Remove or improve demonic guardian

[Hellmonk]

Demonic guardian has seen some changes over the years to try to make it less annoying to use, but it's still completely obnoxious to play around in some situations. I'm playing a DsAE and it's extremely annoying when a guardian summons right next to some enemies so that I can't static discharge without turning it hostile. I also had a guardian summon in a doorway that I wanted to close on my next action this game, and in my previous game I had a cacodemon dig out a bunch of walls in a zot vault while I was trying to fight in a corridor. I do think the mutation is beneficial overall, but the added annoyance of randomly having to deal with a mutation that summons allies based on an opaque mechanic that I can't fully control is not very fun, even now that they can be fired through. I would strongly support removal of demonic guardian, or the replacement of its current form with an active ability so that the player has some more control over when guardians appear and can choose not to summon them in situations where they would be detrimental.

[pumpyscump]

The manner in which allied creatures turn on the player at the slightest provocation is a little extreme in general, Demonspawn or no.

Combat is combat and friendly fire happens sometimes, especially where projectiles and explosions are concerned. It would make more sense for allies tu turn neutral and run for their lives. They should only take up the quest for your internal organs if you hit them while they're fleeing.

[duvessa]

Also, allies love opening doors, which is something you pretty much never actually want them to do.

[Quazifuji]

The manner in which allied creatures turn on the player at the slightest provocation is a little extreme in general, Demonspawn or no.

Combat is combat and friendly fire happens sometimes, especially where projectiles and explosions are concerned. It would make more sense for allies tu turn neutral and run for their lives. They should only take up the quest for your internal organs if you hit them while they're fleeing.

I'd rather summons either just disappear or always stay on your side than turn neutral. I don't think I've ever dealt with neutral monsters in any context in DCSS that didn't feel kind of clunky and annoying.

Either one can be justified pretty easily flavor-wise. The disappearance works if you interpret summoning as calling on creatures from another plane to aid you rather than creating them out of non-existence (as is implied by the term "summoning") - if you hurt them they just abandon you and return to whatever plane you called them from. Summons never turning on you could be flavored as the spell binding summoned monsters to your will (why else would they be helping you out) and hurting them not breaking the spell.

Of course, either of these changes would make summons stronger than they already are, so they might not be the best from a balance standpoint, but they'd at least make summons less annoying to use. They'd also avoid weird inconsistencies where summons won't turn on you if you summon freezing clouds on top of them because they treat the cloud as the damage source and not you (at least I think that's how it works, maybe I'm wrong about that).

[adozu]

i find it especially irritating when a zombie i just made turns hostile on me because, i dunno, i step on its toe or something.

it's a mindless zombie, what does it care if i hurt it or not? like, they are fine being ordered to death vs cerebov but woe me if i hit them with a stone.

i think it would make sense if the possibility of allies turning hostile from friendly fire was based on said ally intelligence.

[PleasingFungus]

i find it especially irritating when a zombie i just made turns hostile on me because, i dunno, i step on its toe or something.

it's a mindless zombie, what does it care if i hurt it or not? like, they are fine being ordered to death vs cerebov but woe me if i hit them with a stone.

i think it would make sense if the possibility of allies turning hostile from friendly fire was based on said ally intelligence.

trivia: zombies & other brainless enemies are only 'supposed' to be annoyed by melee effects, not ranged ones. "This enables some interesting tactics", apparently?

i'd be fine with mindless allies just never being irritated; it's something i've considered before.

[crate]

IIRC that explicitly changed at some point (note the commit you linked is from 2013), because it is really abusable; at the time enslavement was still a spell so the most obvious abuse was just enslaving a monster then using ranged attacks on it so it would let you kill it without getting mad, but there are of course other potential problems.

However, this topic is about non-mindless allies anyway.

[Hellmonk]

Bumping this because I got it again on a DsEn. It's really not cool when allies randomly pop in to block line of fire on my hexes, and I can't use ensorcelled hibernation with them around because they'll hit things and wake them up before I get the stab. Please change demonic guardian mechanics so they don't make some games 100 times more annoying to play.

[rchandra]

I filed a mantis about this, some good interactions with AE:

lightning bolt - no harm
freezing cloud - harms him, no anger
static discharge - harm, agner, warning
tornado - harm, anger, warning
chain lightning - harm, anger, no warning

and I think slouch was harm, no anger but couldn't swear to it.

[nago]

My favourite annoying interaction of guardian is:
cast Olgreb radiance, a guardian pops up while the spell is active, you can't stop it or do anything, you enjoy your hostile sixfirhy or whatever in an already potentially bad situation.
Fun death for unpsoiled player!

[rchandra]

Oh yes tornado is the same way - of course the guardian will die to the tornado soon, but you can get cacodemon mutations pretty easily.

[neil]

I just pushed a commit to prevent angering demonic guardians. They'll still take damage from some spells (similar to fedhas plants), but at least won't turn hostile when it happens.

[Speleothing]

I love guardian. Nothing better than a devil blocking the hallway while you walk away. I thought walking away was supposed to be the top-secret tavern only prostrat that solves 75% of dangerous enemies?

[Octopode-monk-of-XOM]

not sure if this is still a thing, but when i tried it.. *stomp ability from uskayaw was able to aggro demonic guardians

[Laraso]

That sounds like a bug that should be reported.

[asdu]

Please either make allied cacodemons never use dig or remove cacodemons from all the lists of things that can be summoned by the player (or just remove cacodemons, that always works).

[dowan]

Yeah, I second that, remove cocodemons as much as possible.

[and into]

neil may have just solved the biggest issue (thx neil), but I still think demonic guardian can be really annoying, what with swooping in and blocking line of fire.

I like the idea of an active ability instead. You can temporarily call a demonic guardian to aid you, but if the guardian dies, it takes a while before you can call another one (experience-based timer, like drain). As the guardian grows in power, so does the severity of the drain if it dies before timing out. Makes you care about the ally more and seems like appropriate flavor for your "guardian." Also differentiates it from standard summons / Makhleb in particular.