Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice


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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Post Monday, 23rd March 2015, 03:41

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Sac Hearing
You can't hear shouts, explosions, etc.
Marginal piety gain

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Post Saturday, 11th April 2015, 05:24

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Ru's jump attack should have a piety dependent chance to break walls around where you land. I sacrificed artifice without much thinking and it turns out this pretty much makes it impossible to dig. The jump attack is versatile and a good skill but i dont think the current version is overpowered or anything. Being able to break walls shouldnt make this too powerful.
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Post Saturday, 11th April 2015, 05:41

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

if anything I'd worry it makes it too weak for the general in-combat use (messing up your good terrain), but way too scummy for out-of-combat (It'd be like formic digging but slower and random, so you have try to make killholes in advance all the time).
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Post Saturday, 11th April 2015, 08:35

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

its hard to imagine this affecting its combat effectiveness. If you are using the jump as an offensive attack its mostly to win an already won fight easier (clear some fodder and hurt the big guy) where you wont need the positioning of walls. In tough fights its advisable to save the jump as a free blink away, or use Ru's heal or nuke. Also, no one will try to make killholes with this. It would be extremely tedious for marginal gains. Also completely unnecessary if you did not sac artifice (which i think should be avoided in general regardless of the no dig thing).
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Post Saturday, 11th April 2015, 11:36

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

gameguard wrote:Ru's jump attack should have a piety dependent chance to break walls around where you land. I sacrificed artifice without much thinking and it turns out this pretty much makes it impossible to dig. The jump attack is versatile and a good skill but i dont think the current version is overpowered or anything. Being able to break walls shouldnt make this too powerful.
Well assuming you don't do something completely daft and leave Ru for Trog...You can break/passwalls the following ways without Artifice:
  • Orb of Destruction
  • Lee's Rapid Deconstruction
  • Shatter
  • Summon Forest/{Bolt of Fire, Bolt of Lightning, Bolt of Magma, Fireball} Combo
  • Passwall
If you are about to whine about being a pure melee-ist and those all being high level spells. Uhh...you don't really have to dig, EXCEPT to get the slimy rune. You have found at least one of those by midgame. Unless you're Int is VERY low, you should be able to cast any of the level 5- ones in heavy armour before Zot so worst disastercase; you have to do Slimy last; whoop-te-do. If that's still too hard for you; if an orb of destruction misses, the bolt will dig; so you could try getting a pet one at high EV and making the bolt dig through the vault for you; but that really shouldn't be necessary.

Source: I did a TeAE^Ru that gave up artifice; wound up using Orb of Destruction for digging.

If you ask me though; we need less digging, not more. Only time it's necessary is Slime:6 and it really should be changed to make that...not necessary.
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Post Thursday, 23rd April 2015, 06:05

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Early Ru abandonment has no real negative impact, which is problematic.

Ru is the only god who does not have an active wrath, and the passive effects of the wrath--keeping your sacrifices and not getting much piety when rejoining--are negligible for early abandonments. This allows players to worship Ru if they find an early Ru altar as a sort of "backup" god; if they find a god they prefer at a lower depth, then they can switch to that god having lost essentially nothing (assuming they haven't sacrificed anything yet). On the other hand, if they don't find a "better" god, then they get sooner sacrifices from Ru without any real commitment. Is this a feature we should keep with this god?

IMHO, I don't think we should. The purpose of god wrath is to encourage players to stay committed to their gods, which makes choosing which god to worship a tough decision. Even the good gods, who (mostly) don't mind abandonment, will punish you if you convert to an evil god, so abandonment from good gods still has some consequence. Ru is the exception to this rule. Ru changes the question of "I found this early altar of God A, but I want to find an altar of God B. Who should I choose?" into "I found an early altar of Ru. Guess I'll convert to Ru and see if there's anything better downstairs. Even I don't find anything better, I still get my first sacrifice sooner than if I didn't join Ru."

One possible solution is to require a sacrifice to join Ru, eliminating consequence-free Ru abandonment. This sacrifice differ from regular sacrifices in two ways: it gives no piety, and it can't be rejected. (You still have 3 sacrifices to choose from.) The initial sacrifices presented could be trivial or minor to make the initial sacrifice not too harsh. Monks could be allowed to skip this sacrifice, and Ru could be buffed slightly to compensate for the nerf.

Thoughts?

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Post Thursday, 23rd April 2015, 06:16

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

ayayaya wrote:Early Ru abandonment has no real negative impact, which is problematic.

