TSO reform, possible buffs

[and into]

This is, in part, a call-back to a short tangent in an old GDD thread, prompted by some recent games I have played that allowed me to compare how the different "good" gods play at various stages of the game.

It is fine that some gods are better for later stages of the game, but TSO takes that to something of an extreme. This side of Chei and Qazlal (and I suppose Xom if you think of it that way), TSO has the strictest conduct, at least for most characters: In addition to all the normal "good god" conducts, like no evil weapons and no necromancy, you have your stealth nuked, you cannot become invisible, you cannot disable most sentient non-evil stuff in advance of an attack, and you are limited in your use of poison (including blowguns + needles, critically) along similar lines.

Taken together, that is a strict conduct, but also, and more problematically, a very convoluted one, in terms of keeping track of when you can or cannot do this or that action. It also means that the only god that gives direct support to allies you summoned with non-divine abilities is also the one god who is not cool with your attacking enemies because your ally is attacking it, too, which can be very awkward. It also gives rise to a bunch of unclear cases, in terms of what your allies do, versus what you can do, and what is going to make TSO angry.

Holy wrath is hampered by the uneven distribution of undead/demon enemies, encourages swapping weapons when holy-vulnerable enemies do show up, and yet again runs into problems with clarity, given that there are enemies in the game that are considered "evil" or "non-good" for various other purposes (including for TSO's very own piety gain and "chivalrous battle" conduct!), yet which do not have any holy vulnerability. With TSO you may have reason to keep track of three overlapping but not identical subsets of enemies: "evil," "non-intelligent," and "vulnerable to holy." (All of the enemies in the last group are evil, I believe, but the reverse is not true.)

DCSS is not really an RPG, but the draw of a "paladin"-type character tends to be pretty strong, especially among newer players. But TSO is not only underpowered for the parts of the game where divine intervention makes the most difference, he is also rather frustrating to play. TSO's current implementation is a missed opportunity, to say the least.

So, in short, TSO could use some simplification, similar to the treatment Zin has been getting recently. With that simplification there may be opportunities for smoothing out TSO’s usefulness curve, making him at least a somewhat more competitive choice in the non-optional portions of the game.

I'm curious to hear what others think of TSO, but here are some suggestions for ways to simplify TSO that would, I think, make him more enjoyable to play:

1. Evil creatures are clearly marked as such in game, at least so long as you are worshiping TSO.
2. There is no restriction on attacking distracted or disabled enemies, of any type, but stabbing is considered “unchivalrous,” and you will never get stab bonuses on your attacks so long as you worship TSO.
3. Poison from any needles, weapons of venom, and poison-elemented spells should either be allowed, or else treated as unchivalrous in all cases, and forbidden.
4. I'd suggest that training stealth should perhaps be disabled while worshiping TSO, or at least should appear in some special color on the skill screen that better communicates to the player that even with 27 stealth in a robe you will likely be "unstealthy" with full LOS halo, so the skill is about as useful as training armor on a Draconian (with the difference that a TSO worshiper can stop being a TSO worshiper, obviously).

Here are some other possible suggestions, more in the line of buffs, but most of them also help simplify game play:

1. Increase piety gain for discovering new enemies. It still feels too slow.
2. "Bless allies" comes online earlier, and scales up with piety.
3. TSO simply protects your allies from any harm that would come by your hand, intentional or otherwise, without causing penance. (If this “no friendly fire” passive is considered too OP or abusable, it could incur a small piety hit every time harm is prevented in this manner.)
4. Any *evil* (not just undead/demon) creature within your halo will be more susceptible to damage; you and your allies receive +slay against them on all physical attacks, melee or ranged, in addition to the +acc you get from the halo. (Credit due in large part to KoboldLord for this idea, see thread linked at beginning of this post.)
5. In addition to, or in lieu of, TSO blessing a weapon of your choice with HW at max piety: Sporadically (on a gift timeout), TSO blesses your weapon with an effect identical to ?enchant weapon, upon dispatching an evil enemy. (Could be limited only to tough evil enemies, or even just to evil uniques, which is... Well, most uniques, as it turns out.)
6. Cleansing flame deals its full damage to all *evil* (not just undead/demon) creatures. Perhaps cleansing flame should also do more damage to hostile, non-evil creatures. (Say, 75% of full damage, rather than only (IIRC) half.)

