Proposal: elemental armor

[Hurkyl]

This consists of several similar proposals.

Condensation Shield - Remove the spell "condensation shield" from the game. Add a new armor type "condensation shield" that goes in the shield slot with the following properties:

• You can wield two-handed weapons as normal, and you don't suffer the normal melee / evasion penalties
• The shield value uses your Ice skill rather than your Shields skill. The formula could be either that of an ordinary shield, or follow that of the former spell

Ice elementalists start with a condensation shield

Stone ego - Remove the spell "stoneskin" from the game. Add a new body armor ego "stone" which adds AC based on your Earth skill.

Earth elementalists start with a robe of stone.

Boots of swiftness - Remove the spell "swiftness" from the game. Remove the "running" ego. Add a new boots ego "swiftness" which decreases your movement delay by a random amount between 0.0 and 0.2 depending on your Air skill.

Air elementalists start with boots of swiftness.

Talisman of displacement - Remove the spell "phase shift" from the game. Add a new amulet type "displacement" which grants an EV bonus of up to 12, depending on your translocations skill.

Warpers start with a talisman of displacement.

[PleasingFungus]

I'm a little confused about why you're including Swiftness in this proposal.

[Hurkyl]

I'm a little confused about why you're including Swiftness in this proposal.

It came to mind as I was thinking of variations on the basic idea, I didn't think it would hurt to include all of them.

[Hurkyl]

I've edited out the MP-X parts. I had included them as I had that in mind as one of the balancing ideas from the charm permabuff ideas, but that wouldn't make sense if the book starts started with them.

[Siegurt]

Armour slots are more valuable than most of these "buff armors" replacing a spell-slot taking effect with one that takes an armour slot isn't a good tradeoff

[PleasingFungus]

Chatted with other devs about this a little bit. Decided to look at these items purely from the perspective of "new suggested items", rather than relative to the existing buffs.

Rough consensus:
- Talisman of Displacement is hilariously, absurdly strong.
- Boots of swiftness are a little fiddly. Not terrible, but I'm not really sold on them as an improvement for either the spell or the existing boot ego.
- Condensation shield is very strong and violates the entire 2h tradeoff dynamic. Without the tradeoffs that the spell has (requires light body armour &/or high int * spellskill), it just seems like a no-brainer, even for characters with no strong desire to train Ice.
- Stone ego is the most promising - somewhat like Pain ego. Unlike Pain, though, extra AC remains useful in extended. I'm not sure there's a design for this that both allows the AC from stone to be relevant in a 3-rune game, and not have a huge distorting effect on extended, where there's enough xp that everyone can train up a big chunk of Earth skill.

Possibly I'm wrong about that last, though?

[and into]

- Stone ego is the most promising - somewhat like Pain ego. Unlike Pain, though, extra AC remains useful in extended. I'm not sure there's a design for this that both allows the AC from stone to be relevant in a 3-rune game, and not have a huge distorting effect on extended, where there's enough xp that everyone can train up a big chunk of Earth skill.

Possibly I'm wrong about that last, though?

If it could only generate on certain classes of items (light armor—robes and leather), I don't think it would be an issue. A character that already has a lot of earth magic trained might prefer sticking to a lighter armor with stone ego, but for most characters, if you are looking for more AC, you would get better returns investing in some armor skill and wearing something heavier that gives a resistance, rather than training up a bunch of earth magic just to use a robe/leather that doesn't provide any useful resistance, nor archmagi.

[Hurkyl]

- Talisman of Displacement is hilariously, absurdly strong.

Huh. 12 EV could be toned down, of course, but that's still 13.5 translocations just to get a ring of evasion +6 in your amulet slot (assuming it scaled linearly with skill). Or is the point simply that having EV in your amulet slot a bad idea for a regular item?

[PleasingFungus]

- Talisman of Displacement is hilariously, absurdly strong.

Huh. 12 EV could be toned down, of course, but that's still 13.5 translocations just to get a ring of evasion +6 in your amulet slot (assuming it scaled linearly with skill). Or is the point simply that having EV in your amulet slot a bad idea for a regular item?

A ring of evasion +6 is better than most rings, and rings are on average better than amulets. Also, it's not 13.5 tloc "just" +6 EV - there are other benefits to training Tloc.

[duvessa]

Good ideas. Skills that just let you cast spells are boring and underpowered, they should all do different things too. There should be a weapon ego that gives you additional MR depending on your charms skill. And it would be cool to have a hat ego that gives you rMut depending on your transmutations skill. Also stoneskin and ozocubu's armour should be changed to use your earth and ice skills directly, not spell power. Plus it would be great if shatter had a limited range that depended on earth skill.

