Developing Ieoh Jian Council (Latest version inside)

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 19:06 by Steel Neuron

NOTE: I've made some good advances coding IJC on my experimental branch, so I figured I might update you with some design decisions

. As we seemed to have reached an approximate consensus on what seems fun and what doesn't, I've incorporated less external feedback and more changes that I feel help simplify and streamline. The biggest change is based on a conversation I had with Lasty: The collection mechanic is no more. ICJ will now seamlessly work with you whether you're unarmed or wielding a melee weapon, but there is no way to commit weapons to your god (They will keep sending you stuff, don't worry). This time I'm going to jump straight into the mechanics and offer an explanation for the changes afterwards.

Ieoh Jian Council

The Ieoh Jian Council is a congregation of seven martial monks, that ascended to divinity by fighting their way out of the afterlife, and spend eternity honing their martial skills and, most importantly, enlarging their collection of exotic and powerful weapons. Each of the seven monks is specialized in a weapon type (dagger, long blade, polearm, staff, axe, mace and unarmed).

Gameplay wise, Ieoh Jian is all about weapons, mobility and martial proficiency. They will reward your character for being able to use several different varieties and quickly switch between them. They will empower your crosstraining and help dynamically move between weapon types, as well as lend you weapons of their own collection occasionally. You'll be taught to make weapons fly and converge on enemies, to hit pressure points and to maintain a constant evasive dance.

Piety gain
Killing.

Piety loss
Inactivity. Using shields and ranged weapons other than throwing is forbidden.

Council Interest Mechanic

As you attack enemies in melee, the Council will become interested in the fight, and they will aid you by materializing weapons in the general vicinity. These weapons can attack on their own (like a weaker Tukima's Dance) or you can grab them from the air by walking into them. If you already had a weapon when you walk into the tile of another, you will leave your previous weapon behind (visually, it would be the same as a normal tile swap with a friendly monster, except the weapons will be swapped).

The materialized weapons are always vorpal or speed branded, and their base types improve with your skill level and piety, as well as their enchantment level. At endgame, you may expect +6 to +9 vorpal/speed weapons of powerful base types. In high tension situations, the Council may decide to aid you by materializing an artifact weapon from their own personal vault, which will be notified in the text window. These weapons are normal artifacts, except they can't have any negative properties. At higher piety levels and higher tension, you may expect more powerful artifacts and enchantment levels.

If you stop hitting enemies in melee for more than two consecutive turns, animated weapons will start to disappear quickly as the council lose interest. If your own weapon was animated, it will be the last to disappear and it will always come back to your hands.

Powers
Piety level (-) "Young Dog"

Substantially increases the effects of crosstraining. All weapon types + Unarmed Combat crosstrain at 100% rate.
Hitting enemies in melee has a chance to materialize vorpal/quick weapons, as if they were affected by a weaker Tukima's dance. Walking into them allows you to equip them immediately, leaving your current weapon behind.

Piety level (*) "Young Crane"

Project/Recall Weapon: (Active, small MP, small hunger): If you have a weapon equipped, you project it to an enemy or a target tile, dealing damage and animating the weapon at the target location. While unarmed, you can recall a chosen animated weapon, dealing damage to all enemies it passes through as it comes back to you.

Piety level (**) "Young Tiger"

Flowing Blade:Your martial abilities improve as your connection to the Council strenghtens. All of your weapons gain new auxiliary attacks that trigger on movement.
- Long Blades and Maces/Flails gain Whirlwind: When moving from a space adjacent to a monster to another space adjacent to it, the monster is hit for the weapon's base damage.
- Short Blades and Axes gain Lunge: When moving directly towards a monster, you perform a powerful lunging attack, hitting for 2.0 times weapon damage.
- Staves and Polearms gain Pole Vault: When moving directly into a wall or solid obstacle, you vault two spaces in the opposite direction, hitting all enemies around your landing spot. Can't be used if the landing spot is occupied.

Piety level (***) "Red Sash"

Afterimage: Equipping an animated weapon by grabbing it from the air grants a powerful but very short EV and MR boost.

Piety level (****) "Golden Sash"

Pressure Points: Your Flowing Blade attacks get a chance to inflict slowness and paralysis.

