Nemelex Reform, part 2

[and into]

Deck gifting was recently changed for Nemelex, which is an improvement. Part 1 can be found here: https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10658&hilit=Nemelex+Reform

In this post I outline some ideas for how to address the other problems with Nemelex.

I stand by proposals 1. and 3. in the first thread, but would reject 2. now, as the problems it seeks to address are obviated by more critical changes suggested below.

Main Goals:
1.) Better clarity, less reliance on reading a dossier in advance to avoid killing your character accidentally
2.) Introduce more of an element of meaningful, interesting risk/gamble to the gambling god (rather than "know how to abuse system, or else randomly kill character")
3.) Streamlined gameplay
4.) Limit much of the long term (and scummable) aspects of decks of Wonders

Result: Better god that, while still not newbie friendly, does not require extensive briefing to use well. Also much more fun, I expect.

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A.) Introduce flat risk component regardless of card power. Conentrate and rationalize the risk of card drawing for transparency, balance, and reduction of spoiler-reliance.

Problem: Once you have sufficient card power, you just use triple draw on Wonders and throw summoning and destruction at stuff with 0 risk, aside from the tiny chance of a “Wrong Card” (from oddities) being randomly generated. Here are some suggestions for a fix:

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+ Drawing cards at too low of a power, simply produce no effect rather than hostile summons, bad mutations, etc.

+ Every card you draw has a chance to actually be a “Joker” and cause a backfire, with severity that depends on your card power and character level. (High char level can generate meaningful backfires even with low power.) Backfire effects can be dependent on deck type. Joker is only revealed upon drawing, Stack Five does not safeguard against it. Draw Four can potentially generate multiple Jokers.

+ Backfire Chance: 1/27 is doubly thematic (the obvious, plus 2 jokers in a 52 card deck means literally 1/27 chance of drawing joker from standard playing cards, neat coincidence). However that is probably too low; something more like 1/14 seems better, which would be 4 Jokers + 52 standard cards, so some subtle thematic justification.

+ Retain the tiny chance for “wrong card” from deck of oddities, in addition to above, if desired. 

+ Fix some bad Destruction interactions, like two orbs being generated back to back via Draw Four and auto-killing you. Note that Draw Four can generate multiple Jokers in a single round so it carries additional risk already.

+ Wonders presents bigger problems and needs its own section, see below.

+ Backfire ideas:

Wonder: Polymorph self. Temporary bad mutations (a la wretched stars, but potentially longer lasting). Temporary –Experience (like Ash wrath), or alternately (or additionally) draining [no neg energy damage, just the status; bypasses any rN+(++) the player might have].

Destruction: Get hit with destruction effects, pretty obvious.

Summonings: Here is where those hostile summons come in. :)

Escape: Self-Corona. Noise. Recall some random enemies to your location and wake them. Slow. Mark status.

B.) Make Wonders less broken, and more (but not entirely) tactical

Problem: I think it is widely felt that this deck needs an overhaul, here are some ideas that retain some theme and keep certain strategic considerations, but would (I think) address the major problems of decks of Wonders:

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+ Remove Wild Magic. Remove Focus.

+ Potion and Alchemist can probably mostly remain, but the bad effects from Potion should perhaps be removed. (Or at least paralysis.)

+ Ideas for changes to other card affects from Wonders:

Helix: Polymorph enemy or enemies. At higher power can affect multiple enemies in LOS with difficult-to-resist “guaranteed devolution”—rather than random polymorph, guarantees that enemies are polymorphed to a lower-HD enemy.

Trowel: Mapping, with ability to remove / rearrange walls on level at high power. Each time a level has been rearranged it becomes more “resistant” to further rearrangements. (“You feel you have shifted the walls of this level almost as much as you can.”)

Shuffle Card: Swaps around enemies and yourself in LOS. At higher power tends more often to move enemies away from you while shuffling you to a random location in LOS.

Sage: “reverse draining”—get a boost to your skill levels that dwindles down over exp gain / exploration / time (but long lasting). Subsequent sage cards while still under the Sage effect do not stack the skill boost but will increase timer.

Experience: Get a boost to incoming experience for the next X experience gained. Still good but not nearly as broken as currently. Alternately: Lets you take some experience out of one place and transfer it elsewhere, like a one-time skill transfer, but immediately; can refuse the effect if desired.


EDIT: Spitballing some of the ideas for backfire, obviously exact ratios/how quickly it scales/severity would need to be tweaked to an appropriate level. Based on Lasty's input, Mark and possibly Slow are too severe; those seemed appropriate "misfires" for escape but might be too harsh even at high experience and card power. Other ideas welcome here.

[Lasty]

Adding a significant chance of a backfire means that cards become quite bad choices in deadly situations, which leads to cards being used only in safe situations, which makes cards significantly less useful.

After these changes, Nemelex seems like a fairly undesirable god: he gives you little-to-no permanent character boosts; his combat abilities run the risk of applying serious damage to you or surrounding you with hostile creatures; his escape abilities may randomly slow you or give you mark or also surround you with hostile creatures.

[and into]

Adding a significant chance of a backfire means that cards become quite bad choices in deadly situations, which leads to cards being used only in safe situations, which makes cards significantly less useful.

After these changes, Nemelex seems like a fairly undesirable god: he gives you little-to-no permanent character boosts; his combat abilities run the risk of applying serious damage to you or surrounding you with hostile creatures; his escape abilities may randomly slow you or give you mark or also surround you with hostile creatures.

Backfire can and should be balanced around that, and could be in multiple ways, several of which were mentioned. You are the first person to mention "surrounding with hostile creatures," I didn't suggest that. Admittedly Mark and the like probably is too severe, possibly Slow as well. But what about noise? Corona? A power-dependent recall on some enemies on the level? ("some" could be "one to three" with a certain HD check so you don't suddenly get uniques randomly dumped on you). Again these would scale up based on your experience level and card power, and there are multiple levels for tweaking.