Ru is the only god who does not have an active wrath, and the passive effects of the wrath--keeping your sacrifices and not getting much piety when rejoining--are negligible for early abandonments. This allows players to worship Ru if they find an early Ru altar as a sort of "backup" god; if they find a god they prefer at a lower depth, then they can switch to that god having lost essentially nothing (assuming they haven't sacrificed anything yet). On the other hand, if they don't find a "better" god, then they get sooner sacrifices from Ru without any real commitment. Is this a feature we should keep with this god?

IMHO, I don't think we should. The purpose of god wrath is to encourage players to stay committed to their gods, which makes choosing which god to worship a tough decision. Even the good gods, who (mostly) don't mind abandonment, will punish you if you convert to an evil god, so abandonment from good gods still has some consequence. Ru is the exception to this rule. Ru changes the question of "I found this early altar of God A, but I want to find an altar of God B. Who should I choose?" into "I found an early altar of Ru. Guess I'll convert to Ru and see if there's anything better downstairs. Even I don't find anything better, I still get my first sacrifice sooner than if I didn't join Ru."

One possible solution is to require a sacrifice to join Ru, eliminating consequence-free Ru abandonment. This sacrifice differ from regular sacrifices in two ways: it gives no piety, and it can't be rejected. (You still have 3 sacrifices to choose from.) The initial sacrifices presented could be trivial or minor to make the initial sacrifice not too harsh. Monks could be allowed to skip this sacrifice, and Ru could be buffed slightly to compensate for the nerf.

Thoughts?

This seems like creating a problem to solve, the time you wait before your first sacrifice is really really minor compared to the sacrifice itself (in terms of a cost paid in exchange for powers gained) I'm not sure it's a problem that needs solving, it's certainly a smaller benefit gained than the ability to abandon a good god with no wrath.

If we do go with the inital sacrifice on join, I would make it rejectable, but you don't get to join Ru if you reject the initial sacrifice, and if you try to join again later, the initial sacrifice choices will be the same (in a given game)
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Post Thursday, 23rd April 2015, 06:35

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Abandoning Ru could inflict one random sacrifice.

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Post Thursday, 23rd April 2015, 23:19

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Siegurt wrote:This seems like creating a problem to solve, the time you wait before your first sacrifice is really really minor compared to the sacrifice itself (in terms of a cost paid in exchange for powers gained) I'm not sure it's a problem that needs solving, it's certainly a smaller benefit gained than the ability to abandon a good god with no wrath.

If we do go with the inital sacrifice on join, I would make it rejectable, but you don't get to join Ru if you reject the initial sacrifice, and if you try to join again later, the initial sacrifice choices will be the same (in a given game)


The benefit is admittedly small since you start gaining piety only a few hundred turns sooner. However, the fact that a benefit exists, even if it's a small one, means that the optimal strategy for players without a god is to always worship Ru if they find an early Ru altar, assuming they aren't playing for score.

On a separate note, here's an idea for a sacrifice for Sacrifice Purity: Contam Vulnerability. It could
1. Permanently give the player a "base" amount of grey contam that does not decay. One or two miscasts would not be enough for contam to grow to yellow, but using haste or invis would be enough. Contam above the "base" amount would decay over time like normal until it reaches the "base" amount. A moderate sacrifice. One issue is clearly communicating to the player exactly how much contam this sacrifice gives.
or
2. If the player has no contam and gets any form of contam, the player gets yellow contam. This could be implemented in a couple of ways, such giving players additional contam when contaminated or lowering threshold for yellow contam to 1. A major sacrifice.

All mutations gained from contam can be cured with cure mut like normal mutations, but contam vulnerability would be a "racial" mutation.

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Post Thursday, 23rd April 2015, 23:31

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

He could have a passive-aggressive wrath during which he just won't accept you back.

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Post Friday, 24th April 2015, 01:14

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Yeah who cares if there's no penalty for abandoning him with no piety/sacrifices? What does it save you, a safe run back to a Ru altar when you decide to stick with him, and the initial sacrifice waiting period?
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Post Friday, 24th April 2015, 02:28

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Hmm, what if the penalty for abandonment is that Ru will never take you back, ie you have sacrificed the opportunity to worship him? Like instead of "renounce religion" it's "sacrifice Ru". I'm sure he wouldn't letting you sacrifice him since he likes sacrifices so much. After all you can kill Jiyva, right?
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Post Friday, 24th April 2015, 02:45

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Another thing that can be implemented (possibly in conjunction with the above) is that you have to go back to Ru's altar to renounce him, and can't join any other religion until you do so.
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Post Friday, 24th April 2015, 04:57

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

^Actually last post is a bad idea as it eliminates one of the primary ways of escaping the abyss.
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