Proposal: Rename Summoner to Druid

[skyspire]

I propose two changes:

1) Rename Summoner to Druid (it sounds cooler and more thematic)
2) Replace "Summon Imp" from the Druid spell book, with a new spell called "Cure Other" (this spell cannot be used on self)

3) Cure Other would be in the Charms school, or maybe Summons/Charms level 2 - it would only heal a small amount 1-6 hp at low power to summons. With higher summons skill, this could max out to the power of a curing potion (not a heal wounds pot) So with power maxxed, it is like giving a curing potion to your summon, curing poison or confusion.


Druid is a popular class, it would be awesome to see it adapted in DCSS. I know we already have Spriggan Druids in the Enchanted Forest, so obviously the player version of Druid is not a forest druid, so his spells are different. So I don't think a player Druid class would conflict with the monster version thematically.. Just like monster Wizards have a different spell set than player Wizards.

[Mulzaro]

I think a Druid in this game sounds more like a zealot of Fedhas Madash.

[Wahaha]

Why should a class that casts summoning spells be called a druid and not a summoner? Consider that none of the summoning spells are related to nature.

[skyspire]

If you think about it, the spells in the Book of Callings (which we can rename to Druidic Lore or Book of the Druid), are all nature-related spells. They are all natural creatures, with the exception Ice Beast, which is arguably an elemental creature. (Nature has 4 elements - air earth water fire)

a. Summon Small Mammals
b. Cure Other
c. Summon Canine
d. Summon Scorpions
e. Summon Ice Beast

Cure Other can be used to keep grey rats/canines/scorpions/ice beast alive a little longer.

Even the Spriggan Druid monster has the spell "Druid's Call" which "teleports a random band of natural, animal-intelligence creatures to the caster"

[Sar]

And then your Druid levels up and starts summoning demons from beyond this world and horrible creatures which existence alone is an offence to all things natural and pure.
Goddamn treehuggers.

[skyspire]

hybridizing of classes is part of what makes crawl fun

[and into]

Well, you aren't just proposing a name change, but also game play changes that would be implemented in order to justify the name change. All of this skips over an important point: What is the upshot of doing this? What is wrong with summoners now that this change would improve upon? Would spamming "Cure Other" at your quokka or dog pal be more fun than calling up some imps? Also, call imp (even with cap of 3) is a very good spell and not getting an upgrade to SSM until lvl 3 Canine Familiar would actually be pretty frustrating for summoners.

[skyspire]

well, I don't suggest removing Summon Imp from other spell books, only the druid/summoner one. Druids would have to rely on summon animals + cure other instead of Summon Imp. So yes there would be a slight playstyle difference, you would want to keep alive your more useful summons, like healing the grey rat or wolf instead of rolling the dice with another summon. It makes your summons less disposable and gives you a way to help prevent their deaths in combat, allowing a more support type role, which at present doesn't exist as a playstyle in crawl. Unless you are a summoner playing with Elyvilon as a god (which is unwise since you lose piety when your summons die)

The nice thing about "summon small mammals" is that the strength of the spell does increase with higher Summoning skill, allowing it to be a useful spell until the Lair.

Up until this point, summoners treat combat situations as meat grinders, not caring if they live or die, and just creating more summons gambling that a wolf or warg will generate on "summon canine", and not a small dog.

[Sar]

A Summoner is a character who starts with the book of Summonings and has a decent amount of Summoning skill.
A Druid is...

[skyspire]

A druid is a summoner of natural or elemental-based creatures (Ice Beast) , with also the ability to Cure Other their summons. Starting with the Book of the Druid and a decent amount of summoning skill (no starting skills change from present Summoner class).

This is only a slight thematic tweak, no major changes, other than 1 new spell.

[MDvedh]

I think of Druid mostly as of Nature worshiper connected to the forests and other natural places, not the guy who summons dogs and scorpions out of pink smoke.

[nicolae]

This is only a slight thematic tweak, no major changes, other than 1 new spell.

Is there any reason to make this change besides your own personal sense of aesthetics?

[skyspire]

Is there any reason to make this change besides your own personal sense of aesthetics?

It is a proposal. I think its a cool idea that makes the game better by introducing a new gameplay mechanic and a more thematic class. Do others like the idea too? Apparently not yet.

But this is the purpose of posting a proposal, to find out if others like your idea or not. Maybe most people don't like to create new gameplay mechanics and instead just like things they way they are. Me, I like to innovate; look for ways to make things better. It's easy to complain. It's tougher to come up with new ideas and have the teflon to not to let whiners get you down.

