New Unrand: Torpor Shell

[Tiktacy]

A piece of armor carved from the shell of a torpor snail. Although the snail has long since passed, you can feel the remnants of their slow mindless existence seeping into the very fiber of your being.

+14 Torpor Shell [-5 intelligence, slow-monster, *paralysis]

You may sometimes be paralysed upon taking heavy damage(you curl up into your shell in fear)
All monsters in your LoS are slowed

Basically, when you get hit hard, you curl up into your shell like a snail when its scared. However, despite this large drawback, you are able to slow down any enemy in the game, most likely resulting in you being able to preposition yourself at will. I imagine the paralysis for this armor would need to be adjusted to make sure it doesn't last for too long making the risk too significant.

Just for fun, imagine for a moment using this armor while hasted, using a quickblade of speed, after activating finesse.

EDIT: Changed the OP a little bit.

[PowerOfKaishin]

If a Formicid found this it would absolutely break the game. Not only will it move at normal speed while everything else is slowed, it is immune to the paralysis effect as well. You're practically permanently hasted and if you're playing a melee-focused character like a Be you're golden. Hell, even magically-inclined Formicids have no reason not to wear this. The int penalty is somewhat compensated for by the strength bonus (since a Torpor Shell would obviously have weight).

Other than that, this looks amusing. If heavy damage is over >50% health, then this can only happen once, meaning that yes, giving it low duration paralysis would be neat.

What's the base AC of a Torpor Shell?

[chequers]

I'm not sure if stats add much to the design. I'm also not sure if *paralyse is necessary - it's a mechanic from a different monster.

[Tiktacy]

If a Formicid found this it would absolutely break the game. Not only will it move at normal speed while everything else is slowed, it is immune to the paralysis effect as well. You're practically permanently hasted and if you're playing a melee-focused character like a Be you're golden. Hell, even magically-inclined Formicids have no reason not to wear this. The int penalty is somewhat compensated for by the strength bonus (since a Torpor Shell would obviously have weight).

Other than that, this looks amusing. If heavy damage is over >50% health, then this can only happen once, meaning that yes, giving it low duration paralysis would be neat.

What's the base AC of a Torpor Shell?

I like to think its plate, but I'm not sure what it should be for a base body.

[crate]

Permanently slowing both the player and all enemies is basically amulet of resist slow; the only net effect in most cases is that the player is immune to further slowing (I mean, enemies are too, but players don't actually slow enemies very often). I'm pretty sure that's not going to get into crawl.

[Tiktacy]

Permanently slowing both the player and all enemies is basically amulet of resist slow; the only net effect in most cases is that the player is immune to further slowing (I mean, enemies are too, but players don't actually slow enemies very often). I'm pretty sure that's not going to get into crawl.

It doesn't slow the player.

[crate]

+14 Torpor Shell [-8 intelligence, +5 Strength, slow, *paralysis]

I assumed the "slow" there meant it did slow the player.

[PleasingFungus]

i think it might be misremembering the term for 'ponderous'?

[Sprucery]

I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to be ponderous.

All monsters in your LoS are slowed
[...]
you are able to slow down any enemy in the game, most likely resulting in you being able to preposition yourself at will
[...]
Just for fun, imagine for a moment using this armor while hasted, using a quickblade of speed, after activating finesse.

[genericpseudonym]

For clarity the inscription would probably have to say something like {slowmonsters}.

Also throwing my vote in for removing the stat changes, they seem mostly unrelated.

[Quazifuji]

Also in favor of removing the stat changes. On top of them feeling generally kind of arbitrary, not a fan of the item just being off-limits to low int characters (which are often heavily armored ones who might be interested in wearing this otherwise).

I keep going back and forth on whether I think the slow aura is too overpowered for this to work or the paralyze is too crippling for this to work, but maybe that just means it's an interesting item that's at least worth testing out in trunk. It would be one of the most powerful bonuses on any randart, but also one of the most dangerous downsides. I'm glad that the paralyze is upon taking heavy damage and not random, because if it were random I think it would be way too frustrating. Heavy damage only still makes it incredibly dangerous, but that's necessary for such an insanely powerful upside.

[Siegurt]

I thought the slow was some kind of activated ability.

[ololoev]

Casters would never take that because of int malus. Non-casters just cant handle it!

[chequers]

I like the idea of taking this unrand one of two ways:

a) it slows everything but the user, and has otherwise atrocious stats (because perma-slowing everything but yourself is insanely powerful), say -1 animal skin *Corrode *Confuse.
b) it slows everything including the user and has decent stats (because slowing everything is interesting but not great as per crate), say +5 animal skin.

Just for fun, imagine for a moment using this armor while hasted, using a quickblade of speed, after activating finesse.

Also, the minimum attack speed is 0.3, haste/finesse don't improve on a quickblade's speed.

[Sar]

Akshully it's 0.2, so Haste or Finesse do improve it, but Finesse is not better than Haste at it.

[Croases]

An alternative: +4 Torpor Shell [ponderous+++, slowmonsters], base item is large shield.

Slows everything in sight, but lowers your movement speed massively so that you can't run away from most things even if they're slowed, and needs substantial shields investment. Still very powerful, though.

[Floodkiller]

An alternative: +4 Torpor Shell [ponderous+++, slowmonsters], base item is large shield.

Slows everything in sight, but lowers your movement speed massively so that you can't run away from most things even if they're slowed, and needs substantial shields investment. Still very powerful, though.

So it's Chei on a large shield, but you successfully Bend Time on everything in sight automatically, permenantly, and for free. This is on top of being able to pick a different god and still be able to use Haste or Berserk.

[Sar]

it doesn't give you +15 to all stats

[nago]

And ask to train a kinda bad skill to 25.

[Sar]

Well, unlike Chei this item actually would have a synergy with Nagas!

[njvack]

If a Formicid found this it would absolutely break the game. Not only will it move at normal speed while everything else is slowed, it is immune to the paralysis effect as well.

If this existed, I don't think Fo should be immune to its paralysis. Flavor-wise, it's not actually paralysis anyhow; it's you hiding in the shell.

I can't speak to the balance of this, but the idea is neat.

[genericpseudonym]

Akshully it's 0.2, so Haste or Finesse do improve it, but Finesse is not better than Haste at it.

It's still a dumb restriction. Going straight from 0.2 to 0.1 with haste would be stupidly powerful of course but there shouldn't be anything stopping the game from just using div_rand_round to make it 0.1 aut X% of the time. And Finesse dropping a quickblade from 0.3 to 0.15 average isn't proportionally stronger than dropping another weapon from 0.7 to 0.35, anyways.

The restriction on move speed makes more sense because a lot of stuff is actually a flat minus to move delay instead of a percentage bonus, and as you get closer to 0 those get significantly stronger.

But I want to use hastefinesse quickblades of speed and have a 0.1 attack delay with a 1/3 chance to take 0 time instead.

[duvessa]

haste and finesse don't stack but the minimum should indeed be 1 instead of 2