Page 1 of 1
Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Sunday, 2nd February 2014, 18:56by red_kangaroo
I'd like to propose a new passive ability for Xom followers:
Random Usefulness - changes a behavior of scroll of random uselessness, triggering one of the following effects instead of the usual cantrip:
[*] heal for 3d5 HP
[*] one temporary beneficial mutation
[*] berserker
[*] brilliance
[*] as !resist
[*] uncontrolled blink
[*] static discharge
[*] instant shafting of the player
[*] confusing touch
[*] summon butterflies
The list definitely isn't final, it's here for general concept. No effect should be harmful while all should be at least slightly beneficial. I'd like to hear your ideas about appropriate effects.
Reasoning:
Scrolls of random uselessness are largely uninteresting and redundant. Well, they are random and useless, right? They can sometimes matter on the beginning, especially when you blow your only ?ID on them instead of some more useful scroll that can save your life, but afterwards, they are simply ignored similarly to ?curse foo.
However, ?curse are worth staying in the game due to Ash who makes a good use of them. As ?immolation was changed recently to do something interesting and I see ?useless as a nice piece of flavor especially in connection with Xom, I'd be happy to make it more interesting and connected with our beloved god of chaos.
I'm proposing this god ability being inspired by Ash and ?curse, but also because Xom has a peculiar habit of sending you into dangerous situations very early, sometimes obviously trying to kill you. Having one more tool at your disposal will hopefully help some character survive hostile demon summons on D:2 and offer a slight benefit for worshipping the chaos itself, retaining the chaotic and unpredicatble nature of Xom.
I hope a change like the one I'm propsing will fulfill that demand.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Sunday, 2nd February 2014, 21:31by jaega1
I like this idea in theory but it seems to have a big problem with it. Cursed scrolls are the major aspect of Ash so it is not difficult at all to communicate to the player about it. However if scrolls of uselessness are valuable to Xom, how would it be communicated? It seems like it is something that you would only understand if you looked it up in a spoiler online. This is something that is acceptable (and even fun) in some games but this seems to be against the philosophy of crawl.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Sunday, 2nd February 2014, 21:41by nicolae
red_kangaroo wrote:I'd like to propose a new passive ability for Xom followers:
Random Usefulness - changes a behavior of scroll of random uselessness, triggering one of the following effects instead of the usual cantrip:
[*] heal for 3d5 HP
[*] one temporary beneficial mutation
[*] berserker
[*] brilliance
[*] as !resist
[*] uncontrolled blink
[*] static discharge
[*] instant shafting of the player
[*] confusing touch
[*] summon butterflies
The list definitely isn't final, it's here for general concept. No effect should be harmful while all should be at least slightly beneficial. I'd like to hear your ideas about appropriate effects.
Reasoning:
Scrolls of random uselessness are largely uninteresting and redundant. Well, they are random and useless, right? They can sometimes matter on the beginning, especially when you blow your only ?ID on them instead of some more useful scroll that can save your life, but afterwards, they are simply ignored similarly to ?curse foo.
Making a scroll behave entirely differently for a single god seems spoilery and unintuitive, and giving Xom specific abilities seems quite out of the spirit of Xom.
If random uselessness needs to be improved (besides just getting rid of them), why not change them to "scroll of randomness" or "scroll of random cantrip" and give them a small list of very minor effects that are sometimes useful but are never guaranteed to be so, similar to the current summon butterflies effect?
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Sunday, 2nd February 2014, 22:09by phobetor
nicolae wrote: If random uselessness needs to be improved (besides just getting rid of them), why not change them to "scroll of randomness" or "scroll of random cantrip" and give them a small list of very minor effects that are sometimes useful but are never guaranteed to be so, similar to the current summon butterflies effect?
I like this, items that are always bad are kinda dull once IDed, items that are risky but useful are a lot of fun.Making it a Xom only skill seems to narrow to meaningfully impact the game.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Monday, 3rd February 2014, 00:11by dpeg
phobetor: Well, we just had precisely this happen with !slowing -> !lignification. More ideas are definitely welcome.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Monday, 3rd February 2014, 06:24by phobetor
dpeg wrote:phobetor: Well, we just had precisely this happen with !slowing -> !lignification. More ideas are definitely welcome.
Cool, When I saw lignification added and slow removed I was wondering if that was a direct swap to spice up slowing or just an odd coincidence. Glad to hear items are moving in that direction.
As for the scroll I think the best direction would be to add chancy escape effects to fit with butterflies.
Summon butterflies
Random blink
Directional blink
Wisp Form (or something similar which is fast but frail)
Kind of a deck of escape light.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Monday, 3rd February 2014, 08:25by red_kangaroo
About the spoilers - that's why I'm suggesting god ability, so you can see it on religion screen.
I'm definitely not against making the scroll useful for everbody, but for the original proposal I wanted to preserve the trickster feeling of the scroll. It's as if there is a vast cult of Xomian mages that dedicate their lives to creation of completely random and useless scrolls and infesting dungeons with those scrolls, just for the sake of fun. Seeing the scroll as Xom's (or his clerics') creation I thought it would be interesting to link it even more with him/her/it.
