DD Replacement - Crystal Dwarf

[LoopyLeo]

So there's been a bit of talk about fixing Deep Dwarfs, due to their apparent tedium.
I came up with an idea for "fixing" them. They would be replaced by the following species:

Crystal Dwarf
The origin of these strange creatures has led to much speculation. They hail from the deepest depths of the earth, and their whole bodies are made of hard crystal.
Crystal Dwarfs have much the same aptitudes of Deep Dwarfs (but more than open to change).They also posses huge amounts of HP.

Now for the interesting part - Crystal Dwarfs lose Max HP, permanently, from taking damage.

e.g: CD has 27 Max HP. He then gets into a large fight, and loses 3 HP. This then brings his Max HP to 24. The CD cannot, however, get that HP back- as rather than subtracting from HP, it subtracted from his Max HP.
The only possible way for said Crystal Dwarf to get HP back to 27 is either through XL advancement, or increasing Fighting skill.
Things such as Makhleb or wands of healing would not change HP in any way.

Crystal Dwarfs would also be immune to poison, seeing as their bodies are made of Crystal.

Please let me know what you think- I'm not quite sure how such a race would play out, but thought I'd suggest it for discussion.

NB: On a side note, if it seemed better, Crystal Dwarfs could have damage equally dished out between current and max HP- leaving room healing items, abilities etc.

[Haelyn]

This is a really interesting idea, but I think there are some important things to consider; how MUCH extra HP, exactly, how much gets taken out of maximum, what kind of effects do they get to resist in trade for this, etc.

You take a metric cat-ton of damage playing crawl. Having it always chip at your maximum, ESPECIALLY in cases of smite and torment and so on, can be absolutely devastating.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Phoenix Dwarf

Like Deep Dwarf but cannot heal by any means; loses Device Recharging.
Reaching 0 HP makes you die and resurrect, like a felid, with 1 less max HP.
You stop resurrecting when you reach 0 max HP.

[LoopyLeo]

This is a really interesting idea, but I think there are some important things to consider; how MUCH extra HP, exactly, how much gets taken out of maximum, what kind of effects do they get to resist in trade for this, etc.

You take a metric cat-ton of damage playing crawl. Having it always chip at your maximum, ESPECIALLY in cases of smite and torment and so on, can be absolutely devastating.

I'm not really sure how much would work, I think that would take a lot of play testing- but to prevent numbers getting insanely high, perhaps they could have super damage shaving as well. Does that actually work on smiting btw?

[Haelyn]

Phoenix Dwarf

Like Deep Dwarf but cannot heal by any means; loses Device Recharging.
Reaching 0 HP makes you die and resurrect, like a felid, with 1 less max HP.
You stop resurrecting when you reach 0 max HP.

If we could make that just "Phoenix" and make that a race, I would be impossibly happy.

[duvessa]

A good DD replacement would be nothing. Crawl has a lot of races already.

[genericpseudonym]

This is a really interesting idea, but I think there are some important things to consider; how MUCH extra HP, exactly, how much gets taken out of maximum, what kind of effects do they get to resist in trade for this, etc.

You take a metric cat-ton of damage playing crawl. Having it always chip at your maximum, ESPECIALLY in cases of smite and torment and so on, can be absolutely devastating.

I'm not really sure how much would work, I think that would take a lot of play testing- but to prevent numbers getting insanely high, perhaps they could have super damage shaving as well. Does that actually work on smiting btw?

It works on almost every source of damage, including smiting.
The one exception that I know of is poison: instead of applying damage shaving normally to the poison damage each turn, DD just take no damage from the first 30 points worth of poisoning.

[Quazifuji]

I remember seeing a similar idea suggested before. Personally, my biggest issue with it: it would be possible, and in fact extremely easy, to end up in a situation where you haven't lost, but winning is incredibly likely. Maybe some people would like it, but personally, getting a rune or two but realizing that I almost certainly don't have enough HP left to finish the game just sounds kind of awful. Current DD can already get into similar situations if they run out of sources of healing, but there's at least always the possiblity of finding more healing potions or scrolls of recharging, and most players play gods that turn healing into a renewable resource.

Really, I feel like every discussion about fixing Deep Dwarves that I've seen has it backwards. You can't fix Deep Dwarves by starting with the problem and trying to fix it. Because like Duvessa pointed out, if they're completely broken right now, then we may as well just remove them instead of fixing them.

If you want to fix Deep Dwarves, you have to start with what does work. Then, you build a race out of that, without all of the parts of Deep Dwarves that don't work. So I think that's the question someone needs to answer. What works about Deep Dwarves? If you enjoy playing Deep Dwarves, why do you enjoy playing them? What qualities do Deep Dwarves have that you would miss if they were removed?

(Answers that I'm pretty sure will be rejected: "They're really strong," "I like Dwarves and Deep Dwarves are all that's left," "I don't really play them much, I just don't like removing features.")

[ololoev]

A good DD replacement would be nothing. Crawl has a lot of races already.

But DD is unique by their own. Why not replace hafling/kobold/human?

[LoopyLeo]

I wasn't really sure how good this idea would be, but I just thought that I'd float it around just in case it struck any chords.

From what I had ascertained, Deep Dwarfs were a race which attempted to make HP a strategic resource. Although in my somewhat limited DD experience, their HP conduct only really lead to tedium.
My goal was to try and remake the race, and remove as much tedium from the species as possible. As has been pointed out to me, my idea- while it may be a unique "fix" to the whole tedium problem, could lead to some miserable games down the line.

In my opinion, Deep Dwarfs should be changed - or removed. My idea, while I think it may have fixed the current problem, could just lead to many more.
But that is only an opinion. Perhaps Deep Dwarfs are fine as they are? I certainly don't think so, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I'll leave it to the devs

[ydeve]

This proposal would make the race much more tedious, as now you actually have to play in such as a way as to take as little damage as possible, where as the current system gives some leeway.

[dowan]

Yeah, I don't see how your proposal reduces any of the tedium. Using the heal wand is the least tedious part of the DD experience in my eyes. The tedious part is making sure even trivial enemies don't take away any of your precious HP. Your design preserves this tedium perfectly!

I guess it does move the race away from wanting a healing god, if that was your intention.