Obviously having an inbuilt chance for a misfire does not kill a god's usefulness (cf. Makhleb!); right now you get moderate card power and there is zero risk to everything but Wonders, which can still be used completely safely with a few abilities that Nemelex readily provides.

With these changes people would actually have to *think* before they draw a card (like with Lesser/Greater Servant), but blind drawing in a non-desperate situation would also be safer so people uninitiated in the recondite min-maxing of current Nemelex can actually learn through experience how to use the god well.

I hope it is clear that the intent is to remove the silly risks that are rare, obscure, absurdly harsh, and/or avoidable through repeatable, abusable means, and replace them with risks that are appropriate for an extremely powerful god who is thematically linked to gambling.

[Lasty]

Summonings: Here is where those hostile summons come in.

Escape: . . . Recall some random enemies to your location and wake them.

I read these two to mean that the hostile creatures would come in surrounding you, as they would if they were the result of a summon spell turned hostile or a recall ability that only recalls enemies. If they're meant to bring the monsters in somewhere in your LOS but not near you/surrounding you, that would change how dangerous it seems.

I think to make this work the frequency of the dangerous outcome is less significant than the probability that getting a bad outcome at the wrong time will kill you.

Destruction cards can deal serious damage; if that damage could kill the player or take their health from full to < 50%, it would usually be too dangerous to use Destruction decks. If the damage is capped in some way to prevent unreasonable/fatal damage, then it is probably not a serious drawback unless it happens frequently. There might be a sweet spot where this is a meaningful drawback without being suicidal, but it would require a level of precision that I'm not sure we'll manage.

Summoning decks can summon hordes of creatures and singletons like skeletal warriors, bone dragons, and dancing weapons. If this could cut off escape or deal fatal damage in short order or move faster than you and also be too dangerous to fight, then it would be a mistake to draw from this deck.

The Escape deck mostly is something you want to draw from when you're in a situation you want to leave. Having a penalty that prevents you from leaving makes this a very dangerous proposition. Imagine if Zin Sanctuary had a chance of instead slapping a crippling status on you . . . Any backfire that prevents you from actually escaping is likely to be fatal, making relying on this deck a mistake.

So, what I'm getting at over all is that having an unmitigatable risk of backfire in all of the powers you gain from Nemelex is likely to be very hard to balance in a way where it a meaningful drawback for each deck, but for no deck makes using that deck a terrible risk.

Here's what I've got in terms of ways to address this issue:
* Destruction misfires: permanently increase the defenses of nearby monsters.
* Summoning misfires: permanently give a non-speed buff (bonus damage and cleaving, for example) to some monsters in LOS.
* Escape: act as though a monster in LOS has cast Word of Recall or one of a list of summoning spells.

In each case, what happens does not directly cripple the character or their chances of escape, but does have a consequence that affects their goal. Destruction is used to hurt things, and the misfire makes that harder; summoning is used to even the odds in a fight against an opponent, and the misfire reverses that; Escape is meant to get out of a jam and/or escape from monsters, and the misfire increases the number of monsters the player must escape from without making escape impossible.

[and into]

+1 to those misfires, I wasn't wedded so much to the particular "Joker" effects. I just think it is a strong improvement if all the opaque and/or subtle, spoiler-heavy "no nos" that come with Nemelex worship were condensed into one rationalized package (like with Makhleb; Nem is and will remain more complicated, but Nem's dangers should be *clearer* certainly, and can be). So a straight up chance for a card to backfire makes sense. Also fits flavor—supposedly those cards are made from the ichor of demons. It fits that they sometimes misbehave, even if Nem helps you plan around that.

For comparison, right now (unless changed recently) a deal four from destruction can, and has, outright killed a player from high (if not max) HP. So there is a small but non-zero chance of someone using their "power ability" on one of the four deck types they are given and being brought a lot lower than 50%. I agree 50% is too harsh but right now some bad luck can really badly hurt you from Nem. Much worse than anything I suggested; though of course perhaps what I suggested was still too harsh. I was thinking like, "conjurations miscasts" with a damage cap based on char lvl—that's why I brought up power of the card misfires being balanced by both spell power and char lvl.

So I guess I didn't make it clear enough, but I was definitely not thinking "misfire" from random joker draw from summonings or destruction = that card being used against you. That would be crazy.

[XuaXua]

I would rather use a god who might gift me a useful artefact.

[Moose]

I never figured out how nemelex worked ... All I ever got were cards of summoning, and then I was told I had to stop saccing weapons and armor and sac other stuff, but then the game became micromanagy, and I still wasn't getting other kinds of decks because I couldn't find enough of that "other stuff." If I had wanted to play as a summoner, I would have rolled one, but I didn't.

I realize that this is all pebkac of course, but I'm too lazy to dick around with this kind of stuff, when there are gods out there that are seemingly vastly more intuitive.

[Kate]

The existing backfire mechanic (deck of Oddities cards) could just be more common (and its list of effects adjusted) if that is really necessary, rather than adding a whole new, complex, deck-specific backfire mechanic.

[Kalma]

Maybe backfire destruction would be more tolerable if it caused you to fire in opposite or random direction. This way you could tactically set it up so that you don't nuke yourself when you get unlucky.

[Sprucery]

I never figured out how nemelex worked ... All I ever got were cards of summoning, and then I was told I had to stop saccing weapons and armor and sac other stuff, but then the game became micromanagy, and I still wasn't getting other kinds of decks because I couldn't find enough of that "other stuff."

No, you should have kept saccing weapons (for Destruction) and armour (for Escape) and stopped saccing corpses or chunks (for Summoning).