Draconians

[Ghoul King]

Draconians don't really seem to work as intended, game design-wise. My understanding is that Draconians are structured the way they are to encourage the player to adapt to the race rather than simply planning their character's entire life from creation, but it seems to me that Daemonspawn pull that off perfectly and Draconians pull it off not at all. As a Draconian, you don't know what color you'll get when you're picking your background nor for skill training and so on in the six levels before you mature, but once you hit level 7 there only difference between how Draconians work vs being able to pick whichever color you like is...

-The RNG can potentially punish your background choice. (You picked Fire Elementalist, and got White Draconian)

-You wanted a color, any color, other than X. You got X. Uuuugh.

... which doesn't really encourage adapting around your color, it just encourages quitting on them and being mad.

Note that I don't mean players should be able to pick their color. My point is rather that, as things stand, the Draconian color being random is obnoxious and doesn't seem to really achieve the intended effect of encouraging players to be flexible in their planning.

Meanwhile, as I said earlier, Daemonspawn look to me to do what Draconians are intended to. Until you have all your different facets, you don't know what exactly you're going to get: if you're fully spoilered you know some things of importance, such as that one of your equipment slots will ultimately be unusable (Unless you roll monstrous, in which case you know already that you will be unable to use headgear, gloves, and boots), and that certain kinds of mutations will not roll together so if you got X mutation you will not get Y, but for instance a Daemonspawn who rolls Thin Skeletal Structure might in turn roll multiple other mutations that all weight them towards stabber material or they might roll stuff like Hooves (Which hinders stealth and encourages more straightforward melee activity), and so you can't really assume anything about your final build until you have rolled six different mutations (More if monstrous) which may not happen until quite late in your character's development.

It raises the question: if Daemonspawn do what Draconians are intended to do, and Draconians do not achieve their intended purpose, why are Draconians in the game? I like the general idea of Draconians and am not suggesting they be removed, but if they are invalidated in their purpose by another species and failing at it besides, then some kind of change needs to be made.

Draconian colors also have seemingly contradictory incentives at work. A Red Draconian, looking at their skill modifications, should obviously commit to Fire magics and quite possibly ignore Ice magic outright. (The removal of anti-training will make this less true, thankfully) But their innate breath weapon is a fire attack that overlaps in its utility with both Conjure Flame and Bolt of Fire, and in general is redundant in damage type with the Fire school: just looking at the breath weapon I would sooner make a Red Draconian an Ice Elementalist, using my breath weapon to dispatch Ice Beasts and so on and my spells to deal with Crimson Imps and later fire immune enemies. Red Draconians strike me as the color most guilty of this phenomenon, but other colors have this oddness at work too, such as how Green Draconians have a Mephitic breath weapon alongside skill with the Poison school. Purple, Pale, Yellow and Grey Draconians largely escape this, but that leaves more than half of the colors in an awkward position. There's also a psychological component: if I roll a Purple Draconian I feel pressured to start training Charms/Hexes even though it's not like a Purple Draconian is non-functional doing other things. One could argue I should just ignore that nagging feeling, but if I have no pressing motivation to use the advantages I've acquired, why am I supposed to care what color I got? That's a problem all its own, and a worse one than a psychological trick too.

More than that, the bonuses that distinguish Draconian colors don't seem very interesting in terms of gameplay. The skill modifications don't really encourage any interesting decision-making (While the skill maluses can directly punish your previous decisions) in that either you take advantage of them and are better than a color that lacks the bonus but raises the skill anyway or you don't take advantage of them and are left with... your breath weapon and resistance? Poison, Asphyxiation, and Electricity are the only resistances that carry substantial connotations beyond 'some attacks do less damage to you than normal', since they influence decisions like 'should I dump Mephitic Cloud at my feet?' or 'should I use this Electrical damage thing that can hurt me?' The Yellow Draconian's Acid resistance is particularly disappointing, because Corrosion Resistance provides Acid Resistance, the two effects don't stack, and if you're digging around in the Slime Pits or something you want Corrosion Resistance regardless of whether you have Acid Resistance or not, so at any given moment a Yellow Draconian doesn't necessarily meaningfully benefit from their innate resistance at all, even, and in fact especially, when they should.

