Proposal: Early Trample

[Lasty]

I cannot figure out what happens if a trampling creature appears close to lava or deep water areas, is there a chance to be pushed to instadeath? If so, I think vaults could be cleverly designed to convert a mild nuisance in a challenging threat.

Trampling can never push you into fatal terrain.

[Roderic]

I cannot figure out what happens if a trampling creature appears close to lava or deep water areas, is there a chance to be pushed to instadeath? If so, I think vaults could be cleverly designed to convert a mild nuisance in a challenging threat.

Trampling can never push you into fatal terrain.

how is this exception addressed? "you stand your ground courageously"?

[Lasty]

I'm pretty sure you just silently don't get trampled, though it's possible I've missed the messages for it consistently.

[Sandman25]

I'm confused by a couple of things that have been said:

It is not always possible to retreat upstairs even if you started fighting several tiles away from elephants.

Elephants are the same speed as you, and they can only trample you off stairs if you are standing next to them when you go upstairs, if you're several tiles away from elephants it's always possible to retreat upstairs. Given that, I'm not sure what you mean -- could you clarify?

For simplicity let's assume that I am in a corridor and that it takes 2 turns for me to kill an Elephant.

  Code:

########
E..E@<.#
########

As you can see another Elephant is 2 tiles away from rightmost Elephant so if I kill the latter in 2 turns, I will be able to retreat upstairs (there will be 1 tile distance between me and leftmost Elephant):

  Code:

########
..E.@<.#
########

If I start fighting that rightmost Elephant while standing on stairs:

  Code:

########
.E..E@.#
########

and it tramples me after my first attack, I will be in a very bad situation with Elephant standing on stairs (there are still 2 tiles distance between the elephants because trampling monster automatically moves after the trampling attack)

  Code:

########
..E..E@#
########

Next turn I kill it and remaining Elephant moves closer (as you can see there are 2 tiles between us, not 1 tile, trampling actually helps in this regard)

  Code:

########
...E.<@#
########

Next turn I move to the stairs tile and Elephant moves too so it becomes adjacent to me

  Code:

########
....E@.#
########

That would not happen if I started fighting 1 tile to left from stairs because I would not need to move to stairs, I would use them immediately.

  Code:

########
..E..@.#
########

Realistically it often takes more than 2 turns to kill an Elephant so Elephant can trample you multiple times and every time it does that, it moves you closer (and then farther) from the stairs.
So I usually try to fight a single Elephant 5-6 tiles away from stairs, it is very unlikely that it will move me beyond the stairs.

[wheals]

I may be misreading but lasty's complaint about trampling seems to be saying that it's a poor mechanic for a speed 10 melee-only monster (and even worse in elephant packs because swapping makes them effectively even slower). There obviously are mechanics that don't work well on some type of monsters, but I think that if elephants were able to trample you out of a good position and hit you if you tried to find a better one, the trample certainly would matter. That said, I'm not sure that a lone, even if fast, monster would be so interesting because there's no reason to not just fight it there -- elephant packs would at least provide the danger of a poor defensive position meaning that you get surrounded.

[Lasty]

I didn't expressly weigh in on whether or not trampling is a good mechanic and/or whether it's good on a speed 10 monster, but since you ask, I would say that if trampling were on a speed > 10 monster, it would be a more meaningful mechanic in that trampling could punish you slightly for abandoning an open-backed chokepoint. However, trampling actually reduces the power of herds, and makes it less dangerous to fight a group of trampling monsters in open terrain. For example, if you decide to melee a pack of elephants in open terrain, they will generally push you away faster than they can surround you, ensuring that you are in range of only 1-2 elephants at any one time. Speeding up the elephants doesn't change that, since the elephants are racing each other, and not you.

I'm not against trampling, but I think it does nothing in ~60% of situations, weakens the monster in ~30% of situations, and makes the monster stronger in <10% of situations. It's a weak and largely unnecessary mechanic, but relatively inoffensive.

Trampling would be relevant in a greater number of scenarios if being trampled into an impassible feature did extra damage, or if it did more damage in corridors, or something, because then trampling would make it actively safer to fight the monster in the open, rather than making every situation be relatively favorable for the player, as per now.

