New Ashenzari


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

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Zot Zealot

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Post Sunday, 3rd April 2011, 08:25

Re: New Ashenzari

Cool. An incentive for people to step outside the Aptitude Munchkin* box is very welcome.

(*I know it isn't as big a deal as some people think, but I still get sucked into it a lot.)
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Post Monday, 4th April 2011, 08:56

Re: New Ashenzari

RangerC wrote:I think that's OK, but losing the ability to boost Stealth is a loss to some builds. Maybe 'light' armour (robe/leather) boosts Stealth/Dodging and 'heavy armour' (the rest) boosts Armour/Dodging?

Good idea, one of the goal of the Ashenzari design was also to make a god attractive to stealth based builds. But maybe we can use a smoother transition. Somebody might want to do some sneaking in dragon armour. The light/heavy armour distinction is supposed to be gone. Also, heavy armour is getting screwed, because they get a dodging bonus that does nothing. So maybe go from stealth/dodging -> armour based on EVP. And the armour bonus is higher because a single skill is boosted.

RangerC wrote:- The weapon boost was extremely underwhelming, especially once the speed cap got close. Keeping hands unbound is probably better in almost all situations/builds (now that full cursing isn't required). Also, I can't see ever wanting to bind a rod for a measly +4 in Evocations(make it +8 or +10, then you might have a decision). Getting +10 on a two-handed weapon might be interesting, though (MfCr could use a bardiche early, for example). Same thing with the boost to top spell school (though that is now gone anyway) - barely noticeable. I like that the most powerful boost (+6 to spell schools) requires full bondage of jewelery (giving up tactical swaps); it's a balanced trade-off.

We can use piety + 1 - skill/5 (same as fully bounded jewellery) for single handed weapon and maybe something like piety*1.5 + 1 - skill/5 for 2-handed weapons. I don't know about rods. I think the effect of evocation isn't strong enough anyway.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 15:55

Re: New Ashenzari

Abilities Ashenzari has should not overhaul current cursing systems. I am not sure which, if any, of these are still in however none of them should be:

You can swap weapons if cursed / you can butcher using ash ability

You can wear armour if your cloak is cursed and rings if your gloves are cursed

Keep it consistent!

It's feeling more and more like ash is just losing all his flavour. He's the cursed god but his curses don't have any impact.
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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 16:02

Re: New Ashenzari

casmith789 wrote:Abilities Ashenzari has should not overhaul current cursing systems. I am not sure which, if any, of these are still in however none of them should be:

You can swap weapons if cursed / you can butcher using ash ability

You can wear armour if your cloak is cursed and rings if your gloves are cursed

Keep it consistent!

It's feeling more and more like ash is just losing all his flavour. He's the cursed god but his curses don't have any impact.

What's in:
You can butcher even if wielding a blunt weapon.
You can swap rings even with cursed gloves.
You can swap body armour even with cursed cloak.

You can't swap from your cursed weapon appart for butchering (and your forced to switch back if interrupted). All those things just create annoyance and are not significant to the gameplay. The curses still have a lot of impact and keep the "no flexibility" conduct of the god.
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TGW

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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 16:42

Re: New Ashenzari

Why not remove them in general, then?
Last edited by TGW on Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 16:54, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 17:25

Re: New Ashenzari

I agree that cursed weapons blocking butchering add nothing to the gameplay except to annoy new / inexperienced players who want to butcher. This should be removed imo. Removing the others should be done for all characters if it is done for ash as well. No need for inconsistency.
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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 17:31

Re: New Ashenzari

TGW wrote:Why not remove them in general, then?

Why remove them? They don't create any gameplay problem for non-ash worshippers. They add a little realism and flavour to the curse system. And this is good, up until it starts stepping on ash's gameplay.
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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 17:37

Re: New Ashenzari

minmay wrote:Not being able to change armour and rings is not significant to gameplay?

