Bad Mutation Proposals

[dolphin]

After reading the Yeek proposal, and seeing the relatively small list of relatively strong/annoying malmutations, I figured some bad mutation proposals should be in order.
I'm aiming for 'Not Annoying, and on a scale between Hampering and Dangerous."

Looking for feedback and other bad mutation proposals.

Current Malmutations

• Berserkitis
• Teletitus
• Shoutitus
• Slow Movement
• Deformed
• Attribute Loss
• Fraility
• Low MP
• Slow Healing
• Deterioration
• Vegetarian
• Fast Metabolism

Bad Mutation Proposals

• Remorse - Chance to lose mana OR stat drain OR get drained when you kill something (edit: I was actually thinking a 3%, 10%, 30% chance on kill of losing mana, OR a 3%, 10%, 30% chance of a single point, single stat drain, ... Not all three effects in one mutation)
• Hypochondriac - Chance for unbranded physical damage to be Poison
• Forgetful - Chance of draining during tension
• Fearful - Chance of reducing AC and EV upon taking damage
• Marked - Chance of Sentinels Mark for each XP percentage point, with duration increasing based on XL (could replace Shoutitus. Having the level descend upon you seems like it would cause more excitement/desperation than having intermittently terrible stealth, but that could be a bad thing)
• NAME? (concussion prone) - Upon taking damage in a single blow that is a percentage of max HP (% maxHP damage), your movement is temporarily slowed
• Mana Leak - % maxHP damage threshold drains mana like the guardian amulet, only without the guarding
• Spontaneous Combustion - % maxHP damage threshold gives fireball centered on player. The damage of fireball should likely be based on max HP so spriggans don't die instantly
• Awkward - Negative EV (edit: while minus DEX does lower EV, it does many other things. I think something analogous to Deformed might be nice, something like a minimum EV malus + EV malus based on perhaps XL?)

Ideally, I'd like to see some weaknesses to the various resistible effects beyond a simple negative resist, along the lines of cold-blooded (slows when hit by cold), but I'm still thinking about these.

Also, 'Bad Mutation Proposals' is grammatical fun.

[bcadren]

I think the following (relatively basic) ones need to be in place:

Heat Vulnerable rF-
Cold Vulnerable rC-
Conductive rElec-
Brittle Scales AC- (bad Scales mutation; perhaps AC penalty for some bonus; but penalty strong)
Draining Vulnerable rN- (draining x 1.5, Torment does 2/3 of current HP, Vampires heal all the damage they did)
Poison Vulnerable rPois-

Also some that are kind of both:
Methodical Magic Opposite of Wild Magic (Negative Spell Enhancer, Wizardry)
Fire Attunement Fire Enhancer rF+, rC-
Ice Attunement Ice Enhancer rF-, rC+
Stasis or even -Tele

...just ones that are opposites of good mutations, since there are so many good muts that's the most obvious path.

[Patashu]

I think the following (relatively basic) ones need to be in place:

Heat Vulnerable rF-
Cold Vulnerable rC-

While basic, the problem with such mutations is that they render you 100% unable to fight certain classes of enemies safely ever if the right items haven't dropped (my current character has two runes and is still missing a useful source of rF+). Slow movement bad mutations were taken out for a similar reason for why these aren't such a good idea. Sure, there's Mummy, where you go in knowing you'll be rF- and have to compensate for it - but imagine having your chacter turn into a mummy randomly part way through a game. Not so fun now, huh?

Stasis or -Tele as an outright 'bam, now you have this mutation' is probably too big as well. Maybe if it was probabilistic, ala Blurry Vision's 20-40-60?

In dolphin's post my favourite is probably Mana Leak.

[reaver]

It is true that there is a lack of bad mutations. Sometime in the next couple weeks I'm going to make Vinestalker's no device heal mutation a normal bad mutation with 2 levels.


Mana leak looks interesting if done right but it has the "less energetic" problem it only applies to mages.

[Quazifuji]

I don't like remorse causing drain, since the way you get rid of drain is by killing enemies.

[Patashu]

I don't like remorse causing drain, since the way you get rid of drain is by killing enemies.

There's also the issue that if you get it in a zig, for example, you're completely screwed because you can't not kill things.

[MiraclePrism]

How would this affect mutation roulette? Does the current state of random mutation give you 50% good or 50% bad, or is a random mutation taken from all possibilities? Currently I feel like roulette gives me good mutations significantly more often than bad ones. Would this nerf roulette?

(yes, I am aware that mutation roulette is very rarely a good idea if you are playing to win. i don't care what you say, it's fun.)