[duvessa]

I don't think punishing players for blocking trample would be an improvement - you'll make people run in circles to fight elephants instead, which sounds pretty annoying as a player and not particularly interesting.

[crate]

It's already beneficial to let trample move you when you're fighting elephants since it usually pushes you away from the other elephants (minmay mentioned this earlier).

I don't think you need to further incentivise already good behaviour/punish already bad behaviour.

Fast trampling monster packs doesn't seem to me to solve much either. Many (maybe even most) characters who are in lair cannot fight a whole elephant pack at once, so either this means you just have to do lair later (if they elephants are fast enough), or it doesn't change anything (if the elephants are something like speed 11 and you're still able to escape them like you can currently). If you make them weaker then trample actually just makes it easier to fight the group than not having trample (so why bother?).

If you want to try to make trample interesting the way to do it is to place trampling monsters in packs with non-trampling monsters (but then you still have the problem that monsters in crawl tend to be pretty easy to split up if you work at it; this even works for stuff like bees a lot of the time ... not sure that this is really fixable though).

[Lasty]

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for speed 11 trampling monsters, since as I explained, they don't achieve much. I'm also not advocating for trampling doing extra damage, merely noting that it would actually make the mechanic more meaningful.

If you want to try to make trample interesting the way to do it is to place trampling monsters in packs with non-trampling monsters (but then you still have the problem that monsters in crawl tend to be pretty easy to split up if you work at it; this even works for stuff like bees a lot of the time ... not sure that this is really fixable though).

I disagree: putting trampling monsters with the non-trampling monsters still means you get trampled out so that you don't get surrounded, as you do now. If the other monsters are faster than the tramplers (see: black mambas, spiny frogs, etc), you walk to a choke point; the fast monsters will be at the front and you'll be able to fight them one at a time and then resume running from the speed 10 tramplers.

Honestly, what would be more interesting than monsters that push you back would be monsters that pull you forward. You actually don't want to be pulled forward, usually. Of course, we already have that in form of mesmerism, but I think it would be interesting to have an elephant-like creature that pulls you toward friends as part of an attack action instead of pushing you away from them.

[Sharkman1231]

While I think an early trampler would be fine, I don't know why we don't slap trample on sheep. I might be wrong on this, but I feel I run into sheep at the same time I run into yaks. I don't know if I have ever been worried about running into a pack of sheep. I think having sheep show up earlier and trample you around would be better than the fluffy, flammable chunks of xp they are now. You could also give the sheep tile larger horns.

[damiac]

I think when crawl players talk about enemies they forget that often, more than one enemy type can show up at once. If an elephant tramples you out of your chokepoint, and it's just 10 speed monsters around, ok sure, you can just walk away to a new chokepoint. If an elephant tramples you out of your chokepoint, and there are black mambas and water mocassins around, you're going to take some bites on your way to a new chokepoint.

Constriction is similar, but not dependent on speed. If a naga is constricting me for low damage, but preventing me from getting out of LOS of more dangerous foes, then it's still dangerous. But really, the most dangerous thing about both constriction and trampling is the way they block stairways, which in my experience is a significant effect.

Giving sheep trample would be fine... but they show up only a tiny bit earlier than elephant anyway. But really, there's no reason they couldn't show up earlier, they are just free bags of XP...

[skyspire]

Why don't we just rename sheep to ram, and update the art to display horns, and give it trample? I always thought that fighting sheep is a bit stupid since they are so cowardly and docile IRL. Just like how having cows and chickens in the game would be silly.

[XuaXua]

Give the boulder beetle rolling ability to quokka.

[evilmike]

nah, rename porcupines to hedgehogs and give them rolling instead. no need to change their colour, either.

[jejorda2]

I don't recall seeing a porcupine earlier than boulder beetles. Both are early Lair foes, right?

[XuaXua]

nah, rename porcupines to hedgehogs and give them rolling instead. no need to change their colour, either.

But blue is traditional!

[PleasingFungus]

I don't recall seeing a porcupine earlier than boulder beetles. Both are early Lair foes, right?

Pretty much.