The ideal, I think, is to have only one type of enemy ("evil") that you need to look out for, those enemies will be clearly marked for you, and then TSO gives you abilities to help you take them down, and those abilities start being useful earlier in the game. The anti-evil support comes out sooner, and "evil" is a broader and more useful category of enemies to be strong against, especially in the early game, compared to "vulnerable to holy."

[crate]

So a note on stealth ... I'm not sure how the halo works, but I strongly suspect that it is not the same as stealth of 0. The most important thing that I am pretty sure is different is that monsters do still lose track of you if you worship TSO and have nonzero stealth (and this is actually the effect of stealth that I personally find most important in my gameplay). (Compare to wielding a lantern of shadows, which does set stealth to 0: monsters will follow you across an entire level!) So I would not ban training stealth (Trog lets you train magic, after all, which is much more strict than anything with TSO and stealth!).

Strongly agree with "There is no restriction on attacking distracted or disabled enemies, of any type, but stabbing is considered “unchivalrous,” and you will never get stab bonuses on your attacks so long as you worship TSO."

I don't have a problem with holy wrath as a player weapon brand, I don't personally think TSO piety gain is too slow.

[PleasingFungus]

I liked the idea of "no penance for attacking distracted/disabled enemies, can't get stab bonuses" the last time it was suggested, but the main concern is that it makes the conduct pretty much toothless for primary-spellcasters of TSO. Which I don't think is something we want. (Maybe I'm wrong?)

[crate]

I liked the idea of "no penance for attacking distracted/disabled enemies, can't get stab bonuses" the last time it was suggested, but the main concern is that it makes the conduct pretty much toothless for primary-spellcasters of TSO. Which I don't think is something we want. (Maybe I'm wrong?)

Well right now the problem is if you play a summoner of TSO you are not allowed to attack enemies half the time. The least-intrusive fix here is to make it so monsters cannot become distracted if you worship TSO (this makes sense anyway--you have a giant halo), but I would see any change that lets you attack monsters when you are a summoner of TSO as a positive one. It's just such a huge quality-of-life improvement. (It's relevant even for non-summoners since TSO gives you summons.)

[PleasingFungus]

Well right now the problem is if you play a summoner of TSO you are not allowed to attack enemies half the time. The least-intrusive fix here is to make it so monsters cannot become distracted if you worship TSO (this makes sense anyway--you have a giant halo), but I would see any change that lets you attack monsters when you are a summoner of TSO as a positive one. It's just such a huge quality-of-life improvement. (It's relevant even for non-summoners since TSO gives you summons.)

Sure, something like that seems reasonable.

[nagdon]

I would also like the removal of the "you can't help your allies by attacking their enemies" effect of the conducts, as it's annoying and counterintuitive. I think that simply not giving penance for attacking distraced/disabled foes and just disabling the stabbing bonus is a fine -- TSO is already weak against nonevil foes, so I think a minor buff is OK here.

When this change makes TSO summoners not annoying, maybe TSO ally blessings could be buffed too to make it actually a good playstyle. TSO bans lots of summoning spells and gives his own summons (making Summoning a bit redundant), so it would be interesting if TSO gave buffs to allowed summons, creating a different summoner strategy.

[and into]

Right—the other thing to consider (which came up several times in the early game for me) is that if I can disable something with (for instance) a wand of paralysis, it is far more often simply annoying, rather than actually challenging, that I cannot directly kill it. Yes, the conduct technically weakens you in some way, but even when working correctly, it means that you just end up repeatedly "beating" an enemy with some tool, without killing it, which isn't very fun. Even more problematic, however, is the fact that there are tons of workarounds; apparently it is perfectly chivalrous to command three ice beasts to kill that paralyzed orc knight, or to coat the knight in napalm/get it to stand in a flame cloud before paralyzing it and letting it burn to a crisp, etc.