[Skrybe]

I'm pulling an idea out of the air here, but how would Displacement work as an ego on heavy armor? If it was on, say, plate armor, that would cut into the spell success rates coming from training a lot of tloc, as well as making it harder to raise EV to stupid high levels.

[milski]

Displacement as an ego on heavy armor would send a ton of mixed signals; there are specific strong armors with lower penalties for casting/extended, which means that it's a brand you'd be unlikely to ID as a caster and unlikely to want as a heavy fighter. Specifically, on heavy armors you are offering melee-types the option to trade off having a brand for training tloc instead of dodging to get EV. Since your Tloc aptitude will likely be bad, and dodging is being reworked to be useful at all ranks instead of a cutoff where early skills don't matter, I don't think it offers a ton.

To other topics

These items have a really odd sort of problem where you want to train a casting skill to buff them (presumably, getting access to that skill even without spells memorized), but being a better caster doesn't matter. A MeFi with a condensation shield will get more benefit than a DeIE would, given a moderate investment. After recently reworking buffs to be based on spellpower instead of school skill, swapping that back seems very strange.

I also really dislike swiftness. Branded boots in general are rare, and running is moreso. I don't feel like giving that to every air elementalist is a good thing for the game. Plus, the randomness aspect is a turn off, since you lose the ability to swiftness-sprint away to the stairs and may have to dance for a while to get a tile gap at lower air skill. There's also the problem where if you want it to be good in e.g. the lair for kiting yaks at Air Magic 10, it would either barely improve in extended or basically offer you permanent .8 movement, which would make it twice as good as boots of running.

[johlstei]

Gonna cast ozo's in my robe of stone.

[and into]

Let's please try to keep this on track. A dev has responded with a post that wasn't entirely a shoot-down, so how about we don't further derail with a meta-discussion? If you think any post was over the line, report it. Posting to the thread calling it out, even if done with good intentions, tends to actually contribute to the problem. Thank you!

[SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon]

For the stone ego, how about as you level up earth magic it slows you down a bit? Like the proposed swiftness ego, just the other way. Chei worsippers rejoice.

[dynast]

For the stone ego, how about as you level up earth magic it slows you down a bit? Like the proposed swiftness ego, just the other way. Chei worsippers rejoice.

Might as well remove the "statue form" spell while we are at it.

[MrPlanck]

I would be very sad to see phase shift replaced with more amulet swapping.

[kuniqs]

Those egos would be fine on fixedarts.
Amulet of Air would fit with that swiftness ego.
Maybe give salamander hide armour an fire ego that acts like icemail (except fire branded), burning everyone that hit you in meele, depending on your fire magic skill?

[Wahaha]

I like idea of these items more than the existing spells because of reasons that are in other threads. The item types (armor or shield or something else) could be different and the values could be different but in general it's a good idea. Except for the phase shift item. I think the phase shift spell is fine because it has a short duration and high mana cost. A phase shift item is fine too though.

I don't think there's anything wrong with having spell casting skills also give bonuses to some items. The pain brand exists and I think it's a great part of the game.

[cosmonaut]

Stone ego seems fine If it can be only for light armour, as and into said. and I think including cloak also nice, heavy and thick cloak!

and I think Ice shield idea is good. but also agreed to PF, it ruined 2H weapon tradeoff so most 2H weapon users will use this shield. so what if making only for 1H weapon?

[daggaz]

Maybe I missed the boat on this one, but I'm not seeing the reason for removing the spells as well. This just limits options. As it stands, the earth ego acts two fold: 1) It's an incentive to learn the earth skill. 2) It's an upgrade to an existing spell, should you find both.

So a player could have stoneskin, and if they did find a decent item with the earth ego, hey nice I dont have to cast stoneskin anymore and I free up a spell slot. Conversely, they may never find the spell but find the ego, or vice-versa. If it's honestly a problem that access to stoneskin is easier, devs can just tweak down the load rates for both accordingly.

[Hurkyl]

For a bit of flavor, the stone ego could be for animal skins only.

Maybe I missed the boat on this one, but I'm not seeing the reason for removing the spells as well.

Some of the ideas for improving the state of charms tend to get shot down by claiming they would make charms too much like items rather than like spells. The inspiration for this posting was to take this idea seriously and try to find interesting ways to change charm spells into items.

[mechanicalmaniac]

Let's remove a bunch of cool and good buff spells and turn them into items!

Please no. Magic in Crawl is already far too killdude-slanted.