It simply forces you to choose other pieces of armour to curse. And with the new planned skill boost, if you want to fully bind your armour, then you're practically forced to also fully bind your jewellery (since swapping rings is usually more useful than amulets).
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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 19:49

Re: New Ashenzari

minmay wrote:
galehar wrote:And this is good, up until it starts stepping on ash's gameplay.

But curses are Ashenzari's gameplay.

Of course, but I think per slot curses are enough. Layered curses add nothing but complication. I don't think they add anything interesting to Ash's gameplay. Do you?
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TGW

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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 20:01

Re: New Ashenzari

galehar wrote:
TGW wrote:Why not remove them in general, then?

Why remove them? They don't create any gameplay problem for non-ash worshippers. They add a little realism and flavour to the curse system. And this is good, up until it starts stepping on ash's gameplay.
And they take a huge chunk out of Ashenzari's flavour with the special cases.

The flavour/realism doesn't make sense, anyway. Like how you can use a backpack with a club stuck to your hand, but not a knife, or how a piece of cloth attached to you only at your neck prevents you from removing a robe.

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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 20:05

Re: New Ashenzari

It's a game folks. We won't develop a science of curses here. One advantage of using a god is that "it's a god!" is an ever better explanation than "it's magic!".
If you're happy with it, state that Ash allows you to put rings over gloves or whatever.
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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 20:43

Re: New Ashenzari

TGW wrote:And they take a huge chunk out of Ashenzari's flavour with the special cases.

So first, you just want to remove them, and now, they're a "huge part of Ashenzari's flavour"? I don't quite follow. This things are really minor, I really don't think they make any part of Ashenzari's flavour. Oh, and btw in case you didn't notice, I added a line to Ash's description about that:

  Code:
Having been shackled for centuries, Ashenzari has learned a few tricks to deal with curses and will help you in that regard.

Yeah, it's a bit cheap, but better than nothing. It's open to suggestions :)

minmay wrote:Maybe I'm weird, but I think they do. In particular, it means you may want to avoid cursing your cloak until you find body armour you want to leave on, and that you may want to avoid cursing your gloves until you have two rings you want to leave on.

Yes, they add a little something to the curse minigame. Some (like you) find it interesting. Others find it annoying. I don't really care, but the glove/ring can really be a problem if we want to give a better boost for full boundage of armour/jewellery.

minmay wrote:Plain single-slot curses are enough, sure, but I really don't like special-casing it for Ashenzari worshippers. If these restrictions are annoying to Ashenzari worshippers, why would they be any less annoying to other characters?

Because they don't rely on cursed gear? I mean it can rarely have some significance in the very early game, the rest of the time, they'll just read a ?RC and be done with it. For Ash, it can be annoying the whole game. Not being able to curse a magic staff because of the butchering is an arbitrary restriction that doesn't fit with Ash's flavour and remove a lot of gameplay options (both from the designer and gamer perspectives).
Curses aren't very harsh in a non-Ash game. There's enough RC and DC scrolls that you just need to pay some attention and you'll be fine. I don't want to make them even less relevant by removing the butchering restriction.
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Post Wednesday, 6th April 2011, 22:51

Re: New Ashenzari

galehar wrote:
minmay wrote:Maybe I'm weird, but I think they do. In particular, it means you may want to avoid cursing your cloak until you find body armour you want to leave on, and that you may want to avoid cursing your gloves until you have two rings you want to leave on.

Yes, they add a little something to the curse minigame. Some (like you) find it interesting. Others find it annoying. I don't really care, but the glove/ring can really be a problem if we want to give a better boost for full boundage of armour/jewellery.


When I played (old) ash, this felt like I had a curse on. It was the only thing that did. Curses on armour was not a problem, you hardly changed it, choose a char that doesn't change weapons... but jewellery you want to change all the time. Do you curse your gloves or not? it was a nice dilemma and meant that the full cursing boost actually meant something especially if I hadn't found enough slots to get fully bound on armour.
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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 11:33

Re: New Ashenzari

OK, here's my $0.02:

With respect to the butchering game, I'm totally fine if it goes away completely, and you're assumed to have a pocketknife or the like. It's dangerous for maybe D1 and D2, and then a non-issue for the rest of the game. Scrolls of Remove Curse are common. And really -- can I not butcher something even if I'm wielding a cursed blunt 1-hander? Really?

