Give Usk +cleave at 1*, cut stomp

[luckless]

Uskayaw benefits from cleaving a lot, to the point of all but requiring melee worshippers to use axes. imo, tying god choice to weapon choice so tightly is bad design. On the other hand, Stomp is virtually just a cleaving melee attack that's more annoying to use. So why not split the difference and just give Uskayaw worshippers passive cleave?

[lethediver]

Triple sword with cleave lol

Why bother learning to use other god abilities? This one enough for the gg

[neil]

Ignoring the question of balance. There are a few minor problems that would need to be solved:

• Axes would be worse than other weapon classes for Uskayaw worshippers, since their damage/delay was reduced to make up for cleaving.
• Cleaving + polearms would need some work, or a better definition of what it hits. Xom's cleave effect (previously the Blade card) does this already, so you could re-use that behaviour, but I'm not sure whether the current behaviour is ideal: if you attack an enemy at range, it cleaves to all adjacent enemies except the one you reached over.
• As lethediver alludes to, you'd probably want to make sure that ripostes don't get cleave. That behaviour is fine for a Xom effect, but is way too powerful for a usually-on god ability.

[luckless]

I agree: I think you'd definitely want to make sure ripostes don't get cleave! (One of the craziest characters I ever played was a gargoyle with fencer's gloves and the freezing clouds axe, who cleared zigs spell-less.)

as to your other points:

• Axes would be a *bit* worse, but is that really a big deal? Conceivably the cleave effect could only kick in at ** instead, which would at least give axe users a bit of a head start.
• Interesting point re: polearms. I can't think of a better alternative than the current behavior, since (a) cleaving to the enemy you reach over would probably be too powerful in corridors, while (b) not cleaving at all when you reach would give polearms the same problem as axes

[jwoodward48ss]

Not really. The axe problem is "no benefit at *", the polearm problem is "no benefit at * when using weapon gimmick". Polearms can still attack near.

[Lasty]

I don't particularly hate Usk giving some extra punch to axes and short blades -- Usk also gives extra punch to anything else that deals AOE. I'm open to the idea of replacing Stomp with some other form of radial damage. What might work better than "always cleaving" is something like "melee attacks against the target you attacked explode outward dealing damage around the target". So, for a mace, that means you also damage every monster next to your target. For an axe, that means you damage every monster next to your target or you.

That said, I'm not in love with the idea of pushing Uskayaw too hard into melee-only builds; Usk already leans in that direction, but also rewards (just about) all forms of AOE, whether it's axes, Fireball, bolt wands, or Static Discharge. If the ability was something like "damage explodes around the targeted square" that could buff things other than melee, potentially, and keep the god more general purpose. Of course, with ranged attacks you sometimes want to target a tile that doesn't contain a monster. . .

This whole area may be creating more problems than it solves.

[Shard1697]

If the ability was something like "damage explodes around the targeted square" that could buff things other than melee, potentially, and keep the god more general purpose. Of course, with ranged attacks you sometimes want to target a tile that doesn't contain a monster. . .

Not if it only happens when it hits something.

[Lasty]

Ranged attacks can hit multiple things tho -- penetrating ammo, bolt spells, all other aoe...

[bcadren]

penetrating ammo.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's penetration ammo gone? You'd need a Penetration launcher (either the Piercer (longbow) or a branded arbalest)).

[Lasty]

Penetrating javelins still exist

[ion_frigate]

How about combining two of PrincessRL's special moves: Open Ground attack and Multiple Enemies attack? For Brogue players, the first of those is almost identical to a flail:

If you move from any square adjacent to a monster to any square adjacent to a monster (does not have to be the same monster), you hit all currently adjacent monsters as many times as you would have during the time you spent moving, with some bonus. So for example, if you move adjacent to a monster, with a movement delay of 10aut and a current attack delay of 4aut, you would get 2.5 (50% chance of 2, 50% chance of 3) attacks. But that number could then be multiplied by some factor that scales with piety, so at * you'd get 2.75, but at ****** you'd get 5 (those are completely wild guesses meant to illustrate the concept). The extra attacks factor could also scale with sequential passing attacks instead of piety, though that might be abusable.

This sounds complicated, but to the player it's fairly simple: moving around among monsters in a dance-like fashion kills them more rapidly than just hitting them, but is also dangerous as you'll frequently be allowing multiple monsters to hit you, and at the very least be fighting on open ground. It is also almost completely ineffective in corridors, which is a plus.

