Unrand: Cloak of the Rakshasa

[elmdor]

I really like the mechanics of illusions in crawl. On the enemy side, we have Rakshasas, Mara, and Mara's hostile illusions. On the player's side, there are Phantom Mirrors which allow copying enemies, and the Illusion card which copies the player character using ghost code. However, both of these are limited by item generation.

I'd like to propose an unrandart that would allow the player to evoke an illusion of themselves at will. This powerful ability would be balanced in several ways - requiring high Evo investment to use (perhaps 90% fail at 0 Evo, 35% fail chance at 10 Evo, 10% at 20 evo?), costing big skill drain (as much as Ru's Apocalypse?), and requiring a recharging period like a lamp of fire.

+0 Cloak of the Rakshasa {*Drain rN+ +Illusion}

This tigerskin cloak allows you to summon an illusionary copy of yourself, at the cost of severe skill drain. It recharges as you gain experience with it in your possession. It causes draining when unequipped.

Another balancing option (which would require more coding) would be to make the evocation very difficult at full HP, but much more reliable the more your HP are reduced. This would fit thematically with how enemy Rakshasas only clone themselves at low health, and discourage it from being used as just another buff at the beginning of a tough fight.

If there are too many good unrandart cloaks right now, maybe this could become boots instead, although the flavor wouldn't be nearly as cool that way...

Thoughts?

[bcadren]

As an artifact; big NO. As a god power, maybe. Even then, hard maybe. This is already a player ability, as you stated; a randArt version isn't really necessary, just go ^Nemelex for more Illusion Cards.

[bananaken]

An ability already existing is okay, IMO.

[Aethrus]

I'd rather see this sort of thing as a hex spell, perhaps more for soaking attacks and misdirecting enemies than getting a full ghost self copy to fight alongside you.

[ion_frigate]

I'd rather see this sort of thing as a hex spell, perhaps more for soaking attacks and misdirecting enemies than getting a full ghost self copy to fight alongside you.

This exists in NetHack with cloaks of displacement (and to a lesser extent invisibility): you don't "see" your displaced image, but monsters sometimes attack it, even with ranged attacks. Trust me, it's pretty boring and overpowered, basically just amounting to something that makes monsters miss like 35% of the time. In Crawl terms, it'd basically just be a super-sputterflies (since it'd also nerf monsters' bolt spells).

Don't get me wrong, I like illusions/displaced images thematically. I also think they work pretty well to fight against as a player. But monsters fighting against them is just another "decrease monster damage by x%" effect," or in the case of a full-on Mara-esque player illusion, just an extremely powerful summon.

[duvessa]

displacement in nethack is not overpowered or even good

[KoboldLord]

displacement in nethack is not overpowered or even good

It's bad in Nethack because it's tacked onto a cloak that only has magic cancellation 2 instead of 3, which is partial resistance to a laundry list of bad crap instead of basically complete resistance. You can also get a similar benefit that is almost as good from invisibility, which can be gotten slotless and is actually sometimes hard to avoid getting slotless. Displacement is something you'd never choose past the early game in the current vanilla fork of Nethack, but that's mostly because you would never choose to have crippled magic cancellation.

[Rast]

displacement in nethack is not overpowered or even good

It's bad in Nethack because it's tacked onto a cloak that only has magic cancellation 2 instead of 3, which is partial resistance to a laundry list of bad crap instead of basically complete resistance. You can also get a similar benefit that is almost as good from invisibility, which can be gotten slotless and is actually sometimes hard to avoid getting slotless. Displacement is something you'd never choose past the early game in the current vanilla fork of Nethack, but that's mostly because you would never choose to have crippled magic cancellation.

You can get MC3 from mithril armor, leaving your cloak slot free for displacement. This is a reasonable choice through the midgame.

[KoboldLord]

You can get MC3 from mithril armor, leaving your cloak slot free for displacement. This is a reasonable choice through the midgame.

By early game, I meant until you have reflection, magic resistance, and poison resistance. Considering that's the only vaguely challenging part of the game, perhaps 'early game' was the wrong choice of words. Mithril is good early on, but it doesn't give you any of those. Displacement is indeed quite good until then, particularly if you are a ranger who started with a +2 version.

[elmdor]

We don't need to use analogies to Nethack to see how this mechanic would work - the Illusion card already does it. It's just that most players don't bother with cards or Nemelex because inventory management.

One thing I'm not clear on is how Evocations skill affects the strength of the Illusion card. Learndb tells me that a card's power value is boosted by Nem worship and deck type -- (evocations * 9 for plain decks, +150 for ornate decks, +300 for legendary) but I am not experienced enough with Nemelex or code diving to say how this effects the Illusion card in terms of its duration, spell list, etc.

If an item like this seems too OP as proposed, what would it take to make it balanced?

[Sar]

I think the whole point of Nemelex is getting access to a bunch of overpowered and unique abilities.

[bananaken]

Personally, I don't like Nemelex, though I find some of the abilities hidden behind decks to be cool, so I'll spend some time using and identifying decks every now and then. That said I think it'd be cool to have a chance to use some of those abilities more readily thanks to a rare item like a unrand.

I've used Ru before, and while apocalypse-level XP drain is manageable, it's largely in thanks to how easy it is to clear an entire room of enemies. Severe stat drain for making a copy of yourself sounds like it wouldn't be worth it unless your copy would be casting high level spells and help you dispatch a similar amount of enemies. Also, XP recharging is always associated with artifacts like lamp of fire, it's probably going to be confusing to have an unrand behave like an artifact, specially when draining already does the whole XP re-charge thing.

[elmdor]

Yeah I agree it might be confusing to have a rechargeable equipped item, I was kind of just spitballing ideas to balance it...

The ideal gameplay use I have in mind for an item like this would be as a non-escape panic button during a fight that's not going your way, say a powerful unique or Depths vault.

[Croases]

Have it sometimes spawn a clone when you take huge damage, with HP equal to the HP you lost. Some of your essence flows out through your cloak of the Rakshasa!

Also makes sense since Rakshasas only clone at low HP now.

[bananaken]

That'd be an interesting way to give torment and other guaranteed damage sources the middle finger while still having to deal with the damage itself, I like the idea.

[jason0320]

I think the whole point of Nemelex is getting access to a bunch of overpowered and unique abilities.

Yeah since it's all in the cards.

[Quazifuji]

[quote="bcadren"]As a god power, maybe. Even then, hard maybe. /quote]

I feel like "God of Deception" could be a cool flavor concept that might lead to some interesting abilities.

That said, I also like Croases' idea of turning the lost health into an illusion when you take a big hit.