Suggestion: Make Channel a Status Effect

[Hurricos]

Compare the <Ray> status effect.

Channeling (except with CBoE maybe) is tedious as-is, and while I'm aware that there are scripts (iirc gfunk's Sif channeling script turns all corpses into mana automatically), the game itself should be different.

I propose that there be a <Channel> status that is activated whenever you channel energy. It has the same effect as channeling every turn with the two sources of small, low-risk channeling: Sif and the Staff of energy. If you wait, you will continue to channel.

That's pretty much it.

If needed, there could be other things associated with this effect - slowly growing amount of mana restored, slowly decreasing hunger cost, what have you, as the Channel effect continues.

[kuniqs]

So instead of aa-ing with Sif or v-ing with staff, I'll be .-ing constantly?

[Hurricos]

So instead of aa-ing with Sif or v-ing with staff, I'll be .-ing constantly?

No, you'll hit 5 which will stop when your MP is restored, unless you're fighting. But it's about as tedious as tabbing when actually fighting things ...

[onmach]

That sounds like a great improvement to me.

[archaeo]

I'm still a fan of what I proposed last week:

• remove CBoE
• |energy now returns 15-25 MP and takes 30 auts at 0 evo, 10 auts at 20 evo, and 5 auts at 27 evo.
• Sif's channeling is now Song of Channeling, MP regen rate is significantly boosted for the duration, leaves the player breathless. Alternately, Song of Spellcasting, which reduces all MP costs by half.
• Staff of Wucad Mu remains unchanged.

Channeling at a rate of a handful of MP per turn is frustrating. CBoE, meanwhile, requires you to either blindly hope that you won't get drained to zero (which usually necessitates even more turns mashing channel) or you have to know/refer to the CBoE success rate chart.

I think the requirement to channel first and then manually wait or rest actually makes the problem worse, not better, hurricos. Still nearly as many button presses, but now it's a complicated status instead of a direct and immediate hit.

[Hurricos]

I'm still a fan of what I proposed last week:

• remove CBoE
• |energy now returns 15-25 MP and takes 30 auts at 0 evo, 10 auts at 20 evo, and 5 auts at 27 evo.
• Sif's channeling is now Song of Channeling, MP regen rate is significantly boosted for the duration, leaves the player breathless. Alternately, Song of Spellcasting, which reduces all MP costs by half.
• Staff of Wucad Mu remains unchanged.

Channeling at a rate of a handful of MP per turn is frustrating. CBoE, meanwhile, requires you to either blindly hope that you won't get drained to zero (which usually necessitates even more turns mashing channel) or you have to know/refer to the CBoE success rate chart.

I think the requirement to channel first and then manually wait or rest actually makes the problem worse, not better, hurricos. Still nearly as many button presses, but now it's a complicated status instead of a direct and immediate hit.

Removing CBoE and giving the Staff of energy a massive buff would be the wrong way to go, and would make casters (esp Summoners) much MUCH more powerful (n.b. that a spriggan moves in 6 auts). Actually, at 27 Evo, your |erg will easily be twice as good as Wucad Mu with none of the risky drawbacks. You're also forgetting that your implementation of the Staff of energy would require an action interface similar to reading a scroll with Blurry vision - when enemies are on-screen, you'd have to repeatedly be asked if you want to continue channeling, or risk killing the player.

I don't really need to explain what I meant, since while your description of my suggestion is wrong, I think you've got a slightly better idea with a passive channel.

I'll propose a mix of the <Channel> status and your Song of Channeling: When you eVoke the Staff of energy or invoke Sif Muna's channeling, you will instantly get whatever quantity of mana you'd normally get, plus the <Channel> status effect. This acts similarly to Regeneration, but is much more effective when you are waiting with 5 or with s (flavor: You are concentrating on channeling a flow of magical energy). The rate of passive MP regeneration while using the Staff or Sif's Channel is dependent upon your Evo / Invo scores, but should generally be about twice as strong with Sif as with the staff at equivalent scores. Unwielding the Staff will NOT cause the Channel to end (and this is good because if you've ever played a caster not of Sif or Veh, you know that getting energy back after a CBoE drain with your |erg in slot b and enhancer in a has always been a matter of hitting <'vvvvv'>, which is another way of saying an intensive and mind-numbing switching process that cannot be macroed safely).

[archaeo]

Honestly, part of me thinks channeling is unredeemable. I feel like if the current dev team were to design magic from scratch, they probably wouldn't balance it around the idea that most characters would tap a button for more mid-battle mp by the midgame. Maybe there's some good mechanical replacement that eliminates the practice of tactical mp pumping, but nothing really elegant comes to mind other than just rebalancing mp growth or something like that.