If we want to make cursed weapons more challenging, it might make sense to impose a delay to getting stuff out of the backpack, or a malus on spell success, which could Ash could reduce or negate. But the butchering thing is... meh.

And as far as the changing equipment that's under other cursed equipment thing goes, either way seems defensible to me. Partly, it'll depend on whether Ash supports wearing lots of cursed gear, or supports not wearing uncursed gear.

If he just doesn't want you to wear uncursed stuff, life's easy -- don't wear gloves or a cloak. Most of the time, you don't care that much, and you probably don't need a piety boost in Slime.

If he instead wants you to wear lots of cursed gear, it depends on whether you want Ash to be more or less difficult, or for him to do more or fewer things, which is outside the realm of my expertise. My gut tells me that he doesn't take a whole lot of actions as it is, so maybe the "remove cursed rings even if your gloves are cursed" thing would be neat?
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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 12:56

Re: New Ashenzari

Personally I detest the curse and ID subgames so Ash makes it fun for me.

I think the ID subgame is implemented pretty well right now. But the curse subgame I just don't get. A cursed weapon can make you start to death on D1. Other than that, there's nothing dangerous about curses. Cursed armour is almost always ignorable. At worse you have to return to your stash after killing a mummy. So it's death and burning scroll on D1, and ignorable or mild annoyance on after, say, D5.

Make cursed weapon sometimes hit the player. Make cursed armour less effective. Make cursed cTele amulets not work. Make rings of ice give you miscast effects. Make cursed rings of cold resistance make you more vulnerable to cold. Make cursed elven boots noisy. Whatever! Make curses a threat somehow! Right now they're ineffective. I don't think gloves/cloaks preventing the removal of other items or butchering restrictions are strong enough. (And they annoy me. Make curses a threat, not a reason to return to my stash!)

I often have 10+ scrolls of remove curse by the end of lair. (But never when playing Ash!) This means that the curse minigame is broken. It's too easy. ?rc are not at present a valuable resource. If I had 10 scrolls of blinking by the end of lair, I would dominate the whole game and it would be considered problematic.

So, why am I ranting about curse mechanics here? Well, Ash would be a lot more fun if he turned curses from something bad into something good. It would be more satisfying to play Ash. Right now, Ash turns curses from something annoying into something good.

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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 13:06

Re: New Ashenzari

Good point on the curses minigame. Like most traps, they mean little (until an axe traps kills you all of a sudden, leading to an unfun death). I believe that curses can be made more interesting, even if we stick to sticky-curses. I would suggest to not try to come up with elaborate system (a la Nethack) how cursed items are inferior, although a simple, broad system could work (e.g. a cursed item has a 33% chance of not working).
Apart from that, we should reduce on ?RC and or ?DC scrolls (it might be an option to just cut ?DC) and we should add cursing monsters. A very early opponent could have the ability to curse an armour item it touches (and your weapon may get cursed if you attack the monster). Later opponents could curse your whole gear just by being around (think cursed toe, or a moth of curses) and you may drop non-used cursed items in its presence.

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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 13:24

Re: New Ashenzari

dpeg wrote:I would suggest to not try to come up with elaborate system (a la Nethack) how cursed items are inferior, although a simple, broad system could work (e.g. a cursed item has a 33% chance of not working).

Agreed!

dpeg wrote:Apart from that, we should reduce on ?RC and or ?DC scrolls (it might be an option to just cut ?DC) and we should add cursing monsters.

