Summoning proposal

[sanka]

I really like the recent changes to summoning: the cap for number of summons and especially that they do not fight out of LOS. I feel that they are way better and more interesting than before.

I still feel that there is a tedious (and strong) tactic for summoners that I do not like. For summons that have long duration it's still optimal to walk around (on the same level) with them, and put a line in the init.rc to let you always resummon them when they disappear. Yes, it's tedious so I won't do it, but it worths it.: it's not a "minor" gain in safety. The summoner is most vulnerable when she meet something dangerous without her summons.

I think there are two ways to get rid of the tedium - and it's possible to use both on different spells. So divide summons into two main category:

1. The first is to simply give such summons infinite duration (ie. they never time out). Yes, this makes them stronger, but I think only in theory, because in practice you can keep them up anyway. If a spell would be too strong, I propose some ways to weaken:
a.) lessen the cap for the spell
b.) Name these summons "familiars" or something, and do not let resummon them after they die for a short period (1-3 turns).
c.) Name these summons "familiars" or something, and give a cap for the total number of familiars, so you cannot go around with 20 infinite duration monsters.

2. Dramatically shorten the duration if they are out of battle. After a number of turns (~20) if they do not fight with any monster, they should time out quickly. If the battle is long, their duration can remain as now. I would implement it that in period of peace either they time out or their duration is not decreased at all (if a new monster comes into sight). By fight I do not mean that they actually attack, I mean that they chose a target (maybe they can't attack it because there are other summons in the way, or they just move towards it, etc.)

The strange new behaviour of stairs is loosly related to this problem. I understand that summons dissapear on stairs because it would be optimal to always summon a lot of monsters before descending. However in practice I feel that it's not easy to balance summoners, because while entering a new level is very dangerous for everyone, it's extremly dangerous for a summoner compared to other battles. If 1 b) and c) gets implemented, than it may be possible to allow for familiars (and only for familiars) to travel on stairs.

(Note: I think that summoners are still strong, my proposal aims to improve gameplay and let balance be achieved by tweaking the individual spells. If a spell would be too strong with these changes, weaken it, raise it's level, etc.)

[morik]

What if upon entering battle (player is attacked by anything, summon attacks anything, player attacks anything, summon is told to attack something, monster in LOS is aware of player or one of player's summons), summons start ticking down on duration.
This duration countdown resets a short time after the battle is over (i.e., a short time after none of the above conditions is active. Maybe 10 or 15 turns).
This way long in long battles you will still need to resummon things that haven't been killed before they expire.
Outside of battle, summons do not expire.

Rationale for monster in LOS aware of player counting as battle:
- otherwise you could kite to reset summon duration, then resume battle

Summon durations would probably need to be shortened.

There is still a problem: you could cast a very powerful summon (which costs a lot of hunger for you), and keep it around for a long time without having to refresh it.

Maybe instead an in-game configurable "easy-renew-spell" interface, similar to the \ menu or something.
It would list all your spells. It can exclude ones that don't make sense, like conjurations. Though just excluding targeted spells doesn't work; haste should be in this list.
You could select which spells to automatically renew (by casting them) when they are about to expire, so long as auto-explore or rest (via 5) is available.
Great for keeping up buffs that don't cause you any hunger. (Or ones that do if you are ok with that.)
Maybe have an overall toggle like for auto-pickup so that in dangerous areas where the player might want to be more cautious about spending mana at random times it could be disabled.
I think this would solve the summoning issue, and remove tedium for buff renewal as well.
(Edit: posted a separate thread about this)