[KittenInMyCerealz]

There should be a ḿutation that makes Xom somewhat interested in you, making him act randomly even though you don't worship him and/or worship another god. Good gods could potentially nullify this interaction.
some kind of halo-like mutation that would only effect your tile could be nice as well.
momentary silence (3-5 turns) could be reasonable as well.

Only realtively balanced mutation from your list would be mana leak. Draining is a incredibly boring&annoying effect and should be removed from the whole game.
cold-blooded would be nice as well.

[Patashu]

How would this affect mutation roulette? Does the current state of random mutation give you 50% good or 50% bad, or is a random mutation taken from all possibilities? Currently I feel like roulette gives me good mutations significantly more often than bad ones. Would this nerf roulette?

(yes, I am aware that mutation roulette is very rarely a good idea if you are playing to win. i don't care what you say, it's fun.)

Pretty sure everything that mutates decides if it wants to give good or bad, THEN picks from all the possibilities left, so you don't have to worry.

[Lasty]

Oops, misthank on Patashu.

I think a bunch of these have potential.

Remorse -- drop the drain effect and it's solid.
Hypochondriac
Fearful
Concussion-prone (Soft skull?)
Mana Leak
Awkward

Let me also propose a different mutation that might also be called Fearful: the first time you see each monster, you take a small amount of drain proportional to the threat level of that monster; e.g., you see popcorn, probably nothing happens. You see a mild threat, you get a 0.1 or so drain. You see something difficult, you get a 0.3 or so drain. Most of the time you aren't performing much below normal, but if you run into a bunch of monsters at once or have to run from several monsters in a row and it'll start to add up.

[eeviac]

It boggles my mind that Wild Magic is still considered a good mutation. Oftentimes it's more debilitating than any of the current badmut set.

Stat drain is already a thing, so -EV mutations aren't necessary.

Negative resistances are not fun or interesting. See: Mummy.

I like Remorse, giving all enemies death curses is neat.

I kinda like Tomb but that sounds like the worst thing ever


Some of these might be OK (combustion sounds hilarious, especially if you can stack rF against it) but I'm hesitant about new bad mutations. I know mutation is rare but (curemut being rare and unreliable) they also tend to be really hard to get rid of.

[red_kangaroo]

[*]NAME? (concussion prone) - Upon taking damage in a single blow that is a percentage of max HP (% maxHP damage), your movement is temporarily slowed

Osteogenesis Imperfecta? Or simply Brittle Bones?

Also:

Tentacled mouth - every spell you cast has a small chance to fizzle (independent on spell failure) as you cannot pronounce the magical words correctly
Vestigial wings - you cannot wear armor (other than robes?) nor can you fly
Missing finger - one less ring slot
Athropy - you lose your left hand slots (ring and offhand)
Toxic touch - you gain venomous UC, but everything you eat or drink also deals mild poisonous damage as you pollute it with your touch
Roots - any time you stop moving for several turns, you root in the ground, gaining a little nutrition and rTrample, but when you try to move again, you lose one turn ripping off the ground
Haematophagous/Blood Hunger - you can gain nutrition only by sucking fresh corpses dry (you gain no other vampiric characteristics )
Thermal Sensitivity - as for ADOM's Drakelings
Calm - you cannot be frightened nor berserkered (or any other condition of mental imbalance)
Cowardice - each time you take large damage, you become Panicked and cannot attack for one or more turns (but you can run for your life)
Hadephobia - you are more likely to suffer hell's mystical force effects, in other branches, you could possibly have several hositle demons be always spawned on every floor
Displacement - every time an attack would land on your person (after passing SH and EV but before AC), you have a chance to swap places with the attacker instead of being harmed
Pheromones - you have a chance to berserker any adjacent monster due to your smell
Light Weight - every attacks that hits has a chance to knock you back
I.B.S. - you create a cloud of poison (miasma?) on your tile time to time

More mutations are always good, even when they're bad.

[khalil]

Here's an idea for a mutation.
Stiff Skin: +2 ac, -3 dex. It's got a bonus, but it also hits you with stat loss greater than the stat loss mutation, and it gives a lot less AC than thick black scales. (A second level would probably be +3 or 4 ac, -5 dex)

[zardo]

It boggles my mind that Wild Magic is still considered a good mutation. Oftentimes it's more debilitating than any of the current badmut set.