Cutting ?DC would make the intersection of the id/curse minigame a lot more difficult, especially for short blade users. (This is no true of many other builds, who are just looking for robes or a demon trident or whatnot.) I use ?DC to curse-ID a dozen daggers at a time (like, during/after orc). Many daggers of speed would go un-ID'ed for a long time! I don't think this is a problem but it would make stabbers play the ID game.
dpeg wrote:A very early opponent could have the ability to curse an armour item it touches (and your weapon may get cursed if you attack the monster). Later opponents could curse your whole gear just by being around (think cursed toe, or a moth of curses) and you may drop non-used cursed items in its presence.

I think opponents that give curses is a great call. Much better than items that some cursed! Might I suggest two or more early/mid game monsters that curse specific item slots, or that can just do so once, so that a single pre-temple encounter can't be abused to get quick Ash piety.

I've love to arrive at the temple with a couple of cursed items and really want/need Ash to rescue me from the curses.

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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 13:29

Re: New Ashenzari

I'm not sure I'm down with completely making a cursed blunt weapon a non-issue for the food game. I can understand it probably annoys a lot of players, but it does provide the only significant pause to just trying every single glowing or runed weapon you come across (especially finding out recently that str/dex "bonuses" for weapon types are a non-issue).

Rather than have it utterly cripple a character though, have it merely up the tension, with something like "off-hand butchering": You can butcher, but there's a significant chance you get no chunks, or less chunks for big creatures. You'd still make it, but it'd provide you an incentive against/cost to having a cursed weapon.
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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 13:37

Re: New Ashenzari

dpeg wrote:e.g. a cursed item has a 33% chance of not working.

Sounds good. I assume Ash would protect you from this.

dpeg wrote:Apart from that, we should reduce on ?RC and or ?DC scrolls.

Reducing ?RC would hurt Ash a lot. Reducing ?DC is a good idea. We already have 2 scrolls we want to reduce (DC and amnesia) but we don't know which ones to increase. Let's start a srcoll generation thread.
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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 14:11

Re: New Ashenzari

One more Ash-specific thought: my current character is drowning(!) in Curse Jewelry and Curse Weapon scrolls, though I've got jewelry I like and am using unarmed combat. But I can't find enough Curse Armour to bind myself, and praying over RC... well, let's just say I can curse rings whenever I want for the rest of the game. If I can find any more RC. :-/

Think it might be reasonable to give Ash a "choose what kind of curse scroll you're going to get from this RC scroll" ability? Right now, I'd be happy even if it was pretty piety-expensive.
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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 15:06

Re: New Ashenzari

njvack wrote:Think it might be reasonable to give Ash a "choose what kind of curse scroll you're going to get from this RC scroll" ability? Right now, I'd be happy even if it was pretty piety-expensive.

Maybe. We can go even further and merge all 3 curse foo scrolls into a curse item scroll. It would also make the scroll id mini-game (too?) much easier.
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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 16:07

Re: New Ashenzari

Or Ash can give you the scrolls that are for currently unbound slots(or at least a higher chance of those)...

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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 17:22

Re: New Ashenzari

smock: We'd need a new thread on cursing monsters... If you start, I'll follow :)
Here's a bonus idea: there could be a randart property of perpetually recursing. In other words, it'd be a potentially endless ?RC sink. (Also, we should try harder with randart generation: much less trivial ones; better chances for good ones to get a problematic property. But that is another subject.)

galehar: Yes, Ash would have to prevent monster curses, just like with mummies.
There are nontrivial details with cursed items working less. The simplest solution is to roll 1d3 whenever an item is used, and give a special "The curse prevents [foo] from working.". This works for rings of teleportation, or attacks with a weapon, or even a piece of armour (it'd hurt to have your CPM cursed, though). But do we also want to make egos or randart properties unreliable? Perhaps best to restrict to the base function.

Curse scrolls: Keep in mind that the sole purpose of bad items (outside of their special uses, like Curses + Ash) is just to make the id-minigame interesting. (Whether they succeed at that is a different topic.) Simply removing bad items would skew matters, from conservative approaches (reading identify, or waiting) towards more testing. I don't like that.

