Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier


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Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 16:31

Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

While I have never made an individual game past clearing the mines, I've played many games through the "early game" (Before clearing Lair) and have a game design suggestion for the boards:

I believe Summoner and Artificer have a disproportionally difficult early game due to a design problem, unlike most other starting backgrounds they can not use their starting skills as easily without being punished. Let me explain:

Any melee based background uses their starting weapon and weapon skills to tough out early fights. Beyond a trivial amount of food they do not use an resource killing rats nor do they loose xp. They skills one learns (using choke points, when to run, when to burn additional resources (food, piety, wands, etc)) and transferable thought the mid game.

Most magic based backgrounds use their starting spells and casting skill to tough out early fights. They generally have the toolkit to get though the lair without counting on lucky book drops. The skills they learn (in game and as a player) generally transfer through mid game. While using one's Necromancy minions can sap XP, the starting books has enough other spells (such as pain) that this is not normally a huge problem.

While most ranged weapon based backgrounds have some problems with early ammo consumption, finding additional ammo via shops or gods isn't terribly difficult much of the time, although I think they should be started with a bit more ammo.

Artificer, however is a different story. While starting with three non-trivial wands, the player generally learns that evoking them in cases that a melee fighter would not (normal fights) leads to sub-par fighter with empty wands. Even the wiki suggests quickly picking up a weapon skill and ignoring the evocation skill until picking up a god (only 1 evoke god really) or lucking into a decent rod (difficult without a scroll of acquirement). One generally plays the early game as a sub-par fighter with lucky early wand finds.

Summoner also doesn't play like the rest of the caster classes. Since their starting tool (summoning) seriously drains rewarded xp, the best play is to pick up some type of external weapon or skill and use that to kill most of the "easy" mobs, falling back on spamming summons for difficult enemies. Many times I've played summoner, I feel like a sub-par archer/slinger with magical support I try not to use.

Playing a summoner in particular punishes the player for using the provided initial skillset (the artificer at least can turn into a sub-par fighter when the wands are drained) by reducing the total XP pool. Picking up a stack of darts/stones/spears to chuck at every monster in the early levels feels very grindy when I have no interest in using those long term.

I'm not suggesting removing the XP penalty for summoned monsters. Spamming summons can be used to bypass a non-trivial number of challenges. Here are my thoughts:

1a) Give the summoner a better starting weapon / path for killing outside of summoning skill. This feels a bit hacky, but +1 dagger or staff would by helpful.
ab) Give the summoner a spell in the starting spellbook that is useful without sucking XP. Maybe something like:

Level 1 (Summoning)
Summon Golem
Summons a permanent golem as a faithful servant. Its power grows (in HD) as your summoning skill improves. Summoning it requires a portion of ones life (1d4 damage on cast) and its death costs even more (torment just player). Casting again will unsummon. Damage caused by this creature do not reduce gained XP.

It does feel more like a Necro spell, but I like the idea. One could go further (towards a "pet" class) by allowing self buffs to affect the golem if one wishes, but the idea is to allow a summoner to gain full XP while placing them self in risk (torment + life damage on cast prevents spamming). One could replace Spam-animals with this spell in the starting book.

2) Give artificer a rod that doesn't suck.
In previous versions, the artificer had a choice on starting weapon, with avoiding the "Rod of Striking" being a power gamer quiz question. It hit like a magic missile except missed a bunch, didn't grow with the character at all, and left the player wishing he'd picked up the first sword on the ground instead. While the starting wand collection is better, it still is a consumable resource that is much more difficult to replace than arrows.

I'd like the idea of a starting rod with a low level power useful for surviving the early game and a higher level power(s) useful for getting oneself to the lair. (Maybe some skills are unusable until a certain evocation level). Something to make early use of evocation a viable option.

tl; dr;

Summoner and Artificer could use some early game love. I've laid out a few ideas here and don't mind getting my hands dirty (hacking up a patch) if people are interested in the idea.

Thoughts?
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 17:19

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

Summoning is overpowered even with half xp gain (which doesn't matter, since you don't need much xp if you are just killing everything with summons). It's just that summoning is also full of tons of annoyances; the game becomes as much of "is it actually worth the trouble to keep playing" instead of "how do I avoid dying".

Artificer is ok, it's usually not one of the real power classes but it's not a super challenge class or anything. The wands are strong and you can still pick up a weapon just like every other class.

Halls Hopper

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 17:23

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

Although summoners lose out on XP, their summons allow them to take out higher monsters with less difficulty. This means they can go deeper faster than most classes. Since you only need to increase summoning, and to a certain extent spellcasting, and high levels summons are over-powered (devs, please ignore what I just said), you can finish Zot:5 at low level without too much difficulty. Tip: concentrate on only summoning skill until you max out first spell.

As for artificers, their initial wands gives them a much better chance of surviving upto Lair. By then, they should easily have increased skills necessary to continue.

Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 17:51

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

All of the non-mage spectrum classes are going to kill the vast majority of enemies with melee or ranged combat. Artificiers are supposed to be basically melee characters with a head start in evocation and some wands. If you want to play a character that evokes rods constantly, consier just playing a conjurer, as it's basically the same.

