Ru + Silence

[bcadren]

Ru's (A)bilities are (flavourwise) powers you've unlocked by giving up your sacrifices; NOT normal invocations. It'd be interesting (and unique) if because of that they worked while silenced. [I'm advocating this change; it'd be a minor; though flavourful buff to the god.]

[Tiktacy]

bcadren has been on fire lately.

[ontoclasm]

Give a reason that isn't flavor.

[byrel]

We have 4 gods with the 'Downside, mitigated by bigger powers' design. If you look at their interactions with Silence:

Trog The downside is entirely eliminated by silence. The powers are also entirely eliminated if not pre-cast.
Qazlal The downside is entirely eliminated by silence. Most of the offensive powers are eliminated by silence, while the defensive ones are largely intact.
Chei The downside is not affected by silence. Most of his power* remains while silenced.
Ru The downside is not affected by silence. Most of his powers are eliminated by silence.

While we don't have a standard design approach to how silence affects these sacrifice gods, it's certainly true that Ru is hit the worst by silence. If one or more of his spells were silence resistant it would bring the impact of silence on his strength more in line with the others.

*I don't play chei, so my estimate of how much power is in the stats, and how much in the actives is questionable.

[Tiktacy]

Give a reason that isn't flavor.

Intuitiveness is another good reason. Most god abilities make sense as far as being unable to cast while silenced goes, its sort of inferred that you are praying to your god to receive assistance. Ru actually GIVES you the ability to do certain things as a result of your sacrifices, he has no other requirement besides that, aside from continuing to believe in him.

Also, whats wrong with flavor as a reason? I doubt the amount of effort it would take to make this change would exceed the benefits to flavor.

[Lasty]

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/7db326cb1c9e

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/b35d107f522f

[gammafunk]

Nearly all gods give you the ability to do certain things as a result of your sacrifice of worshiping them and sacrificing your piety to this god and not doing so for any other god. This is along with any other sacrifices they might have you make. Having some gods arbitrarily not be affected by silence would be a big step backwards with respect to intuition, and would be even worse if arbitrarily only some active abilities of some gods weren't affected, as someone tried to propose above.

Adding weird per-god or per-ability special cases to silence is only going to make the effect more spoilery. A possible systematic change would be at least reasonable would be to simply allow all god abilities and prayer while silenced (savory flavour: you're praying to god in your mind), but if we did this I doubt Silence the spell would continue to exist.

[bcadren]

I expected to be able to use it while silenced because of the flavour explanation...also for another non-flavour reason; it increases the synchronicity with Hex-users/stabbers; which is already one of the strengths of Ru.

[tabstorm]

Why would you expect to be able to call out to your god while silenced? It dosen't work that way for anyone else, flavor text dosen't take priority over mechanical consistency.

[ontoclasm]

While we don't have a standard design approach to how silence affects these sacrifice gods,

What? Sure we do. "You can't activate invocations while silenced." How this impacts the power level of various gods is irrelevant.

[Tiktacy]

Nearly all gods give you the ability to do certain things as a result of your sacrifice of worshiping them and sacrificing your piety to this god and not doing so for any other god. This is along with any other sacrifices they might have you make. Having some gods arbitrarily not be affected by silence would be a big step backwards with respect to intuition, and would be even worse if arbitrarily only some active abilities of some gods weren't affected, as someone tried to propose above.

Adding weird per-god or per-ability special cases to silence is only going to make the effect more spoilery. A possible systematic change would be at least reasonable would be to simply allow all god abilities and prayer while silenced (savory flavour: you're praying to god in your mind), but if we did this I doubt Silence the spell would continue to exist.

Silence preventing god abilities is spoilery to begin with, I had no idea this was consistent with all god abilities until just now and I've been playing this game for years. If anything, that is what's spoilery.

[Shard1697]

How is that spoilery? I don't understand what knowledge it "spoils".

[Tiktacy]

How is that spoilery? I don't understand what knowledge it "spoils".

