Distortion Weapon Change

[phobetor]

Currently distortion weapons are one of the closest things crawl has to one hit kills. An unassuming kobold can fatally banish, or teleport a promising character and there is very little the player can do about it. To mitigate this I propose that distortion weapons have their effect build up in a similar fashion to poison. Each hit from a distortion weapon would have a chance to deal bonus damage, and would always add a level of a new "distorted" status.

Each hit would ad 5 points to your distortion score. Every turn would reduce this score by one and check if an effect happens. The score would be capped at 15. 1-5 points would be yellow with a 20% chance to blink and a 80% chance of nothing happening. 6-10 would be light red with a 30% chance to blink, 20% to teleport, and 50% of nothing. 11-15 would be dark red with a 40% to blink, 30% teleport, 20% banishment, 10% nothing. (All of these percents are just a model and would be changed for balance)

This change would help prevent frustrating and fatal abyss trips. It would also make encounters involving distortion slightly more interesting, giving you the option to fight in melee if you think you can kill the enemy fast enough.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Crawl has plenty of things closer to one hit kills than distortion. Like Paralysis, or actual one hit kills.

Replacing an awful mechanic with an equally awful but way more complicated mechanic does not improve the situation. The correct solution to "banishment is stupid" is "remove banishment", not "force players to obsessively count melee hits and then still get banished anyway".

The option to fight in melee with distortion enemies already exists, btw. It is just a bad option, with this proposal it still would be.

[argonaut]

How about just autoidentifying the brand on all distortion weapons? Then there's no surprise from the glowing kobold weapon or the Okawaru/Trog "present". You still have to figure out how to deal with it though.

[TeshiAlair]

I actually really like the idea of being charged up with distortional energy. Make it like glow, but only for tloc effects.

[and into]

How about just autoidentifying the brand on all distortion weapons? Then there's no surprise from the glowing kobold weapon or the Okawaru/Trog "present". You still have to figure out how to deal with it though.

Agreed. The fact that distortion weapons are a tiny fraction of glowing/runed/artefact weapons means that in most situations, most players behave as if they did not exist, and simply hope that you don't get unlucky. If weapons were sight-IDed for distortion, they could fairly retain very dangerous one-hit possibilities, and would actually tend to present difficult and possibly interesting scenarios (the two to five times they show up in an average game).

It would be pretty easy to justify distortion sight-ID in terms of flavor: "Space seems to bend around the kobold/Vault Guard/etc. as it moves."

Arguably all brands should ID, since some of them (draining comes to mind) would make you behave differently but you only find out about it *after* the fact. But distortion is definitely the strongest case for sight-ID of a brand making sense.

[phobetor]

force players to obsessively count melee hits and then still get banished anyway.

Thats a good point, if the amount of distortion you receive was fixed as I proposed it would be optimal to keep track of every hit. The amount you receive should be variable to prevent this. Something close to 3-7 would probably work.

How about just autoidentifying the brand on all distortion weapons? Then there's no surprise from the glowing kobold weapon or the Okawaru/Trog "present". You still have to figure out how to deal with it though.

This would definitely be a huge improvement but it would still require you to check and make sure each enemy you meet isn't carrying one, Unless you add some kind of clear visual. That probably be easy for tiles, not sure about console though.

[sanka]

I'm not saying that id distortion on sight is a bad idea, but I want the mention that one of the main effect of distortion weapons is that you may equip them unidentifed. Auto id would have a greater impact on auto id-ing distortion weapon on the floor.

Of course you may only auto id distortion weapons when wielded by someone.

[sanka]

This would definitely be a huge improvement but it would still require you to check and make sure each enemy you meet isn't carrying one, Unless you add some kind of clear visual. That probably be easy for tiles, not sure about console though.

If the weapon is identified, it is usually displayed in the text message. Then you can easily set up a *more* prompt. No checking is needed.

[n1000]

radical proposal: what if you didn't want to get hit by distortion because it did a lot of damage?

[khalil]

It does, and in fact damage is much more likely than abyssing.
However, the 9.9% of the time were you get abyssed is much more memorable than the 55.5% where a kobold just does some extra damage.

[phobetor]

If the weapon is identified, it is usually displayed in the text message. Then you can easily set up a *more* prompt. No checking is needed.

Very true, I have a bad habit of ignoring the text box and didn't think of setting a prompt.