Piety level (*****) "Red Dragon"
Piety level (******) "Golden Dragon"

Steel Dragonfly Technique: (food, 5 MP, piety, active) Projects all Council weapons towards a single monster, unsummoning them after the strike (all summoned weapons are thrown at once and they immediately disappear). Paralysed and slow enemies have a chance to explode.

Ieoh Jian Council's wrath (and stealing mechanic)
The Council have their own spin on excommunication. By default, their rage shouldn't be too powerful, and should be based on combat debuffs, summoning animated weapons against you, and corroding your gear. However, the interesting point is that, the moment you abandon the Council, you get to keep whatever weapons were manifested at the time (you normally relinquish them voluntarily to the council).

The council's rage is substantially affected by the quality of weapons stolen. If you steal a powerful randart, the backlash caused by this should be longer and more dangerous.

Notes on this last design:

There have been a few changes since the third revision that I think will make the God simpler and more fun.

For starters, Disengage is gone and instead we get Pole Vault, which is a much more tactical ability that doesn't allow mindless kiting, while still providing a tool to gain distance (or shorten it) that plays with the rest of the kit.

I toyed with the idea of throwing weapons with F, but it surprisingly turned out to be more confusing than the ability alternative, from my tests. It made it unclear whether you need to train throwing (which you don't), it makes it difficult to add a mana cost, forces you not to quiver anything, etc. Having Project Weapon in ability form also allowed me to include Recall Weapon, which is an interesting positional ability (it incentivises putting your weapon to the opposite side from the enemy, which plays with Pole Vault very well).

Another major change is the removal of the "status effect roulette". I think the roulette was unnecessary to incentivise swapping weapons, and a huge cognitive load as you kept track of who has what status effect. Instead, Afterimage now gives you a defensive boost when swapping. Also, Pressure Points now causes slowness and paralysis with all special attacks, which I think is interesting because it already involves a natural need to cycle weapons. Some weapons are better suited to exploit slowness (polearms for example, or weapons you can Lunge with) while others deal better with paralysis (thanks to stabbing), while others are best at causing the status to begin with (long blades and m&f thanks to the more spammable whirlwind).

I moved which weapons have which attack around, so there is always a meaningful choice. Axes are the best for charging headfirst into a big group of enemies, thanks to the damage amplification you can get on a Lunge+Cleave. This makes them combine very well with Pole Vault weapons so you can quickly jump in and out of the fray. Long Blades and Maces are the best to hit pressure points, while Polearms and Short Blades are the best to exploit status effects (Slowness and Paralysis respectively). Staves and Polearms are always an interesting choice thanks to the mobility that Pole Vault gives even for exploring the dungeon.

Finally, I decided to stop trying to make Unarmed an exception with its own private role. The player is now able to wield anything they want as they traverse the dungeon. The arguable benefit of using unarmed (which is powerful at high levels) is offset by the fact that they will not summon anything behind themselves the first time they grab a weapon from the air, as opposed to weapon-wielding followers of ICJ, which will always start with more armed support.

Third revision (Ieoh Jian Council):

Spoiler: show

Second revision (Wikanna Council):

Spoiler: show

First version (Wiruiamesh)

Spoiler: show

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 20:25 by dowan

It's a very interesting idea, I'd like to see this fleshed out a bit more, although it's actually already fairly well defined.

Seems to step on urkayaw (sp?) a bit, but that doesn't bother me at all. The name looks pronounceable, which is a big problem you might want to work on

.

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 20:56 by vergil

Am I the only one thinking about Gilgamesh? What about throwing spectral copies tho from an endless treasure vault?
Still, sounds fun to me.

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 21:07 by Siegurt

vergil wrote:Am I the only one thinking about Gilgamesh? What about throwing spectral copies tho from an endless treasure vault?
Still, sounds fun to me.

Not familiar at all...

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 21:08 by Steel Neuron

Siegurt wrote:
vergil wrote:Am I the only one thinking about Gilgamesh? What about throwing spectral copies tho from an endless treasure vault?
Still, sounds fun to me.

Not familiar at all...

What's that from?

The idea for this god is inspired in Gilgamesh indeed, but in my case the Final Fantasy VIII version (if you haven't played, he appeared every now and then and attacked with a random sword) and of course the Epic of Gilgamesh. But it sounds like I need to watch that anime!