?DC: As it stands, you never really have to use ?DC -- unless in games which are exceptionally stingy with ?RC. So we can confidently say that there's an overabundance of ?RC + ?DC.
Now let's assess: If ?RC was very rare, you'd have to use ?DC more often, and players would probably hoard items of unknown curse status before reading ?DC (assuming that ?DC is not overabundant) -- I have done exactly this in Nethack with blessed ?Id. Not good. Then again, if ?DC is really rare, we'll get the same behaviour. (Curremtly no-one is doing this because the ?RC scrolls pile to the sky.) On the other hand, it can be an interesting decision whether to blow an ?RC if you have just one cursed item. (This will be more interesting if curses hurt and ?RC is rarer.)
Therefore, I believe that the curse minigame will profit most from making curses meaningful (that's the most urgent thing here) and removing ?DC. Once ?RC is valuable, the amount of ?RC is not that crucial anymore -- it becomes a resource. We'll get complaints like "?RC is way too rare" as an indication we're on the right track.
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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 17:45

Re: New Ashenzari

dpeg wrote:galehar: Yes, Ash would have to prevent monster curses, just like with mummies.

I meant protect you from the 1/3 chance of your gear not working. Ash's gameplay is about no flexibility. Adding general unreliability of all your equipment wouldn't be very fun I guess.
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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 17:50

Re: New Ashenzari

galehar: Oh, of course. That was always implied.

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Post Thursday, 7th April 2011, 17:59

Re: New Ashenzari

dpeg wrote:Here's a bonus idea: there could be a randart property of perpetually recursing. In other words, it'd be a potentially endless ?RC sink.


Isn't this the *CURSE property that randarts already can get? Or did you mean something else?

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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 06:22

Re: New Ashenzari

galehar wrote:I don't understand what you mean. Under my proposal, the player is encouraged to bind himself and keep piety high. Isn't that what you're suggesting too? What do you mean by "no numerical bonus to piety rank calculation"?


Hi,

That was a bit awkwardly worded. My only defense is that I was walking the web and I came across this late at night.

"Piety+1" in an equation designed to indicate full bind bonuses seems uncomfortable flavor-wise. The deity should care about the level of binding, not if you're completely bound, when it comes to calculations of his gifts. < Edit: I think this was the sentence you had trouble with. I mean getting bonuses to Piety gain from being fully bound sounds stupid. Full binding itself shouldn't affect Piety gain, just binding level.

I don't think that Ashenzari cares if you temporarily don a cursed weapon for a bonus. I think it's what you do while you wear the cursed weapon that interests. There's flavor text at the end about this belief.

You should only be rewarded for maximum binding in terms of your bonuses to effects invoked from Ashenzari. Piety should be limited according to the number of bindings you have- that way a player is encouraged to wear even poor cursed items for the bonuses Ashenzari grants.

In the current metastate, people will choose better items, taking their time, and ignore the usual cursed item, which no one will wield unless they're forced to. Wouldn't it be better if it was beneficial in some way to wield an item like that? It makes Ashenzari no more different in terms of playstyle than Chei if you're just looking for good items with a certain statistic to get ahead- being forced to wear granted items with Slow to get bonuses.

If you are fully bound, what does the Chained God care? It is what you do irrespective of your chains that troubles Ashenzari. The chaining is symbolic. You are chained because the god you desired is chained. Ashenzari comprehends curses unlike any other god due to the proximity of the bindings put unto him by each other deity. The magic of Sif Muna and the ferocity of Trog the Destroyer alike keep him spread-eagled in the sky. Thus the only way he is left to aid those whom he loves is the unpareil comprehension of the curses bound to the material and the spiritual as well as his utter concentration upon the earth- whatever the arcane domains of The God That Was are, he no longer oversees them, so his torment-clarified gaze burns over the earth.