I don't care if the conduct is made slightly more stringent overall ("no poison use at all"), or slightly less stringent. What is most important is that the conduct is 1.) made simpler to grasp and communicate, and 2.) doesn't cause situations in which you are doing awkward things to achieve precisely the same result that a more direct but forbidden action would achieve. I think "no poison" plus "no stabbing" would be much easier to communicate and would, on balance, be about as difficult as currently, where you can often use poison, but "cannot" (really, you totally can) attack helpless things. Because, basically, it currently is a "no stabbing" conduct, once you learn a few of the workarounds. It is just a (pardon the bluntness) very poorly implemented "no stabbing" conduct.

(The most common workaround is a summon, and even if you don't manage to find a way to get allies early in the game, it just so happens that TSO eventually gives you the ability to summon allies anyway, thus rendering the "do not attack helpless, sentient, non-evil creatures" conduct pretty much nonexistent, even if we put aside how awkward it is that the conduct applies only to "helpless, sentient, non-evil" enemies, which is asking the player to have to keep in mind three different flags, each of which has non-obvious inclusions and exclusions.)

[and into]

Also, in a PM Ironfoot kindly pointed out to me that Daevas, which you can summon via TSO, like to cast confuse on things, which, once confused, you are not allowed to attack if you worship TSO (unless they are evil and/or non-intelligent). While that's kind of funny, it is another example of a problematic interaction.

After some wizmode testing I am happy to say I stand corrected about TSO and training stealth, so please feel free to disregard that part of the proposal (if, you know, you hadn't already).

[KoboldLord]

I really like the idea of adjusting the chivalry conduct. When I use TSO, I frequently find myself having to wait out monster distractions because my allies are attacking the same target. I frequently have to intentionally skip turns because I cannot do anything productive without breaking conduct. Doing so is not an actual risk, since the monster is distracted and attacked by super-powered angels, which means that the conduct is forcing me to spend turns not playing the game for no actual productive purpose.

I think the rate of piety gain is not so bad. If a TSO character is supposed to use abilities more often in the early game, perhaps it would be better to make them cheaper, or perhaps make a cheaper version of the same ability that is weaker. Angelspam is overkill through most of the game, and it isn't very much fun to trivially wipe a branch end by watching your angels kill everything easily, so perhaps a cheaper but weaker summons is a better ability for TSO to grant during the main part of the game than the full version.

[crate]

Daevas, which you can summon via TSO, like to cast confuse on things

I can't find a commit adding confuse spell to them and Chei says they don't have the spell (Chei's db is a bit out of date, so it is possible that Daevas got confuse in a recent change and I didn't find the commit).

[Ironfoot]

Also, in a PM Ironfoot kindly pointed out to me that Daevas, which you can summon via TSO, like to cast confuse on things, which, once confused, you are not allowed to attack if you worship TSO (unless they are evil and/or non-intelligent). While that's kind of funny, it is another example of a problematic interaction.

Shhhh, don't let Grunt know that I'm here. The dev cops are on to me. I was wrong about the Daeva part, they can only cast smite. Sorry 'bout that. But they tend to make you unable to attack an enemy without making TSO mad anyway, so the point stil stands.

Also you're right about Divine Shield, it got changed recently to scale on Invocations only.

[sgrunt]

Shhhh, don't let Grunt know that I'm here.

Okay, not letting Grunt know.

[Ironfoot]

Shhhh, don't let Grunt know that I'm here.

Okay, not letting Grunt know.

Whew, that was a close one.

That reminds me, am I the only one who thinks it's strange that everything in TSO's realm (holy pan) is hostile towards a TSO worshipper (or any worshipper of the good gods, for that matter)?

[KoboldLord]

That reminds me, am I the only one who thinks it's strange that everything in TSO's realm (holy pan) is hostile towards a TSO worshipper (or any worshipper of the good gods, for that matter)?

[handwave]The goddesses of protection, healing, and sanctuary are deities of civilization and the community, not just 'good' as defined by philosophers in their ivory towers. In a world where demons and undead monsters blight the land, the safety of your community is the only 'good' that matters in day-to-day life. Just as different communities can come into completely legitimate conflict with each other and even go to war, so too can those who worship the abstract representation of that community come into conflict and fight.[/handwave]

Angelic beings aren't common or reliable enough to make for a strategically meaningful influence on your deity choice, unlike Jiyva or Beogh, and if those angelic beings spawn peaceful it has no impact except to turn a potentially interesting monster spawn into a meaningless one.

