[FR] Brilliance gives sInv

[petete]

Might and agility are useful for every character, but brilliance pales in comparison. For non-casters it's basically dead-weight. So my proposal is to give it sInv in addition to it's current effect.
Why sInv and not another property? Most other effects are already in potion form in one way or another, resistances are covered, as well as a cure to confusion and poison, MR have a lot of sources and giving it to a potion would be boring and it would fit better in the potion of resistance. sInv only comes from equipment, a couple of gods and a mutation that can be acquired at birth and doesn't have a consumable alternative, it is useful for early characters who find an invisible bat of doom (in trunk i often find one before lair), even for advanced characters could be useful as a way to avoid switching equipment. The only alternative to sInv, would be teleporting away to changing levels.

Originally i thought of giving it ESP, the ability of detecting all monsters in sight range even through walls, similar to Ash's ability, but rejected it as being too powerful. But maybe it can also be considered as it would be useful for every race except Ash followers.

What do you think?

[jejorda2]

It sure beats carrying a randart club, and is no worse than swapping a ring.

To bikeshed: "Potion of Insight?"

Or if it remains "brilliance," the potion could give a TSO-like halo that lets you see invisible enemies nearby. So it's good against unseen horrors and sky beasts, but it doesn't tell you where orc wizards are.

[Slogo]

An interesting effect of this is the type of characters that struggle vs early/mid invisible monsters are often the same ones who have a use for brilliance potion. Most melee armor dudes can just tab their way through invisible monsters (retreating to a hallway if necessary), but casters, if they don't have an applicable spell, can get stuck. So using it in a lot of cases it would mostly just mean that a caster/EV character could use a potion of brilliance in place of another necessary consumable usage.

[archaeo]

I feel like tacking this kind of effect onto an already good potion (seriously, try it on your next caster, it's very useful) isn't a really productive way to go. Instead, if sInv is really a desirable thing to have on a consumable, it'd be more interesting to plug it onto one of the bad scrolls/pots, similar to how !lignification and !ambrosia came about. Obviously, as somebody who isn't the biggest fan of the ID game, I'm all in favor of getting rid of the bad items that exist mostly just to complicate identification. But even if you like IDing items, removing outright bad items in favor of "interesting" items seems like a good idea.

Of course, it's worth pointing out that we already have a consumable that gives you pseudo sInv: ?fog. But I could see, for example, making Scroll of Noise into Scroll of Light, with a temporary explosive beam of light acting as a temporary halo. Not sure that it really works for any of the bad potions. This doesn't strike me as terribly interesting, but it'd be better than tacking sInv onto Brilliance.

[triorph]

I really like this idea, although so far my favourite version is the mini-TSO aura for it.

[byrel]

I really like this idea, although so far my favourite version is the mini-TSO aura for it.

I kind of like it too, but it's worth considering it's impact on stabbers; currently it's 100% viable to quaff brilliance to cast invis on an OOD pack of yaktaurs or death yaks. It wouldn't be with this. Same for brilliance casting Phase shift, Darkness, Silence, etc. before moving in for a stab.