Proposal: Redesigns to Torment, Hellfire and Caster AI

[bananaken]

TBH, regarding the huge skill investment of Necromutation: at the point where you're pondering whether or not you want to do extended, with most casters (or hybrid characters with cracked out int stats due to equipment or gods like Chei) getting Necromutation is not that big of a deal.. even if you had minimal to no investment in the appropriate schools. Heck, it's finding the book that can be more of a hurdle at times. Worst case scenario you can begin training the relevant magic schools by wandering Abyss (assuming you've exhausted everything else). The requirements for avoiding YASD in places like Abyss:1 near the end of a 3 rune game are pretty mild by then.

So basically, if I want to hurry up and finish my 15 rune game, I'll probably just dive straight into extended. If I don't feel like dealing with torment though then I'll grind Necromutation until it's castable (again, with a mage or hybrid caster of sorts, though I've heard of lichform trolls ). Yes, I can deal with torment 300 other ways, but Necromutation is the least hassle for me. Grinding expensive spells is very doable, if not tedious and inconvenient if you don't enjoy killing stuff and scavenging for items in Abyss.

Here's what I do:
- Definitely get a source of clarity
- Source of wizardry to speed up improving the success rate
- Don't facetank holy attacks or dispel undead
- Wand of healing is a nice plus, but as a lichform caster you should be abusing the lack of food clock to do mana channeling and level 9 spells to end fights before you take big damage.

This is all like, anecdotal stuff from my games, but Necromutation is really convenient and I hardly ever notice the drawbacks.. definitely worth the trouble if you don't mind a little scummy behavior.

[Sar]

least hassle

training the relevant magic schools by wandering Abyss

okay

[Lasty]

but I think people are only saying that to 'disprove' that necromutation is good for some reason, as you can't talk about necromut without someone jumping up and down screaming about borgs and death's door being better.

Yeah, that's weird. It's like how I can't tell people that scythes trivialize Lair without someone jumping up and down screaming about halberds and glaives being better.

I find it frustrating that being repeatedly offered information on a subject seems to have no effect other than causing you to characterize that information as "jumping up and down screaming".

[bananaken]

least hassle

training the relevant magic schools by wandering Abyss

okay

I've had Berserkers where I abandon Trog after doing everything except the last 10 runes, then switch to Zin/TSO and build up piety, get extra supplies and level up magic schools for the first time to get repel missiles/haste, all in Abyss. I found the transition pretty fun!

Did I just start something by mentioning abyss scumming

[damiac]

No, you're putting words in my mouth. Point out 1 place where I claimed necromutation was a good investment, or better than any other spell. I never did, so that's why I'm annoyed people are bringing up Borg's and Death's door. I know they're better, easier to learn, and all that good stuff.

This is a topic about torment, among other things. Of those three spells, only 1 directly has anything to do specifically with torment. My only line of reasoning, that I keep trying to point out, is IF torment is important, THEN necromut is breaking something important.

That's it. So you can list 1000 reasons why necromut sucks, and I'll probably agree with them, but all 1000 of those reasons is irrelevant to this conversation. Please, please, stop derailing this topic about Torment, Hellfire and Caster AI with irrelevant comments about the relative quality of necromut vs other spells.

[Sar]

Eh, I did have a lot of dudes who went for TSO for the postend because with TSO you can pretty much hold Tab and receive HP and XP, but I never really grind for that. If Oka/Trog vengeance reaches me in Tomb, so be it.

~not optimal~

@damiac: um, so you went from "torment is essential" to "torment is important". Okay. It's important. You either deal with it by positioning or learn a very expensive spell that also blocks two very great spells. That's an important decision. Is it not important enough for you?

Edit: actually TSO probably trivializes the whole postend/torment deal for ~melee~ characters even more so than Nmut does that for spellcasters, so

[crate]

Hellfire and torment aren't necessary for extended at all provided either:
1) You're ok with crawl characters becoming nethack-levels of invulnerable (except crawl has even fewer instadeaths)
2) You're ok with abolutely flattening characters that aren't super strong

(You do sort of need both hellfire and something like torment, in that hellfire is really not very scary against 300 hp, but making it scary against 300 hp means it starts to fall into category 2 on its own.)

It's not necessarily expressly a design goal to make extended follow both 1) and 2) but it mostly works out that way.

Necromutation is a separate topic and I think it probably shouldn't really be a spell for lots of reasons. It's not actually more powerful than other crawl spells but I would definitely argue that it's badly designed (and part of that is precisely because it negates torment entirely).

[Sar]

Yred ****** power pls

[Sprucery]

What, did it work like it works now otherwise? What version was that?

I think the last time I cast BR was in DCSS 0.1.2. It was level 5 then and I think it worked basically the same way than now (memory is hazy though).

[duvessa]

This is a topic about torment, among other things. Of those three spells, only 1 directly has anything to do specifically with torment. My only line of reasoning, that I keep trying to point out, is IF torment is important, THEN necromut is breaking something important.

When you posted this, the only person in the entire thread who had ever called torment "important" was you. You're going to have to move the goalposts a bit further.

[wheals]

In case anyone's curious: Borg's was level 6 in Linley's Dungeon Crawl, then was made level 5 in 4.1, a change then imported into early DCSS. MarvinPA made it level 7 in 0.8, then level 8 in 0.13.

[Hurkyl]

but I think people are only saying that to 'disprove' that necromutation is good for some reason, as you can't talk about necromut without someone jumping up and down screaming about borgs and death's door being better.

Yeah, that's weird. It's like how I can't tell people that scythes trivialize Lair without someone jumping up and down screaming about halberds and glaives being better.

I find it frustrating that being repeatedly offered information on a subject seems to have no effect other than causing you to characterize that information as "jumping up and down screaming".

I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here, but a better analogy might be in a discussion about shields, someone mentions wielding a trident with one, only to have people shoot it down with how much better a weapon halberds are.

[Quazifuji]

My only line of reasoning, that I keep trying to point out, is IF torment is important, THEN necromut is breaking something important.

I think it's long been a part of Crawl's design philosophy to allow ways to circumvent major game mechanics at a cost. The food clock is important, but you can still get around it by playing a mummy, worshipping Jiyva, or wearing gourmand. Before it was removed, item destruction was considered important, but you could get around it by wearing conservation. And in general, when you consider items as a whole, a large part of Crawl's design allows you to selectively protect yourself from various types of threats.

The key thing is that every way to negate a threat comes at an opportunity cost. Most resistances require item slots, races that eliminate major mechanics often come with drawbacks, etc. A big part of crawl is about using the limited number of equipment slots, spell slots, experience points, and racial abilities to protect yourself from as many different types of threats as possible, and then figure out how to deal with the threats you aren't protected against through tactics, consumables, avoidance, etc.

Torment is one such type of threat, and by design, it's one that's particularly hard to protect yourself against. Most ways to protect yourself from torment provide fairly limited protection, and the only ways to become immune come with considerable drawbacks. But like any other threat besides hellfire, there are things you can do about it. It just comes at a considerable opportunity cost, includiding leaving yourself vulnerable to other threats in the process. It forces you to make a tradeoff.