Nerf animate skeleton: hostility

[Sandman25]

The spell is too powerful for level 1 especially since you can use it after fights and don't care about miscast. I suggest the following: if you got a miscast while casting Animate Skelton, the skeleton is hostile and it does not give any XP/piety.

[Siegurt]

I personally think both animate skeleton and animate dead should have a chance of failing depending on the HD of the corpse and the spellpower it's cast at. Animate skeleton having a lower cap on spellpower would probably fail a lot when trying to animate higher level corpses. (Also I'd make a failed animation spoil the corpse so it couldn't be animated thereafter)

This would serve both to distinguish the spells further and also make the low level animate skeleton less useful as a high level player, without impacting a player using them for their intended purposes much at all. (Also it would make investing in them for spellpower actually useful)

That's just how I would handle it, personally, though.

[Sandman25]

I personally think both animate skeleton and animate dead should have a chance of failing depending on the HD of the corpse and the spellpower it's cast at. Animate skeleton having a lower cap on spellpower would probably fail a lot when trying to animate higher level corpses. (Also I'd make a failed animation spoil the corpse so it couldn't be animated thereafter)

This would serve both to distinguish the spells further and also make the low level animate skeleton less useful as a high level player, without impacting a player using them for their intended purposes much at all. (Also it would make investing in them for spellpower actually useful)

That's just how I would handle it, personally, though.

I assume you mean there is only one attempt to raise specific corpse, otherwise nothing prevents player from ignoring miscast (level 1 miscasts are almost harmless) and just trying again. This is less cruel than hostile skeleton, I agree.

[KoboldLord]

The spell is too powerful for level 1 especially since you can use it after fights and don't care about miscast. I suggest the following: if you got a miscast while casting Animate Skelton, the skeleton is hostile and it does not give any XP/piety.

It isn't really a problem that you can get adder or hobgoblin skeletons on D1. That's intended use. The problem is that you get hydra skeletons in Lair and ettin skeletons in depths with no additional investment to speak of since making those D1 skeletons. Making D1 necromancers get hostile skeletons 8% of the time or whatever makes D1 much worse but won't help with the late game problem at all, since those character won't be miscasting a level 1 spell basically ever.

Solution is worse than status quo.

[Sandman25]

Solution is worse than status quo.

Well, you are right of course, the miscasts will not happen often. Yet I believe it will be interesting sometimes, a hostile black mamba skeleton or hydra skeleton can be deadly. I am trying to make characters train Necromancy, currently you can afford 45% Animate Skeleton and still be fine. A better solution would be to move the spell to higher level but I don't think it will happen.

[Siegurt]

I personally think both animate skeleton and animate dead should have a chance of failing depending on the HD of the corpse and the spellpower it's cast at. Animate skeleton having a lower cap on spellpower would probably fail a lot when trying to animate higher level corpses. (Also I'd make a failed animation spoil the corpse so it couldn't be animated thereafter)

This would serve both to distinguish the spells further and also make the low level animate skeleton less useful as a high level player, without impacting a player using them for their intended purposes much at all. (Also it would make investing in them for spellpower actually useful)

That's just how I would handle it, personally, though.

I assume you mean there is only one attempt to raise specific corpse, otherwise nothing prevents player from ignoring miscast (level 1 miscasts are almost harmless) and just trying again. This is less cruel than hostile skeleton, I agree.

That's mostly what I meant by this:

(Also I'd make a failed animation spoil the corpse so it couldn't be animated thereafter)

However actually meant a *separate* failure-to-animate chance so rather than the spell failing (which has no result) the spell can succeed and has a percentage change of animating a corpse based on it's HD and your spellpower (the "effect" of the spell, similar to hex power or conjuration's damage)

When that chance failed I'd "Spoil" the corpse so you don't get a second shot.

I believe fairly strongly that failing to cast the spell at all shouldn't additionally penalize you.

[ion_frigate]

One of the big concerns seems to be that you can create high-level skeletons with little to no skill investment. So how about adding a spell power vs HD check to this spell? If the check vs the HD of the skeleton fails, the skeleton just collapses uselessly (or, possibly, is hostile). Since unless I'm mistaken the spell has a low-ish cap on spell power (and if not, could be given one), this could easily be tweaked so that it wouldn't affect D:1, while removing the possibility of easily creating iron dragon skeletons.

[Siegurt]

One of the big concerns seems to be that you can create high-level skeletons with little to no skill investment. So how about adding a spell power vs HD check to this spell? If the check vs the HD of the skeleton fails, the skeleton just collapses uselessly (or, possibly, is hostile). Since unless I'm mistaken the spell has a low-ish cap on spell power (and if not, could be given one), this could easily be tweaked so that it wouldn't affect D:1, while removing the possibility of easily creating iron dragon skeletons.

