Make Ancestors Match Your Speed

[bcadren]

Having ancestors vary to match types that fit your individual races would be really cool, but is a complicated tweak that would take awhile and be a lot of flavor difference for very little practical difference.

At minimum, they really should at least match your movement speed right now. I mean they are your ancestor (or how you are imagining your ancestor), not...your imaginary human companion. This has both that flavor reasoning AND the practical reasoning that matching your movement speed makes for a better permacompanion (yes I know you can slow yourself to match as an autoexplore setting, but this is one case where that's less than an ideal solution).

[robotcentaur]

I agree. In terms of mechanics they should match speed to feel good. In terms of fiction, and the sprite echoes this, they are a ghost and not a player character class.

[Sandman25]

It felt very annoying to pause autoexplore as Felid and wait for ancestor to catch up but I think it can be a huge buff for some species. When you run away from something dangerous and meet another dangerous monster you will benefit a lot from having ancestor nearby, with current mechanic you will need to spend a whole turn to recall ancestor in such situation.

[goodcoolguy]

...The god has recall, so obviously the benefit of your dude following at your speed is minimal to nonexistent, especially given that you can turn this autoexplore issue off by using well known in-game options...

The practical ramifications of such a change entirely relate to reduced micromanagement and general fiddliness. This would be a good change.

[genericpseudonym]

It felt very annoying to pause autoexplore as Felid and wait for ancestor to catch up but I think it can be a huge buff for some species. When you run away from something dangerous and meet another dangerous monster you will benefit a lot from having ancestor nearby, with current mechanic you will need to spend a whole turn to recall ancestor in such situation.

You can press control-E to slow your autoexplore movement to the speed of your slowest ally (also useful on necromancers).
It probably shouldn't be necessary to do this with hep though.

[Sandman25]

You can press control-E to slow your autoexplore movement to the speed of your slowest ally (also useful on necromancers).
It probably shouldn't be necessary to do this with hep though.

Yes, I know, thank you. I was a Felid so I didn't use autoexplore on new levels.

[Gongclonker]

Yeah. It's nice to be able to leave the ancestor and head out of its LOS to deal with something, but it sucks to wait around for it to catch up. Random energy should be enough to give the player the lead on the ancestor the majority of the time.

[PleasingFungus]

why would you ever need to wait for it to catch up?

[Sandman25]

why would you ever need to wait for it to catch up?

Recall costs 2 MP.

[Chicken]

Having it NOT match your speed is really powerful though when you're up against a ziggurat full of greater mummies and the occasional quicksilver dragon and you keep getting set to Slow. At least *somebody* is hacking away when you're not.

[Sprucery]

Having it NOT match your speed is really powerful though when you're up against a ziggurat full of greater mummies

I was going to point out that design decisions like this aren't made because of what happens in a Ziggurat...

...but then I remembered that Projected Noise was removed when someone cleared a Zig with it :)

[bcadren]

Having it NOT match your speed is really powerful though when you're up against a ziggurat full of greater mummies and the occasional quicksilver dragon and you keep getting set to Slow. At least *somebody* is hacking away when you're not.

I think you misunderstand anyways. Speed Matching here means it's base movement delay should be the same as yours so it keeps up when exploring (normally or via autoexplore)...not it's delay is always exactly the same as yours, lol.

[PleasingFungus]

worth noting that it's mathematically impossible for monsters to have the same speed as most nonstandard-move-speed player races. you can have them be slightly faster or slightly slower, but not the same speed, because of the way that monsters work differently from players.

my feeling is that it's a huge can of worms to start having ancestors vary mechanically between player races, that there's no particular reason that spriggans should have dramatically better ancestors than nagas, and that the game already provides tools for the player to manage any autoexplore annoyances, as genericpseudonym noted.

[ion_frigate]

Is increased movement speed really that much of a benefit? It's not like it's making the monster hit or cast any quicker. Also, I'm pretty sure that using the "Move:60%" feature would let Hep ancestors match a player's speed perfectly, though I could be mistaken there.

Fast movement is incredibly powerful on players because it lets them escape danger, and on monsters because it prevents the player from escaping them. Neither is particularly significant to an allied monster that's capable of respawning.

[Sandman25]

Knight moving 40% faster to melee monsters at the edge of view will be much more powerful.