[nicolae]

It is a proposal. I think its a cool idea that makes the game better by introducing a new gameplay mechanic and a more thematic class.

What new gameplay mechanic? Healing your summons isn't interesting. They're temporary. They will all vanish eventually even if nothing damages them ever. They're supposed to be disposable. If it's important to facilitate having more powerful summons around, then it would be easier to simply modify existing spells to remove or lower the chances of low-power summons.

At best, this proposal would just encourage more micromanaging in ally play, which the devs don't want at all.

It's easy to complain. It's tougher to come up with new ideas and have the teflon to not to let whiners get you down.

It's good to not let disagreements get you down, but rejecting all criticism out-of-hand is like sticking teflon on your brake pads.

[TehDruid]

No. No. No. No. No. No!!

[TehDruid]

Did I mention I'm opposed to this proposal?

[skyspire]

rejecting all criticism out-of-hand is like sticking teflon on your brake pads.

Are you implying that I am rejecting criticism? Just posting to this forum category means you are welcoming it. I think that any rejecting that's going on is not from me.

Where's the love?

[crate]

You can already heal your summons; you have to worship Ely to do so.

I don't think duplicating a god ability as a spell is a good idea.

[Tiktacy]

I really like this idea actually, but the way we are going about it doesn't feel right. Rather than keep all the same spells, remove some of them and add some new ones. I don't have time to suggest anything atm, but I might be back later to give some ideas. I was thinking something related to buffing allies for a level 4 spell. This is all just ideas though, I doubt it will be implemented.

[Sandman25]

I really like this idea actually, but the way we are going about it doesn't feel right. Rather than keep all the same spells, remove some of them and add some new ones. I don't have time to suggest anything atm, but I might be back later to give some ideas. I was thinking something related to buffing allies for a level 4 spell. This is all just ideas though, I doubt it will be implemented.

Yes, Druid could be a new background if there were more nature-related spells. Call Treant, Call Thorn Lotus, Call Satyr, Call Spriggan Enchanter, Awaken Forest. Its main difference from Summoner would be ability to have summons which don't fight in melee only, they could have ranged/magic attacks and decrease MR of hostile monsters.

[dck]

Awaken forest is a thoroughly horrible spell to give to a player.
Similarly summoning random forest things sounds pretty bad.
I think the game doesn't need any more summoning spells, too.

[nagdon]

This idea would be interesting, but seems to be relatively hard as plants are the domain of Fedhas, healing is the domain of Elyvilon (although demon summoning is shared between Makhleb and Summoning spells, so I think some overlap is allowed).

My spell ideas for Druids:

• Summon Swamp (Summoning/Poison 3-4) (the name is mentioned in docs/develop/spells.txt as an example for a summoning spell that doesn't summon a creature) Temporary shallow water, mist and plants appear around the player, and walls (only regular ones) may crumble and sink into the ground. Summoned water, plants and clouds are temporary, but the walls destroyed by the humidity don't grow back. Casting it unsummons the effects of the previous casting. The main effects could be wall destruction (to make open fighting ground for other summons) and battlefield control.
• Venom of Frenzy (Poison 2-3, maybe Poison/Charms or Poison/Transmutation or Poison/Hexes) (something similar was suggested somewhere)
  Targetted creature is heavily poisoned and gains movement speed increase and +meele damage proportional to the severity of its poisoning. Does not anger friendly unintelligent targets. Its main use would be buffing summoned allies (especially the poison-vulnerable scorpions for the increased effect), but sometimes could be used as a very dangerous self-buff spell (on a high-hp race) or as a dangerous attack spell (the targetted enemy may eventually die, but usually has a chance to kill the player first).
• Call Predator (Summoning 3..5)
  Offers a corpse to summon a predatory animal (the corpse is consumed by the predator). The summonend animal depends on spellpower and the size of the corpse, for example a bat corpse at low spellpower might yield a jackal, a hound or an adder, while a yak corpse at high spellpower might call an ancient bear, an alligator or an anaconda. Bad (mutagenic, rot-inducing) corpses don't work, rotten corpses either don't work or always call a jackal, poisonous corpses can work, but fail if the randomly selected predator isn't poison-resistant. The summoning is temporary with a long duration. This would be an interesting non-necromantic corpse using spell. It uses a corpse, not chunks, because otherwise casting Animate Skeleton would be too useful before it.
• Dull Pain (Poison 2) (a version of Heal Other which is a bit more different from the Elyvilon ability)
  A creature touched by the caster is infused by a poison which blocks pain, but deals permanent damage, which is initially hidden by the lack of pain. Targetted creature gains some hp and maxhp (for example +30% of maxhp), but loses some maxhp (for example 60% of original value) after a fixed duration. Doesn't affect hostile or poison resistant creatures, can't be cast on the player.