I've always thought spoilery meant that something isn't at all intuitive or obvious unless you use resources outside the game(assuming the player is intended to know).

[Quazifuji]

How is that spoilery? I don't understand what knowledge it "spoils".

I've always thought spoilery meant that something isn't at all intuitive or obvious unless you use resources outside the game(assuming the player is intended to know).

How is silence not letting you use invocations any more spoilery than confuse making you move in random directions? What would it not be spoilery for silence to do? The 't' command? Sure, silence stopping spells is an RPG convention, but you could argue that that counts as an outside resource. At some point, you have to accept that there are some aspects of the game that you can only learn from experience, the manual, or other outside resources, and I think the core effects of status effects is one of those (and I would count silence not allowing invocations being a core effect, not some weird minor side effect).

Anyway, I haven't checked, but I'm guessing there's a good chance that silence is described in the instructions anyway, which are a resource that is in the game.

[Tiktacy]

you could argue that that counts as an outside resource.

You can't argue that at all. The description of silence specifically states that it stops spellcasting.

How is silence not letting you use invocations any more spoilery than confuse making you move in random directions?

Confusion is a mechanic that is introduced to the player intentionally in the early game. It gets a pass for that, you can't say something is spoilery if it is obviously part of an intentional learning curve. Also, this can be inferred the moment you try moving while confused, leaving you with the only penalty being a single lost turn.

What would it not be spoilery for silence to do?

Acts of reading scrolls, casting spells, or shouting. Exactly as it says in the description of the spell, which I believe can be read by examining a monster and reading the ability/spell effect.

At some point, you have to accept that there are some aspects of the game that you can only learn from experience, the manual, or other outside resources.

This is absolutely not that point. This issue can be fixed simply by adding something onto silences description that states it prevents the use of most god abilities, but thats a different thread topic so I didn't bother mentioning it. This thread is about Ru and Silence, not core issues with silence itself.

(I'm using wizmode on 0.16 to double check these things, so if they were changed in 0.17 then feel free to say so.)

[Shard1697]

Confusion is a mechanic that is introduced to the player intentionally in the early game.

If an enemy like an orc wizard manages to cast confuse on you, you mean. They often don't, though.

[Tiktacy]

Confusion is a mechanic that is introduced to the player intentionally in the early game.

If an enemy like an orc wizard manages to cast confuse on you, you mean. They often don't, though.

Odds are that after many orc wizards you run into in orcish halls you are eventually going to experience confusion. Fair point though, it may not always happen, although its still introduced to the player intentionally as part of the learning curve.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Why would you expect to be able to call out to your god while silenced?

Much of divine communication is nonverbal. Silence has no effect on piety and penance and passive benefits (or do you imagine our hero saying "hey boss, check this out" all the time?) and gods even know your intentions (using unidentified evil items... once; training magic under Trog/Sif).

It dosen't work that way for anyone else

That's precisely as spoilery. We should have a durable early unique with silence and a number of invocations (priest-flag spells) so players have a chance to notice whether silence blocks invocations or not, however it's implemented.

the core effects of status effects is [an aspect that must be learned] (and I would count silence not allowing invocations being a core effect, not some weird minor side effect).

Anyway, I haven't checked, but I'm guessing there's a good chance that silence is described in the instructions anyway, which are a resource that is in the game.

When you go to ?/ status effects are not in the dropdown list. The descriptions for scroll of silence and silence the spell list a number of things that silence makes impossible; invocations and praying are not included. Silence is not very core. Few things silence you. And most of the time you're silenced, you're not inclined to invoke anything anyway... until at some point, you are, so you press 'a' and... uh-oh.

[Sprucery]

Just fix the descriptions of the scroll and spell of silence and everything's fine.

[Tiktacy]

Just fix the descriptions of the scroll and spell of silence and everything's fine.

This isn't really what the thread is about, but I completely agree with you though and was going to make a thread about this. Lets try to get back on discussing Ru though, we don't want to get too far off topic.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Just fix the descriptions of the scroll and spell of silence and everything's fine.

it was just fixed: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 781ac3ae84