stoppage ego

[HardboiledGargoyle]

for shields and +SH amulets
makes SH apply to bolt spells and penetrating projectiles
pros:
simple to understand
combines well with reflection ego to supplement fun with giggles
promotes player awareness of how shields normally behave
changes the likelihood of seeking a shield and/or reflection

[Sandman25]

As a bonus SH will not be completely useless vs the most dangerous monster in the game.

[duvessa]

It shouldn't be able to combine with reflection unless monsters lose the ability to use shields.

[genericpseudonym]

As a bonus SH will not be completely useless vs the most dangerous monster in the game.

Shields already did nothing to stop Grinder's paralysis though.

I think he's the enemy with the highest killrate anyways. It doesn't stop orc priests either.

[PleasingFungus]

would it also apply to explosions, e.g. fireball?

[HardboiledGargoyle]

fireball isn't a bolt spell or penetrating projectile, plus fireball never misses, so no

wow I can't believe duvessa liked my suggestion to ADD something to the game

[dpeg]

I like the proposal.

Reflection + stoppage would only be possible (for players) through ego shield and amulet, I think. Therefore, I don't think that monsters should ever end up with both.

[KoboldLord]

As a bonus SH will not be completely useless vs the most dangerous monster in the game.

Shields already did nothing to stop Grinder's paralysis though.

I think he's the enemy with the highest killrate anyways. It doesn't stop orc priests either.

The most dangerous monster in the game is the player. SH usually works pretty decently against it, although SH is rare enough that it doesn't usually come up. Most players already use mostly attacks that are blockable, so I'm not sure what Sandman25 meant.

The proposed brand would be pretty annoying on the few shield uniques for borderline characters. Sometimes it is very hard to land a hit that can be blocked at all, since shield uniques usually don't have to worry about being attacked by multiple monsters at once. Players can probably adjust, though, and it isn't like you can't just outrun most shield uniques.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

I believe Sandman25 was talking about orbs of fire and their Bolt of Fire, which would become blockable with the stoppage ego.

Mennas/Asterion/Wiglaf are fast or can haste themselves, but not Donald/Louise. Did I miss anyone? They could be rigged to never generate with a shield of stoppage. I'm not sure I'd call SH monsters annoying, rather than dangerous.

Monsters finding reflection+stoppage would be such a rare occurrence, and monsters so frequently fail to pick up useful items, that you can easily special-case monsters to never pick up an item that would let them have both reflection and stoppage, and it would make virtually 0 difference.

[Shtopit]

It could be nice for some new shield unrandarts, too.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

rework Ignorance?

[duvessa]

Reflection + stoppage would only be possible (for players) through ego shield and amulet, I think. Therefore, I don't think that monsters should ever end up with both.

Currently monsters could end up with both, since monsters were given the ability to use amulets for some god-awful reason.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

yes, but why is your first comment and focus centered around this extremely unlikely and often completely irrelevant event?

[duvessa]

Because it's not fun to forget to check every monster for that unlikely combination of equipment and then die from casting bolt of fire at a monster that does happen to have that extremely unlikely equipment.

[Lacuenta]

It could be nice for some new shield unrandarts, too.

We could call it "warlocks mirror"!

Because it's not fun to forget to check every monster for that unlikely combination of equipment and then die from casting bolt of fire at a monster that does happen to have that extremely unlikely equipment.

I have the feeling that the chance of actually dying from this are so vanishingly small it's worth it to keep it for all the times it makes you use one of your 5 blink scrolls.

[and into]

Because it's not fun to forget to check every monster for that unlikely combination of equipment and then die from casting bolt of fire at a monster that does happen to have that extremely unlikely equipment.

I have the feeling that the chance of actually dying from this are so vanishingly small it's worth it to keep it for all the times it makes you use one of your 5 blink scrolls.

Having a high-spellpower bolt of fire reflected back at yourself would be very rare, but very dangerous, and the only way to circumvent this danger would be checking what equipment certain enemies (capable of having both egos) are wearing. It probably isn't good to encourage that behavior.

Some enemies have unique dangerous effects (e.g., flaying), but at least *every* flayed ghost applies that effect to you. Enemies that use equipment introduce something of a problem here. The game has already been changed so as to identify when, for instance, an orc happens to be carrying a weapon of distortion. This was done so that the player does not have to treat every enemy carrying a "glowing weapon" as though it might have distortion (NB: also a very rare occurrence).

