Deep Dwarves

[bcadren]

Personally I'm in Favor of Removal; but the following tweaks would balance them a bit more and while overall making them harder; it'd prevent scummy behavior ever being optimal. And I think it's worth trying the changes before just ripping out.

• Vampiric weapons and Vampiric Draining can never heal you by more than 75% of the target's total HP.
  • While this would -technically- affect everyone only DD that come back to the same creature allowing it to Regen over and over to heal would be practically affected.
• Godly healing (TSO, Makhleb, Elyvilon, Trog, etc.) is affected by the damage shaving.
  • Prevents pigeonholing DD as an easy race if you pick these gods; but much harder otherwise.
  • Balances back to having to focus on defenses.
• Amount of health healed by a Wand of Heal Wounds scales with Evocations.
  • Should be roughly 1/4-1/2 max HP at level {foo} with evocations {foo}.
  • Means it's not so brokenly powerful in early game (unless you start DDAr).
  • Means it can be more considerable healing in late game.
  • But forces the player to train Evo to get the healing, effectively giving DD a 4th defensive skill.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

Just remove Deep dwarves from Tournament play or something, but removing them from the whole game would just be idiotic; They are a unique race, and many people actually enjoy playing them as they are. (+ they are a gateway to many first wins/learning the game)

[BobIsDead]

Hmm... I've seen a lot of stuff relating to deep dwarves lately. I think a problem might be that, as crawl has changed, the whole "no natural healing" thing has gradually become a bit redundant for deep dwarves. One of the best solutions I've seen is to completely remove any form of healing avaliable to them and then balance them around that. However, that carries a whole host of its own problems.

Personally, I think that the "no natural healing" thing should be altered to fit more in with the rest of crawl. For example, they could heal naturally, however a percentage of all damage they receive is coverted to rot damage, which reduces their maximum HP. This would create a similar scenario to them not being able to heal naturally, and would cut away many of the easy way of them restoring themselves to their maximum possible HP. The downside is that this might create some new cheap tactics for overcoming this obstacle (such as relying on Elyvilon's purification ability).

Err... but yeah, failing all of that, just cutting out the scumminess sounds like it's not too bad an idea. I particularly like the idea of applying damage shaving to gods' healing, mainly because it's a tweak that affects deep dwarves and only deep dwarves.

[Berder]

The problem I see with deep dwarves is that they are limited to Mak (and to a lesser extent Trog, and Ely - is new ely even good for dd anymore?) or else they run out of charges and can't heal or have to resort to scummy tactics with vamp draining etc. The problem is not that the scummy tactics are allowed - the problem is that they are necessary. The solution to this problem is to give deep dwarves more healing. This would allow deep dwarves to take all different gods, which is more interesting, and not need scummy tactics with those other gods.

For instance, let their device recharging ability only cause MP rot 50% of the time, or 25% of the time, when used on a wand of heal wounds. It could cause rot 100% of the time on other devices, same as now. That would let them pick any god and not worry much about healing. Alternative, equivalent implementation: let device recharging always restore heal wounds wands to the maximum 9 charges, while working normally for other wands.

Would this make deep dwarves too overpowered? Well, it would have little to no effect on the early game since they have enough charges for that anyway. And later in the game what you have to compare it to is a DD^Mak. Makhleb is a powerful god, and under makhleb deep dwarves don't have to worry about running out of heal wounds charges. So I don't think a DD^Oka or DD^yred who doesn't have to worry about HW charges would be more powerful than that.

[Speleothing]

(+ they are a gateway to many first wins/learning the game)

Really?
I'd like to see some stats on that.

[Quazifuji]

The problem I see with deep dwarves is that they are limited to Mak (and to a lesser extent Trog, and Ely - is new ely even good for dd anymore?) or else they run out of charges and can't heal or have to resort to scummy tactics with vamp draining etc. The problem is not that the scummy tactics are allowed - the problem is that they are necessary. The solution to this problem is to give deep dwarves more healing. This would allow deep dwarves to take all different gods, which is more interesting, and not need scummy tactics with those other gods.

For instance, let their device recharging ability only cause MP rot 50% of the time, or 25% of the time, when used on a wand of heal wounds. It could cause rot 100% of the time on other devices, same as now. That would let them pick any god and not worry much about healing. Alternative, equivalent implementation: let device recharging always restore heal wounds wands to the maximum 9 charges, while working normally for other wands.

Would this make deep dwarves too overpowered? Well, it would have little to no effect on the early game since they have enough charges for that anyway. And later in the game what you have to compare it to is a DD^Mak. Makhleb is a powerful god, and under makhleb deep dwarves don't have to worry about running out of heal wounds charges. So I don't think a DD^Oka or DD^yred who doesn't have to worry about HW charges would be more powerful than that.

But if you give Deep Dwarves more healing, then they're no longer interesting.

This feels like the real problem with Deep Dwarves. The thing that makes Deep Dwarves unique is that they cannot heal by resting. Except 99% of methods for winning with Deep Dwarves consists of just finding alternative methods of healing, because Crawl is designed and balanced around current HP being a tactical resource and not a strategic one.

