Improve documentation for death curses in xv

[tabstorm]

See title. I never noticed this until now, but they aren't explained in xv, and I don't know where else documentation can be found within the game, short of source diving or external sources. Since you can die to death curses, for instance, if you are using conjurations against mummies and get strength drained and paralyzed, I think it is worthwhile to explain to players that they can theoretically be dangerous. I assume that removing death curses would be too much to hope for because of how flavorful they are, so documenting their effects would be a positive change, imo.

[duvessa]

IMO make all death curses torment you instead of picking from necromancy miscasts.

[Arrhythmia]

IMO make all death curses torment you instead of picking from necromancy miscasts.

IMO do literally anything except this

[4Hooves2Appendages]

IMO make all death curses torment you instead of picking from necromancy miscasts.

IMO do literally anything except this

Let's see... Make any death curse banish the player.

On a serious note, I'd prefer it if the list was a bit more restricted than necro miscasts. Stat loss and rotting are more annoying than dangerous to players who know about them. Drain doesn't usually do a lot. Slow, damage, torment and summons can at least in theory cause trouble. Although I'm not sure I'm in favour of making luring and 1v1 even more necessary in tomb than it already is...

[KoboldLord]

Make mummy curses apply when the mummy sees you and go away when you kill the mummy. What's the point in something that happens when the fight is already over and you can just 5 off the effects or at worst clear some popcorn? The only point where the current curses matter are in Tomb 3 and Ziggurats, where they are degenerate.

[dowan]

Mummy curses are a mechanic obviously designed with flavor in mind. The solution to them is to play in an extremely tedious manner, and stairdance them. Some of that problem is with the design of Tomb itself, of course.

I don't usually feel I'm in any danger when clearing tomb, except the danger of falling asleep on my keyboard. The only positioning I do is to press > and < at the appropriate times. You may say that's a stupid way to do tombs, but since I've never died there, it's obviously effective enough.

I think that the theme of a tomb of mummies and traps is an interesting one, it just needs to be redone. Lots of 3x3 and 5x5 rooms with either a vault warden or a new mummy equivalent, some boulder beetles, and a few mummy priests would be a LOT more fun, interesting, and dangerous. And then you could lose the mummy curses completely, and keep the good parts of the flavor.

[PowerOfKaishin]

Make mummy curses apply when the mummy sees you and go away when you kill the mummy. What's the point in something that happens when the fight is already over and you can just 5 off the effects or at worst clear some popcorn? The only point where the current curses matter are in Tomb 3 and Ziggurats, where they are degenerate.

This is an awesome idea, but how will we deal with tomb 3 and zigs?

[Sandman25]

I don't think it's awesome idea.

  Code:

You climb downstairs.
4 greater mummies and 3 mummy priests come into view.
You die...

[njvack]

Yes, mummy curses would need to be reworked for that to make sense; however, "this monster being in LoS gives you negative effects" is better than "when you kill this monster you get some negative effects" because

a) it makes the monster (and any other monsters in LoS) more dangerous
b) it doesn't give you danger when you can deal with it in peace

[Sandman25]

Torpor snails have similar mechanic and encourage pack spitting and fight resetting if you are not at full HP.
If mummy curse is activated just once for every mummy, you can retreat to restore HP. If it is activated every time the mummy comes into view, it can be really bad depending on terrain and also encourages resetting fight to get desired mummy curse (smiting instead of torment, for example).

[njvack]

It might be something like "every turn, the mummy has an x% chance of doing a curse thing in addition to its other action" rather than a one-time thing or a continually activated thing. Worse mummies could draw from worse curse effects and/or fire them more often.

And yes, dangerous monsters encourage pack splitting and fight resetting. It's still better, I think, for monsters to be dangerous while they're alive than when they die.

[KoboldLord]

Obviously if mummies did their curse at the beginning of the encounter, they'd need to have a different list. The idea is that you'd get a penalty that would be permanent until you killed the mummy, or until you did some other arbitrary action if for some reason it is necessary to give players another out. Rather than direct damage, you just lose a bunch of max hp that doesn't come back until you kill the source of the curse. Rather than spawning a single reaper as the mummy dies, you get a respawning reaper that chases you everywhere. Or perhaps you lose the ability to read, or the ability to quaff. Something relevant in a fight, and you can run away if you really need to but you have to deal with a problem as severe as god wrath or a Ru sacrifice. In the urban legend, the pillagers of King Tut's tomb did not get cursed by killing the undead Tut; they were cursed even as they ran away with the stolen gold. They were eventually were killed by a mosquito, which would normally have been a trivial encounter.

Don't care if it breaks Ziggurats, but Tomb can always include more monsters other than greater mummies and mummy priests.