If it is changed to have some minor but random effect, I'd say give it more than just strictly escape tools. It is scroll of randomness, after all, so a bit inappropriate effect is cool.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Monday, 3rd February 2014, 10:48by 1010011010
The scroll should have instant or quick field effects like butterflies, fan's blowback effect, mass slow/confusion/polymorph as oppose to lasing self effects for two reasons: self-buffs are potion territory.
More importantly, you shouldn't be able to scum buffs before a fight.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Monday, 3rd February 2014, 16:08by Tiber
The simple way to make it useful would be to make it randomly choose among any good or double-edged, tactical scroll (not curse foo, enchant foo, recharging, identification, or acquirement).
1010011010 wrote:The scroll should have instant or quick field effects like butterflies, fan's blowback effect, mass slow/confusion/polymorph as oppose to lasing self effects for two reasons: self-buffs are potion territory.
More importantly, you shouldn't be able to scum buffs before a fight.
I would take out the mass slow/confuse/polymorph, and add mass dispersal (the ammo brand, so it would blink every other creature to somewhere else in sight), uncontrolled blink, shafting, tukima's dance on enemy weapon, etc.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Monday, 3rd February 2014, 21:52by bryanpeddy
Tiber wrote:I would take out the mass slow/confuse/polymorph, and add mass dispersal (the ammo brand, so it would blink every other creature to somewhere else in sight), uncontrolled blink, shafting, tukima's dance on enemy weapon, etc.
Yes. Effects that still play on chance but can completely alter the current moment's playfield. That's Zom style, yo.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Monday, 3rd February 2014, 22:05by IronJelly
Tiber wrote:The simple way to make it useful would be to make it randomly choose among any good or double-edged, tactical scroll (not curse foo, enchant foo, recharging, identification, or acquirement).
1010011010 wrote:The scroll should have instant or quick field effects like butterflies, fan's blowback effect, mass slow/confusion/polymorph as oppose to lasing self effects for two reasons: self-buffs are potion territory.
More importantly, you shouldn't be able to scum buffs before a fight.
I would take out the mass slow/confuse/polymorph, and add mass dispersal (the ammo brand, so it would blink every other creature to somewhere else in sight), uncontrolled blink, shafting, tukima's dance on enemy weapon, etc.
Make a new effect. give all creatures including the player the same visual effect as new ?imolation, but blue rather than red. with this effect, any time a creature is hit, it randomly blinks somewhere else within LOS of the player if possible.
This would fit Xom, I think: Iit's annoying, but can save your life, and has strategic uses when it comes up, but maintains the unpredictability that comes with random blinking.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Tuesday, 4th February 2014, 23:15by Arkhan
Quick and dirty suggestion would be that the scroll simply "gets his attention."
Doesn't have to be good or bad, play on his mood or not maybe, I dunno. But just the idea that reading a "scroll of harmless chaos" being a way to get the attention of the "god of chaos" sounds like it could be fun.
A seven-headed hydra comes into view!
As you read the scroll of Random Uselessness, it crumbles to dust.
WHAT'S UP, MORTAL?
You suddenly find yourself in a different location!
The seven-headed hydra bites you! x7
Xom roars with laughter!
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Thursday, 6th February 2014, 08:37by red_kangaroo
Arkhan wrote:Quick and dirty suggestion would be that the scroll simply "gets his attention."
Doesn't have to be good or bad, play on his mood or not maybe, I dunno. But just the idea that reading a "scroll of harmless chaos" being a way to get the attention of the "god of chaos" sounds like it could be fun.
A seven-headed hydra comes into view!
As you read the scroll of Random Uselessness, it crumbles to dust.
WHAT'S UP, MORTAL?
You suddenly find yourself in a different location!
The seven-headed hydra bites you! x7
Xom roars with laughter!
Nice.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Thursday, 6th February 2014, 14:39by Tiber
Arkhan wrote:Quick and dirty suggestion would be that the scroll simply "gets his attention."
Doesn't have to be good or bad, play on his mood or not maybe, I dunno. But just the idea that reading a "scroll of harmless chaos" being a way to get the attention of the "god of chaos" sounds like it could be fun.
A seven-headed hydra comes into view!
As you read the scroll of Random Uselessness, it crumbles to dust.
WHAT'S UP, MORTAL?
You suddenly find yourself in a different location!
The seven-headed hydra bites you! x7
Xom roars with laughter!
The Xom card already does this. People don't see it much because it's in the deck of oddities though.
Re: Proposal: Xom and ?useless
Posted:
Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 02:15by Pollen_Golem
IronJelly wrote:Make a new effect. give all creatures including the player the same visual effect as new ?imolation, but blue rather than red. with this effect, any time a creature is hit, it randomly blinks somewhere else within LOS of the player if possible.
This would fit Xom, I think: Iit's annoying, but can save your life, and has strategic uses when it comes up, but maintains the unpredictability that comes with random blinking.
That is a fine idea: a scroll that gives the player and all monsters in LOS a temporary status effect that makes them function like blink frogs. Hitting, getting hit, and simply moving may cause random blinking. It could also apply a -cTele effect, and make teleporting enemies/player blink instead of teleporting. This would be a useful, double-edged scroll, like ?immolation and ?torment. Very useful for characters with ranged attacks, like ?vulnerability is useful for enchanters. For kicks, you could make it turn actual blink frogs into plain giant frogs.