What if disto didn't banish PCs with the Abyssal rune

[njvack]

Just had a thought after fighting some Hell Knights, one of whom had distortion: once you're strong enough to get the Abyssal rune, being banished is really not a big deal; you mostly wander around until you get to leave. This has been discussed here many times.

But I didn't get abyssed. I got blinked. And that *was* a big deal, because I had been in a good position and now I was in a place where a ton of hell knights were hitting me at once. And getting teleported would have been a big deal, too, as the level was mostly unexplored. Even a bunch of irresistible damage is nothing to sneeze at.

So, my thought: What if, once you had the Abyssal rune, monster-wielded distortion no longer banished you? It could just reroll the effect.

FWIW, I would leave unwield effects alone, and probably Banishment as well.

Thoughts?

[Sprucery]

Actually, I would include banishment by spellcasters as well. As someone recently said, getting banished by an alich potentially saves your life, so maybe they should do something more dangerous instead.

[jejorda2]

A more dangerous abyss (deeper floors based on the strength of banishing attack) would be better than preventing banishment.

I don't like the idea of making any rune undesirable.

Having the rune already makes exits more common, right? Making them always appear in LOS of the entry point might be even better. Choosing to kill the banisher last, or risking loss of position in hopes of getting a breather, might be fun.

[njvack]

I don't like the idea of making any rune undesirable.

Hm, that's a good point. Gating it on the rune does sound bad for this reason; something like XL might be better but that would be awfully spoilery.

[Sprucery]

Hm, that's a good point. Gating it on the rune does sound bad for this reason; something like XL might be better but that would be awfully spoilery.

And that would make gaining XL undesirable...

[Sandman25]

Distortion hit shouldn't banish you if you are in danger. Probably "tension" can help here.

[dowan]

Distortion is an unpredictable effect, just like when you use it on monsters. Why should it discriminate based on how dangerous the effect it?

[Sandman25]

Distortion is an unpredictable effect, just like when you use it on monsters. Why should it discriminate based on how dangerous the effect it?

Are you asking from flavor standpoint? I think there is obvious reasoning from game balance standpoint.

[dpeg]

It would already help if banishment did not always send you to Abyss:1, but also deeper, depending on banishment source. I've proposed an extremely simple formula on that recently on c-r-d, and it seems there's no opposition... perhaps we'll get that for 0.17. That said, it might turn out that lower Abysses underperform, but tackling that'd be the second step.

[dowan]

Distortion is an unpredictable effect, just like when you use it on monsters. Why should it discriminate based on how dangerous the effect it?

Are you asking from flavor standpoint? I think there is obvious reasoning from game balance standpoint.

Well, it's like saying if an enemy attacks you with a chaos weapon it should never give you a beneficial effect. That's just the nature of the weapon ego. Sometimes disto blinks a centaur away from you, sometimes it banishes you out of a deadly situation. Sometimes yuif kills you because his chaos staff does lots of damaging effects, sometimes he heals you and makes you invisible.

I think weapon egos should continue working normally, and not consider whether their effect is particularly helpful or harmful to their target. Also, how often does this come up where a disto weapon hit saves you from trouble?

[Sandman25]

Well, it's like saying if an enemy attacks you with a chaos weapon it should never give you a beneficial effect.

Yes, I would like to fix that too
I guess we can just agree to disagree at this point.

[dowan]

Heh, I guess so. I don't see weapons doing their effect on the player as a bad thing, I guess you would rather have some brands work differently for monsters. I agree it would make the game harder, but it just seems like a weird way to go about it to me. Yiuf would also stop being a great demonstration of the dangers of chaos weapons to their users.

As dpeg keeps pointing out, getting banished would be less of a good or neutral thing if it sent you deeper based on spellpower. I'm not exactly sure how weapon brands would determine spellpower for the purpose of abyss level, I guess the easy way to do it would be just base it off the depth where you got hit with the effect.

[byrel]

I honestly don't see a reason for chaos brand to do positive things to whoever it hits. As it stands, it's a bit of a noob trap. I remember always rushing to kill yuif for his wonderful weapon when I was new. I don't see any reason chaos couldn't stick to neutral-negative effects on the target (keep polymorph, but eliminate berserk.)

[jejorda2]

I don't see any reason chaos couldn't stick to neutral-negative effects on the target (keep polymorph, but eliminate berserk.)

If it always hurts the target, then there is no downside for the player to wield it.

It's okay to have things that are always good (most weapon brands are always good), but the point of chaos is that it's sometimes very good and sometimes very bad.

If you can see invisible and escape berserk/healed/hasted targets, then it's worth using chaos for the times that it makes the target stab vulnerable or does enough extra damage to kill quickly.

[byrel]

If it always hurts the target, then there is no downside for the player to wield it. It's okay to have things that are always good (most weapon brands are always good), but the point of chaos is that it's sometimes very good and sometimes very bad.

Actually, I've never had a character where I thought chaos was a good idea. The downside of a weapon brand is generally not using the weapon, barring specific downsides like distortion/vampiric unwield, and distortion healing blink frogs. The first category are designed to make the choice interesting, and the blink frogs thing is just cool flavor. The downside to a chaos brand merely makes it bad. If you eliminate berserk and invis, you can still leave situationally useful possibilities like polymorph as a downside.

I don't actually propose we should try to make chaos competitive with good brands on the weapon, but it should be competitive (probably slightly superior) with no brand.

[dowan]

Chaos is the ultimate brand on a late game stabber. I had such an easy time in zot with my chaos dagger wielding kobold. OOF? Paralyzed OOF is easy to stab. Orb guardian? Hex, stab. Oops, I duplicated an alich, better read one of my 20 teleport scrolls and try again.

Chaos is a terrible weapon until you can survive the worst it can do. Then it's a really good weapon, at least for a stabber.