The problem with summoners is that they are tedious. I would much rather play a wizard and switch late game in almost all circumstances, personally. I do like the idea of a single permanent, scaling-strength summon spell though.
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Barkeep

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 18:28

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

The golem idea is interesting (definitely don't think Su needs a buff, though); it reminds me very much of the Blood Golems from Diablo II:

http://www.diablowiki.com/Blood_Golem_(Diablo_II)

The whole "summon heals the player by consuming corpses" is an interesting mechanic, too -- my sense is there's a lot of design space to play with here...
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Halls Hopper

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 18:31

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

As for permanent, there are many permanent allies already. There was also some talk about making Call Canine Familiar permanent and increases in level.
You might want to check out this page : [url]https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:magic:spells:summoning_general&s[]=call&s[]=canine&s[]=familiar[/url]

Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 18:40

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

"Artificiers are supposed to be basically melee characters with a head start in evocation and some wands."

If this is true, why would I want to play one as opposed to a Fighter (better equipment / skills)? The evocation skills are much less useful than an extra level of fighting. You are trading worse equipment and starting skills for 3 wands. I like the idea of a character with a rod of blasting with a bunch of "tricks" wands and scrolls to get out of a tough spot.

"The problem with summoners is that they are tedious. I would much rather play a wizard and switch late game in almost all circumstances, personally."

From http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.ht ... pas-de-faq:

One of the major design goals is: "meaningful decisions (no no-brainers)"

Why would one play an artificer as opposed to a Fighter? Why would one play a Summoner as opposed to a Wizard and spam Call Imp (and get a blast spell, blink, cloud, etc)?
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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 19:01

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

I know there's been some discussion about limiting the number of summons that you can have out at one time. If something like this goes into effect, maybe the XP "sharing" should be revisited too.

At the same time, I've played a couple of MuSu recently and other than a splat from a trapdoor spider that I felt was pretty unfair, most of the others were due to inattention which ties into the "problem with summoners is that they are tedious." Since you have no real granular control over the summons and you are pretty fragile as a summoner, you end up spamming a lot of summons to "scout" around corners for you with t-w and hoping they go the right way.

Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 19:08

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

The backgrounds aren't balanced for all or even most species; I think most people agree that fighter is just weaker than gladiator (for example.) I think wizard is probably the strongest for most characters, so if you want to *win* then you should just play that. You think that Ar is always weaker than Fi (which I don't really agree withi consider SpAr vs SpFi) but regardless of whether you areright, they play differently, which is the purpose of backgrounds. SpEn or DDEE are very strong combos, but people play other ones, too.

Why would one want to play Ar over Fi? Because wands are good, Fi's equipment isn't actually that great,you want to stick to light armour or robes, you're going nemelex, your species has good evocation aptitudes, etc.

Su over Wz? Summon ice beast is quite strong, spammals can clear out everything early if you cast it enough, you only want to ever raise three skils and still get 15 runes, you're a mummy, etc.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 19:16

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

"The backgrounds aren't balanced for all or even most species; I think most people agree that fighter is just weaker than gladiator (for example.)"

Interesting, I always assumed that they were roughly balanced with obvious (Wanderer) exceptions.

"you're going nemelex"

Part of me wonders if the class should start worshiping Nemelex since nearly every Artificer ends up worshiping one if not a demi-god, since it is the (only?) god that works with evocation?

Does anybody think there should be a more reliable way to obtain rods beyond non-spell casters using a scroll of acquirement and asking for a staff?
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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 19:48

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

Fighters start with a decentish weapon, a shield they can't use well because they have no skill to use it, and bad armour. With the exception of falchions and tridents you're going to find nearly all of their equipment by D:2 in most games, and that equipment isn't even very good.

Artificers start with a bad weapon, armour that isn't very good but at least doesn't have the accuracy penalties of scale male (which has bad protection too) and 3 wands. Random effects is extremely strong used against player ghosts and when zapping from staircases to reduce risk, and will kill any early-game monster, with reliablity being its biggest problem.
Enslavement is tremendously useful early on since noone is going to resist it well.
Flame will kill basically every early threat like ice beasts, Sigmund, Grinder and Ijyb, ogres, centaurs orc priests/wizards etc. And you have enough charges to kill probably 4 of these on average. Same goes for kobolds with blowguns or crossbows.

All in all Fighters may have more melee output. But if you aren't a Tr or Mi, who have increased output due to racial abilities/perks, or nowadays Na, you will nearly always have problems when you first encounter the monsters listed above while Artificers are one of the best if not the best class for handling them and will have to run away. And don't forget branded daggers and similar items are common on the first couple of levels, and that they are usually better than a Fi's starting weapon.

So Ar is definitely more reliable and actually has an easier time. I don't know if your problems are due to being to conservative with charges or by wasting them when you don't need to, or not selecting the right weapons from the floor, but Ar is nearly always a strictly better class than Fi on any race.
Fi is screwed when Ijyb shows up with a wand of fire - Ar enslaves him. Fi has to run from every ogre before D:6 or so, if you don't find stuff and play reasonably, Ar takes him out with two or three puffs of flame, Fi would take four poisoned needles from that kobold and die, Ar kills him with one zap and survives mild poisoning, etc. etc. Better streaking class (reliability) and less running away/more fighting (power) due to clearly superior starting gear. Fi is probably the second weakest class topped only by CK - bad gear, no special tricks, no skills to use the bad gear, no god.

