Remove or reform Demonic Guardian

[and into]

I know that Demonspawn are supposed to develop in such a way that, at least in theory, you must adapt to take full advantage of their mutations. But I don't think demonic guardian works well for this design goal, especially with some bad interactions that were amplified by recent changes to how summoning works.

Currently, demonic guardians will not wait for orders but will generate and immediately try to attack stuff. In the past they could still mess up your line of sight and positioning in ways that were obnoxious, but from a recent DsNe game this has been *much* more of a problem than I remember in the past. I found myself repeatedly hitting "tf," and since demonic guardian can summon multiple guys this can be extremely frustrating. I don't find this to be an interesting thing to adapt to; rather, it feels more like an interface screw. The guardians can sometimes be helpful, of course, but since unlike normal summons you have no control over when they come, situations you could readily handle on your own are made, not significantly more difficult, and certainly not more interesting, but much more annoying.

This problem is greatly exacerbated by the fact that your tier one summons are not very strong but have a high chance to be problematic in their movement and positioning: crimson imps flit around the screen randomly and ufetubus are so fast they often rush toward an opponent you'd like to hit with stone arrow/dazzling spray/pain and block line of fire, before you get the chance to tell them otherwise. If you roll the tier one mutation relatively early but don't hit the tier two until much later, on some characters the positioning/LOF interference can be painful to the point of making a CTRL+Q very appealing.

My suggestion is to remove demonic guardian as a tier two facet. I think there have been many good changes to Ds facets lately and this is definitely a weak and poorly designed element. If it is to be retained, please give some ability to opt out. For instance, demonic guardians will only come to your aid while you are (p)raying, or you can sever/reactive your link to your guardians via a toggle in the (a)bilities menu.

EDIT: Although thematic (p)raying would interfere with Fedhas/Trog/Lugonu worship, so instead make it a toggle on/off thing under abilities menu, or else give an active ability "call demonic guardian" which for the next X number of turns will provide current demonic guardian behavior, randomly spawning appropriate demons based on mutation tier, contingent upon tension.

[sgrunt]

Random idea: turn it into an active ability with some form of timeout (one at a time; if one dies it takes a while for another to be callable?).

[and into]

^ That would be an improvement, but then it is a bit like Makhleb's ability or just a summon spell, yes? (Unless maybe you had a different sort of effect in mind.)

[dpeg]

I like getting the guardians. And I don't like that a thread about an "interface screw" (quoted from OP) starts with "remove". If the problem is the interface, then it will be possible to address the interface. In fact, there are a number of ways to do that but I don't feel like discussing this here.

[Knight9910]

In a recent game I was running a demonspawn AK who took up bows after finding a good randart... then I got demonic guardians and oh my crazy cosmic horror god they are ANNOYING me. Right now they're nothing but puny little imps that die in one hit from anything. Their only purpose is to block me from shooting enemies with my +4/+9 venom bow.

So yeah, a change would be very nice.

[bcadren]

It's already the only demonspawn mutation (or mutation at all) that has is suppressed by a god (Okawaru) over this similar issues making it likely for him to put you in penance without the suppression...

Possible solutions:

• The free instant summon could be turned into an instant ability like Delayed Fireball. The fact that it's still an instant makes it different than Makh and Summoning.
• The Guardian could only appear after you've been hit and attack specifically the creature that last hit you before self-abjuring.
• You could be allowed to fire through your Guardian, like Fedhas Shrooms.
• They could (at least) be smart enough to not awaken extra enemies (no stab attempts).
• Or you could remove it...removing it is cool.

[Sar]

Okawaru no longer cares about allies dying and doesn't suppress DG anymore.

[DracheReborn]

I haven't played with demonic guardian since the summoning change. But if that interaction is the problem, then why not simply remove autofoe from demonic guardians? The reason autofoe was introduced was because people would normally "tw" after summoning anyway; this reasoning probably doesn't apply as much for demonic guardian. So reverting to the old summon behavior for demonic guardian specifically might be reasonable.

On the larger issue of whether demonic guardian is annoying. I think it's ok on primarily melee characters. They get in the way sometimes, but they're useful early on. Agreed that they'd be annoying on characters with strong ranged attacks. Maybe if you can just shoot through them, like battlesphere?

[crate]

The problem with demonic guardian is it forces allies on you whether you want them or not.

This is tremendously annoying, and then it's compounded by the allies being really wimpy unless you are exceedingly lucky and either get the mutation to level up very quickly or get lots of extra XL from somewhere (!xp, xp card).

[Patashu]

My idea for demonic guardian reform: You get an 'abjure all demonic guardians' ability accessible under a.

[jejorda2]

What if demonic guardians were a new monster that act kind of like bushes? They can't be walked through without destroying them, but you can fire through them. Maybe they don't move from space to space? So if gives you a possible avenue to escape, and possible extra melee, but they don't absorb enemy ranged attacks or get in the way of your ranged attacks.

Or maybe there is some other very different type of ally that would make a good guardian.

[Knight9910]

My idea for demonic guardian reform: You get an 'abjure all demonic guardians' ability accessible under a.

Yeah, that's exactly what we need to make them less obnoxious - one more extra thing to have to micromanage and waste turns on.

[and into]

I like getting the guardians. And I don't like that a thread about an "interface screw" (quoted from OP) starts with "remove". If the problem is the interface, then it will be possible to address the interface. In fact, there are a number of ways to do that but I don't feel like discussing this here.

The thread title is a request, "remove or reform." I try to be sensitive to the work that developers put into the game, and I know that "reforming" or changing or improving something is very easy to say, but difficult to accomplish, and thus sometimes removal is the more realistic choice. My impulse usually is, "try to fix it if possible and retain," but I've come to learn that this isn't always realistic and can in fact be a presumptuous attitude to take with respect to the people who (unlike me) actually have the ability to make the game work and (also unlike me) put in the time to really do so.

