Just nine wands

[and into]

I appreciate the efforts to compress the number of wands so as to reduce clutter and ensure that each has a potentially interesting effect. If the developers want to continue along these lines, I offer the following proposal, which incorporates a good idea that fortunately emerged in the discussion of my rather ill-advised proposal to make digging temporary.

+ Combine slowing, confusion, and paralysis into one wand. The Wand of Debilitation always attempts to slow, may attempt to confuse in addition (chance based on evocations), and may attempt to paralyze on top of all that (less frequent, chance based on evocations). Power of each hex increases with evocations, as currently. Each separate hex chance that you successfully roll checks MR of the target separately. High-tier wand, max charges 24.

+ Combine Random Effects and Flame into one wand. The Wand of Elemental Blast shoots a single-targeted blast of flame, cold, electricity, or negative energy, chosen randomly with equal chance. Worshipping a good god will remove the chance for a blast of negative energy. Perhaps buff damage formula a little; at the very least, allow higher max power. Max charges 48.

+ Combine Digging and Disintegration into one wand: The Wand of Blasting shoots a bolt that digs out rock walls and deals good irresistible, unavoidable damage to anything in its path. High-tier wand, max charges 9.

+ Remove wand of lightning. Rationale: Wand of blasting and wand of acid already shoot bolts, lightning bolt is already a spell. Do we really need this wand in the game?

+ Remove wand of polymorph. Rationale: I really like the polymorph effect, but knowing spoilers gives players a distinct and real advantage in terms of when to use it. Through normal use and experience players can deduce which enemies make good targets (e.g., low-ish MR, but an annoying and/or deadly ability). However, knowing the factors that affect what enemies can result from a polymorph gives players a real advantage, but these factors are not documented in-game, nor or they obvious. It would pain me a bit to see it go, but I think it would be the correct decision, ultimately. Besides, we already have more than one wand that destroys enemies with sufficiently low MR. Functionally speaking, this is redundant, even if it is a cool effect.

__________


This proposal would leave us with the following wands:

Wand of Acid (15)
Wand of Blasting (9)
Wand of Debilitation (24)
Wand of Enslavement (24)
Wand of Elemental Blast (48)
Wand of Hasting (9)
Wand of Heal Wounds (9)
Wand of Iceblast (15)
Wand of Teleportation (9)


EDIT: If I may be allowed a tangent: I do think evocable items are, as a class, too strong in Crawl currently. I would welcome attempts to rebalance them, but I think that, in the meantime, the effort to change and remove evocable effects so that only distinctive ones remain is also an improvement.

[jwoodward48ss]

+1. If we aren't going to go with "tons of wands," which I would like, we might as well reap the benefits of "few wands." Also, would make the Pak-charge minigame less tedious, and remove most of the useless wands.

Also, could we make them take up no space, and exist as "you have 40 charges of acid" and such? Then they would be perfect.

[Sprucery]

Polymorph should stay imo. Crawl does not give the player exact information about many things anyway, so I don't see any problem with the 'spoileryness' of polymorph.

[le_nerd]

Please dont call "wand of elemental blasts" that if it has a non-elemental component, eg. draining. Call it "wand of conjuration" or "boom wand" or "blast wand" or somesuch.

[pubby]

does anyone want ancient code?
selling ancient code here

  Code:

commit d22d49ca5b69ff57e62ae2209d10a6e2b065ceec
Author: pubby <pubby8@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Mar 1 20:31:09 2014 -0600

    Remove wand of slowing, confusion, and paralysis.
   
    They are wands of disabling now.

commit b399af0ae8691d5d7a396e8bd8917f33ffb6b274
Author: pubby <pubby8@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Mar 1 20:06:00 2014 -0600

    Remove wands of flame, frost, and magic darts.
   
    Replace with wands of exploit weakness.


help put my kids through college

[and into]

Please dont call "wand of elemental blasts" that if it has a non-elemental component, eg. draining. Call it "wand of conjuration" or "boom wand" or "blast wand" or somesuch.

