New item: potion of focus

[Sandman25]

Potion of focus temporary increases selected skill by 10 for 10+d5 turns, temporary decreases all other skills by 5 for 10 + d10 turns, after the boost for selected skill has expired the skill is temporary decreased by 5 for 10 + d10. No skill can be greater than 27 or less than 0.
Example: quaff the potion on turn 500.0, select Invocations, Invocations is increased by 10 during turns 500.0-513.0 and decreased by 5 during turns 513.1-528.0, all other skills are decreased by 5 during turns 500.0-512.0.

Reasoning.
All consumables have somewhat limited purpose, this item can be used in different situations but still has a significant cost and thus it is opposite of "no-brainer".
You can use it to banish/pacify/corrupt (Invocations), polymorph/paralyze/deal damage with rods/wands(Evocations), increase melee/ranged speed/damage (weapon skill, stacks with might), increase spell damage/success (magic skill, stacks with brilliance), survive dangerous situation (Dodging/Armour, stacks with agility). Probably it should also give temporary HP for selected Fighting and temporary MP for selected Spellcasting. The potion should be extremely rare, similar to acquirement.

[xentronium]

Can you get to skill 37 with the potion?

Would synergize great with the dark maul.

[chequers]

It sort of overlaps with str/int/dex potions, but a potion to make wands better would be cool. Maybe a temporary evo/invo enhancer? Doesn't even need to be that rare

[Sandman25]

Can you get to skill 37 with the potion?

No, I think it should not allow to get more than skill 27 for balance reasons.

[Sandman25]

It sort of overlaps with str/int/dex potions, but a potion to make wands better would be cool. Maybe a temporary evo/invo enhancer? Doesn't even need to be that rare

Yes, evo/invo was my inspiration for the item. Then I recalled that ranged weapons don't benefit that much from might.

[duvessa]

1. I don't understand why you want it to reduce skills.
2. More than half your examples were about using it as a shitty version of might/brilliance/agility. This doesn't help make it seem unique. And the only other use is "shitty brilliance but for evocations/invocations instead of spells".

Probably it should also give temporary HP for selected Fighting and temporary MP for selected Spellcasting.

3. I don't understand why you want it to do this, either. Aren't heal wounds/magic enough for restoring HP and MP?

[Sandman25]

1. I don't understand why you want it to reduce skills.
2. More than half your examples were about using it as a shitty version of might/brilliance/agility. This doesn't help make it seem unique. And the only other use is "shitty brilliance but for evocations/invocations instead of spells".

Probably it should also give temporary HP for selected Fighting and temporary MP for selected Spellcasting.

3. I don't understand why you want it to do this, either. Aren't heal wounds/magic enough for restoring HP and MP?

1) Otherwise it would be a no-brainer for polymorphing TRJ. Basically I want the potion to be more powerful than brilliance/might/agility/HW and I believe it should have some serious disadvantage for balance reasons.
2) True, it will be rarely used as brilliance/agility/might. Though having Borg's Revivification with only 10 levels in Necromancy or Silence with 0 levels in Air/Hexes can be a life saver. A character in Statue Form (Fo of Chei?) might be interested in extra might. A late game character of Ru who sacrificed Armour might be interested in extra EV etc.
3) Fighting and Spellcasting are the only skills which give only minor boost, it would always be optimal to boost weapon or magic school instead. Probably VS might heal from the potion in Fighting/Spellcasting. Also the potion could give 2-3 times more HP/MP than !HW and !magic give.

[njvack]

1) Otherwise it would be a no-brainer for polymorphing TRJ.

That's a pretty edgy edge case. And since TRJ doesn't change back, it'd still be useful in this role. Poly, run away, rest off stat loss, come back and kill your shiny new titan.

[mechanicalmaniac]

The potion should be extremely rare, similar to acquirement.

Rare items like acquirement or experience usually effect long-term character building. I can't think of any super-rare item off the top of my head that are intended to be used in specific situations, leaving no trace other than you being alive. Making such an item so rare would encourage players to hoard it until they succumb to death by stinginess, or else hoard it until they forget about it.

[XuaXua]

1) Otherwise it would be a no-brainer for polymorphing TRJ.

Pairing with a Scroll of Vulnerability is already the no-brainer for this, and with fewer drawbacks than reduced other skills, considering the location.

This is not a proper use case for the reduction of non-focused skills.

[Sandman25]

1) Otherwise it would be a no-brainer for polymorphing TRJ.

That's a pretty edgy edge case. And since TRJ doesn't change back, it'd still be useful in this role. Poly, run away, rest off stat loss, come back and kill your shiny new titan.

The character can be killed by other jellies. Also you can be unlucky and TRJ remains TRJ while your defenses are lowered. Last time I had Evocations 18 and it still took many wand zaps.

The potion should be extremely rare, similar to acquirement.

Rare items like acquirement or experience usually effect long-term character building. I can't think of any super-rare item off the top of my head that are intended to be used in specific situations, leaving no trace other than you being alive. Making such an item so rare would encourage players to hoard it until they succumb to death by stinginess, or else hoard it until they forget about it.