[Sazzle]

It felt very annoying to pause Semenax as Felid and wait for ancestor to catch up but I think it can be a huge buff for some species. When you run away from something dangerous and meet another dangerous monster you will benefit a lot from having ancestor nearby, with current mechanic you will need to spend a whole turn to recall ancestor in such situation.

Yeah same here, I'm always having to wait on these mo fo's.

[Shard1697]

Just hit ctrl-e to set travel speed to slowest ally.

[goodcoolguy]

Fast movement is incredibly powerful on players because it lets them escape danger, and on monsters because it prevents the player from escaping them. Neither is particularly significant to an allied monster that's capable of respawning.

This would seem to be painfully obvious, yet

Knight moving 40% faster to melee monsters at the edge of view will be much more powerful.

Short of berserking dragon summons, I have a hard time thinking of something that could be "much more powerful" than an ally that has drain branded attacks and spams mass confusion. You can produce the same "much more powerful" effect with any ally by just backing away while the ally approaches monsters. You're talking about whether infinity is less than infinity plus one here.

[Brannock]

Fast movement is incredibly powerful on players because it lets them escape danger, and on monsters because it prevents the player from escaping them. Neither is particularly significant to an allied monster that's capable of respawning.

Did people forget Transpose exists or what?

[njvack]

there's no particular reason that spriggans should have dramatically better ancestors than nagas

My thought was that spriggans' and nagas' ancestors were probably spriggans and nagas, probably?

Not that I'm not saying the game would me mechanically better if ancestors took on characteristics of the PC, but the way the god is currently flavored it's a bit surprising that they don't. If you were calling on the memory of some random legendary warrior, it'd be one thing, but this is literally the memory of the character's great great grandma.

[Sar]

there's no particular reason that spriggans should have dramatically better ancestors than nagas

well Naga ancestors should have better HP, AC and constriction

[PleasingFungus]

felid ancestors should be unable to use weapons or armour

[njvack]

... and spriggans would only get like four hp

[infinitevox]

Can I get a Ds ally that spams Damnation plz?

[bcadren]

Why don't we just make a testing branch where they actually do vary with race and see if it plays better or make the god too powerful for certain races, etc.

[goodcoolguy]

Let's be honest here, the coolness of the god as it currently exists probably can't be maintained after nerfing it to a reasonable power level (which remains a long way off at present) and the fact that the ally really has nothing to do with the player character is a "can of worms" that'll never go away as long as the flavor is what it is. The god should be viewed as an interesting experiment in ally mechanics to be applied to other gods.

[bcadren]

Let's be honest here, the coolness of the god as it currently exists probably can't be maintained after nerfing it to a reasonable power level (which remains a long way off at present) and the fact that the ally really has nothing to do with the player character is a "can of worms" that'll never go away as long as the flavor is what it is. The god should be viewed as an interesting experiment in ally mechanics to be applied to other gods.

The god isn't OP; it's still fairly weak compared to normal summons. In my limited experience with it and just analyzing the data as written, I'd say the Hexer is most similar to a combo of a single Mana Viper and a Sphinx (two high level summoning spells); the Fighter is fairly comparable to a Bone Dragon (Yredelemnul) or daeva (TSO), which is better only in bulk and (maybe?) AI; the Battlemage is pretty much the same as a Spellforged Servitor, except it has a passable melee and some bulk as well. The actives help you position your single free summon better; but it's still only a single decent summon; it's not...on par with good use of Ashenzari, Ru, Sif or Oka.

[goodcoolguy]

Wow. What?

*HaFi on lair 2 with spellforged servitor*

bcadren: This is normal.

*NaGl on d10 with bone dragon ally + heals and buffs for bone dragon ally*

bcadren: This is fine.

*TrMo with drain branded melee sphinx ally on d4*

bcadren: Seems in line with power level of other gods.

[PleasingFungus]

It might be more productive to make your own thread about how insanely overpowered Hep is, though I think the original topic of this thread has probably run its course in any case.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

It would be possible to change the flavour away from ancestor to something species independent. Like a guardian angel, imaginary friend, friendly phantasm, first pet or whatever. Then there wouldn't be a strange disconnect between a non-humanoid race and their 'ancestor'.