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 21:10 by Siegurt

Steel Neuron wrote:
Siegurt wrote:
vergil wrote:Am I the only one thinking about Gilgamesh? What about throwing spectral copies tho from an endless treasure vault?
Still, sounds fun to me.

Not familiar at all...

What's that from?

The idea for this god is inspired in Gilgamesh indeed, but in my case the Final Fantasy VIII version (if you haven't played, he appeared every now and then and attacked with a random sword). But it sounds like I need to watch that anime!

I think that image is from fate/stay (there are several amine in that series, not sure which one that is from)

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 21:10 by Airwolf

Very nice!

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 22:12 by BabyRage

Its really hard for me to imagine how the gameplay of this god will look like, but from the first glance it seems like a lot of keypresses. So you basically have active abilities which you want to use every turn/couple of turns? I personally would be too lazy to do that unless they are absolutely OP. While with Trog you can just use berserk and hold tab. Again, I might be mistaken about this. How do you see the gameplay with this god?

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 22:24 by Steel Neuron

BabyRage wrote:Its really hard for me to imagine how the gameplay of this god will look like, but from the first glance it seems like a lot of keypresses. So you basically have active abilities which you want to use every turn/couple of turns? I personally would be too lazy to do that unless they are absolutely OP. While with Trog you can just use berserk and hold tab. Again, I might be mistaken about this. How do you see the gameplay with this god?

Not really, the only active ability you would want to use more than once per encounter is Blade Song. The Maestro abilities are tied to your movement, and aren't that easy to spam (with the exception of whirlwind).

My thought process playing this god would be something like...

> A pack of bees appear.
> Use blade song, get offered a dagger, an axe, and a longsword+shield.
> Choose Longsword + Shield and fight the bees for a bit.
> Use Orchestra and grab an axe from the air. Now that the beers are confused, the axe can deal more damage.
> Instead of attacking directly, since they're less dangerous now, I start walking diagonally close to them, automatically cleaving, dealing damage, and applying weakness.
> An ogre appears and the fight looks like it will go south, move to grab the staff that is floating beside me (from the former orchestra) and use it to Disengage and run away (simply by moving on the opposite direction).

This could be a long-ish fight with only two active abilities used, but several tactical decisions. The Maestro abilities are active in the sense that they require conscious action, but Disengage and Lunge aren't quite spammable, and whirlwind needs careful positioning to be more efficient than simply hitting tab.

For easy encounters, you could just use Blade Song once, get the strongest weapon on display, and lay on Tab. You will not trigger any Maestro abilities, but you're causing status effects and benefitting from the effects of Trance, so the god is doing work for you

Hope this helps!

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 22:35 by BabyRage

Yeah, this explains it. Still, I'm kinda skeptical about god requiring manual movement from you. Imagine doing this hundreds of times during one game.

Monday, 3rd October 2016, 22:57 by milski

I'm not entirely sold on a god who looks to be blatantly aping (one of two versions of) Gilgamesh. I'm also not entirely sold on the idea of the major selling point of a god being "I have 7 awesome fixedarts." Finally, the end effect of this god seems to be similar to Okawaru, with skill enhancements+gear improval, but instead of getting finesse+defense, you get to summon multiple powerful allies and to wield acquirement++ artifacts.

Tuesday, 4th October 2016, 04:23 by and into

You definitely spent some time thinking about this and writing a well put-together proposal, but my impression is that you maybe over-thought this. The god is overly complicated. While I think gods can get away with being complicated to some extent, I think the complications here are unnecessary for achieving the things that are potentially interesting about this god. (In particular, buffing melee combat in different ways based on weapon type, which helps differentiate those weapon types better — but only if you leave in a choice about weapon type, rather than boosting cross-training at the same time....)

I also just plain don't like punishing ranged damage. Stuff like orb spiders exist in the game, after all; this conduct doesn't make those enemies much more interesting, or even that much more dangerous, but makes them a lot more annoying.

Okay, enough complaining. Going from what I think are the interesting bits, plus some other assorted ideas, here's a simpler god inspired by the OP:

Wir

Wir hates cowardice and being forgotten. Piety decays over time at usual rate. Wir occasionally gives tiny piety on kills, but this is much lower than Oka/Trog/Lugonu/etc. and barely keeps pace with decay. On occasion (chance, triggered when a new enemy enters LOS), Wir will call on you to perform great feats of battle; this gives you a temporary status during which you gain much better piety for each kill.

