HD and polymorph

[Pollen_Golem]

Yeah, adding a new hidden property for every monster is a great way to make polymorph less spoilery.

Actually, if Polymorph Dice are strictly based on XP values, then polymorph can legitimately be referred to as "using the XP value of the creature, with some irrelevant rounding involved". It would be no more spoilery than polymorph based on HD, but spoilers would be less necessary/relevant because polymorph would generally be more likely to give you a monster of similar difficulty.

[MainiacJoe]

you're still saying that it should not matter whether it's a river rat you've just polymorphed, or a death yak
making polymorph a "turn into popcorn" wand, rather radically changing what it's good for

Yes, you're right, I see that now. What a mess.

[byrel]

you're still saying that it should not matter whether it's a river rat you've just polymorphed, or a death yak
making polymorph a "turn into popcorn" wand, rather radically changing what it's good for

That's like calling a wand of paralysis a "turn into dead" wand. All the hex wands are essentially "Would you trivialize this combat for me? Kthxbai!" vs low-MR targets. And that's not a bad thing! Burning consumables to trivialize certain combats is an interesting decision.

The distinguishing characteristic is how they trivialize the encounter; a slow wand lets you run away or take less damage, paralysis is basically a straight kill, confuse is a combination of silence, defense and offense and enslavement is only good for 2+minion combat and running.

I don't think 'Turn into random shadow creature' is a bad addition to that list of trivialization mechanics; it's more distinct than, say, slow and confuse.

[Pollen_Golem]

paralysis is a turn into dead wand so I'm not sure we need a second one
confuse is close behind paralysis but slow is a debuff equivalent to hasting yourself and enslave requires you to either anger the charmed monster or get the monster to kill itself on other monsters
disintegration may not do enough damage to kill the monster
polymorph ideally works well against a monster that is unusually threatening to you because of your build or something
so the hex wands are different enough that I don't think a new wand should be added to the trivialization hexes that are {paralysis, confuse}

[Fishman]

I think the simplest solution is to make wand of polymorph work like a single-target degeneration card - attempting to turn the monster into a type with less HD.

[njvack]

Degneration has the same problem as poly: some targets have a surprisingly high HD so even with less HD the results can be problematic.

[bananaken]

Degneration has the same problem as poly: some targets have a surprisingly high HD so even with less HD the results can be problematic.

I still stand by my idea:

Maybe polymorph should just be treated as a slightly more rare wand that transforms an enemy into a "bad form", much like the monster only spell Polymorph. This way you'll get a small, fixed list of possibilities, making it sensible enough to convey the information to players in-game. You might need to alter this polymorph a bit though, as I'm not sure there's support for stuff like statue form and dragon form (you may want to replace these with stone golems and fire dragons respectively). The potency of the wand can be adjusted respectively to reflect its usefulness, as well as the probabilities for getting a particular form.

To elaborate, this is what the Crawl wiki has for player bad forms:

• Bat Form : 15.4%
• Fungus Form : 15.4%
• Pig Form : 15.4%
• Porcupine Form : 15.4%
• Tree Form : 15.4%
• Wisp Form : 15.4%
• Spider Form : 3%
• Ice Form : 3%
• Statue Form : 0.77%
• Dragon Form : 0.15%

Do we need to copy/paste the same list? Not necessarily, but it could be used as a start. No need to mess with HD or XP or any arbitrary metric to decide which monster it's polymorphing into, just the initial MR check from the zap and some RNG.

[Shard1697]

Observations:
1) Gastronok can now turn into a juggernaut, how's that for a nasty surprise!

This actually happened to me a bit back.

how does a juggernaut "slosh around", anyway