I literally suggested that like 3 posts ago

[Sprucery]

Spellpower check against monster HD would be fine imho. This has been suggested before (at least by me and Rast), so maybe it doesn't get dev love...

It is too powerful for a level 1 spell. Compare it to other level 1 spells.

[Sandman25]

Spellpower check against monster HD would be fine imho. This has been suggested before (at least by me and Rast), so maybe it doesn't get dev love...

I think it's because HD (or HP) is not listed anywhere in the game so it will be very confusing for players. "Why can't I animate that ettin? The goblin was animated without any problems..."

[Sprucery]

I think it's because HD (or HP) is not listed anywhere in the game so it will be very confusing for players. "Why can't I animate that ettin? The goblin was animated without any problems..."

Probably there should be a message "Your spellpower is not enough to raise that skeleton" or something like that.

[Sandman25]

Probably there should be a message "Your spellpower is not enough to raise that skeleton" or something like that.

And then we have problem "I trained more Necromancy and now I don't know if I am able to animate ettin. What is the formula?". Unless monster description for ettin says "You can animate this monster" which depends on gear and draining.

[greedo]

My concern with this is whether or not it'd backfire and actually hurt casters more heh. Getting animate to 20% and surviving a hostile skeleton now and then as a fighter oriented player is not a big deal. However, getting animate down to 2% and getting a hostile skeleton as a felid or octopode at level 2 might be a big concern.

Sort of off topic, but perhaps deep red miscasts need to be more.. explosive And not affected by spell level.

[Sandman25]

My concern with this is whether or not it'd backfire and actually hurt casters more heh. Getting animate to 20% and surviving a hostile skeleton now and then as a fighter oriented player is not a big deal. However, getting animate down to 2% and getting a hostile skeleton as a felid or octopode at level 2 might be a big concern.

Sort of off topic, but perhaps deep red miscasts need to be more.. explosive And not affected by spell level.

Don't forget about casting during fighting. I often animate something while still fighting something else, that can be a bad idea with high failure chance.

[mps]

There have been lots of reasonable proposals for toning down animate skeleton, including some made in this thread, e.g. HD vs. spellpower dependence in various permutations.

I'm amazed by the OP though. This is exactly the kind of bad-random pseudo-challenge that needs to go where it still exists. Level 1 spell that spawns hostiles on top of you... smdh

[Sandman25]

Yes, it is like there was a god who made you lose 10 HP, 100-200 food and 5-8 piety just to throw a hostile Executioner at you. What was I thinking???

[Berder]

I don't consider Makhleb's demons worth the risk of a hostile executioner. I've won Mak 16 times and barely ever used his invo, for that reason.

[mps]

As you may have guessed from my comment, I'm not keen on hostile demon summons either.

[greedo]

Well, with hostile demon summons there's also the fact that you're not going to be casting this often. Wondering if a skeleton is going to kill you sounds like it will get old after the 3000th cast.

[Sandman25]

Yes, I know, you go Trog in every game because it is optimal with characters you are playing.

[Sandman25]

I don't treat hostile skeleton as inherent problem. If you are not sure that you can survive it, don't animate that hydra. Animate Dead does not have this problem.

[mps]

Actually, I usually take the best god on the first floor I encounter altars, with a short list of take-on-sight gods. I just notice that when that happens to be Trog, games go very smoothly.

Anyway, randomly giving hostiles instead of allies is tedious and bad. The remedies are straightforward and boring. It just dumbs down the spell tactically, since you won't want to cast it in combat if anything remotely dangerous is happening.

[Sandman25]

Yes, it is supposed to be a nerf, not a buff.

[mps]

Yes, and many reasonable nerfs have been proposed, as I mentioned upthread. This is not one of them.

[Sandman25]

Yes, I like spell power idea much more than my idea. Yet the former was suggested a long time ago and still is not in the game (I tried to guess in this thread why). So I tried to suggest an easier solution which takes like 5 minutes to code and does not require displaying HD in the game.

[yesno]

does not require displaying HD in the game.

could animate skeleton just get % success display prompt maybe?

[archaeo]

That'd technically leak information about HD too, I guess? I'd prefer a solution by which low spellpower = low duration, with a relatively modest cap (such that you get max duration at ~10 necro). If they don't already, you may as well make them collapse when you go up or down a staircase as well, I guess.