It follows that, if stoppage and reflection egos were implemented so as to combine in effect, an enemy that happens to have both stoppage and reflection egos in effect on them should likewise be identified to the player. So, either amulets need to be IDed on view, or the effects should not stack (at least, not for enemies, though this introduces asymmetry), or enemies should simply not be allowed to wear amulets. It is a good point to keep in mind if stoppage ego were to be added and allowed to stack with reflection.

[andreas]

How about printing in the message area when something comes into view wearing a glowing shield, as we print when something comes into view wielding a glowing weapon? This still means the occasional x-v-ing to check if the monster also has an amulet, but enemies with magical shields are rare enough that I don't think this would be unduly tedious.

(From where I'm sitting the problem with distortion was the high volume of repetitive uninteresting behaviour it encouraged in preparation for a relatively rare worst case. Take away the high volume and repetition and I think there's far less of an issue, though I concede that the behaviour in this case (the part where you x-v everybody with a glowing shield) is not exhilarating stuff. And simply making it better for the player to pay attention to the message area and what is going on with the enemies coming on screen isn't a problem for me.)

This strikes me as perhaps better than making amulets unwearable by enemies (a strange spoilery special case) or making the stacking of effects asymmetrical between enemies and players (again, an unexpected spoilerly protip). (I assume for the sake of this discussion that making enemies use no objects is off the table.)

[Shard1697]

Well, why do monsters even get amulets? A lot of them don't function for enemies, like mana regen or faith, or are just extremely unlikely to do anything. There's already all sorts of special cases to do with monsters(they don't have mana, their damage and attack rate with weapons is totally different from the players, they have no failure rate for spells...), and monsters can't pick up seen items anymore anyways so I'm not sure what about your play would change to make it 'spoilery'... if back before the monster-pickup rules were changed, it was changed so monsters could not pick up amulets, maybe that would mean different decisions(I won't drop this amulet because something couuld put it on), but when would having that knowledge affect decision making now that monster pickup is what it is?

[andreas]

Well the point isn't that there's some important mechanic that gets lost if monsters can't use amulets. But making monsters unable to use amulets only changes your behaviour for the better (by making you not worry about this combination of effects) if you happen to know the obscure bit of meta that while enemies can use rings, weapons, armour, potions, etc., they cannot use amulets. And as you point out, there's really no very organic way to notice this, since monsters only pick up and use stuff you haven't yet seen out of your sight. Barring really crazy amounts of observation about what gets left on the floor and what gets worn (and why would you be paying that much attention, unless you already knew something was up?) you'd have to know because you read tavern or whatever.

[Shard1697]

But does not knowing that affect you negatively? And how is that different from not knowing things like what I mentioned, where monsters differ from players in other ways as well? Or much, much more important and spoilery info which is not communicated, like base damage for different kinds of monsters?

[andreas]

If you don't know that enemies can't wear amulets, then you have, as far as you know (once you realize that reflection and stoppage stack), a reason to x-v everything that could have both a shield or an amulet. You'll either do it, which sucks, or not and think you should, which also sucks.

[Shard1697]

Well, if stoppage is implemented, the alternative is enemies can wear amulets, and you actually do have reason to x-v everything with a shield in case of an amulet. So spoiled players as well as unspoiled players will do this.

[andreas]

Am I misunderstanding what pops up in the message feed right now? I took the problem with the proposal as it stands to be that you should x-v everything that could have a shield and amulet, which is awful. My proposal would have you x-v everything that has a glowing shield, which I find to be far less awful. I don't think I've ever played a game where this is more than a handful of monsters.

[Shard1697]

My proposal would have you x-v everything that has a glowing shield, which I find to be far less awful.

And then if monsters can't have amulets, spoiled players will not have to do this(instead of both spoiled and unspoiled players doing this), which is less awful still.

[andreas]

I think we might have a different evaluation of how bad it is for an optimal player to have to press x-JJn-v a handful of times a game to view what an enemy has. I don't think it is bad enough to start introducing weird special cases or removing interactions (stoppage+reflection) that don't have other inherent problems. I'm not sure I think it's bad at all.

(E.g., iirc, a recent proposal was to let Ash followers see what spellbook casters with random books have on x-v: I would not, and I note that no one then did, oppose that on the grounds that it encourages tedious behaviour.)

