The Tavern

The player would need a good reason to pick TSO first.

Wahaha wrote:The player would need a good reason to pick TSO first.

Do you not feel the INTEREST?

Well, "How to make TSO a competitive choice in a 3 rune game" could be its own thread, really, but I have enough threads at this juncture.

Occasional distortion/whatever on enemies is fine and interesting. Having to act like a large proportion of monsters have it isn't.

I think it's worth noting that dpeg already (just a few hours after the dragon slaying removal) sent an email to c-r-d suggesting that all brands that a monster is wielding be automatically known, as crate suggested in the previous page. I don't have any objection to this, for the reasons that tabstorm and others (esp. crate) have pointed out.

I will admit that really the only difference between dragon slaying and holy wrath for this instance is that dragon slaying wasmore marginal and thus easier to remove from the game entirely to solve its problem. :P

wheals wrote:I think it's worth noting that dpeg already (just a few hours after the dragon slaying removal) sent an email to c-r-d suggesting that all brands that a monster is wielding be automatically known, as crate suggested in the previous page. I don't have any objection to this, for the reasons that tabstorm and others (esp. crate) have pointed out.

I will admit that really the only difference between dragon slaying and holy wrath for this instance is that dragon slaying wasmore marginal and thus easier to remove from the game entirely to solve its problem.

That is fine, assuming you can at least automate in your rcfile a stop message when your character spots a distortion or holy brand (when undead-. I guess it takes away a little bit of danger from early Dungeon so it's not exactly what I wanted, but it would still make me happy.

Just throwing this out here.

Righteousness: Gain a slaying bonus of (piety/20) against Anathema and Apostates. (passive)

I'm envisioning this as a replacement TSO ability for Bless Weapon, but available starting at conversion because it scales with piety anyway. Holy Wrath can then be removed from the game except (possibly) as a monster property for some holy monsters. This would remove the unreasonable spike damage from surprise holy wrath weapons for mummy, vampire, and ghoul player characters, and it would remove the problematic aspect of the holy wrath brand in player hands as it suddenly changes from clearly the worst brand in the game to clearly the most damaging brand in the game at an arbitrary point.

Anathema and Apostates are the same groups that Zin uses for Recite, which means that the player only has to understand one monster classification scheme. Maybe get Elyvilon in on this too, rather than having the three related deities have completely different overlapping but not identical monster classification schemes. A slaying bonus against most intelligent opponents would make TSO more appealing in the early game, since this includes a sizable number of tough opponents, rather than completely overshadowed by both of her sisters. The specific proposed bonus can be tweaked, of course; perhaps 'unbelievers' should give a lesser bonus than 'heretics', for instance, just as they do for Zin. Slaying is nice for making sword-and-board with a fast one-handed weapon more appealing, but of course absolutely any TSO build would appreciate having it.

I am actuay competely ok with there being a god and a brand that get dramatcally better later on. The former introduces an interesting god decision while the latter raises questions about what to enchant (if you aren't with TSO).

The question about what to enchant is mostly a newbie trap, because holy wrath is useless for the parts of the game that are hard. You should enchant a weapon that isn't rubbish.

The fact that almost the entire post-endgame shares a single huge, gaping weakness against an otherwise useless thing is also questionable design. The weapon choice question is even more interesting for all characters when there isn't a single clear winner.

Leafsnail wrote:I am actuay competely ok with there being a god and a brand that get dramatcally better later on.

Well I am not, really.
I don't see why it's interesting to have a weapon ego for the whole game that is effectively the same as the weapon being unbranded until you're so deep in you've not only literally beaten the game but are going further into it. Crawl may not be the most generous game when it comes to giving the player loot but it's also not the cheapest, everyone who would've ever cared for the damage boost from HW in post-end as anything other than pointless min-maxing already has ten weapons perfectly up for the task at hand and quite possibly a brand/weapon that is indeed better than HW itself regardless.

It's true HW is relevant for people who wish to play post-end as a normal part of the game instead of some silly self-flagellation thing, but given the changes crawl has seen in the recent past I believe that behavior is actively frowned upon and erradicated to the extent it is possible to do so.

e: may have would have may have would have

HW isn't the clear winner overall though, due to the fact that it's not good before extended. I guess there's the general problem with Crawl's difficulty curve being so poor that "endgame weaponry" isn't really desirable at all, but I don't think that's a problem with the principle of "stuff that is bad now but becomes better later".

Sar wrote:Regarding distortion I think it's funny how a lot of new players consider it bad power-wise, and more experienced players consider it to be strong but still don't like to actually use it.

I was of this opinion until about 2 weeks ago or so. I played two octopodes who happened to wield ID a distortion short blade very early on (ie, before temple) and found it to be incredibly useful. They were both EE backgrounds, so the weapon was a secondary attack, but being able to rapidly kill things between constriction and when space warped on them for raw damage was very helpful. The damage was high enough when mixed with constriction that you could probably say it wasn't even really secondary, just an alternative offense. Teleporting away/banishing mobs also saved me several times - in a roguelike where the ultimate goal is "don't die" getting monsters away from you is practically as good as killing them. You could always walk around the level one last time at the end if you want to find the mobs you've teleported. I did this once or twice when I teleported a unique but it isn't generally necessary.

In both games I sidestepped the issue of removing the weapon by using a scroll of brand weapon to rebrand it and unwield it safely, so that's pretty awesome too. Did this around the first rune branch time, after finishing lair/orc/dungeon.

Not all builds are as suited to just go with a randomly worn distortion brand, but for casters who don't care about finding the highest damage weapon, any base type with distortion has a lot of utility.

tasonir wrote:In both games I sidestepped the issue of removing the weapon by using a scroll of brand weapon to rebrand it and unwield it safely, so that's pretty awesome too. Did this around the first rune branch time, after finishing lair/orc/dungeon.

Just so you know, rebranding a distortion weapon in any way triggers the distortion effect, so you must have gotten lucky and had nothing happened. The only way to 'safely' unwield distortion is Lugonu, who blocks the effect.

Patashu wrote:
tasonir wrote:In both games I sidestepped the issue of removing the weapon by using a scroll of brand weapon to rebrand it and unwield it safely, so that's pretty awesome too. Did this around the first rune branch time, after finishing lair/orc/dungeon.

Just so you know, rebranding a distortion weapon in any way triggers the distortion effect, so you must have gotten lucky and had nothing happened. The only way to 'safely' unwield distortion is Lugonu, who blocks the effect.

not any more

crate wrote:
Patashu wrote:
tasonir wrote:In both games I sidestepped the issue of removing the weapon by using a scroll of brand weapon to rebrand it and unwield it safely, so that's pretty awesome too. Did this around the first rune branch time, after finishing lair/orc/dungeon.

Just so you know, rebranding a distortion weapon in any way triggers the distortion effect, so you must have gotten lucky and had nothing happened. The only way to 'safely' unwield distortion is Lugonu, who blocks the effect.

not any more

Oh, it did change. Here are the relevant commits, mostly so I can refer to them again when I forget:
http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 6de1a0fd0a Don't do a distortion unwield effect on rebrand. 28 Apr 2014
http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 7ff0b589e1 Don't give distortion effects when rebranding a distortion weapon under Lugonu (#8116) 8 Feb 2014
http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... fe09961998 Suppress distortion unwield effects for Lucy followers. 16 Nov 2013
http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... d1298bc923 Don't capricious abyss the player with rebranding (context: rebranding a distortion weapon in inventory did the unwield effect, after this it didn't) 8 Nov 2013

The Tavern

Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands

Re: Pain/Disto/Holy brands