Like before, his overwhelming ambition drives him to continually transcend. He challenged the gods in his hubris and nearly surmounted them. Now he is chained but yet his intellect remains. No other god has the sight of Ashenzari.
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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 08:42

Re: New Ashenzari

You might to familiarize yourself with the basic mechanism of the god before commenting on the new design, because you seem to be confusing piety and boundage. Boundage is determined by worn cursed items. There's bound hands (weapon), bound armour and bound magic (jewellery). The more you're bound, the faster you gain piety. Piety is gained by exploring the dungeon and spent by using scrying and reskilling. Your current amount of piety is represented by piety rank, which is the number of stars displayed next to the god's name.
The effect of boundage is faster piety gain and a boost to XP gained. We're discussing how to replace the boring XP boost by a more interesting skill boost.
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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 09:07

Re: New Ashenzari

=.= I am familiar. I will edit my post to be clearer.

Reading it over, I think that my post was quite clear. I'm suggesting your boundage value limit piety level or value (the 'number of stars' as you put it) to values proportionate to binds (with the current system I imagine that the total value would have to be a multiple of 3) and to keep the piety rate virtually constant until full bind as opposed to having bound hands/weapon/magic each boost piety rate increase via exploration to encourage equipping cursed items rapidly.

With piety deteriorating from the maximum gradually if you remove a bound item, it would encourage but not force keeping cursed items on your body. This would be better implemented with each individual equip counting towards the bounding value - but I understand there are exceptions made to that in this thread. I hope this makes my suggestion more understandable.

Look at the other suggestions here. I'm sure it's been said at least once that Ashenzari, dealing with the nature of a curse, should make curses natural to deal in. Ashenzari in short should make curses good.
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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 09:47

Re: New Ashenzari

But piety under Ash is used only for scrying and reskilling. If I understand your proposal, boundage would only affect piety gain and maximum value. If the skill boost doesn't depend on piety, then it doesn't encourage the player to bind himself. He'll do just the minimum necessary to get the skill boost he is interested in and won't consider going further, since the added piety wouldn't be worth the lack of flexibility.
That's why I'm suggesting we give a higher bonus for fully binding your armour/jewellery. Making the bonus dependent on piety also encourage players to keep their piety high either by gaining more (more boundage) or spending less (reskilling).
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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 09:59

Re: New Ashenzari

You understand it. Boundage values affect piety limits. If the player is not fully bound, he doesn't get a greater level of skill bonus. Full binding permits the maximum amount of both skill bonuses and piety limit. Of course, without giving Ashenzari more versatile abilities, this is useless. Ashenzari affecting curses with Piety use, for instance increasing the negative enchant level of a weapon, would be a frequent use. Invoking Ashenzari for the reversal of the effect of negative enchantment and the proliferation of Disenchant Weapon/Armor scrolls would make a whole new world for the use of seemingly stupid -5/-3 Axes of Desolation (CtrlTele, RPois+, Lev.).
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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 10:34

Re: New Ashenzari

The Mantis wrote:I don't like the idea of having a numerical bonus to piety rank calculation, really.

The Mantis wrote:"Piety+1" in an equation designed to indicate full bind bonuses seems uncomfortable flavor-wise.

The Mantis wrote:Boundage values affect piety limits. If the player is not fully bound, he doesn't get a greater level of skill bonus. Full binding permits the maximum amount of both skill bonuses and piety limit.

I have a hard time following you. Also, capping the piety with boundage is redundant with the slower piety gain. It's just a harsher penalty to transmuters for example.
Anyway, what kind of formula would you see for the skill boost?
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Halls Hopper

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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 11:26

Re: New Ashenzari

Do those three not follow? Your formula contained a +1 Rank bonus for full bound - as I understood. The second expresses that I do not like that in terms of flavor. I thought Ashenzari wouldn't care about anything but the binding level. Boundage limitations cap piety but piety increase itself is accelerated overall. This is stream of consciousness.

My proposal to condense it into one post is that Ashenzari should have invokable curse-related powers in addition to Divinations that would be invoked frequently- in addition, that Ashenzari piety should be bound by Bounding level and deterioriate over time if piety exceeds that bounding level at a rate equal to the rate of exploration gain.