On special cases: I do think there is some value to having the game's surface mechanics behave in a broadly predictable way, even when it turns out the player who was mislead in the natural way would make the same or functionally the same decisions. I'm not sure I have much more to say on this point than that this is the kind of game I like to play, and I don't like the feeling of finding out that the mechanisms that seemed like they were obviously in play actually weren't.

[duvessa]

This strikes me as perhaps better than making amulets unwearable by enemies (a strange spoilery special case)

What? Do you think it's spoilery that monsters don't pick up and wear gloves, cloaks, and boots, or spoilery that monsters don't read scrolls of acquirement and quaff potions of mutation?
Pretty sure the special case is monsters being able to use jewellery, not monsters not being able to use jewellery. The latter was true every version before the introduction of Fannar and nobody was ever surprised to learn it, as far as I'm aware, and it certainly didn't involve any special cases in the code.

[andreas]

What? Do you think it's spoilery that monsters don't pick up and wear gloves, cloaks, and boots, or spoilery that monsters don't read scrolls of acquirement and quaff potions of mutation?

Yes, I do. To be honest I think the whole thing with how monsters interact with armour/weapons/items in general is pretty spoilery and arcane. Monsters read ?summoning but not ?fear, although they're both good scrolls for them to read---yes, I think it's unexpected. (I think they do? I don't actually know what the rules are! I'm just trying to remember what I've seen.) I did not know that monsters did not pick up and wear aux armour until just now.

I am not sure how best to bring order to these rules, or to what extent it is worth doing---there are good reasons for at least some of the exceptions---but I would not want to make it worse if there's an alternative.

Pretty sure the special case is monsters being able to use jewellery, not monsters not being able to use jewellery.

Monsters not being able to use jewelry was not the case Shard1697 was describing. That seems cleaner to me than stopping monsters from using amulets. It is not true that rings don't have an effect for monsters, as Shard suggested for amulets. I am not sure that mechanic is an important loss, but I am also not sure making room for stoppage is so important it should be tossed. In any case that idea was not what I was expressing an opinion about.

[duvessa]

Um, lots of rings have no effect for monsters.

[andreas]

um, and some do

[PleasingFungus]

I implemented this. It's not in trunk yet, though.

[dowan]

Wow, I wonder if this seriously affects the calculus of using a shield. Does this stack with reflect as implemented?

[PleasingFungus]

xposting:

08:05:06 <MarvinPA> re: adamant, i sort of feel like "shields blocking things that shields don't normally block" is better just kept in unrand territory, it seems like a quite substantial difference in type of effect compared to other egos

Wow, I wonder if this seriously affects the calculus of using a shield. Does this stack with reflect as implemented?

It does not. If you have an adamant shield & an amulet of reflection, you can reflect normal projectiles and block beams, but can't reflect beams.

[Quazifuji]

yes, but why is your first comment and focus centered around this extremely unlikely and often completely irrelevant event?

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Duvessa's ability to consistently find weird cases where a seemingly innocent suggestion could cause problems that no one else thought of is a remarkable talent that we as a community should cherish. That doesn't mean every single one of the weird cases he/she comes up with should always be considered a major problem - sometimes, it's okay to say "that issue's too hard to fix and too minor to be worth the trouble, and the idea is still worth implementing" - but I think it's good that we get to have these discussions now and implement ideas with them in mind, rather than waiting until someone complains when one comes up and deciding if we care then.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

"shields blocking things that shields don't normally block" is better just kept in unrand territory
[because]
it seems like a quite substantial difference in type of effect compared to other egos

I don't follow that reasoning up there.
Crawl has quite a few egos that are substantially different from other egos: archery, archmagi, flight, invisibility, pain, penetration, running, stealth, and others. I'm not saying they're all good, but it's not like they all give off an "unrand territory" vibe. edit: IMO adamant (damn, I liked saying "stoppage") is one of the better "weird" egos.
Many players don't even know that shields don't block bolt effects. They just see SH go up, and don't even think to consider bolts. As for unrands, I don't think the warlock mirror clarifies anything except that normal shields don't block hexes (and I doubt that anyone has ever thought or suspected that normal shields block hexes).

[Shard1697]

Yeah, I definitely would think boots of running at the very least is much more of something that should be an unrand that this...