Remove chaos weapon shafting.

[dck]

I would like for chaos weapon shafting to be removed. It's really silly right now because if you stand on top of a dungeon feature or fly while hitting things with a chaos weapon you're 100% safe of shafting, and if you'd actually want to hit things with a chaos weapon in the part of the game where you can reasonably expect to have no flight you can just walk to a dungeon feature and fight on top of that.

[XuaXua]

That's spoiler info right there.

[duvessa]

It would also be nice if attacking with a chaos weapon didn't instantly kill you from full HP.

[Tiktacy]

It would also be nice if attacking with a chaos weapon didn't instantly kill you from full HP.

LOL!

[Hirsch I]

dying to your own weapon while cutting a bush. Xom passes out from laughter.

[dck]

In general having miscast effects that can very rarely happen and then have a 1/3 chance of targetting you and paralyzing you, petrifying you or making you explode (or even if they don't target you, making whatever you're hitting explode) doesn't sound very good and shouldn't be a thing. Just like you shouldn't ever touch a bush with a chaos weapon because it can be polymorphed into a D: 3 thorn hunter and murder you.
Chaos weapons seem to be full of awfully spoilery things and it doesn't really make sense for them to be like that at all.
Furthermore chaos weapons are definitely something that shouldn't be given to XL 1 characters.

[evilmike]

I don't like the bad effects that chaos weapons can do (my main problem is with how enemies can go berserk), so I've rarely used them as a main weapon. They're more fun to use against undead and nonliving because they can't go berserk or be polymorphed. It's ok against demons too, because for some reason they can't berserk.

[Hirsch I]

imagine an berserk hasted executioner. nice.

[Abominae]

I don't know how common knowledge this is, but shafting from Chaos can also shaft you multiple floors at once. I've been shafted down two levels multiple times, and I've even been shafted three floors. It was bad enough when I thought I just couldn't use Chaos on V:4, S:4, E:2, Z:4, etc etc.

Chaos brand is one of those things that sounds really cool when you're talking about it, but in practice, it doesn't work well at all. I would much rather see Chaos brand just imitate a random existing brand and keep the ability to Haste & Heal monsters. The chance to heal or haste a monster instead of activating a normal brand retains some of the "backfire" type of flavor this brand has, but it doesn't tack on like 20+ effects that I have to worry about.

[Sar]

Normal shafts can shaft you multiple levels as well.

[pubby]

Chaos weapons seem to be full of awfully spoilery things

What are the other spoilery effects?

[dck]

Duplication and treeform, off the top of my head. Then there's poly other and berserk that punish you if you don't know which monsters can polymorph or go berserk and which can't.
But this miscast part is really stupid and in practice you just don't notice it until you hit the one in a million chance and die. Swinging a chaos weapon at something at high XL includes a chance of self-banishment, paralysis, durable sgd, instant teleconfusion, a ton of mutations and flat out creating an acid 3 tiles explosion that deals 60 or more damage.
It doesn't even have to be that high XL for some of those, and as minmay's Sp showed some can kill early CKs instantly from full health.

This isn't alright because "hah chaos". Chaos weapons aren't Xom; Xom teaches you very soon that he will sometimes do nasty things, in fact if you hit ?: to check what happened you can even see that he hit you with a miscast effect or whatever. Xom also lets you know that he can do many different kinds of nasty things, so if you get an exec on D: 4 it's not something that really surprises you even though it's so incredibly rare for him to do that.
Chaos weapons on the other hand seem to have a theme. They seem to just hit guys with random weapon brands, then they can hit them with random beneficial/negative statuses. This is what chaos weapons give the player the idea of doing, until the player duplicates a hellephant, polymorphs something into a sphinx or gets shafted or treeformed. And then the player learns about that and takes care not to use chaos in situations he can't deal with those extra effects, and then one day he hits the jackpot and gets blown up because chaos weapons can also do that.
I think it directly detracts from the game to have a brand with such terrible and rare effects.

[njvack]

Yeah, I agree -- there's essentially never a time chaos is a safe thing to use, which is a pity because it's generally such a fun brand. Even really rare things will eventually proc on a melee weapon because you use it so many times.

@pubby:

If you're defending, you get (this is from debug messages, but are descriptive):

  Code:

    case CHAOS_CLONE:           chaos_effect += "clone"; break;
    case CHAOS_POLY:            chaos_effect += "polymorph"; break;
    case CHAOS_POLY_UP:         chaos_effect += "polymorph PPT_MORE"; break;
    case CHAOS_MAKE_SHIFTER:    chaos_effect += "shifter"; break;
    case CHAOS_MISCAST:         chaos_effect += "miscast"; break;
    case CHAOS_RAGE:            chaos_effect += "berserk"; break;
    case CHAOS_HEAL:            chaos_effect += "healing"; break;
    case CHAOS_HASTE:           chaos_effect += "hasting"; break;
    case CHAOS_INVIS:           chaos_effect += "invisible"; break;
    case CHAOS_SLOW:            chaos_effect += "slowing"; break;
    case CHAOS_PARALYSIS:       chaos_effect += "paralysis"; break;
    case CHAOS_PETRIFY:         chaos_effect += "petrify"; break;
    default:                    chaos_effect += "(other)"; break;


and (other) is an error condition. It looks like miscasts affect the attacker 1/3 of the time. They can be up to level 3 miscasts.