Upon joining: You are immune to hostile teleport/repositioning effects. This also nullifies *tele. ("Wir empowers you to stand your ground.")
* Wir will occasionally enchant a non-artefact melee weapon in your inventory (including the one you are carrying), if you have one.
** Pitched Combat, active, small piety. Instant action. Beam targeting, full LOS. Choose an adversary to engage in pitched combat. Irresistibly blinks target adjacent to you and mesmerizes it. If you move away from the target (via teleport, blink, or regular movement) or attack a different target, the effect ends and you take a big piety hit. ("Wir does not appreciate your cowardice!")
*** One time: Wir will vorpalize (not "?brand") a melee weapon of your choice. You get a passive buff based on weapon type. (see below)
**** Battle focus. Passive. During pitched combat, your attacks gain an additional bonus, based on weapon type, against your chosen adversary. (see below)
***** Weapon Ally, active, high piety. Summons an artefact dancing weapon ally. When first hitting five stars of piety, and periodically thereafter, Wir will "gift" you a weapon ally. These will tend to be very high quality. You cannot use this as a normal weapon, but you can summon it to help you. It disappears back to Wir's vault after the summon times out, after which you will be unable to use this ability until a new weapon ally has been gifted.
****** One time: Artefactize a melee weapon (cf. pubby's smithgod). Select a melee weapon. Wir will offer you three or four different artefact versions of that weapon. Choose one. It is given an artefact name drawn from a special list (for the flavor).

Polearms/axes
passive: crippling strikes — your hits will sometimes weaken target, lowering their damage and AC (rAcid-bypassing corrode can be used here?)
pitched combat: chance for "critical strike" that deals twice the damage (on top of brand)

Staves/m&f:
passive: overwhelming strikes — your hits will sometimes stun targets (lose one or two turns); stunned targets are immune to further stun for a while
pitched combat: better stun chance, target can be stunned multiple times

blades:
passive: en passant — movement that starts or ends adjacent to an enemy has chance of giving free strike
pitched combat: chance to parry melee attacks, which deflects them and causes one-turn distraction (opening up stab possibility upon counterattack)

Tuesday, 4th October 2016, 05:09 by chequers

I like the core idea of a god that encourages swapping between weapons in a single battle. However, I think your design is overly complex.

The active abilities involve significantly increased amounts of micromanagement. Blade song starts as fiddly as potion petition (one of the more complex combat buffs) and gets worse as your piety increases! Additionally, the god changing banked weapons further increases the complexity.

The idea of giving each weapon type additional effects is interesting and one that would synergise with encouraging weapon swapping. A lot of the other mechanics from this God seem less important. Here's a very simple God based on the core idea:

-: Swapping weapons is instant; ' key moves between every weapon in inventory in order
*: Cross-training for all weapons is boosted by 0-x% (scales with piety)
***: Weapon types gain additional effects (scale with invo?)
****: Negative wield/unwield weapon effects are suppressed
*****: Summon dancing weapon allies. Perhaps based on what you have in your inventory. (spellpower scales with invocations)

Tuesday, 4th October 2016, 07:12 by roctavian

Rather than force the player to press ' thousands more times per game, it might be interesting if just one weapon the player wields (maybe the god is a weapon itself) cycled through all different aux attacks (cleave, riposte, reaching, why not even constrict or something) and you spent piety to "lock" it into one for a while if you want it. Better abilities should cost more or be available only at higher levels of piety.

Tuesday, 4th October 2016, 07:14 by Steel Neuron

Thank you guys for the awesome feedback! I'll answer to everything that I can

.

BabyRage wrote:Yeah, this explains it. Still, I'm kinda skeptical about god requiring manual movement from you. Imagine doing this hundreds of times during one game.

I can see your worry. Do you think limiting it somehow would help? The movement abilities could cost mana or cause exhaustion (wouldn't be the first time a triggered ability drains on your MP, like Song of Slaying).