I don't know how to balance the skill boost, but I'll go via the spreadsheet above.

As Ashenzari grows more attuned to the devotee and the devotee grows in the favor of Ashenzari, Ashenzari grants bonuses to the devotee's attunement to the world.

Skill Bonus=((Piety Rank*(2 to the power of Boundage)/2)/(<Skill+1/2>+1), limited to 6 before maximum piety.

With Boundage three, Piety Rank is multiplied by 8, Boundage two is four, Boundage 1 is one and no boundage is halved.

With Piety Rank 3 and Boundage 1 and 4 Ranks in Fighting, Fighting is increased by 1.

With Piety Rank 6 and Boundage 3 and 1 Rank in Fighting, Fighting is increased by 11.

With Piety Rank 5 and Boundage 1 and 7 Rank in Fighting, Fighting is increased by 0.


I don't honestly know, but my foolish idea gives a progression of for every one rank of Piety gained at Boundage 3, you gain 2 Ranks on a Level 1 skill, and at Rank 6 Piety it is possible to gain one rank on a Level 26 skill with full boundage. There is obviously something wrong with gaining 11 Levels in Fighting at max Piety, but I don't know it. Mathematics... =w=

Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 11:39

Re: New Ashenzari

I cannot really follow Mantis either, but reading his post gave me an idea: we could have another passive Ash power, which increases with enchantments. I suggest to use "up to piety rank" (nothing happens if the enchantment is already bigger, of course). Now, we cannot give every armour item a whopping +6, so item limits must also be respected. But it should work on randarts! So at **** piety, your -5 robe of Folly (rF, rC, rEverything) becomes +2.
This would essentially mean that (a) players save a whole lot of EA/EW scrolls and (b) that some otherwise useless randarts might become usable.
As with all Ash powers, there's the question of when that should trigger this boost. I am for "cursed weapon" (for weapon enchantment boost) and "all worn armour pieces cursed" (for armour enchantment boosts).

Halls Hopper

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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 11:48

Re: New Ashenzari

I'm sorry I am hard to understand. English is sadly not my first language. My thought in terms of that was even simpler: enchantments up to piety rank on cursed items are inverted. Would this be balanced...?
Last edited by The Mantis on Saturday, 9th April 2011, 12:13, edited 1 time in total.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 12:10

Re: New Ashenzari

My proposal doesn't boost fighting, but whatever. I also proposed to raised the maximum boundage to 4 (count hands separately), but it seems you've worked with 3, so let's try that. I think something is wrong with your formula. The maximum (piety=6, boundage=3, skill=0) boost is:
6 * (2^3)/2 = 6 * 8 / 2 = 24.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Saturday, 9th April 2011, 12:14

Re: New Ashenzari

I thought I'd divided that by 2 at the end, making it =12. Above the modifications to the proposal suggest raising Fighting without Max HP bonus. That must have affected my use of it as the example then.

Please realize I am totally incompetent. My aim for the formula is as follows:

At high piety levels, lower skills are boosted immensely. Higher level skills are boosted slightly, all the way up to Rank 26, which becomes Rank 27.

At lower piety levels, lower skills are boosted slightly. Higher skills aren't boosted, or are boosted very little.

At low bounding, even high piety means little. Unbound Ashenzari worshippers get one eighth the effect from Ashenzari's binding abilities.

A reward for maintaining max piety. No deterioration of piety except when unbound. Bounding levels increase Piety cap. Piety increases fast. Invokes that expend Piety cost a lot.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Friday, 15th April 2011, 15:27

Re: New Ashenzari

I have updated the proposal for 0.9. I also reverted the curse exceptions for now (butchering and layered curses).
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Blades Runner

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Post Friday, 15th April 2011, 17:57

Re: New Ashenzari

I think that'll work great. Can't wait to test it. I love the one-vs-two-hand distinction. I think it's classy.