[nicolae]

That reminds me, am I the only one who thinks it's strange that everything in TSO's realm (holy pan) is hostile towards a TSO worshipper (or any worshipper of the good gods, for that matter)?

I suspect that the good gods of Crawl go with YHWH's answer in the Book of Job, when asked about why terrible things happen: "Stop questioning me, you're not so great."

[ebering]

So I've poked together a small patch to monster behavior that does what crate suggested. It will go up on mantis along with something to mark creatures TSO hates after I sleep and proofread.

In terms of the conduct there are two parts.

First, the poison part. Reading the code I don't see what poisonous things TSO permits the use of (other than by allies). Seems like it's a bug if the player can directly poison something.

Second, disabling enemies. I think here the conduct should be stricter, if one wants to salvage the spirit of the current conduct (which the allies-dont-distract behavior does). The goal is to avoid the degenerate gameplay case of "my best move is to stand still and do nothing while the monster dies". Removing ways for the player to make the monster unattackable comes close to accomplishing this. The boring consequence of this is that the forbidden-spells list becomes longer, though I don't think there are any surprises on it. (Possibly incomplete: Confusing touch, ensorcelled hibernation, dazzling spray, confuse, (cause fear?), mass confusion, (discord?), petrify). Additionally the relevant wands would be forbidden, and all needles. The terrifying consequence is the interaction with the mess that is monster enslavement, but this too could be solved by forbidding enslavement.

At this point my guess is the conduct would be so strict as to require a buff elsewhere but now I'm getting close to big idea territory and I suggested elsewhere on this forum that big ideas are probably not worth having, so I'll stop.

[dpeg]

Many thanks for OP and patch! (I've been bogged down in work, so I am late.)

On announcement of TSO target monsters: what about giving everyone the 'evil' adjective -- all the time (in messages, when firing etc.)? At times it might read clumsily, but I can imagine it'd be pretty flavourful and might work in the end.

[ebering]

I've been trawling through the code. It turns out that at present TSO dislikes monsters that

a) are undead or demonic
b) are priests and worship an evil god
c) have necromantic, demonic, or abyssal spells.

Here's the catch: Ogre Mages, Wizards (and maybe a few others) are only sometimes in group c, depending on their spell book. The patch I'm currently writing makes these monsters evil according to TSO all the time, since it is otherwise impossible to communicate and avoid an information leak. If you worship TSO xv then displays "pronoun is evil and an enemy of The Shining One." An adjective version wouldn't be unreasonable, I guess I'll do both.

[grisamentum]

Playing a silly amount of TSO in trunk recently.

The chivalry conduct is still a problem. It leads to absurd scenarios like when your summoned daeva is fighting an anubis guard on tomb:3, and the anubis guard is distracted, so your cleansing flame causes penance because it hit a distracted creature. Yet in Snake Pit it's still legit to use ignite poison against distracted nagas (not really a cogent counterpoint, just something that feels like a silly discrepancy). How about Cleansing Flame doesn't count for penance, or it won't damage creatures where it would cause penance?

Piety gain is fine but sort of uneven. It feels fine exploring, but if you luck out and get an ossuary vault you'll hit max piety almost immediately. Every time I find a shadow imp I feel like I should drag it around with me because I get piety from raised corpses.

[comebackshane]

Playing a silly amount of TSO in trunk recently.

The chivalry conduct is still a problem. It leads to absurd scenarios like when your summoned daeva is fighting an anubis guard on tomb:3, and the anubis guard is distracted, so your cleansing flame causes penance because it hit a distracted creature. Yet in Snake Pit it's still legit to use ignite poison against distracted nagas (not really a cogent counterpoint, just something that feels like a silly discrepancy). How about Cleansing Flame doesn't count for penance, or it won't damage creatures where it would cause penance?

Piety gain is fine but sort of uneven. It feels fine exploring, but if you luck out and get an ossuary vault you'll hit max piety almost immediately. Every time I find a shadow imp I feel like I should drag it around with me because I get piety from raised corpses.

What if poison and stabbing were banned but attacking distracted enemies was allowed?

[Sar]

attacking distracted enemies is stabbing

[comebackshane]

9adecdf: Don't let monsters be distracted by your allies under TSO

YES! Thanks MarvinPA!