"since nearly every Artificer ends up worshiping one if not a demi-god"

  Code:
<Sequell> 27649 games for * (ar): 24724x , 1714x Nemelex Xobeh, 255x Okawaru, 160x Makhleb, 134x Elyvilon, 92x Ashenzari, 87x Xom, 86x Kikubaaqudgha, 85x Trog, 58x Cheibriados, 45x Sif Muna, 43x Fedhas, 43x The Shining One, 38x Yredelemnul, 35x Vehumet, 28x Zin, 13x Jiyva, 8x Lugonu, Beogh


1714 vs 1211 games of Nemelex/non-Nemelex = 58% of artificers who get to pick a god online pick Nemelex. 42% don't. This isn't really "nearly every Artificer". I like playing Artificers, for one, but I don't like playing Nemelex so I would still prefer using other gods, and I know I'm not the only one with a dislike of Nemelex.

Ar is already very strong, they don't need an extremely strong god to compensate for some non-existent weakness, and I would also prefer to see Ar of Xom, Trog and Kiku, etc. possible in the future. Don't forget that while Nemelex may be the only god that supports Evocations directly, other gods like Trog or Okawaru played with heavy armour benefit from it because rods and powerful wand zaps are good ways to compensate for options you lose by giving up magic.
So yeah. Check statistics before you start throwing out imaginary ones, please.


As to Su: Call Imp is one of the best spells from D:1 to D:4 (white imps are great... iron imps tank and have good base damage... crimson imps can pick up weapns and don't die quickly... shadow imps deal good damage and raise zombies), and XL 1 summoners can spammal an ogre to death in the open with not too many problems. Throw Frost, Throw Flame, Magic Dart, Cure Poison etc. could not possibly hope to live up to Call Imp at these depths, and later Summon Ice Beast and Summon Scorpions are excellent spells. Are you standing in corridors where only one spammal can attack at a time? Try to stand in corners (two attackers) or if possible in the open. Any problem Su can poesssibly burn down to really bad luck or tactical problems, where the former can happen to other classes too in different ways and the latter are player mistakes. XP is really not a problem. Try play an almost pure summoner. It's a very easy win. I don't mean to offend but I do think that most people who think Su doesn't get enough XP haven't played Su the way it can be played very successfully and reliably, and don't understand how powerful summoning is.


You're criticising two of the strongest classes. :|
Last edited by cerebovssquire on Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 19:54, edited 1 time in total.

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Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 19:53

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

*ducks*

Alright, alright, I apparently play Wz/Cj/Fi much better than Su/Ar.
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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 21:33

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

cerebovssquire said what I know to be true about Su as a class and I'm not nearly as good a player. You have one concern and that's finding the most powerful summoning spell you can. The downside is that due to the XP sharing, you can't afford to hybridize and really even getting some other spellcasting can be tough. But if you find something like summon horrible things, summon dragons or even summon hydra or haunt, you simply don't care.
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Post Tuesday, 6th March 2012, 21:35

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

banei wrote:As for permanent, there are many permanent allies already. There was also some talk about making Call Canine Familiar permanent and increases in level.
You might want to check out this page : [url]https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:magic:spells:summoning_general&s[]=call&s[]=canine&s[]=familiar[/url]


Nice, having a "pet" might be fun, will being really less tedious. Su is one of the best background, but I can't play it at all. It's way to full/annoying. And if you begin in Su, you don't have lot of diversification possible.

As for Ar, I liked the choice of scroll, but yeah the fact that you could choose between a crappy wand, a good wand or a rod broke the whole system. Maybe a bollean choice could resove it, like draining(5) | random(15), flame(15) | frost(15), charm monster(10) | sleep (15).

Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 3rd April 2012, 18:04

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

My problem isn't artificers being underpowered so much as their starting package being poorly synergized and unfun to play. Staff is a disastrous starting weapon, particularly with the low starting skill and bad aptitudes most races have for it. You don't have any skill for your starting armor. Traps&Doors is helpful but wholly unnecessary. In the end the best road is to turn off evocations (and most of your skills), find new weapons and armor, and play as a rather gimped fighter with some shiny wands. Artificers don't need a buff per e, but it would be nice to be able to actually play them as evokers.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 3rd April 2012, 18:36

Re: Thoughts on early gameplay on Summoner and Artificier

Petro wrote:My problem isn't artificers being underpowered so much as their starting package being poorly synergized and unfun to play. Staff is a disastrous starting weapon, particularly with the low starting skill and bad aptitudes most races have for it.


Artificers work on luck; staff gives you Quarterstaff, which is a very effective weapon if you can find one, which you generally can early on.

With a recent Artificer experience, removing the Wand of Random Effects and bequeathing some Crossbow skill might help compensate.
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