[and into]

radical proposal: what if you didn't want to get hit by distortion because it did a lot of damage?

Then distortion weapons lose basically all of their distinctiveness, which would be a major loss since they are fun for players to use, and in particular go well with Lugonu (though I suppose distortion could just never generate randomly and be completely restricted to Lugonu).

But it isn't like distortion-banishment is the only non-damage melee effect that you want to avoid being hit with. Do you propose removing all such effects?

[n1000]

No, I like some of the other melee special effects. I like player disto weapons too but I don't like the effects versus players.

[khalil]

But it isn't like distortion-banishment is the only non-damage melee effect that you want to avoid being hit with. Do you propose removing all such effects?

Sure, but distortion is special because of the 9.9% of the time where it arbitrarily abysses you. While getting hit by draining sucks, it can be survived. However, getting abyssed is equivalent to a one hit kill at lower levels. The problem isn't really distortion, it's that the Abyss is trying to be both an endgame branch and a place for unlucky characters to try and escape from. The end result is the Abyss contains both Draconian Annihilators that can reduce low level characters to a bloody smear 3d35 tiles long and tier 5 demons that die when you glare at them, when it really should contain one or the other. (Side idea: instead of abyssal stairs changing the monster generation rate, they change what monsters can appear, with deeper levels having stronger monsters. Banished characters end up at a depth determined by the HD of whatever banished them, so a kobold with a distortion dagger just dumps you in Abyss 1 where the greatest threat is a grumpy imp, whereas Ancient Liches leave you stranded in Abyss 5 surrounded by enough Starcursed Masses to outnumber the Red Army Choir.)

[TeshiAlair]

Self Xpost from the abyss thread:

How's this as an alternative to banishment: Have it corrupt the floor around you, with radius increasing with spell power. This way, early banishment will be minor, while more powerful sources will essentially be a 1 floor banishment.

[Lyrick]

How about just autoidentifying the brand on all distortion weapons? Then there's no surprise from the glowing kobold weapon or the Okawaru/Trog "present". You still have to figure out how to deal with it though.

This would definitely be a huge improvement but it would still require you to check and make sure each enemy you meet isn't carrying one, Unless you add some kind of clear visual. That probably be easy for tiles, not sure about console though.

How about giving them a purple background, kind of like with stab indicators

[zardo]

Letting distortion auto-id seems like a great solution, really. As a threat most forms of banishment are really pretty fair in that you know when they're a possibility and how to prevent them (whether the abyss itself works as a game feature is a different matter) and are in fact only interesting (to the extent that they are interesting) if you know this.

[Leafsnail]

There are also a couple of other brands that should maybe auto-ID (electric, draining, other common D:1 1HKOs). Having to run away from every glowing weapon enemy early on is annoying and I don't see the point of faking the player out like that.

[NessOnett]

Auto-ID seems like a very slippery slope. I can't foresee a situation where distortion gets this treatment where other brands don't quickly follow. And ID scrolls are already losing usefulness with jewelry changing.

And if they are going to make all brands ID(which thematically makes sense), what is the reason to keep the ID system around still?

[DickhardLionheart]

And if they are going to make all brands ID(which thematically makes sense), what is the reason to keep the ID system around still?

Nostalgy. The id scroll economy is a boring, easily solved and then repetitive minigame.

What and_into posted as "arguably" above makes a lot of sense: knowing brands ahead of time would make for more involved tactics which are a design goal (unlike preserving the utility of scrolls of id).

[NessOnett]

And if they are going to make all brands ID(which thematically makes sense), what is the reason to keep the ID system around still?

Nostalgy. The id scroll economy is a boring, easily solved and then repetitive minigame.

What and_into posted as "arguably" above makes a lot of sense: knowing brands ahead of time would make for more involved tactics which are a design goal (unlike preserving the utility of scrolls of id).

Well that's somewhat my point. Either they need to completely remove the ID system, and take the initiative to redesign the dozens of loose ends that are influences by it(such as Ashenzari, etc.), or they need to leave it alone. Slowly stripping it away little by little just leaves these random and niche artifacts(no pun intended) of the older system that is largely irrelevant in a modern context.

So in short, I don't think they can make distortion auto-ID without taking a serious look at completely removing ID-ing altogether...which is a much bigger discussion.