I like Demonspawn a lot (as I think you know) and I don't want anyone to ax anything without careful consideration. I apologize if this didn't come through very well in my initial post.

Having Ds mutations cause some changes in how one values certain strategic/long-term considerations for a character is great. But most Ds mutations do not drastically interfere with tactics, so the fact that this one specific Ds mutation can interfere rather drastically with tactics seems to go against that design.

Anyway, I hope this draws attention to a problem that other recent changes (and for the most part, I would say, improvements) to summoning has unwittingly worsened in the niche case of Ds demonic guardian.

EDIT: Also yes, it is not truly an interface screw, I don't think, but I said "it feels like an interface screw." And that was my honest impression from my recent DsNe, who kept having crimson imps and quasits get in the way of pain/agony spells all the way up to level 11 or so when it died stupidly in a volcano, due to bad play that was completely unrelated to demonic guardian.

[omegonthesane]

What if demonic guardians were a new monster that act kind of like bushes? They can't be walked through without destroying them, but you can fire through them. Maybe they don't move from space to space? So if gives you a possible avenue to escape, and possible extra melee, but they don't absorb enemy ranged attacks or get in the way of your ranged attacks.

Or maybe there is some other very different type of ally that would make a good guardian.

Yeah, being able to shoot through your guardians like a Fedhasite through plants sounds like it would solve many of the positioning problems.

[bcadren]

You could be allowed to fire through your Guardian, like Fedhas Shrooms.

Maybe if you can just shoot through them, like battlesphere?

What if demonic guardians were a new monster that act kind of like bushes? They can't be walked through without destroying them, but you can fire through them. Maybe they don't move from space to space? So if gives you a possible avenue to escape, and possible extra melee, but they don't absorb enemy ranged attacks or get in the way of your ranged attacks.

Three people suggested basically the same thing with the later two not paying any regard for previous posts. That's a little obnoxious. More importantly though...THREE PEOPLE SUGGESTED THE SAME THING...it's probably a good idea to at least try it.

[Arrhythmia]

THREE PEOPLE SUGGESTED THE SAME THING...it's probably a good idea to at least try it.

Yeah well there's SIX PEOPLE on CSZO who just said that we should replace crawl w/ a Sif Muna dating sim so I think that's the priority here.

[JARG]

*Trying to stay on topic* Why not just have the guardians spawn either behind(or at a diagonal from) your enemies or behind(on the side with less enemies) you? If you want the guardian between you and your enemy, you just switch places. Otherwise, they're out of the way at least initially. I rather like Demonspawn and their demonic guardians, I think maybe the issue(aside from imp's jumpy behavior, that'd still cause trouble) could just be resolved by addressing their spawn behavior(like the location, or for example: "A rift appears!" *15 auts later a demon appears*)... as some people mentioned via turning them into an active. My personal preference is to keep the Ds mutations mostly passive though and just tweaking it's behavior.

//It does seem that listing "Remove" first makes it look like the preferred option rather than the reluctant last choice

[TheDefiniteArticle]

The issue is the mere existence of allies. They clutter up the screen, make tons of message spam, ruin +/- key targetting, drown important monsters out on the monster list, and that's assuming they stand politely out of the way for the whole battle. When they actually do things, all your actions are basically forced to revolve around them, partly because they directly interfere with your normal tactics, and partly because allies as a crawl concept are so overwhelmingly powerful that any desire to win mandates taking full advantage.

In all other cases the player directly controls if and when they will have allies, which is important due to the severe burden they place on both the interface and the actual combat mechanics.

[Kismet]

The issue is the mere existence of allies. They clutter up the screen, make tons of message spam, ruin +/- key targetting, drown important monsters out on the monster list, and that's assuming they stand politely out of the way for the whole battle. When they actually do things, all your actions are basically forced to revolve around them, partly because they directly interfere with your normal tactics, and partly because allies as a crawl concept are so overwhelmingly powerful that any desire to win mandates taking full advantage.

In all other cases the player directly controls if and when they will have allies, which is important due to the severe burden they place on both the interface and the actual combat mechanics.

I agree, I too find playing with allies to be both very powerful and extremely tedious. I think the game would benefit enormously if allies were removed completely or if they were restrained to mechanically unique hands-off "allies" like the malign gateway.

[TeshiAlair]

How about this: "Demonic Guardian" means you get a protective aura around you representing the demon's presence, which is essentially an X HP shield and a slight slaying bonus, where X is the demon's health. While this shield is up, you can activate it to summon the demon to the physical realm briefly, removing the aura.

[sanka]

My idea:

Let you have only one, but permanent guardian (demon ally). If it dies, you need to collect some XP before it appears again. The type is fixed for a mutation level for a given DS.

One permanent ally is much more manageable than many temporal, and I think it's way more interesting.

[Hirsch I]

Demonic Charisma
allows to summon one creature, adequate to dungeon level, to be your permanent ally.
this ally gains levels naturally, until a limit based on mutlevel. orcs are not eligible.
If it dies, you need to collect some XP before it appears again.
single, permanent allies that level up with you are a very interesting feature, that one can only have trough the merc card. unreliable as hell.

[hellsembrace]

My idea:

Let you have only one, but permanent guardian (demon ally). If it dies, you need to collect some XP before it appears again. The type is fixed for a mutation level for a given DS.

One permanent ally is much more manageable than many temporal, and I think it's way more interesting.

We could rename the mutation to "Demonic Buddy" instead of "Demonic Guardian."