We have already potions of lignification and berserk, they are very powerful (situationally) and have a significant drawback.

[Giant Orange Brainbow Dash]

I really feel that the Titan TRJ trick should get patched somehow. The Royal Titan should spawn fire, ice, and stone giants every time you hit it.

[tedric]

The potion should be extremely rare, similar to acquirement.

Rare items like acquirement or experience usually effect long-term character building. I can't think of any super-rare item off the top of my head that are intended to be used in specific situations, leaving no trace other than you being alive. Making such an item so rare would encourage players to hoard it until they succumb to death by stinginess, or else hoard it until they forget about it.

Easy fix: Make potion of focus a strategic consumable that gives permanent +2 attribute to a selected skill, and permanent -1 attribute to all other skills. Numbers fudgeable.

[Sandman25]

Easy fix: Make potion of focus a strategic consumable that gives permanent +2 attribute to a selected skill, and permanent -1 attribute to all other skills. Numbers fudgeable.

I am not sure it is a good item, most characters train more than 3 skills.

[bel]

Off topic.

Does using scroll of vulnerability twice make the MR 1/4th?

[mechanicalmaniac]

I don't think so; I think it just extends the effect. Also the advice forum is thattaway.

[Sandman25]

http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=co ... 600b2bc8ac

  Code:

Make TRJ spawn jellies on a failed poly (|amethyst)

 Polying TRJ is cool, but a little too easy at present.

 A bit of an inelegant special case, but perhaps the flavour text
 is enough to make it work...?

Poly TRJ is not no-brainer now. The potion of focus does not need skill penalties that much (though I am still not sure an item with +10 skill is balanced without penalties).

Can I work on the patch?

[duvessa]

crawl devs seem really upset about it being possible to kill uniques

[PleasingFungus]

crawl devs seem really upset about it being possible to kill uniques

fwiw I made that change (and the later change that replaced it) because people were threatening to just make trj magic immune instead

this is super off topic tho

e: also it's possible to kill trj in quite a lot of different ways and it seems really disingenuous to suggest otherwise?

[Sar]

IMO polymorphed TRJ should spawn enemies of its new genus on hit.

[Sandman25]

IMO polymorphed TRJ should spawn enemies of its new genus on hit.

It would be hard to distinguish TRJ Titan from other 10 Titans in tiles (we have similar problem with Tiamat but at least Tiamat does not add more draconians on hit).

[Sar]

You can probably make it use some special color. Probably not worth the ~loss of clarity~ adding, but think about how cool that would be!

[Sandman25]

You can probably make it use some special color. Probably not worth the ~loss of clarity~ adding, but think about how cool that would be!

Yes, I like the idea.

[wheals]

IMO polymorphed TRJ should spawn enemies of its new genus on hit.

It would be hard to distinguish TRJ Titan from other 10 Titans in tiles (we have similar problem with Tiamat but at least Tiamat does not add more draconians on hit).

This is extremely offtopic at this point, but there was someone around who was working on making the Tiamat tile bigger (not panlord size, but larger than the other draconians). Don't know what happened with that.

[kuniqs]

On topic - how is potion of focus different than potions of might, agility or brilliance?

[Sandman25]

On topic - how is potion of focus different than potions of might, agility or brilliance?

It stacks with those items and can increase any skill, you can see examples earlier in the thread.

Based on lack of feedback from devs, I guess the idea is not good enough.

[Sharkman1231]

The item can also give characters ~5 AC, which is pretty substantial. I don't feel it'd be used for many skills, the only ones I feel like it'd be good for would be armour, dodging, evo, and maybe a spell school, like if you really need to not miscast Deaths Door or something.

[Galefury]

Having to pick a skill on using a consumable is bad. It should just increase all skills. Then it overlaps a lot with Heroism though. Not a good item in my opinion.

[Sandman25]

Having to pick a skill on using a consumable is bad. It should just increase all skills. Then it overlaps a lot with Heroism though. Not a good item in my opinion.

!experience, ?acquirement, ?enchant armour, ?enchant weapon, ?remove curse, ?amnesia.
The item would be as rare as ?acquirement.

All skills increase would make it boring.

[Lasty]

Honestly, I think the real question is, why add an incredibly rare, single-use, limited-purpose tactical item to the game? It's effectively going to almost never exist. Even if it were an obviously-perfect design for a consumable, it still might not be worth adding under those conditions.

[Sandman25]

Honestly, I think the real question is, why add an incredibly rare, single-use, limited-purpose tactical item to the game? It's effectively going to almost never exist. Even if it were an obviously-perfect design for a consumable, it still might not be worth adding under those conditions.

Well, potion of cancellation exists and it was added recently so I guess it is acceptable approach.

[Lasty]

Potion of cancellation isn't acquirement-level rarity (it's as common as ambrosia, and only the smallest amount less common than flight, resistance, magic, berserk rage, mutation, and lignification), and there are a fairly large number of situations where using it makes sense, since it doesn't apply a crippling debuff in addition to its primary purpose.