Toggle Forms

[Abominae]

I'm sure this has probably been mentioned in various buff reform threads, but I think playing any sort of Transmuter would become much more enjoyable if forms were changed to toggle on and toggle off instead of respecting a duration. This is because that unlike many duration-based buffs (e.g., Ozo's Armor or Phase Shift) all of the forms come with some sort of significant drawback. In this way, I feel the cost of X MP and one turn is miniscule in comparison to a negative wizardry enhancer, the inability to quaff potions, or permanent slow.

I think forms are a great place to try out buffs that can be toggled on and off without having to worry about creating additional costs to balance 100% uptime.

As far as the details go, what I have in my head would play out like this:
It costs X MP and 1 turn to toggle into a form. There is no sustained mana cost.
It costs 0 MP and 1 turn to toggle back into your default self.
It costs X MP and 1 turn to change from one form to another (i.e., it doesn't take two turns to go from Blade Hands to Statue Form).
Hydra Form retains its short duration because it's a duration-gimmick form anyway.
I don't know what to do about Beastly Appendage.

Problems I see with toggling forms:
Stacking Wizardry & swapping
Taking off armour to cast Blade Hands or Necromutation
Using !Brilliance to slip into forms one could not normally cast

[le_nerd]

Man, playing transmuters would be so much less tedious! All in favour.

[asdu]

all of the forms come with some sort of significant drawback.

Which is why, if they were toggleable, you'd almost always want to cancel your current form as soon as the immediate need for it is gone. Would that be less annoying than the current behaviour? I suspect not.

[Abominae]

Which is why, if they were toggleable, you'd almost always want to cancel your current form as soon as the immediate need for it is gone. Would that be less annoying than the current behaviour? I suspect not.

Would you mind elaborating on this? I'm going to say what I think you mean, but I'm aware my interpretation may be off base.

Basically, I think the heart of your what your saying is that one would never want to auto-explore in a form due to: elemental vulnerability, negative wizardy, lichform stuff, or permanent slow. From this follows one should always toggle out of a form after a battle, which entirely defeats the purpose of the change and actually adds more key presses. Hm. That sucks.

[asdu]

Yup, that's exactly what I meant.

[bananaken]

What about making the forms sustain themselves as long as there is tension? Crawl already tracks tension for things as Singing Sword, Xom and other stuff, so you could just freeze transformation timer as long as some form of tension is present. This way once you're out of battle you can just auto-explore or rest and have it wear off automatically.

[Abominae]

What about making the forms sustain themselves as long as there is tension? Crawl already tracks tension for things as Singing Sword, Xom and other stuff, so you could just freeze transformation timer as long as some form of tension is present. This way once you're out of battle you can just auto-explore or rest and have it wear off automatically.

This doesn't solve what the proposed change aims to do accomplish--removing the need to cast a form at the start of every battle. It's rare that I encounter a form wearing off before the battle is over unless I've had to run away or am using Hydra Form (I guess very low spellpower would also create this scenario). I don't see recasting in battle if necessary to be a problem; I just hate the fact that when I pick Transmuter I add yet another spell to cast before a battle starts. I guess it wouldn't be as annoying (and I suppose differentiated from normal buffs) if the majority of buffs became some sort of sustained function, but I surmise that's a long way down the road.

Basically, asdu hit the nail on the head. There's no way to obtain what I envisioned without it just being bad for good play or fundamentally changing forms, which is something I wasn't looking for nor want to see happen.

[bananaken]

Eh, I find transformations running out mid-battle to be one of the more annoying things to deal with specially early on (like you said, spellpower). No, it wouldn't solve the problem as you framed it but it would overall reduce keystrokes which seems to be desirable.

[jejorda2]

If forms didn't end without interaction, I would autoexplore in spider form before lair, in ice form during lair, and in blade hands (or statue form) after lair. When I encounter something that makes the drawback matter, I'd change back.

It would be easier to deal with if the spellcasting penalty for spider from and blade hands didn't apply to transmutation spells.

[archaeo]

Part of me honestly thinks that transmutations would be better if they were rare consumables or a god, and all other recastable buffs were just spells you could toggle on and off in exchange for max MP. It seems like it'd be a good thing to look at when the devs inevitably get around to charms reform.

