Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood


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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 14:26

Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood

Bad design: IP is currently the "learn if you got snake/spider branch" spell of transmuters and some fire elementalists, it is a level 5 spell that acts as the fire version of Ozocubu's Refrigeration, with the drawback it only affect "poisonous creatures" and thus becoming mostly useless at depths/vaults.

It can be used with other poison spells or poison chunks/arrows to generate clouds of flame but it leads to tiresome and not very rewarding strategies.

My suggestions are:

Change the spell name to Ignite Blood;
Have the spell cause sticky flame effect to all targets on the screen, including the caster;
Cold blooded, undead and bloodless creatures are immune to it;
Raise the spell level to 6.

And no, its not like the Demonspawn mutation and it doesnt affect blood splatters on the floor.

Feel free to reply your current thoughts on IP or any other ideas for IB
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Snake Sneak

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 15:55

Re: Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood

I know that Ignite Poison has some problems, but it is still one of my favourite spells. IMO a spell which is only powerful against a relatively small but still significant enemy set (poisonous creatures) is an interesting/unique effect. The convert poison/mephitic clouds into fire clouds effect is also nice, although the flame clouds disappear very quickly.

I would suggest keeping Ignite Poison, removing its rarely useful item-igniting effects and buffing cloud ignition instead (let the fire clouds have the same duration as the poison/mephitic clouds). This way the spell would be somewhat more useful against not naturally poisonous creatures. If it is still too weak against not poisonous creatures, buff its damage on poisoned monsters (and/or reduce the damage on naturally poisonous ones).

My problems with the suggested Ignite Blood are the following:
  • Cold-blooded doesn't mean that the blood of the creature actually has low temperature, it simply means that creature doesn't maintain a fixed body temperature, so it shouldn't protect from igniting blood.
  • Only affecting creatures with blood/living creatures is the territory of Necromancy/Poison and maybe Ice. Also, this is a serious restriction on a level 6 spell, especially in a school (Fire) where all other spells work on demons/undead/other weird creatures.
  • I think two whole-los attack spells with self-damage (Toxic radiance, Refrigeration) are enough, we don't need one of them for every elemental school. If Ignite Poison is too similiar to Refrigeration, don't make it even more similar.

Mass sticky flame would be an interesting effect (invisibility reveal etc), I wouldn't replace Ignite Poison with it, but it could be a good level 6/7 Fire or Fire/Conj (or Fire/Hex?) spell (without the only living creatures limitation).

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 16:38

Re: Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood

dynast wrote: IP is currently the "learn if you got snake/spider branch"


You always get either snake or spider, so you could call it the "always learn" spell. It's also fairly strong in Lair and Swamp.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 19:22

Re: Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood

It's my favorite way to kill killer bee packs :)
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 20:28

Re: Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood

Most damage spells are kind of terrible, when it comes right down to it. You have a maximum pool of ~50mp, so you have an extremely limited number of shots to deal with active opposition and then retreat to a safe area to recover. Given that level of ammo restriction, the returns on damage are bad. Without some form of fast recovery, you don't have enough mp to kill more than a couple weak enemies, and you aren't guaranteed to have enough to kill even one fairly tough enemy.

This is a disadvantage intrinsic to the playing style, so a moderately experienced player knows it going in. To make straight damage spells viable, you need to find ways to make them efficient. Making good use of bolt or burst spells basically requires you to carefully position yourself to hit as many targets as possible at once, hopefully overcoming the disadvantages of low damage and low ammo by stretching every shot as far as it will go. This requires a lot of movement and planning, and you have to carefully ration your power and carefully manage the attention you're drawing outside your chosen killing field. The goals of the player's positioning in this sort of build are substantially different than the goals of positioning in other playing builds, so the choices that result from these different goals result in a distinct and interesting playing experience.

Ignite Poison nullifies this distinct experience. You go through Spider, and if you see spiders you freeze and mash Ignite Poison until they stop moving. There's no point in moving to a better position because you always kill them all. There isn't even any reason to bother with choke points or stick near the stairwell, because numbers are irrelevant and there's nothing dangerous in there with enough hit points to survive about three shots, which isn't enough to substantially deplete the player's mp pool. Ignite Poison makes this part of the game boring. This isn't quite the same thing as being too strong, since the same player could clear Spider with Fireball instead, but tweaking the power level of Ignite Poison isn't going to change the fact that it is a fundamentally boring spell to use in the first place.

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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 21:51

Re: Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood

yeah i would rather drag enemies until they form up in groups to maximize my spells and mash 5 in a dark corner filled with cobwebs than hit whatever button ignite poison is macrod to and move the game along because it is much more tactical. straightaway damage is silly, the player should orient themselves within a special arrangement of rock wall formations in order to deal damage properly or drag everything until they bunch up just so, after who knows how long, and only then should you apply your now maximally efficient predefined damage pattern upon the enemy. this is truly teh funnest most distinct experience possible
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Monday, 22nd December 2014, 00:35

Re: Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood

twelwe wrote: the player should orient themselves within a special arrangement of rock wall formations in order to deal damage properly or drag everything until they bunch up just so, after who knows how long, and only then should you apply your now maximally efficient predefined damage pattern upon the enemy. this is truly teh funnest most distinct experience possible

Except this is what you do with pretty much every character, particularly if your main damage spell is "hit shit with a big fucking weapon"? Admittedly, in that situation you rarely have to worry about your MP.
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 22nd December 2014, 14:09

Re: Ignite Poison Reform to Ignite Blood

Here's an idea to make it more interesting and more reliant on positioning: Have it be a beam spell that does a poison-immolation effect: Targets killed by this spell explode and have a chance to hit neighboring enemies with the spell, with a chance of it poisoning them* and diminishing returns. This way, some of the mass-spider/snake usage case is retained, but you can't just spam it with enemies next to you.

*It has to be cast on a poisonous enemy, but can then poison neighboring enemies and possibly explode them as well.
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