Lacertilians, playable on CBRO

[ontoclasm]

I coded up a species a few months back, mostly just to see if I could. Turns out it's not that difficult, and I encourage anyone to try it if you've got the time. Anyway, I recently rebased them to 0.18 trunk, and johnstein has been kind enough to host them as an experimental branch on CBRO, so feel free to give them a spin and tell me what you think. Are they a well-designed species? Who knows.

Lacertilians

Scaly lizard dudes with a strong connection to the gods. Probably they do that weird thing where they lick their eyeballs. They get perma-faith (which functions exactly like the amulet, and doesn't stack with it) and no wrath for switching gods. Note that you still suffer the normal effects of leaving (e.g. Yred allies abandoning you) and you can still get penance and wrath for doing stuff your god hates (e.g. using poison under TSO). In exchange they're just overall kind of wimpy, with -10% HP/MP and mediocre apts.

Full apts and such, if you care:

Spoiler: show

7 STR, 8 INT, 10 DEX; sid/5

EXP -1
HP -10%
MP -10%

Fighting -2
All weapons & UC -1
Armour 0
Dodging 0
Stealth +3
Shields 0
Spellcasting -4
Elemental Schools -2
Other Schools 0
Invocations +3
Evocations 0

Green scales 2, cold blooded, camouflage

You can see the branch they're on here.

[ydeve]

why make them non-casters?

[byrel]

It looks like conjurer, necromancer, summoner, etc. should still be viable.

[ydeve]

But why the -4 Spc? ie, why do you want them to learn very few spells?
Also, conjurors generally want to branch into elemental schools.

[ontoclasm]

I frankly don't even remember! I imagine my rationale was something like "no other race is really like that, so why not." So yeah, I might change that. But you can do fine at casting with a poor Spc apt; you just need to be more careful about slots and such.

[WingedEspeon]

Now that faith has been nerfed I would kinda like to see either the fighting apt go to -1 or +0 and the spellcasting apt go to -3 (or maybe -2) to mirror the fighting change ( so the race doesn't end up too melee focused) or bump the HP apt (and maybe the MP apt) up to +0. That is of couse if you want them to be around human power level. They are certanly playable as they are now and maybe i was thinking they were weak due to trying to exploit their unique ability too early.

I would like to see these guys moved to trunk. They are interesting to play and well within the balance range of playable species.




My MiFe^Vehu that is trying to get tornado castable (It is with brilliance) is seriously envious of Lacertilians superb magic apts.

[Viashino_wizard]

While I like the taxonomy reference, the name's a little unwieldy. Maybe cut it down a syllable or two to Lacertans/Lacertians?

[archaeo]

Let's not bikeshed in GDD, Viashino_wizard. Feel free to start a thread in CYC if you'd like to discuss Lacertilians' names.

[prozacelf]

Let's not bikeshed in GDD, Viashino_wizard. Feel free to start a thread in CYC if you'd like to discuss Lacertilians' names.

If we're not bikeshedding in GDD anymore, I can think of about 7000 topics that should be moved to CYC =P.

That being said, why do games played on the 'experimental' branches now count towards winrate and such on Sequell? I don't personally care that much, but it doesn't provide much incentive to try out something weird and new to provide feedback about it.

[archaeo]

If we're not bikeshedding in GDD anymore, I can think of about 7000 topics that should be moved to CYC =P.

It's the "first amendment" to the GDD rules, but I'm sure we've missed threads, sure.

That being said, why do games played on the 'experimental' branches now count towards winrate and such on Sequell? I don't personally care that much, but it doesn't provide much incentive to try out something weird and new to provide feedback about it.

If you don't want experimental games affecting your online stats, you can always play with a robin/alt account or build the branch for yourself for offline play. Sometimes, the only option is winscumming.

[duvessa]

I don't personally care that much, but it doesn't provide much incentive to try out something weird and new to provide feedback about it.

To a lot of people, the lack of online records was the disincentive, I think.

[tedric]

^^ my first 15-runer was on an experimental branch, and I was so bitter that it didn't show up on my scoring page that I made a sig about it

[grisamentum]

I played a couple games with them and they were fun. I'm a terrible player so I think this race will have broad appeal.