Attackers are a little more involved... it looks like chaos can:

• Move stairs out from under attacker
• Shaft the attacker
• Make smoke
• Make noise
• Make you a tree, statue, lich, or give you an appendage

So far I can't figure out how often the things happen. Oddly, it looks like it *can't* heal or berserk or haste the attacker unless I'm misreading melee_attack.cc which is very likely.

[pubby]

This is what chaos weapons give the player the idea of doing, until the player duplicates a hellephant, polymorphs something into a sphinx

I find those 2 effects tons of fun though.

Maybe chaos should only cause effects on defenders and not attackers?

[duvessa]

Oddly, it looks like it *can't* heal or berserk or haste the attacker unless I'm misreading melee_attack.cc which is very likely.

It can berserk the attacker because berserk is a miscast effect. You're right about healing and hasting though.

[njvack]

Berserk is a miscast effect?

[duvessa]

did i fucking stutter

[headcrab0803]

what about berserking and hasting the wielder too

[Bloax]

  Code:

1: corona / random uselessness 2: curse / slowing / berserk 3: 3x curse / paralysis / confusion / 0-18 glow. Charms and Hexes miscasts still use the old Enchantment miscasts.

[cerebovssquire]

what about berserking and hasting the wielder too

Berserking you when you don't want to just causes more stupid deaths (can't use consumables, can't cast spells, slowed upon end).

[galehar]

I think it would be much better if they didn't do anything to the attacker (unless maybe harmless stuff like smoke and noise). And trim some of the worst effect to defenders. The ones which have been brought up:
berserk (too deadly and some monsters, doesn't work on others)
poly other (can be fun be too spoilery about what monster can be affected and which ones are likely to poly into a very dangerous monster)
duplicates sounds ok to me. It's fun and easier to deal with than berserk.
This leaves heal, haste and invisible as the bad effects. Maybe this could be expanded. How about a growth effect? Make the monster bigger and stronger (+dam, -EV). Good on spriggans, bad on ogres

[dck]

Note that berserking is a severity 2 miscast and you can get it from single digit XL miscasts, you probably enter the land of each swing being a diceroll for paralysis a whole lot sooner than one would imagine.

@pubby: I think for chaos to be usable without being completely suicidal it should not hit the attacker with miscasts at all and not hit the defender with AoE miscasts either. I also believe the weapon has no business treeforming you, shafting you, making you a lich/statue or the one I forgot: moving stairs away from your feet.
Particularly because these effects are so rare I don't understand why they are good to have in any way since they are so terribly spoilery and just make the weapons have this really tiny chance of killing you outright or leaving you in an amazingly weakened state that just makes it optimal not to swing them at all.

@Galehar: Hm, I had some thoughts about making monsters suddenly stop all action when hit and trying to either resurrect an ally of the same holiness in a shedu fashion or chanting recall, although perhaps chanting recall will get increasingly annoying as you go deeper. And perhaps resurrection would make you want to kite some things out of LoS of the corpse but tbh that sounds like a lot of effort for rather minimal gain.
It could be cool though.

  Code:

You sock the four-headed hydra!!
You kill the four-headed hydra!
The five-headed hydra roars!
_You bludgeon the five-headed hydra!!!
The five-headed hydra is enlightened for a moment.
The five-headed hydra stops all action and prepares to resurrect its mate.

  Code:

You flatten the kraken like a pancake!!!
The kraken is suffused with power!
The kraken begins to recite a word of recall!

[TeshiAlair]

Chaos brand might not equal xom levels of crazy, but I don't think people pick up a chaos weapon and think "I can reliably use this weapon without any nasty surprises."

[Lasty]

We've had at least two threads where people claimed that using a chaos weapon was a good choice as primary weapon for certain builds. This implies that there are people who do think that using one for several dungeon levels will not give them fatal surprises.

[Bloax]

Chaos brand might not equal xom levels of crazy, but I don't think people pick up a chaos weapon and think "I can reliably use this weapon without any nasty surprises."

Chaos knights don't get a choice, and they already have to deal with Xom. Let's throw instant death into the mix while we're at it, it's not like the early game is a hellhole already without a +0 weapon of randomly killing you.

[TeshiAlair]

You picked the god of randomly killing you anyway. This is as silly as saying "it isn't fair that monks can't use scrolls of enchant weapon."

[XuaXua]

You picked the god of randomly killing you anyway. This is as silly as saying "it isn't fair that monks can't use scrolls of enchant weapon."

How else are they going to open that trove?

[dck]

Stop derailing the thread about chaos weapons into how CKs should or shouldn't have chaos weapons in D: 1.
It's pretty obvious that they shouldn't, definitely not the way chaos weapons act right now.

[RBrandon]

Some chaos brand actions (shafting being one the most apparent) just don't seem like they belong on a weapon brand. For example, I thought that stair-sliding was Xom's doing for the longest time until I read somewhere that it was a chaos brand thing. I do like that chaos brand can do more than just pick a random other brand to use though. Chaos can be a good brand without being Xom-lite.

[duvessa]

For example, I thought that stair-sliding was Xom's doing for the longest time until I read somewhere that it was a chaos brand thing.

It's actually both.

[njvack]

poly other (can be fun be too spoilery about what monster can be affected and which ones are likely to poly into a very dangerous monster)

I also like poly other -- if we don't want people accidentally turning slugs into dragons, it could check for reasonably similar or smaller XP values.