Proposal: Revise Scroll of Immolation

[XuaXua]

ISSUE: I think that with everyone in view getting low-duration Inner Flame'd, this is a seriously easily overpowering scroll in favor of the player.

I have some mutually-exclusive ideas for the Scroll of Immolation (SoL) aka "my favorite way to greet V5 and end TRJ, and trivialize both".

PROPOSAL 1: NERF SoL by having it affect only one target in view.
To nerf it, simply have the scroll only affect a single, random, not-currently-inner-flamed, target in sight, with whatever resistance check is in place today.

PROPOSAL 1A: To keep some form of power, also Sticky-Flame the same Inner-Flamed target, so that triggering the explosion is not necessarily up to the player.

PROPOSAL 2: NERF SoL by having it affect only those who fail a MR check to limit the overall resulting "Explodi-ness" by potentially reducing the number of exploding creatures. This would (1) keep the same sort of effectiveness in places like Orc, but reduce the effectiveness of using it to trivialize the intentional mobs of Vaults:5 / Slime:6
I assume monsters have MR, but Inner Flame from a SoL seems to affect all creatures regardless of MR. Have MR act as a defense so that not all creatures in sight get equally affected.

PROPOSAL 3: Have a read of SoL swap the Inner Flame status of all creatures in view
This one isn't a nerf, but an enhancement. I have noticed a couple recent (last few months) updates where a second cast of a spell or item use can negate the prior effect. Have SoL do the same; if there are Inner Flame'd in view, have a read of SoL remove that inner flame status (but make sure to apply it to anything in view that wasn't inner flamed). This request is simply for consistency.

Obviously these Proposals aren't necessarily intended to combine with each other (except for 1 and 1A).

[Wahaha]

Turning everything into bombs that damage you and make a lot of noise sounds like a pretty bad thing to me.

[XuaXua]

Turning everything into bombs that damage you and make a lot of noise sounds like a pretty bad thing to me.

One explosion, in a less predictable area (as in, not everyone), is pretty bad too.

With ++rF, Scroll of Immolation is basically the best weapon ever to take down large mobs. My last several Vault runs have simply chunked V5. As the scroll was originally intended to be a "trap", I do not think that the scroll is being used for its intended purpose anymore, and has become a predictable tactical device that favors the player.

[Leafsnail]

I don't understand why it needs a nerf. It's only useful in a rather specific set of circumstances (there are a lot of enemies in LoS, you can kill enough of those enemies to start a chain reaction but not enough to just kill them all anyway, none of the enemies are close enough to you to cause serious damage to you when they explode) and if you use it wrongly you put yourself in danger. It's mainly just fun, and I don't see a problem with that.

[Patashu]

I don't like any of these proposals and I like it as it is. It's a scroll of 'huh, this sounds really ill-advised' until you think of some cool place to use it (slime:6, vaults:5) and then you get to have fun for once in your crawl adventurer's life. (You don't even get experience for monsters killed by the inner flame explosion, IIRC, so it's not like it's that overpowered.)

[Aule]

Nerf the most fun (and dangerous to use) thing in this game?

Off wi' 'is 'ead!

[Lasty]

The current implementation of this rare consumable is fun and creates some interesting situations, and is absolutely not overpowered. All of the nerfs you propose would make the scroll less fun and also fairly useless. You might as well just suggest cutting the scroll entirely, though I'd be against that too.

[Galefury]

You don't even get experience for monsters killed by the inner flame explosion, IIRC, so it's not like it's that overpowered.

I think that was changed some time ago. Not 100% sure though.

[Sar]

to greet V5 and ... trivialize

A bunch of not-orc-knights is already trivial to any character who is setting its foot in V:5. Immo just lets you dispatch them in a noisy but spectacular fashion.

[XuaXua]

You might as well just suggest cutting the scroll entirely, though I'd be against that too.

Exactly why I proposed alternatives. I think it's fun, but it's also a little ridiculous; I was proposing to make it "still fun", but "less ridiculous".

[Sar]

Well, as you can see most people do not consider them ridiculous or overpowered. Maybe there isn't a problem that needs fixing, after all?

[Lasty]

Oh, I think they're ridiculous, but I don't think that's bad. They're not overpowered by any means.

[KoboldLord]

In order to kill a dozen threatening enemies at once with a scroll of immolation, you have to have a dozen threatening enemies on the screen at once and keep them there long enough to start the cascade. There really aren't that many points in the game where this is likely to happen, and even in most of those cases (e.g. Rune vaults) it is almost always safer to carefully peel off enemies one at a time until the dangerous vault is empty. Making it work is admittedly really cool-looking, but the game need not be balanced on the basis of cool. It's okay if a feature is cooler than strictly needed.

[zardo]

the opening ambush isn't the hard part of V:5 - if anything it's more of a warning