New Item Proposal: Ring of Silence

[HilariousDeathArtist]

"This ring occasionally exerts its power to randomly silence both the wearer and creatures nearby. It can also be deliberately activated for the same effect."

The ring of silence would be another ring that would contribute to the danger of trying on unidentified rings. Currently very few rings fit this criteria.

Wearing this ring would cause a randomly occurring silence effect, which would also be evokable. The effect would scale with evocations, increasing the radius with power.

Being stuck with a cursed ring would at least limit scroll and god ability usage for all characters, while also severely crippling spellcasters (perhaps too much).

If we want to continue the design of carrying around multiple items such as rings/rods/evocables for activated abilities I think this could be a useful addition.

If it seems like there is enough interest in this concept I may attempt to create a patch to add it myself.

[Lacuenta]

Hmm not sure we need even more useless rings its not like there aren't more than enough ?removecurse around, the don't wear unidentified rings game ends after D5 or so imho.

But a ring of silence would make a cool unrandart, "Ring of the silence: provides a continues silence aura, hp+15, dam+5" for instance.

Edit: probably the silence should be an evocable, since if it would ever get cursed the ring would be unremovable

[and into]

As a randart I like it, something that randomly gives silence while also being evoked for the effect. When it goes off (randomly or otherwise) it should count as "casting" silence, in other words the effect does not end immediately upon removing the ring. Otherwise kind of defeats the purpose.

Even so I'm a bit worried it might encourage too much swapping, as silence is a very strong effect. What about a hat?

+3 Winter Scarf
Base type: Hat
"A warm, magically enchanted scarf that tends to muffle speech."
{*/+ Silence, rC+}

The random silence happens fairly rarely (less often than *Tele).

[Lacuenta]

I really like the idea of making it something else then a ring, but if the silence is random it would promote 5-ing until it activates.
Perhaps something more like: The +3 hat of the ones blessed silence: blessed, continues silence aura, rn+++.
blessed means it can't get cursed basically.

Edit: I didn't see you made it evocable, it's certainly stronger then my proposal, but can still get you into trouble, i like.

[HilariousDeathArtist]

Hmm not sure we need even more useless rings

Like the ring of teleportation this is intended to continue being useful after you have removed the curse.

the effect does not end immediately upon removing the ring

That is a good point I had not considered. Perhaps not allowing the ring to be removed during the duration would be a reasonable drawback?

I'm a bit worried it might encourage too much swapping

I am also worried about this, but this seems to be a problem with most useful jewelery, at least for me.

silence is a very strong effect

Since it is already in the game via Hexes (and also scrolls), we can see that it is useful, but I don't think it is utilized enough currently.

I suppose adding a second way to access reusable silence without having to invest in Int/Hexes could be considered too powerful. However, I think using Evocations could be an interesting way to access silence.

[Lacuenta]

Hmm not sure we need even more useless rings

Like the ring of teleportation this is intended to continue being useful after you have removed the curse.

Well the problem is only melee characters would want to swap to it, besides free scrolls of silence seems pretty strong for such characters.
Personally i like the idea of a continues silence aura like the ring of shadows or the mace of brilliance.
If its something other then a ring it would make swapping it hard and make it more of strategical choice to wear especially if it gives a few bonusses like ac or dam. You will have to trade extra power for no longer having the easy option to bail out of a fight by casting or reading ?tele/blink to escape.

[Siegurt]

Well, I think as a cursed ring type it works if:

1. It always starts cursed.
2. It is very difficult to evoke (requires more evocation than invis)
3. It only procs randomly if it is cursed.
4. Evoking it curses it. (Meaning you can't remove it until the silence ends, since you can't read ?rcurse while silenced)
5. It duplicates the radius effect of the spell (namely that it starts at a radius dependent on spellpower, shrinks rapidly at the outset and slowly once it's getting toward it's terminus) and the spellpower it uses to cast it's silence has a lower cap and requires very high evocation to even get to it's cap.

I'm not sure it needs to be added, but it could work as a ring type.

[Patashu]

Yeah, if this goes in as a real item it needs to have a low radius at low evo otherwise it would be incredibly good if found as Trog.

[archaeo]

I like the hat, I would like it more if it was {+/*Sil, Wiz}, but I also kind of think that if Orange Crystal Plate ends up in the game we might have too many double-edged spellcasting items. rC+ is good flavor though.

[and into]

Yeah, if this goes in as a real item it needs to have a low radius at low evo otherwise it would be incredibly good if found as Trog.

I agree that power should scale up with evo skill and should require a good amount of evocations to be powerful/reliable. But remember: "You cannot call out to <foo> while silenced," including Trog. Even Troggies give up something while silenced. The gods where you can get around this are Vehumet (all passive abilities stay active) and Nemelex.

[DracheReborn]

and_into: um, you can pray now while silenced. The commit to do this is even credited to you!

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... b8a4aeb5f3

[Kate]

That's just item/corpse-sacrificing prayer. You can't use actual invocations while silenced, I think that's what and into was referring to.

[DracheReborn]

Huh, you're right. I confused the two. Thanks MarvinPA