise Fedas would step on the toes of Chei.

[gameguard]

So is it a bug or intended behavior that oklobs become permanent at around 20 invo?

[sdynet]

The nice patch made Fedhas very interesting. I'm having a good time with it. Some questions came to mind while playing.
* Enemy projectiles can pass through the Wall of Briars.
* Player's projectile cannot pass through Ballistomycete spore.
* Player's spore cannot pass through allied plant. <- This is canceled. If spores can get through plants, the player's gonna die.
Are these two intended functions?

[gameguard]

Plants don't fire when you are invisible. Bug I think.

[bel]

The ballistomycete ability seems pretty good (read: OP). It's like having an limitless supply of passive ball lightnings. And it confuses enemies as well. And you can place the ballistomycete to block line of fire as well. Crowds are no problem at all with one or two of these around.

Not as broken as wandering mushrooms at 1*, but still pretty strong.

I really like new Fedhas. All the abilities are nice and smooth. Also, no more worrying about allied plants dying makes it easier to keep piety up.

[sdynet]

I tried playing Fedhas DrCj.
https://webzook.net/soup/morgue/trunk/sdynet/morgue-sdynet-20191226-152828.txt
The new Fedhas MP was too expensive to use with magic. For the Fedhas wizard combination to be realistic, it is necessary to lower the MP cost of power.

[kcfos]

Fedhas should utilize corpses in some way. It fits the theme of decomposition, and corpses are an interesting resource to play with. Make some of his abilities require a fresh corpse to decompose in order to use. Maybe spellpower based on monster hd.

[TheMeInTeam]

Fedhas should utilize corpses in some way. It fits the theme of decomposition, and corpses are an interesting resource to play with. Make some of his abilities require a fresh corpse to decompose in order to use. Maybe spellpower based on monster hd.

I'm not a fan of this unless demons start making corpses in extended, there are already quite a few gods that are pretty much dead weight there and Fedhas used to be one of them.

[Siegurt]

Fedhas should utilize corpses in some way. It fits the theme of decomposition, and corpses are an interesting resource to play with. Make some of his abilities require a fresh corpse to decompose in order to use. Maybe spellpower based on monster hd.

I'm not a fan of this unless demons start making corpses in extended, there are already quite a few gods that are pretty much dead weight there and Fedhas used to be one of them.

Demonspawn have made corpses for quite a while in pan, but there's definitely less corpses available overall in extended.

What if you could just use corpses instead of MP, then it'd be helpful early on, when MP is at a premium, and in extended, you would have more MP, so the lack of corpses wouldn't really be a big deal.