I personally don't think it should be too tiresome, at least not compared to playing any spellcaster. Moving away/strafe around an enemy should be less key presses than pressing z+a to cast a bolt spell, but I guess I can't be sure until I try it.

milski wrote:I'm not entirely sold on a god who looks to be blatantly aping (one of two versions of) Gilgamesh.

I am also a bit unsure about the theme, specially after realizing that there are more depictions of Gilgamesh that overlap with this one. I'm thinking of reworking the theme towards a more arthurian setting. I'm thinking a small council of deities, each with a signature weapon (the council being the entity that you worship).

milski wrote:I'm also not entirely sold on the idea of the major selling point of a god being "I have 7 awesome fixedarts." Finally, the end effect of this god seems to be similar to Okawaru, with skill enhancements+gear improval, but instead of getting finesse+defense, you get to summon multiple powerful allies and to wield acquirement++ artifacts.

I think that's a bit of an unfair assessment, but probably deserved because I don't think I did a good job weighting on my explanation what aspects of the god I consider more important

. The 7 fixedarts aren't really a main mechanic of the god. In fact, it's most likely you won't see them during the game at all, and they wouldn't even be advertised on the religion window. They're there for the possibility of a sudden change of direction in your game, as an occasional challenge.

Similarly, I think gear improval isn't a major point of this god. I'm almost considering getting rid of the passive enchantment mechanic altogether. The key points I'm trying to work the God around are mobility, weapon variety, and being forced to make decisions within a restrictive set of options, which I think aren't covered by Okawaru or Trog.

and into wrote:You definitely spent some time thinking about this and writing a well put-together proposal, but my impression is that you maybe over-thought this. The god is overly complicated. While I think gods can get away with being complicated to some extent, I think the complications here are unnecessary for achieving the things that are potentially interesting about this god. (In particular, buffing melee combat in different ways based on weapon type, which helps differentiate those weapon types better — but only if you leave in a choice about weapon type, rather than boosting cross-training at the same time....)

I agree that, even after simplifying this god from the original idea, it's still overly complicated. I'm definitely thinking of axing one or two main mechanics (and I'll go into that later, based on your suggestions). However, I still believe that restricting your moment-to-moment weapon choices is essential to the idea, namely because people will likely converge to a single weapon type otherwise. My idea with offering weapons in groups of three is to make sure that characters always have a viable option if they have two or three weapon skills at a respectable level, but to punish characters that have only trained one weapon skill.

and into wrote:I also just plain don't like punishing ranged damage. Stuff like orb spiders exist in the game, after all; this conduct doesn't make those enemies much more interesting, or even that much more dangerous, but makes them a lot more annoying.

I agree. I'm taking that out. Any idea of what to do instead that fits the mechanics of the god?

An option is to punish ranged weaponry only, but leave ranged spells and evocables OK. I think this could be valuable because it teaches you that the god doesn't work with bows, crossbows and the like, while remaining a manageable downside. But I'm open to any other ideas.

and into wrote:Okay, enough complaining. Going from what I think are the interesting bits, plus some other assorted ideas, here's a simpler god inspired by the OP:

Thanks for the ideas! I like your take on the idea with Wir, however, I'm still unsure the god would play out as I'd like to if players get a chance to specialize too much. It's interesting that what stood out to you is the passive weapon abilities, as that part of Wiruiamesh is a layer that I added on top of the core idea, which was the semi-random swapping of collected weapons. So while the weapon skill bits are exciting and I'd love to see them in game one way or another, I'd rather axe them, simplify and improve the collection mechanic if possible.

chequers wrote:I like the core idea of a god that encourages swapping between weapons in a single battle. However, I think your design is overly complex.

The active abilities involve significantly increased amounts of micromanagement. Blade song starts as fiddly as potion petition (one of the more complex combat buffs) and gets worse as your piety increases! Additionally, the god changing banked weapons further increases the complexity.

I think you're bang on with this. In particular, after thinking of the god a bit more and reading your feedback, I'm worried that Blade Song can be spammed repeteadly in hopes of being handed a better weapon. However, I think interface-wise it shouldn't be too hard to use; I think it can be salvaged with a couple changes:

Blade Song can ONLY give you weapons from your collection of 7. Your collection starts with seven unenchanted random weapons (+0 glaive, +0 scimitar, etc) so there is always something to offer, even just after joining the god.
Blade Song is recastable, but only after you strike enemies a few times.

