warning before paralysis?

[elmdor]

Does anyone else find paralysis boring, unfun, and arbitrary? In design terms, what does it add to the game?

I've now lost two extended characters to instances of being paralyzed; this last case was especially irritating. My HoBe of TSO had 3 pips of MR and had just killed Khufu in Tomb when a sphinx paralyzed me. Six turns later, during which I didn't get to input anythingr, I'm dead... If anyone cares to see the morgue it's here http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue//elmdor/morgue-elmdor-20160716-181711.txt Naturally, I take responsibility for the death, as I should have remembered to put on a ring with MR, but I wonder if it isn't possible to change the mechanic so it's still potentially fatal, but the player at least has a chance to try a countermeasure?

Right now with petrification you have a turn to move out of the cloud. What if paralysis gave a similar warning, ideally one that would force_more and cause one to stop tabbing? ("You feel your body start to grow numb!") That would give the player a single turn where they could choose to slip on a ring of MR, pop a blink to break LOS, summon help, read or zap tele, or try to deal a finishing blow to the paralyzer.

I guess paralysis due to god wrath could be left alone to maintain the seriousness of insulting the divine.

Thoughts, crawlers?

[Haelyn]

I'm inclined to agree. I haven't had any real problems with paralysis, except for Grinder, but I do think your suggestion makes sense. Paralysis would remain deadly, and you'd still have to be ready beforehand, but this gives you a last-ditch chance.

[and into]

In that case, I would say simply replace paralysis with petrification. (Or, replace all petrification and paralysis with the revised version of paralysis you recommend; the number of turns of "you are growing numb" before paralysis could vary in inverse proportion to spellpower, but never going less than one turn.)

Either of those changes would probably be a bit fairer than current paralysis. That comes at the cost of making it less dangerous, however, and as you note, even in these two frustrating deaths to paralysis, you accept that they were not unavoidable. I agree that deaths from paralysis tend to be particularly frustrating and unfun, though, so I would support some changes to how it works along the lines of what you suggest.

[duvessa]

There are exactly two interesting detrimental statuses in crawl. Slow and paralysis. Please remove some of the dozens of badly designed statuses before you change the number of good ones from two to one.

[tabstorm]

Man, you pretty much just yolo'd on that death. You cannot yolo-charge the tomb:1 sphinx pack with only the low end of MR+++ without accepting a (small) risk of dying. If you had put on the MR ring you would probably not have died.

[Arrhythmia]

The easiest way to make paralysis better without changing its behavior is to not force the player to [enter] their way through however many messages about getting the tar beaten out of them.

e: shit i'm bad at typing

[removeelyvilon]

Call me crazy but I think paralyze is fine as it, now that chaos mirror is gone.

[genericpseudonym]

Just replace paralysis with a very high damage mr-checking disintegrate so the random chance of oneshot doesn't depend on how many other monsters are around.

[dynast]

Paralysis adds a layer of risk management that other debuffs dont, you have to act to prevent it from happening instead of bandaging it afterwards, which imo is more interesting than the other hexes, the problem is that paralysis disables most of your defenses, making it lethal for anyone whos not a heavy armored warrior.

Your death was just bad play, putting yourself on a position where paralyze could kill you while expecting it not to happen, yet i cant really blame you, since you were just steamrolling through the game before it put a road block in your way.

[PowerOfKaishin]

Paralysis shouldn't tank your EV or SH. That's why it's so bullshit when it happens.