Ideas! Scythes and traps...

[Haelyn]

Pressure Plate Traps

I don't know if anybody is still using this place here, but if they are, I'm in the most recent trunk version (27 Jun 2016) and I found a trap that was simply a pressure plate. Once stepped on, a grate cut off my escape and sent a rolling boulder beetle after me. This, I think, is brilliant, and should be very vastly expanded upon. Traps like these, I mean. If they were harder to detect, that'd be great too. The shafts, teleport traps, zot traps, alarm traps… All those are fine and good too, but special traps like as described above are an inspired idea and there ought to be more of them.

Scythes!

Scythes have always been a weapon that LOOKS really awesome, and naturally new players look at something like this (especially after Sigmund) with glee. But right now they're considered the worst weapon type in crawl. Could I suggest they be given cleaving to make up for this? It makes sense aesthetically, and would put them in the interesting position of having both reach and cleave, which would make them useful despite their disadvantages.

~Haelyn

[dynast]

Yeah, i love getting killed by random undetected things, they make the most interesting scenarios. You should only put traps in a game to call the player's attention rather than surprise them, or to excuse the boredom that your game is.

Im sorry, this is your first post. welcome to GDD, i hate traps. If you like traps, you should look foward to designing unique vaults for the game, they are an actual interesting way to make traps(like the boulder beetle one you mentioned).

[njvack]

Welcome! GDD can be a bit... brusque... but you can get good feedback here.

Quick note: It's much better to split posts with two subject into two posts -- would you put the scythes thing into a new topic?

[Rast]

Giving scythes reach plus cleaving has been suggested many times before. It's a decent idea, but apparently the devs don't like it.

[swoonis]

Scythes are pretty pointless. They should honestly be removed.

[ydeve]

Why does Sigmund get to keep his scythe but Yuif needs to lose his hammers?

[Wahaha]

Scythes are pretty pointless. They should honestly be removed.

This thread happens to have a suggestion for making them not pointless, maybe you could give your opinion on it.

I get the impression that the only reason scythes haven't been tested with reaching + cleaving is that no one wants to program it. I don't think anyone would dismiss the idea as unworkable without trying it in practice first. Except people who don't like reaching in general.

[dpeg]

I would say +1 to a patch that gives scythes reaching+cleaving.

I guess one argument against doing this is newbie trap: new players may be misled to think that scythes are extremely strong weapons, when they aren't. But I'd say +1 for Sigmund alone.

[nago]

As long scythe of curses remains.
Wait, FR: Sigmund always spawn with scythe of curses.

[Haelyn]

Oh my. And here I thought this was a slow forum and I wouldn't need to check back for a while.

dynast: Thanks for the welcome! But yeah, simply getting killed isn't what I had in mind. The boulder beetle one was in an otherwise unremarkable passage. I like how it was unexpected and a surprise but I still had time to react. Maybe an alarm trap plus suddenly cobwebs to stall you?

I've seen a lot of amazing vaults, but I always find myself scrolling through the first six or seven levels automatically. Hence why I'm curious how to make the game more interesting even in otherwise unremarkable areas.

njvack: Thank you for the welcome as well! And ah, I certainly could. I think. I assume I should just... Edit the first post and the name and repost the scythes thing...? I'd hope it doesn't look redundant. Apparently scythes are not an uncommon topic.

Wahaha: I personally love reaching. Lovely for getting the priest who's hiding behind his buddies. And there are a few vaults that are easier if you have it, too. The mechanic has good potential.

I'd be surprised if it's hard to code though. But then, I'm very bad with learning code and don't even know what language this is. Still, I'd think it'd just be extending the range of the pre-existing cleave code and then fine tuning.

dpeg: Aren't scythes already kinda newbie trapped? I certainly couldn't wait to use one when I started, and Sigmund was, well... Encouraging. At least this way they'd be useful instead of worst weapon.

[DracheReborn]

Lovely for getting the priest who's hiding behind his buddies.

That doesn't work, surely? You'll hit the buddy first if he's in the way.

Reaching is good if you have allies or summons though.

[Shard1697]

No, you can reach over enemies.
There's a chance for it to fail and hit the first one though, I forget exactly how much. This also applies to allies and when you're just reaching two tiles, but the game won't make you hit your ally if you fail to reach 2 tiles.

[Sprucery]

No, you can reach over enemies.
There's a chance for it to fail and hit the first one though, I forget exactly how much. This also applies to allies and when you're just reaching two tiles, but the game won't make you hit your ally if you fail to reach 2 tiles.

IIRC it's a 50% chance. And if there are two paths to reach the target but only one of them has a blocking monster, you have a 75% chance to attack your intented target.