The chance for divine weapons is removed completely, and chaining Blade Song to get a particular weapon is disallowed. Artifact weapons would only be obtainable with Blade Recital. What do you think?

chequers wrote:The idea of giving each weapon type additional effects is interesting and one that would synergise with encouraging weapon swapping. A lot of the other mechanics from this God seem less important.

I have to echo my concerns when responding to 'and into' and say that I'm worried the god might not work at all if you're allowed free weapon choice at all times. Or maybe it would, but then it wouldn't be terribly different from other combat enhancing gods. After all, you tend to be given weapons of wildly different power levels, and there is a great incentive not to fiddle with swapping and just use your strongest one.

You mention that passively improving your weapons can be complicated. I agree, and I'm thinking of taking that out. After all, the incentive to steal already exists via Blade Recital, so there is no need to insist on that by improving your own weapons.

So far nobody has commented on the stealing mechanic. Any input on it?

Tuesday, 4th October 2016, 10:47 by Psieye

Siegurt wrote:
Steel Neuron wrote:What's that from?

I think that image is from fate/stay (there are several amine in that series, not sure which one that is from)

The source for that franchise is Fate/Stay Night, a Visual Novel. Of the many anime in that franchise, go for Fate/Zero (or Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works) to maximise on Gilgamesh.

To offer a different take on your idea, suppose the god saw you as a 'test monkey' so he could see his collection in use: weapons aren't as exciting in a (extra-dimensional) storage room as they are in live combat.

- The god forcibly equips you with weapons from his collection. You cannot unwield them. He changes your equipment every X EXP. Distortion on-unwield and Vampiric on-wield effects do not trigger.
- Perfect cross-training: all weapon skills act as if they were at the level of your highest one.
- You cannot throw mundane ammo. Instead, you burn some piety to throw an artifact weapon that becomes an animated pet (like Tukima's Dance) at its destination.
- Seize animated weapon: burn piety to forcibly equip an animated weapon (at melee range). Does not care if it's hostile.
- 5* ability: rain weapons down (think Qazlal's Disaster Area) which then become animated weapons.

This take keeps open the possibility of adding your unique wrath idea and your 'extra tactial movements' idea.

Hmm, some kind of tweak would be needed so you don't find yourself with a -1 falchion when you're in the middle of the lategame.

Tuesday, 4th October 2016, 23:48 by and into

@ Steel Neuron: Right, kind of funny that chequers and I latched onto different aspects of the god as being "core" and thus went in rather opposite directions with our suggestions.

If you want to keep the "weapon cycling" aspect, I think Psieye's approach is a better way for that to work. The -1 falchion problem can be solved by having a high piety ability that swaps your weapon with a powerful artefact for a while, before being swapped to something else eventually.

The other aspect of the original design that I kept was "hates cowardice" and "encourages/approves of melee combat," and (if you will pardon some tooting of my own horn) I think I had two useful ideas in that area:

+ Piety gain mostly through a temporary "call to battle" that has a chance to trigger every time a new enemy comes on screen. This retains the "hates cowardice, approves of bravery" but does so with a carrot, rather than a stick (punishing ranged) that doesn't mix well with some enemies in Crawl.

+ Melee combat will naturally be "encouraged" through this god's abilities—Wir gives you melee weapons but not ranged ones, e.g.—but if you want to emphasize this aspect even more, the Pitched Combat ability that I proposed could be one way. It would also give a good means by which to take care of some otherwise annoying-to-melee enemies.

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 01:33 by dpeg

Interesting! My main worry is that melee will not change much under this god. In other words, I am afraid that one-on-one combat, backtracking to avoid groups etc. would still be the way to go. In particular, the Virtuoso power looks very cool, but it might actually help in performing well in one-on-one situations (e.g. waiting for confuse-stab to kick in).

To me, the core concept is to adapt to ever-changing weapon types. I think the Seven Wonders are distractions. I really like the movement bits.