But I don't really care; I don't think animate skeleton really needs to be nerfed. It's up there with summon butterflies as a decent level 1 spell for creating some meatshields, but that's about all it can do, and now that they're temporary, they're not nearly as problematic. In the early game, when level 1 spells are supposed to be good, it works great. In the mid-to-lategame, skeletons are fairly weak, and while having skelebros blocking hits for you is very helpful, players almost always have better options for protecting themselves than constantly casting a barely memorized level 1 spell.

[yesno]

That'd technically leak information about HD too, I guess

you'd have to derive it from spellpower, and if you care that much you'll just look it up

But I don't really care

oh i see

[bel]

Isn't the way to deal with hostile Makh summon to simply summon more? I don't use them much, but I have never been killed by a Makh summon.

[Berder]

If you get a hostile executioner, and summon another greater demon, it's not likely to be a friendly executioner. You're more likely to get a weak demon like a cacodemon or green death, that won't help you fend off the hostile one much. It generally won't, for example, distract the hostile demon into not attacking you - enemies usually attack you and not your allies when possible.

[bel]

Well:

1) You can always summon even more.
2) Cacodemons actually hit decently hard (about the same as executioners, though of course they are slower, but much more beefy). Green deaths are a bit weaker.
3) You generally summon allies before a fight when you're ready, not as a panic button. So you can take a few hits, while you and your allies grind them down and/or escape in some way.

[Sandman25]

If you need to summon another demon to survive hostile demon, don't summon the first one IMHO. Once I got two hostile demons in a row, that could kill me if I didn't use the principle. I didn't care so I summoned 2 more friendly demons and continued fighting. Gh is OP.

[bel]

Back to the OP, I actually rarely learn Animate Skeleton. The spell may be powerful, but I generally don't want to deal with allies unnecessarily. It is decidedly suboptimal though. I agree that the spell is too powerful for its level.

The recent nerf to zombies (expiration) made matters better, this could be pushed a bit farther using some of the ideas in this thread.

[dowan]

I know it's been sorta roundabout suggested, but what if animate skeleton were changed to have a hex-like interface, meaning you go stand on the corpse, cast AS, it targets the square you're on, and shows a % chance to succeed. Chance to succeed is based on spellpower and monster level. 0 spellpower AS becomes essentially worthless. A failure either destroys the corpse or summons a hostile skellie, either way is fine. AS can then stay level 1.

The chance to succeed should be pretty high even with fairly low spellpower, I think. We're trying to prevent the 0 skill guy who picks up AS and gets an army of skeletons, not the necromancer who only has 5 necromancy skill in the lair.

Animate dead can stay as is. It's already level 4, and as it raises multiple corpses, there's no real opportunity to show a success chance, nor is there really any need for a nerf.

[Quazifuji]

I think I agree with the sentiment that removing the permanence made animate skeleton way less powerful late game. I also agree that having a failure chance based on HD, while it would be a reasonable way to limit people in heavy armor training it to 50% failure rate and suddenly having an army of dragon skeletons in Depths, would be extremely opaque and spoilery, and would at a minimum require summon skeletons to be targeted (adding more button presses) so that it can display a hex-style failure rate.

On the other hand, I do like the idea of corpses being destroyed on failure. It wouldn't be huge, and it wouldn't motivate getting high spellpower, but it would at least reward you for getting it to a low failure rate instead of it being fully function even when failing half the time.

Is there any precedent for spell-specific miscast effects? My personal vote would be to make it destroy corpses on miscast and see how that goes before considering further nerfs, but I think generally miscasts normally don't have any spell-specific side effects and spells with special failure effects only happen if they miscast but don't fail. Although the pending suggestion for Makhleb demons to become hostile on failure rather than "failure" and "hostile demons" being two different effects might set some precedent for abilities with side effects on failure.

[ydeve]

If you destroy corpses on failure, they should still leave chunks. Otherwise it's optimal to first 'c' corpses and then cast AS when you're low on nutrition. That would be irritating

[Quazifuji]

If you destroy corpses on failure, they should still leave chunks. Otherwise it's optimal to first 'c' corpses and then cast AS when you're low on nutrition. That would be irritating

Agreed. Maybe it would be more accurate to say it should destroy skeletons on failure.

[kroki]

the drawback of animate skeleton spell is how tedious it is to use

[Quazifuji]

the drawback of animate skeleton spell is how tedious it is to use

Doesn't this serve as an even stronger argument for changing it? Considering trying to avoid tedious but optimal behavior is an important part of Crawl's design philosophy in the first place, if a spell is extremely strong and its drawback is tedium, that means it goes heavily against the game's current design and should be changed.