I don't have anything resembling a proposal or suggestion. The two obvious "fixes" are to make Draconians into Daemonspawn knock-offs, or to remove Draconians, and I don't think either of those is a good answer. I like Draconians overall and think they can have a niche without re-imagining them as something completely unrelated to how they currently are. But I would like to generate discussion, because I feel Draconians aren't really doing what the developers say they're intended to do, and aren't really doing anything else so interesting so well that they are clearly worthwhile as is.

Though I will say that if Yellow was removed as a color or radically altered I wouldn't miss it.

[nilsbloodaxe]

It raises the question...

[derail]
I am so happy you used this rather than the incorrect "begs the question".
[/derail]

[KoboldLord]

Draconians have an almost completely harmless element of random chance. Even if you get the color that is absolutely least suited towards your gameplan, you're still playing a good species with almost exclusively good qualities. The -2 aptitude for unlucky elementalists, for instance, only slightly modifies your skilling in that you spend a little more xp in conjurations and diversify into melee a little more quickly. You'd invest xp in both of these things with a +2 aptitude for matching color, too, so if anything your color is mechanically irrelevant flavor.

Yellow draconians are actually quite good. They have slightly better aux melee than most sub-species, and if you aren't running a ranged background their breath weapon is actually above average for direct damage.

[Sar]

Purple dracs get MR, which is nice (though it doesn't really promote any decision making besides obvious "I can wear a Dex ring instead of MR one". Acid resistance was equal to corrosion resistance for quite some time now.

[scorpionwarrior]

The Yellow Draconian's Acid resistance is particularly disappointing, because Corrosion Resistance provides Acid Resistance, the two effects don't stack, and if you're digging around in the Slime Pits or something you want Corrosion Resistance regardless of whether you have Acid Resistance or not, so at any given moment a Yellow Draconian doesn't necessarily meaningfully benefit from their innate resistance at all, even, and in fact especially, when they should.

rAcid doesn't exist anymore and yellow dracs get rCorr, also player acid attacks halve monster AC now.

[Ghoul King]

Draconians have an almost completely harmless element of random chance. Even if you get the color that is absolutely least suited towards your gameplan, you're still playing a good species with almost exclusively good qualities. The -2 aptitude for unlucky elementalists, for instance, only slightly modifies your skilling in that you spend a little more xp in conjurations and diversify into melee a little more quickly. You'd invest xp in both of these things with a +2 aptitude for matching color, too, so if anything your color is mechanically irrelevant flavor.

Ghoul King: Draconian color is largely irrelevant, which is both boring and a failure to achieve the dev-stated purpose of Draconians.

KoboldLord: Draconian color is irrelevant, even more so than Ghoul King believes. I seem to be under the impression I am contradicting his premise for why change seems called for.

Yellow draconians are actually quite good. They have slightly better aux melee than most sub-species, and if you aren't running a ranged background their breath weapon is actually above average for direct damage.

I never said they were bad. I used them as a specific example of how Draconian color distinctiveness is disappointing. I would prefer them interesting or gone, not better or gone. How good they are is irrelevant to the point.

Purple dracs get MR, which is nice (though it doesn't really promote any decision making besides obvious "I can wear a Dex ring instead of MR one".

Nor did I say "Purple Draconians are bad let's buff them". You are in fact reinforcing my core point, which is that the entire color mechanic is currently very boring and close to pointless.

Acid Resistance

I cannot corroborate these statements, but it's also kind of irrelevant. It just changes my statement, if true, from "Yellow Draconians should still wear Amulets of Resist Corrosion and thus not care they have innate Acid resistance!" to "Yellow Draconians consider Amulets of Resist Corrosion to be a useless find and never wear them" which at least actually alters their decision-making process a little, but the implications are limited and uninteresting.

In summary: please stop telling me Draconians are better at the game than I think they are, because that is in no way shape or form related to my point. My point is colors are boring and borderline irrelevant or relevant in boring and pointless ways and that's bad, no matter how playable Draconians are.