[jejorda2]

Transmutations that don't time out are an awful lot like artifact weapons with drawbacks. Except they can't be "wielded" without skills.

[BeardTony]

I cannot overstate how much I like the idea of toggle-able forms. Even if for no other transmutation, lich form should at least behave this way. Going through crypt, pan, and hell (at least in my style of play), I want to keep lich form on permanently. It is nothing but irritating when auto-explore is interrupted every time Lich form starts to wear off. You have to press O about twice as much as you'd like to and you have to recast the spell. With the old 50 mana soft-cap gone, I would gladly be willing to take 8 off my maximum mana pool to maintain my lichdom indefinitely.

Of course there are the holy floors and dispel undead monsters, but I like the idea of being in control of when forms end rather than letting the game decide for me. I primarily use lich form because it removes hunger, and constantly dropping out of that is nothing but frustrating. I never feel like I can finally drop those breads and steaks to free up some more inventory slots because of all the times I know lich form is going to crap-out on me while I'm surrounded by monsters that are begging for a good firestorming.

It was proposed above that some people prefer exploring while not transmuted and then changing into a new form when they run into a monster, but I propose that I would much rather cast a fireball or firestorm in that turn within monster LoS rather than use it to switch back into lich form.

Also with Felids and Octopodes, their primary form is so vulnerable, that I would always rather have Blade Hands or Statue Form on. Even spider form seems like a step up from being a Felid.

I love the idea of toggle forms, please incorporate it for lichform at the very least.

[tasonir]

I'd prefer them to be permanent. Some like blade hands you would end up wanting to cancel because -wiz really does suck, but I honestly don't really care about being slowed while autoexploring. It doesn't hurt your score which counts actions, and while a monster coming into view gets an extra 5 auts, that doesn't seem like something I'd really care about, considering I generally go around with chei giving them an extra 10 auts as it is. Statue form ac/hp isn't going to suddenly melt because a monster got a double action. And having to cast the spell after they show up gives them another 10 auts anyways, so it's mostly a wash.

I believe hydra form now has a normal duration, that gimmick was removed. It could function the same as the rest. I could see people wanting to cancel out of hydra form more often as you need better defenses, but that's just a mark against hydra form in general, and not really against non-expiring transmutations.

Brilliance would be exploitable, although you could design a system where if your chance to cast the spell goes back down under X%, then you give your form a duration again and after X turns it wears off.

[xentronium]

Make forms toggleable, but give a lot of contamination or draining whenever you change form. Also make contamination go away with experience gain to avoid players being able to rest it off.

[Siegurt]

Twist: make forms permanant, but uncancelable, the only way to end a form is to cast a different one (or have a bad form inflicted on you

[jejorda2]

I could understand it if casting spider form while in spider form turned you back into your standard from instead of extending spider form. Same for the other forms. This would go with removal of the "cancel form" ability.

[Siegurt]

I could understand it if casting spider form while in spider form turned you back into your standard from instead of extending spider form. Same for the other forms. This would go with removal of the "cancel form" ability.

Ooh so it would take mana and you could have failures and miscasts trying to return to normal with a wizardry penalty? I kind of like that

[tasonir]

Honestly if you had to pay your mana cost + failure rate to get out of forms I don't think it would be too much of a nerf, most forms you're going to want to stay in until everything's dead. The one that I could see it hurting is blade hands, where you may suddenly need to zap yourself with a wand of heal wounds, or a monster shows up that you'd want to hit with a wand of cold, or you need to cast some other difficult to cast spell which you can't do safely with blade hands. Blade hands could probably survive the nerf - it would make it more analogous to berserk, where you're getting huge damage but now you are stuck doing nothing but hitting things while it's active.

With high enough casting abilities it would still be easy to get out of blade hands, of course, but getting out would have the -wiz effect and be harder than just casting the spell the first time.

[Sprucery]

Twist: make forms permanant, but uncancelable, the only way to end a form is to cast a different one (or have a bad form inflicted on you ;)

Also add a spell '[Species] Form' (lvl 9 Transmutations), which you can use to get back to your original form...