I could imagine a Druid background with a spellbook containing Summon Small Mammal, Venom of Frenzy, Dull Pain, one or two of {Summon Swamp, Call Predator, Call Canine Familiar} and Summon Scorpions and a separate Summoner with a spellbook containing Summon Small Mammal, Call Imp, maybe Abjuration, maybe Call Canince Familiar, and two of {Summon Ice Beast, Summon Demon, Shadow Creatures}. This way Druid could have a Poison/Summoning focus with natural summons and some ally buffing and Summoner could have a pure unnatural/demonic summoning focus (maybe repalce Summon Small Mammal with something else for them?).

[moocowmoocow]

DrDr: draconian druid, doctor of doctoring.

[nicolae]

Summon Swamp (Summoning/Poison 3-4) (the name is mentioned in docs/develop/spells.txt as an example for a summoning spell that doesn't summon a creature) Temporary shallow water, mist and plants appear around the player, and walls (only regular ones) may crumble and sink into the ground. Summoned water, plants and clouds are temporary, but the walls destroyed by the humidity don't grow back. Casting it unsummons the effects of the previous casting. [i]The main effects could be wall destruction (to make open fighting ground for other summons) and battlefield control.

I think the game design has moved away from the idea of summoning terrain instead of monsters, despite spells.txt. Some way of temporarily summoning a ton of plants, like some kind of sessile Summon Butterflies, might be useful somewhere, though it probably has too much overlap with Fedhas' schtick.

Venom of Frenzy (Poison 2-3, maybe Poison/Charms or Poison/Transmutation or Poison/Hexes) (something similar was suggested somewhere)

I've no comment on the actual effects, but "frenzy" is loaded terminology since its current uses also imply that the target will go neutral and attack indiscriminately.

[nagdon]

One casting of Summon Swamp could usually summon only 1..4 plants even if it is cast in an open area (in a corridor it affects a smaller area and summons fewer things). The other two summoning effects (shallow water and mist) should be more common. For example the spell affects visible squares with distance <= 4 (~50 squares in open areas) and destroys walls with 20% chance, converts floor into shallow water with 30% chance, creates mist with 30% chance (independent from water) and plants with 5% chance. This means that if there are 4 affected positions between the player and the monster, then there is ~35% chance for getting 2 mist clouds between you and the monster.

Fedhas upgrade should only produce temporary oklobs from the summoned plants.

Sorry for the "Frenzy" in the name, originally I planned to give the spell a frenzy effect, then I replaced it with the poison-dependent buff and forgot to change the name.

A minor clarification: you don't have to meele attack the target for Dull Pain, the "creature touched" simply refers to meele range (this is not strictly neccessary) and gives a reason why this spell doesn't work on hostile creatures (they won't let you touch them).

[skyspire]

You can already heal your summons; you have to worship Ely to do so.

I don't think duplicating a god ability as a spell is a good idea.

You also lose piety with Elyvilon if you allow your summons/friends to die. Because of this, isn't Elyvilon a horrible god for a summoner? It would be great to have a heal/cure other ability and not get piety loss. Also, Elyvilon has heal other, not cure other. And the proposed spell is Cure Other.


I think having more Druid-specific spells are a great idea, just like for Skald, a new spellset was created. However, I think it is a bit ambitious and unlikely to get implemented. I just suggested replacing summoner with druid, and have druid keep most of the summoner spells, except Summon Imp. To keep things simple. But I'm all for having more spells, it just will be more work to do that.

[nicolae]

Also, Elyvilon has heal other, not cure other. And the proposed spell is Cure Other.

ah, well, that's totally different then

[WalkerBoh]

Skyspire, generally when a proposal is made the purpose is either to a) make an improvement or b) introduce new content. For new content, it needs to fill some new niche in the game and survive on it's own merits. For improvement, a need for improvement is identified and it is explained why the proposal is better.

Seems to me you want to make an improvement but have not offered any reason why the current system is bad or why yours is better, other than a bunch of completely subjective "I like this flavor better" posts. Generally "because I want it" doesn't work as a reason unless you are willing to write the patch yourself.

[Grimm]

Thread has outlived its usefulness.