[byrel]

I thought these guys were supposed to be brokenly good? I haven't personally tried them...

OTOH, Gargoyles and Mi-- are broken too, so I guess it's not too important. Newbies have to start somewhere.

[duvessa]

Gr and Mi aren't even in the top 5 most broken races, and neither are these.

[Speleothing]

Personally, I think the perma-faith is quite nice, whereas the god-swapping is not particularly useful. The best scenario I can think of being to start as a Be, then swap once you get a nice randart weapon gift and some good spellbooks in Lair/Orc.


My thought after playing a bunch of games with them a few months ago was to drop +faith onto Humans to make them more interesting, while not having the shitty apts you gave to the lacertilians.

[stevs]

Oof, watch out for Pakellas. Abandoning her still permanently disables MP regen. That's consistent with the other technically-not-wrath behaviors but I didn't expect it anyway.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

watch out then, Chei and Ash and maybe Nemelex might have similar issues because they also have passive wrath.

It would be cool if leaving Ru would cancel all the sacrifices you made to him, since he has no active wrath already, kthx.

[WingedEspeon]

I'm having a lot of fun with god swaping in my La run so far. Getting a bunch of good mutes with Jyvia and then swaping was nice. My demonwhip whielding LaGl now has acidic saliva, porjectial jelly, and disarming tenticals, as well as well fitting armour (nice for my CPA) and I'm worshiping Pak. I'm on my 4th god right now and I'm not doing extended. I think I migh end up getting hit by the pak drawback though.

[ontoclasm]

Oof, watch out for Pakellas. Abandoning her still permanently disables MP regen. That's consistent with the other technically-not-wrath behaviors but I didn't expect it anyway.

I think I fixed this; I'll have to bug the admin to rebuild it, but I just tested it on my version and abandoning Pak immediately restarts your MP regen. Chei works the same.

In any case it's definitely not intended.

[grisamentum]

Personally, I think the perma-faith is quite nice, whereas the god-swapping is not particularly useful. The best scenario I can think of being to start as a Be, then swap once you get a nice randart weapon gift and some good spellbooks in Lair/Orc.

Well even if it is perhaps not optimal, godswapping from Xom and Jiyva is fun.

One oddity: I notice I do tail-slap attacks. But I don't see a tail on my shift-a screen?

[savageorange]

@grisamentum: Are you the person who posted a YAVP to r/dcss and commented similarly about tail slap? I was going to suggest that they report it, but looks like you got in first. It's almost certainly a bug.

[WingedEspeon]

Oof, watch out for Pakellas. Abandoning her still permanently disables MP regen. That's consistent with the other technically-not-wrath behaviors but I didn't expect it anyway.

I think I fixed this; I'll have to bug the admin to rebuild it, but I just tested it on my version and abandoning Pak immediately restarts your MP regen. Chei works the same.

In any case it's definitely not intended.

I abandoned Pak and got the message that he was still blocking my MP regen but the message was a fake and I had normal MP regen after I abandoned him.

[archaeo]

I've split discussion of Liminals off from this thread, but mostly because it had developed into its own conversation.

[Quazifuji]

Personally, I haven't tried the race yet, but free god swapping sounds like a fun novelty that allows for a unique style of play if you want to try it, and I think it's okay for it to rarely actually be optimal as long as it's not the only thing that makes the race interesting. I like this idea better than liminals, personally.

[WingedEspeon]

I also like this idea a lot more than liminals. even if it is rarly optimal to abandon your starting god even with no wrath, it gives you the option. Sometimes playing with one god but with perma faith is fun. The free abandonment also means you can do stuff like like take an early fedas to get to lair, then switch to ashe when you have a bunch of ?rc and you are partway though lair/ some other lul in difficulty so you can gain piety quickly and bypass the biggest downfall of ashe (no help early game). Jyvia->Zin is also strong and fun.

[grisamentum]

@grisamentum: Are you the person who posted a YAVP to r/dcss and commented similarly about tail slap? I was going to suggest that they report it, but looks like you got in first. It's almost certainly a bug.

Didn't see this question until now; sorry. But no, that wasn't me. I'll check if someone is has reported it in the meantime and try to get around to reporting it.