[nilsbloodaxe]

Sure, the colors are pretty much irrelevant, and, yes, that might be boring. Also it might confuse a newbie who, not realizing it is basically irrelevant, thinks his awesome DrIE is ruined because he is now a Red Drac. That being said, I don't really see the point in removing or changing the color system. Right now, getting a color is not a tedious mechanic so I don't think removal is really justified (though I can't claim I would really care because it is basically meaningless). On the other hand, making it more relevant would more than likely up the RNG "fuck you" if it gives you a bad color for the skills that you already have trained.

I would also make that point that even with Ds muts, many are great, but none are particularly character breaking.

[and into]

Well, in short, I find draconians are a species with a gimmick but their gimmick is not all that "gimmicky," and I actually like that fact. They are pretty good all around, have neat flavor, and get some slightly randomized characteristics that do not majorly impose any crazy stuff on your game play. The things that all draconians share (good HP, good +AC, no body armor, a breath attack for all except one type) are for the most part more distinctive in terms of game play than the differences between the types of draconians.

[duvessa]

Neither ds mutations nor dr colour have a chance of significantly affecting strategy in my experience. I would submit that dr colour is actually much better design since unlike ds mutations you don't get a bunch of advance knowledge by reading spoilers.
That said I find dr to be an aggressively uninteresting species in the first place, since it's just a stronger human that is missing one of the game's two equipment slots (body armour and weapon) that lead to actual interesting decisions.

[KoboldLord]

Ghoul King: Draconian color is largely irrelevant, which is both boring and a failure to achieve the dev-stated purpose of Draconians.

KoboldLord: Draconian color is irrelevant, even more so than Ghoul King believes. I seem to be under the impression I am contradicting his premise for why change seems called for.

Allow me to clarify. The thing you perceive as the draconian reason for existence is in fact nearly non-existent. The deficit you perceive is actually irrelevant because the niche you think draconians are trying to fulfill is in fact imaginary, and they are not actually trying to fulfill that niche at all. Draconians are the bulky generalists with built-in heavy armor that doesn't penalize them. This is a pretty vanilla niche, but draconians fulfill it more-or-less fine. The status quo is not likely to be improved by throwing a bunch more random crap at them.

[Ghoul King]

Allow me to clarify. The thing you perceive as the draconian reason for existence is in fact nearly non-existent. The deficit you perceive is actually irrelevant because the niche you think draconians are trying to fulfill is in fact imaginary, and they are not actually trying to fulfill that niche at all. Draconians are the bulky generalists with built-in heavy armor that doesn't penalize them. This is a pretty vanilla niche, but draconians fulfill it more-or-less fine. The status quo is not likely to be improved by throwing a bunch more random crap at them.

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... :draconian

Specifically: "No Selection! We will not open up draconian colour to direct (prompt) or indirect (skills) selection. There are several reasons for this: Draconians are (like Demonspawns) are species about flexibility and adaptation." (Emphasis mine)

When I say developer stated I don't mean in my imaginary lala land where I read the developer's mind!

[Kate]

I don't really think a 4-year-old comment that's just referring to not allowing colour selection is particularly indicative of Draconians being a failure to achieve whatever their intended design might be. As multiple people have said, in practice they're flexible hybrids with a unique slot restriction and some relatively minor randomisation, and seem okay in that niche to me at least.

[TeshiAlair]

Ok, Teshi's bad idea time:

What if each Draconian got extra bonuses based on the "encouraged" skills? This way, you have the choice to keep going down your path, or try to branch out.
NOTE: All of these are probably OP/UP/just plain stupid. These are just spitballing ideas.