[luckless]

fwiw, I'm a fan. (I play a lot of Sil, which also has a similar ability, and think it would fit great in Crawl.)

I'm not sure you even need a bonus, though. In fact, I'd suggest seeing if the ability was balanced without it. (If it did give a bonus, I'd suggest EV--all that dancing and weaving makes you harder to hit. But that's Sil talking again. It's almost enough to make me want to play a HESk!)

[ion_frigate]

Glad you like it - and I may have to try out Sil.

The reason for the attack bonus was this: I don't want it to be optimal to sit in a corridor instead of using passing attacks. In theory, if passing attacks are exactly on par with normal attacks, then all they accomplish is to speed up combat and make it swingier. I.e. if you move and end next to three monsters, you deal 3*X damage to all of them, and they all deal 3*Y damage to you - the total damage dealt and received are the same as if you had confronted all three monsters one at a time in a corridor, only it occurred quicker. I think the player should get some bonus for taking on the additional risk of being hit by multiple monsters at once.

That being said, having it increase EV would accomplish the same thing, since instead of dealing more damage the player would receive less. Increasing EV is also nice since it lets the player get a damage reduction while still preserving the risk element - high EV is a lot spikier in terms of damage than high AC. So both increased attacks and increased EV sound like ideas worthy of being tested.

Another idea I had for this was to make it not proc at all if you have more than three or four wall squares adjacent on your ending move - this is to prevent silly abuses of single monsters in corners of corridors.

[Shard1697]

I think the player should get some bonus for taking on the additional risk of being hit by multiple monsters at once.

Right, like gaining more piety.

[luckless]

If you move from any square adjacent to a monster to any square adjacent to a monster (does not have to be the same monster), you hit all currently adjacent monsters as many times as you would have during the time you spent moving.

also this could work with Line Pass, for extra fun.

[goodcoolguy]

This is the right idea. When you look at this god and ask "just how often is a player supposed to be using the god abilities," the answer seems to be "all the damned time." Not the right answer.

If cleave is too generic/problematic/whatever, just make stomp or a stomp-like effect proc randomly on attacks, with probability scaling with piety. Spamming active god abilities is not actually good.

[luckless]

I've been thinking about this a bit more. The more I think about it the more I think the devs should seriously consider a version of ion_frigate's idea, and wanted to make one last bid for it.

The biggest wrinkle is accounting for the difference between movement and attack delay, but it now occurs to me that there's a really simple way to do it: just multiply final, post-AC damage by {movement delay/attack delay}, in basically the same way brands multiply it by a constant range. So I imagine something implemented (and described) roughly as follows:

Battle Dance
At * piety, Uskayaw grants followers the grace and agility necessary to blend movement and attacking into a fluid martial dance. Whenever you move into a square as a result of your normal movement or Line Pass, you automatically attack each opponent that is adjacent to the square you move into. Your damage is significantly influenced by your momentum and the speed with which you can bring your weapon to bear; as a result, you are deadlier with faster weapons than slower ones, doing damage at the same rate you would if standing still.

imo this has pretty much everything going for it:

• Anyone who's played roguelikes with similar abilities knows they're fluid, tactical, and fun. This is especially true when there are other factors making positioning important--something Usk's other abilities do beautifully.
• It's an excellent thematic fit, and reinforces Usk's ability to offer a distinctive play style (which I guess is pretty much the main point of the god).
• It has neat, and in some cases subtle, synergies with all of Usk's later abilities--it helps you approach creatures for quick stabs with Solo Time, and encourages you to seek out the right clusters of enemies for Pain Bond (and in advanced cases manipulate them into clustering in the ways you want).
• It overlaps with cleaving just the right amount. Melee worshippers without axes get the necessary AoE attack, but Battle Dance still leaves axes with a niche: it usually doesn't hit quite as many creatures as cleaving does, and it's useless when you're surrounded. (otoh Battle Dance is a great mechanism for avoiding getting surrounded in the first place, and then there's Line Pass.)
• It doesn't raise any complications with riposte or reach weapons. (It does significantly reduce the situations in which you'd want to use reaching, but I don't think that's a very big deal.)

While the ability still favors melee, substantial amounts of Usk play suggest to me that this isn't a problem. Offensive spellcasters are already really great at AoE damage, and get piety very quickly. And even they would get some use out of the ability, since they too need to move sometimes.