OTOH, if we're going to accept a little button mashing in our Crawl, I still like my idea better than yours, Hurricos. I think my plan's a net tactical nerf right up until the point that it serves as a less tedious replacement for CBoE, and if it means Sp don't have to retreat all the way to the previous floor to regen mp, that doesn't bother me much. I don't think it has to warn characters before they kill themselves, either; we don't do that for untrained heavy weapons and many other multi-turn actions, after all. Your idea just seems like a straight buff to channeling, really.

[WingedEspeon]

How about we give the channel status effect, but make it broken as soon as you do something other than rest. That way the are no game balance changes so the change can be implemented right away but tedium is reduced.

[Lasty]

FWIW, I mostly agree with what archaeo said about (current) channeling being irredeemable. MP is supposed to be a limit on certain sorts of abilities; being able to easily get a bunch more MP repeatedly by wasting turns doesn't seem like an interesting way to interact with that limit. The design of mp recovery should be about giving something up in exchange for the mp -- sublimation of blood gets this right by making you give up not just turns but also HP. Potions of magic cost a consumable, and potions of ambrosia also confuse you while they channel, putting sharper limits on when you can safely use it. Veh and TSO only recover mp for you on kills, and Ru's mp recovery costs drain and can't be used in quick succession.

All of the channeling implementations have a small nod towards this: Sif does this by forcing you to train evo and by costing hunger. Staff of energy tries to do this by charging you more turns and also hunger, but those costs are relatively trivial. CBoE and Wucad Mu do this by doing bad things sometimes instead of giving tons of mana, but the bad things are largely avoidable with trivial effort. However, all of these are relatively light costs and are meant to be spammed more or less indefinitely, and the main obstacles to doing so are the tedium of executing the actions. In an ideal world, all of these would be removed or replaced with something that offers more meaningful tradeoffs and less tedium.

tl;dr: I'm in favor of reforming channeling, but I only support reforms that 1) require few button pushes and 2) have a meaningful cost.

[archaeo]

Maybe the answer looks more like:

• Sif channeling remains, but works like I suggested |energy works above, i.e. you train invocations in order to reduce the amount of time it takes to channel, but it returns more mp per channel. The cost, here, is the opportunity cost of taking Sif.
• |energy and CBoE get removed.
• Wucad Mu now acts as a staff of power x 2.
• Amulet of Gourmand is replaced with Amulet of Energy. While wearing the amulet, all MP costs are halved (and as long as hunger costs are in the game, it also sharply reduces all hunger costs). On removal, XP-gated -Wiz; if hunger is still in the game, it also sets you to Very Hungry.

Of course I'm not really sure about that, either. This is a harder problem to solve than I thought it was when I first posted, and I confess I'm at a loss, so with that, I'll leave it to the smart folks to figure out a workable solution.

[Hurricos]

Honestly, part of me thinks channeling is unredeemable. I feel like if the current dev team were to design magic from scratch, they probably wouldn't balance it around the idea that most characters would tap a button for more mid-battle mp by the midgame. Maybe there's some good mechanical replacement that eliminates the practice of tactical mp pumping, but nothing really elegant comes to mind other than just rebalancing mp growth or something like that.

OTOH, if we're going to accept a little button mashing in our Crawl, I still like my idea better than yours, Hurricos. I think my plan's a net tactical nerf right up until the point that it serves as a less tedious replacement for CBoE, and if it means Sp don't have to retreat all the way to the previous floor to regen mp, that doesn't bother me much. I don't think it has to warn characters before they kill themselves, either; we don't do that for untrained heavy weapons and many other multi-turn actions, after all. Your idea just seems like a straight buff to channeling, really.

I think making the staff of energy regenerate mana twice as quickly as the Staff of Wucad Mu (which is nearly the best source of channeling at proper skill) with none of the risks is a buff, not a nerf ... CBoE actually has a risk in use; |energy does not (besides the delays you suggested, which are only relevant / dangerous at low Evocations, while CBoE always has danger spikes).

You generally warn characters about their actions when their actions correspond with dangerous situations; reading scrolls and channeling are done in more risky situations than no-skill heavy weapons are used, and your base delay for your channel is significantly longer than that of any non-artefact weapon.

What I suggested was the most similar thing I could think of to Regen + Sublimation, which is generally one of the least tedious methods of channel, and it's similar to your Song of Channeling, so I don't see where you're coming from with calling it a buff.