As an aside, I'm not convinced that simply boosting all three of armour, dodging and stealth when bound in body would be overpowered. Would AC-based builds really get that much out of a boost to dodging and stealth? Letting AC-based builds be more stealthy and dodgy won't break anything right now, since AC is relatively weak. It might make Ash more attractive to AC-based fighters, who I'm not sure have as much to gain as some other builds. Would EV-based builds really benefit that much from a few levels in armour? Letting EV-based builds cast in heavier armour might actually be a cool perk for Ash.
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Barkeep

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2011, 00:37

Re: New Ashenzari

For folks using Unarmed Combat, it might be neat to allow hand binding somehow. Bound, unarmed hands would require RC to wield any weapon / shield, and the binding could meld like a weapon when transmuting (no UC bonus for blade hands).

Maybe an ability: Bind Hands for the cost of 1 scroll of Curse Weapon?
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Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2011, 05:11

Re: New Ashenzari

Well, now that weapons meld, it is possible to bind your hands and use uc in forms which cannot wield.
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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2011, 18:49

Re: New Ashenzari

having to cast (and recast) a spell just to go into combat sounds awfully annoying, and melding a weapon to get the binding strikes me as hacky/inelegant, but whatever. Is it any good in practice?
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Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2011, 20:29

Re: New Ashenzari

We're talking about transmuters here. They cast form spell before going in combat, this has nothing to do with Ash or with weapon melding. It's always been like that and nobody has complained that it's awfully annoying.
Before the weapon meld change, transmuters couldn't bind their hands with Ash, now they can. With the current design (XP boost), it can be useful, but quite inelegant as you pointed out. With the design I proposed, they wouldn't get any boost to UC, so even if they can do it, it's irrelevant.
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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2011, 21:10

Re: New Ashenzari

My transmuters don't always change form before combat, which I guess is why I haven't complained already. For instance, putting a form up up just to kill popcorn, or handle any otherwise trivial situation, is kind of silly.
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Post Friday, 22nd April 2011, 19:59

Re: New Ashenzari

The Mantis wrote:Ashenzari piety should be bound by Bounding level and deterioriate over time if piety exceeds that bounding level at a rate equal to the rate of exploration gain.

After discussing the new design on IRC, I have included this idea in the [url=awl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:god:ashenzari#plan_for_09]new design[/url]. Capping the piety (and thus the skill bonus) when not fully bounded will encourage fighters to curse their jewellery, even if they don't care about the magic school skill boost. Same for casters and weapon.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 30th April 2011, 11:26

Re: New Ashenzari

It would be interesting if Ashenzari was a god that is able to find use for items that are usually useless (or even bad)- not only scrolls of curse, but also various random wands/scrolls/decks, potions for Mummies or any evocable item for Felids...

Something like using ring of hunger to make enemies hungry(starving and weak), amulet of innacuracy to make enemies miss at you more often...

He can also help you predict if you are going to be sick from this particular brown chunk of meat (and allow you to throw it away instead).

That would be much more flavorfull and interesting than stupid boost to XP or stealing abilities off the Deep Dwarfs...
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Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 30th April 2011, 14:28

Re: New Ashenzari

SinsI wrote:It would be interesting if Ashenzari was a god that is able to find use for items that are usually useless (or even bad)- not only scrolls of curse, but also various random wands/scrolls/decks, potions for Mummies or any evocable item for Felids...

Something like using ring of hunger to make enemies hungry(starving and weak), amulet of innacuracy to make enemies miss at you more often...

He can also help you predict if you are going to be sick from this particular brown chunk of meat (and allow you to throw it away instead).

That would be much more flavorfull and interesting than stupid boost to XP or stealing abilities off the Deep Dwarfs...

Ashenzari's theme is curses and knowledge. I don't see how applying your jewellery's bad effects to enemies fit in this theme. And you can make use of an early cursed ring of hunger(or any other bad jewellery) to increase your bondage while there's no other jewellery.

The stupid XP boost is going to be replaced by a skill boost as already discussed many times in this thread. The passive mapping is very appropriate for a god of knowledge.
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