The solution to improve DD is not to force them to find an alternate source of healing (usually a god), it's to stop them from using alternate sources of healing. Make vampiric weapons, vampiric draining, and god healing not work on them, so that they can only heal with potions and wands. Then see if it's possible to balance them. If this creates a race that is universally not fun to play, they should probably be scrapped. If it works, they now match their original design much better than before.

[KoboldLord]

Due to their close connection with elemental earth, deep dwarves heal themselves by drawing on the spirit of the land as they pass through. Once they've drawn on the land in a certain location, the spirits are depleted and will not regain enough strength to aid the player again until after the quest for the Orb is already completed. On every initial entry into a level, the deep dwarf player heals equivalent to 50% of his or her maximum hit points. Easy to understand, and if you want to bank Temple for emergency healing go nuts. There aren't enough side levels available in the game to allow for significant degeneration in play, and you can autotravel to banked levels in only a few keystrokes.

In exchange, no other healing works except for potions. Remove the heal wounds wand because it really doesn't have a reason to exist anyway after the removal of item destruction and encumbrance.

[Rast]

I'll repeat my previous suggestion:

Keep damage shaving
Throw out device recharge and the starting wand
No natural healing with monsters in LOS, instead of no natural healing at all. (Slow Healing 2 instead of Slow Healing 3)

Downgrade bonus HP to 10% instead of the current 20%
Possibly downgrade MR per level to 5 instead of 6
Possibly remove the rN+ at XL 14.

Possibly adjust apts, either for balance or to better differentiate DD from other races, if desired.

[Berder]

But if you give Deep Dwarves more healing, then they're no longer interesting.

This feels like the real problem with Deep Dwarves. The thing that makes Deep Dwarves unique is that they cannot heal by resting. Except 99% of methods for winning with Deep Dwarves consists of just finding alternative methods of healing, because Crawl is designed and balanced around current HP being a tactical resource and not a strategic one.

The solution to improve DD is not to force them to find an alternate source of healing (usually a god), it's to stop them from using alternate sources of healing. Make vampiric weapons, vampiric draining, and god healing not work on them, so that they can only heal with potions and wands. Then see if it's possible to balance them. If this creates a race that is universally not fun to play, they should probably be scrapped. If it works, they now match their original design much better than before.

How would you balance them around such a limited amount of healing? I don't think it's possible, because different play styles, player skill levels, and gear result in dramatically different amounts of damage over the course of a game. No fixed amount of healing would work for all those cases.

Also: running out of healing on a DD is terribly unfun. It's a death you can see coming inexorably from a mile away but can't do anything about other than ctrl-q yes. It's happened to me. I've seen it happen to other players such as Tabstorm.

The solution is to give DD more healing charges so that the unfun outcome just never happens. Then they can be rebalanced if necessary.

[bel]

Wasn't there a thread on deep dwarves a month or so ago?

Anyway, I suggested healing on exploration there. For the problem of people leaving unexplored areas, scale the regeneration by the depth of the level. This could probably be justified flavour wise saying that deep dwarves have an affinity with deep levels. (I know, horrible pun)

Or just have healing on kills.

(Remove all healing except potions or perhaps wands and Ely)

Edit: I like KoboldLord's idea too, simpler

[Sar]

Remove the heal wounds wand because it really doesn't have a reason to exist anyway

Guess I'll have to play minmay here and mention that this would be a big mummy nerf.

[rchandra]

Remove the heal wounds wand because it really doesn't have a reason to exist anyway

Guess I'll have to play minmay here and mention that this would be a big mummy nerf.

it's also a rather huge change for extended (I know, extended has minimal effect on balance decisions) - having effectively dozens of !hw instead of just a few. I see no reason why DD couldn't not start with one, though - or just have no device heal 1 so it's less insane.

[Siegurt]

Hm, what if DD, instead of getting recharge, got a 'brew potion of heal wounds' ability that recharged slowly with either XP or exploration (I'm not sure which would be less prone to abuse)

This is functionally similar to the proposal early to heal them a chunk on every new level, except they could 'bank' them if they didn't need them.

Then they could start with just a few potions instead of a wand with charges.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

Hm, what if DD, instead of getting recharge, got a 'brew potion of heal wounds' ability that recharged slowly with either XP or exploration (I'm not sure which would be less prone to abuse)

This is functionally similar to the proposal early to heal them a chunk on every new level, except they could 'bank' them if they didn't need them.

Then they could start with just a few potions instead of a wand with charges.

I actually like this idea.
Tying it to exp gain would be much more preferable due to Pan/abyss.
This idea would make magic more available to them as well.

[tasonir]

Imho the best solution is to give deep dwarves an innate vampiric effect, and then disable god healing, vamp weapons, etc. Probably still allow heal wounds for emergency healing.

basically, merge deep dwarves and red mandrakes: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=15809.