Reduce # of Wand Types


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Zot Zealot

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 05:41

Reduce # of Wand Types

This is a piggyback off of my other thread on wand of digging/disintegration, but I split it into a new thread so as not to confuse the other one.

Proposal:
Remove wand of flame and frost. Wand of cold and fire now scale based on Evocations skill. At skill 0, they act as wands of flame/frost, and their bolt depth/damage scales up with increasing evocations skill. As an example, at 5 skill you have a 1d3 penetration range for a wand of fire (might hit one, two, or three enemies in a row). I don't feel like working out the formulas right this second, but that's the general idea.

Other wand types already scale with Evocations skill (mostly the hex-based ones), and I see no reason it can't work with the conjurations-based wands too. Lightning/draining could be changed to work similarly, even though there are no low-power equivalents currently (but shock and pain are options, and would be similar to their frost/cold and flame/fire counterparts).

I know Evocations is already strong and this just encourages training it even more, but that doesn't feel like a huge problem to me. These changes aren't very glamorous, but small improvements like these that improve the clarity of the game and reduce clutter are still significant to make, in my opinion.

Barkeep

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 05:46

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

This is a really severe nerf to these wands, though. Not entirely sure that's warranted... I think I'd prefer making ?recharging rarer, and/or simply cutting wands of flame and frost.

Zot Zealot

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 05:54

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

I think the numbers can be tweaked to make this as much of or as little of a nerf as you want. You can also make an argument that wands of fire/cold (and lightning and draining) are severely overpowered in the early game (and unfairly so when in the hands of enemies).

The core of the idea though, is that flame and frost are 100% redundant with fire and cold. If you have fire/cold, the only reason you would ever use flame or frost is because you want to save the better wands for badder things. Like, I'll use flame on an eel because I want to conserve my fire wand for harder things like hydras. But I don't think this decision is interesting enough to warrant the clutter of two additional item types. Instead, I think my proposal creates a more interesting decision, that being whether to invest early in Evocations to make your kind of crappy wand into a not-so-crappy wand.

Edit: Strictly cutting flame/frost is also okay to me. It would certainly be simpler, but I thought there was some room for a more interesting mechanism to take its place instead. Rework rather than just remove, and all that.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 06:14

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

The core of the idea though, is that flame and frost are 100% redundant with fire and cold.

probably this shouldve been in the first post, since I actually had no idea this was the reasoning behind this proposal

I'd rather not make wand of fire/cold worse at 0 evo than it is currently. Personally I think the fact that there are multiple consumable versions of haste, teleportation, heal wounds, and invis is much worse than that there are different power level fire attack wands, and having both low-tier attack wands and high-tier attack wands seems fine. You can certainly argue that there don't have to be so many different attack wands, which is reasonable, but I don't personally like just outright removing the best ones.

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duvessa

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 06:46

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

There was a proposal to remove flame and frost and magic dart and add a wand of exploit weakness, which does a minor ranged attack of whatever type the target is vulnerable to, with magic dart if no vulnerabilities exist. The new wand would retain a lot of situational effectiveness later game instead of rapidly becoming floor trash.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 10:56

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

Igxfl wrote:There was a proposal to remove flame and frost and magic dart and add a wand of exploit weakness, which does a minor ranged attack of whatever type the target is vulnerable to, with magic dart if no vulnerabilities exist. The new wand would retain a lot of situational effectiveness later game instead of rapidly becoming floor trash.


It was not only proposal, but even a patch. I'd actually like this one to be implemented.
You slash the rat with your +7 +5 cursed slightly rusted very sharp meteoric steel demonic flaming triple sword of speed and pain covered with various bloods and vomit. The rat is not hurt.
The rat bites you.
You die…
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Tomb Titivator

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 12:15

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

I drop frost/flame/darts instantly. Why sit there clicking it, aiming, firing, just for 1 hp damage if that, when you can mystic blast/great mace them to death in a hit or two?

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 13:08

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

I'll generally keep one of the weak ones for spore management during that low-mana portion of hybrid characters or to polish off a fleeing enemy.

I think the tele/haste/invis wands should be merged into a "wand of escape": Zapping it makes the target invis very briefly (5-7 turns max instead of min 14) and causes fog. Essentially, this is a magician's trick- throw down a smoke bomb, and when it clears you are gone. If used on an enemy, it has a brief (1 or 2 turn) confuse or wander effect.
Three wins: Gargoyle Earth Elementalist of Ash, Ogre Fighter of Ru, Deep Dwarf Fighter of Makhleb (0.16 bugbuild :( )

Tomb Titivator

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 14:21

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

Invis and haste are offensive wands though (invis for stabbers, haste for, well, everyone). They just happen to be usable for escape too.

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 17:52

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

Right, but IMO they are far too strong as offensive wands, being very reusable versions of two very strong potions/spells.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 17:55

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

Or perhaps the spells are what's far too strong, being infinitely reusable versions of two very strong wands.

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 17:57

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

Spells require a lot of investment, wands do not.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 18:09

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

I think the best solution here is to remove the wands of flame/frost/magic darts. The exploit weakness one sounds cool, but even without it, I generally never use the weaker attack wands outside of rare cases like a jelly that I have no other option for. I'd gladly use draining/fire/cold on a jelly instead, just depends on what I found so far.

Fire/Cold can be important for dealing with hydras when you're failed to find any of the much better ways to deal with them. Very limited charges, but can be enough to get you past one or two hydras should running not be more simple. I wouldn't want to lose that option because my character has 0 evo, which most characters do in early lair.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 19:56

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

Why use attack wands on jellies/eels when you can just polymorph them?

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 08:27

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

Because carrying around an attack wand makes more sense than carrying around polymorph simply because there are so few enemies you want to poly
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 17:26

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

You always want to carry a polymorph wand anyway because brown ugly things

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Tomb Titivator

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 21:02

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

I really wish player poly worked like monster poly.
Just have monsters turn into a bat or something dumb and give them the fear status to make them run away.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 21:38

Re: Reduce # of Wand Types

duvessa wrote:You always want to carry a polymorph wand anyway because brown ugly things


And death drake shape shifters.
take it easy

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