My current character (OpAS, just wanted a blowgun but I found confuse early on so now I'm a full blown En) is pretty much built on wild magic. I was taken aback at first but I really, really do not regret the boost to my hexes spellpower.

edit: it does of course suck if you're only barely casting spells as-is

[crate]

I like Remorse, giving all enemies death curses is neat

i hope this is a joke, because the existing enemies that have death curses are problematic precisely because they have death curses (independent of the actual effects the death curses cause)

I have discussed this in other topics.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11744&p=164809&hilit=curse#p164809
viewtopic.php?p=74434#p74434

so you'd have to do a pretty big rework of death curses first

[Zammy]

It is true that there is a lack of bad mutations. Sometime in the next couple weeks I'm going to make Vinestalker's no device heal mutation a normal bad mutation with 2 levels.

This is so going to rock if you get it while playing a deep dwarf.

[Patashu]

It is true that there is a lack of bad mutations. Sometime in the next couple weeks I'm going to make Vinestalker's no device heal mutation a normal bad mutation with 2 levels.

This is so going to rock if you get it while playing a deep dwarf.

A special case like 'if slow regen 3, don't grant no device heal levels' and 'if no device heal 3, don't grant slow regen' should probably be implemented.

[Piginabag]

Tangled feet: When enemies are visible, sometimes lose a turn or half turn when attempting to move.

[reaver]

I like Remorse, giving all enemies death curses is neat

i hope this is a joke, because the existing enemies that have death curses are problematic precisely because they have death curses (independent of the actual effects the death curses cause)

I'll just admit that in retrospect that comment was not well thought out, in part because I haven't ever been able to visit the Tomb, and I now realize I should probably look at how death curses work and whether their design should be improved.

A special case for slow regen vs. no device heal is possible, but I'm not sure it's necessary given that !curemut exists and almost every DD uses divine healing outside of challenge conducts.

[DracheReborn]

I'm not sure it's fair to assume that every DD is going to be worshipping Mahk/Ely/Trog, or that it would have curemut (a rare potion!) handy. No device heal is basically a death sentence for DD.

There's already code to handle mutually exclusive muts, and IMO that's a better way to handle this.

[bcadren]

Even if rF- and rC- or Stasis were complete death sentences to some characters I think there's merit to them being included. Shoutitus is a minor annoyance to most characters but can spell doom to an As or En...or anyone that relies too heavily on Stealth. I feel like Bad Mutations are supposed to be things that can easily wind up killing you; because otherwise Shining Eyes are pretty harmless. For most characters, it ends up using a ring slot, etc. to stop it (rF-, etc.) but if you don't have that slot or an rF item it's a major annoyance that can kill you. You can say the same of Teletitus. Just because it's obvious and it can make some threats from a little deadly to incredibly deadly doesn't mean there's no merit to having it.

[reg]

Bad mutations should be dangerous but not a reason to Ctrl-Q immediately. If I gain vestigal wings and pop out of my heavy armour in Zot, that's game over unless I have enough cure-mut available to remove it. I don't think giving big game-changing racial features as mutations is necessarily a good idea either. -resistance seems ok to me, but I don't agree with having weaknesses on the binary resistances (rElec etc).

[bcadren]

What about say, -Clarity. [Doesn't make you easier to confuse or anything, EXCEPT Amulets of Clarity don't work.] Or maybe more generally...you ignore a lot of positive egos (ring of rPois+ has a 50% chance to fail; etc.)

[indspenceable]

I'm not sure it's fair to assume that every DD is going to be worshipping Mahk/Ely/Trog, or that it would have curemut (a rare potion!) handy. No device heal is basically a death sentence for DD.

Just to reiterate - I did a 15 rune over the last couple of days, and I found my first !cMut after getting 13 runes. No joke. Thank god Zin exists

[Ghoul King]

Most existing bad mutations are boring. (So are many of the good mutations, but there's actually some interesting ones) Bad mutations are almost never something you accommodate your play around and make different decisions in relation to, unless those decisions are forced ie not decisions at all.

As an example: I am all for switching Blurry Vision from a fail-rate to slowing your scroll reading. Not only would it be less obnoxious in downtime, but it would switch emergency scroll reading from "You do exactly what you would do without Blurry Vision, but sometimes the game laughs at you and kills you" to "You give yourself space or read the scroll earlier or otherwise behave differently from not having Blurry Vision, unless you're an idiot and forget in which case you die" which is vastly superior as a play experience on several levels.

I'd rather existing bad mutations be made interesting (And a general idea of what constitutes interesting established) before more are added. It's bad enough having your Spriggan desperately use-ID, trying to clear Confusion, and end up with -2 Strength, Shoutitus, and reduced MP, having had no opportunity to make a decision that would avoid this crushing circumstance. Adding more ways for the game to completely screw you over through no fault of your own just seems a bad goal to me.