Fair point, original name could be misleading. Open to different names, and any of the finer details could of course be tweaked. E.g., Debilitation might be too strong for 24 charges and would be more appropriate at 15, etc.

does anyone want ancient code?
selling ancient code here

  Code:

commit d22d49ca5b69ff57e62ae2209d10a6e2b065ceec
Author: pubby <pubby8@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Mar 1 20:31:<a href="tel:09 2014 -0600">09 2014 -0600</a>

    Remove wand of slowing, confusion, and paralysis.
   
    They are wands of disabling now.

commit b399af0ae8691d5d7a396e8bd8917f33ffb6b274
Author: pubby <pubby8@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Mar 1 20:06:<a href="tel:00 2014 -0600">00 2014 -0600</a>

    Remove wands of flame, frost, and magic darts.
   
    Replace with wands of exploit weakness.


help put my kids through college

You were ahead of your time, pubby.

[phloomp]

Good proposal, but can we drop wand of teleportation too? Scrolls of tele have all the same properties except use while silenced and ability to get more from a recharge scroll/Pak, and both of those properties arguably makes the game worse.

[Airwolf]

Wand of teleportation can be shot at monsters...

[jwoodward48ss]

...and why can't we have duplicates?

[and into]

Good proposal, but can we drop wand of teleportation too? Scrolls of tele have all the same properties except use while silenced and ability to get more from a recharge scroll/Pak, and both of those properties arguably makes the game worse.

Yes, this is a good point. There are actually three big offenders here: /teleportation, /hasting, /heal wounds.

Teleportation can be targeted at enemies, as Airwolf points out, but this checks MR, and there is already more than one wand that takes out low-MR dudes. (In particular, enslaving a monster and sending it off in one direction while you go the opposite way is not so dissimilar to teleport other, but you can also enslave monsters to help you in battle, so enslavement has other, potentially more interesting applications as well.)

...and why can't we have duplicates?

Complete redundancy is bad for what I hope are obvious reasons. (If you disagree with this I can elaborate.) So this leaves "similar, but not identical" effects.

We can have, and do have, overlapping effects. Overall I think there is probably too much overlap in Crawl, though DCSS is much better in this respect than a lot of other games. That doesn't mean there cannot be any similar features, but I think there has to be very good reason for any overlap, because it tends to make players' decisions less interesting.

For example, if the fire school of magic had a bunch of new spells that gave benefits similar to deflect missiles, oz's armor, haste, spectral weapon, discord, darkness, etc., this may appear to be giving players tons of cool new options, but the actual effect is to limit meaningful choices. Suddenly players don't have to make decisions about how to divide up experience into multiple spell schools to get different types of benefit; you can just put everything into Fire skill.

Scrolls of teleportation are cheapened by the wand. So is the Silence effect. What's the point of blocking scroll-reading if one of the most common, general-utility escape scrolls can still be accessed while silenced, if you happened to have a particular wand? (If removing wand of teleportation makes silence too strong, then the silence effect can be altered/nerfed.)

Letting each feature have a distinct design space tends to make for more interesting decisions. It also tends to reduce feature-bloat and make for a cleaner and more approachable game.

[TonberryJam]

Better idea:

Spawn generic wands with no spells. Enchant wands with spells you have learned. one charge = spell level in mana. max charge = player level. Max number of wands = 1. Wand slot now created. yay another ability effect!
Have gods charge wands with spells based on their choosing.

[jwoodward48ss]

I don't get it. Permanent or temporary enchantment? And what is "one charge == spell level in mana" supposed to mean?

[genericpseudonym]

Better idea:

Spawn generic wands with no spells. Enchant wands with spells you have learned. one charge = spell level in mana. max charge = player level. Max number of wands = 1. Wand slot now created. yay another ability effect!
Have gods charge wands with spells based on their choosing.

Under this mechanic wands would basically just be an increase to max mana that you hold in your inventory instead of equipping.

And anyway having wands that do something that you can already do without them isn't nearly as interesting as wands with unique not-otherwise-accessible powers.

[TonberryJam]

I though the point was all wands that weren't heal wounds were useless?

[jwoodward48ss]

...no, that's not what we're trying to do.

And I STILL don't get your proposal. I can't figure out what "one charge = spell level in mana, max charge = player level" means.