Red: Breath attack starts out without the cloud. At 9 Fire, they get the cloud. At 15 Fire, the cloud becomes 3x3. At 21 Fire, the spell becomes a bolt. At 27 Fire, it has the rod of ignition effect.
White: Breath attack starts out normal. At 9 ice, they get the knockback on fliers. At 15 Ice, they get the resistance ignoring. At 21 ice, they get knockback on all enemies. At 27 Ice, they get the freeze into block effect of Glaciate.
Green: Breath attack starts out normal. At 9 poison, the breath attack also slows enemies. At 15 poison, they get the poison tail. At 21 poison, their poison spells have a higher chance of piercing rPois. At 27 poison, all poison spells become curare.
Yellow: breath attack starts out normal. At 9 UC (to make them mildly more interesting), they get acidic scales (aka spines). At 15 UC, they get the acid bite. At 21 UC, their scales become stronger. At 27 uc, their spit leaves an acidic puddle that slows enemies for a turn.
Grey: Have their bonus AC scale off of earth magic. Also at 15 earth, give an earthquake-flavored cleaving attack, at 27 earth, have their melee attacks possibly shatter adjacent walls.
Black: breath attack starts out just bolts. At 9 Air, they get the balls. At 15 air, they get the big wings. At 21 air, they get EV/speed bonus like tengu. At 27 air, their breath becomes a cone instead of random.
Purple: MR bonus scales with Spellcasting. At 9 spellcasting, they get a mild boost to spell power. At 15 spellcasting, their breath attack has a chance to inflict a random hex. At 21 spellcasting, their breath attack also lowers MR for a brief period. At 27 spellcasting, they get a "deflect magic" effect.
Mottled: breath attack starts out without splash. At 9 fire, gains splash effect. At 15 fire, the range increases by 1. At 21 fire, the splash becomes more reliable. At 27, the breath attack ignores more rF
Pale: breath attack starts out normal. At 9 evocations, clouds last a bit longer. At 15 evocations, they get an innate +1 to rods. At 21 evocations, the clouds have a chance to be a random other type of cloud. At 27 evocations, they gain the ability to perma lose 2 mp to recharge a wand or activate an inert evocable.

[Sar]

I don't like the idea of adding more skill breakdowns, tbh.

[Tiktacy]

In my experience, Draconians tend to be excellent learning tools for newer players. They help promote the advantages of hybridization, they encourage a balance of both armour and dodging(which in my experience, tends to be optimal), and are usually very easy to win with.

The colours are just icing on the cake for me personally, they never get in the way of my gameplay and i always find myself having fun with whatever colour I get.

[neil]

they encourage a balance of both armour and dodging(which in my experience, tends to be optimal)

Where "balance" means "don't train Armour at all"?

[Sar]

I think he means AC and EV?

[Bloax]

To encourage you must have a choice in the first place, and for Dr defenses you either train dodging or you train dodging because you can't wear anything worthwhile.
An encouragement so great it becomes forceful!

[TeshiAlair]

I don't like the idea of adding more skill breakdowns, tbh.

It's hacky as hell, but I think it fulfills the two design goals of draconians being 1. Encourage you to change playstyle. 2. Making it so that you don't HAVE to.

[Tiktacy]

they encourage a balance of both armour and dodging(which in my experience, tends to be optimal)

Where "balance" means "don't train Armour at all"?

It teaches the player by example. I'm assuming most newer players think the same things I did: Either Max armor or Max dodging. But after playing draconians for a while, I quickly realized a balance is much more optimal. Does that make more sense?

[Tenaya]

Ghoul King: Draconian color is largely irrelevant, which is both boring and a failure to achieve the dev-stated purpose of Draconians.

KoboldLord: Draconian color is irrelevant, even more so than Ghoul King believes. I seem to be under the impression I am contradicting his premise for why change seems called for.

Allow me to clarify. The thing you perceive as the draconian reason for existence is in fact nearly non-existent. The deficit you perceive is actually irrelevant because the niche you think draconians are trying to fulfill is in fact imaginary, and they are not actually trying to fulfill that niche at all. Draconians are the bulky generalists with built-in heavy armor that doesn't penalize them. This is a pretty vanilla niche, but draconians fulfill it more-or-less fine. The status quo is not likely to be improved by throwing a bunch more random crap at them.

I started a thread with some (IMO) modest proposed modifications to the Draconian species and the response was underwhelming. The impression I got was that most people felt that they were fine as is.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10656&hilit=draconian+revisions