I don't think players should select weapons from a list. This works for Nemelex cards (because players can spot cards at a glance) and for Gozag potions (because you use the power quite rarely), but I don't think it fits for a power that comes up all the time. This is not so much about keystrokes, but more about having to switch focus to select an item in a list (instead of looking at the main map). There are ways to address this.
For example, weapon types could be selected like Tetris tiles, and announced on the main screen: axe, short sword, polearm, axe, ... There would be no way to modify this list, and a weapon will expire (so the next one is used) if and only if some amount of xp has been achieved with it.

I would really like to do something to break up standard combat. Here's a random idea: there is a chance to have support in battle, in the form of dancing weapons. Chances for these to appear depends on (a) number of opponents in sight and (b) number of adjacent opponents. This should also be completely passive; the player would not use an ability to call for allies. (Of which Crawl has plenty gods.)

In my mental image, this would be a very arcade-like god.

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 06:38 by Steel Neuron

dpeg wrote:Interesting! My main worry is that melee will not change much under this god. In other words, I am afraid that one-on-one combat, backtracking to avoid groups etc. would still be the way to go. In particular, the Virtuoso power looks very cool, but it might actually help in performing well in one-on-one situations (e.g. waiting for confuse-stab to kick in).

Good point about confuse stab! I think I'll change the status effects around so none synergizes too much with itself (that's why I will also try to avoid things like Slow on a polearm).

dpeg wrote:I don't think players should select weapons from a list. This works for Nemelex cards (because players can spot cards at a glance) and for Gozag potions (because you use the power quite rarely), but I don't think it fits for a power that comes up all the time. This is not so much about keystrokes, but more about having to switch focus to select an item in a list (instead of looking at the main map). There are ways to address this.
For example, weapon types could be selected like Tetris tiles, and announced on the main screen: axe, short sword, polearm, axe, ... There would be no way to modify this list, and a weapon will expire (so the next one is used) if and only if some amount of xp has been achieved with it.

There are some ideas here that I really like! I like your idea of reacting to the upcoming weapon. There could be a single skill (request weapon) that gives you whatever weapon is available at the time, and that information is available somewhere in the UI (So you know that, if you hit the skill now, you will get your Polearm). The available weapon could randomly change every so many AUTs like a constant roulette.

dpeg wrote:I would really like to do something to break up standard combat. Here's a random idea: there is a chance to have support in battle, in the form of dancing weapons. Chances for these to appear depends on (a) number of opponents in sight and (b) number of adjacent opponents. This should also be completely passive; the player would not use an ability to call for allies. (Of which Crawl has plenty gods.)

I really like that too. I think I'd rather do what you propose than Orchestra, provided that I keep the ability to grab weapons from the air (potentially leaving the one I had equipped behind). But it's definitely much nicer as a passive.

Here's an outline of how the modified version of the god would look like:

(Piety -): Ability to commit weapons to the collection (praying on them) and X-train boost
(Piety *): Blade dance: Receive whatever weapon is available from your collection and enter Trance (you can see what weapon is available on the UI beside your equipped weapon, which changes every few turns). I'm not sure how fiddly this would be, but the information for the available weapon could even replace the Quiver slot (provided we go on with the idea of hating ranged weaponry).
(Piety **): Status effect bonuses (Virtuoso)
(Piety ***): Weapons from your collection start auto-summoning on high tension situations. Walking into them while in trance "swaps" the weapon (you grab the one you are walking into, and leave your former weapon behind, triggering Maestro abilities from either (or both!)).
(Piety ****): Maestro (movement based abilities from the main proposal).
(Piety *****): Blade Recital Same mechanic as in Blade Dance, using the same UI marker (i.e. gives you a weapon of the available type) but gives you a powerful artifact from W's collection.
(Piety ******): Nothing new (Auto-summoned weapons may be artifacts in high tension situations too).

Do you like this one better?

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 06:45 by Steel Neuron

and into wrote:+ Piety gain mostly through a temporary "call to battle" that has a chance to trigger every time a new enemy comes on screen. This retains the "hates cowardice, approves of bravery" but does so with a carrot, rather than a stick (punishing ranged) that doesn't mix well with some enemies in Crawl.

+ Melee combat will naturally be "encouraged" through this god's abilities—Wir gives you melee weapons but not ranged ones, e.g.—but if you want to emphasize this aspect even more, the Pitched Combat ability that I proposed could be one way. It would also give a good means by which to take care of some otherwise annoying-to-melee enemies.

What worries me a little is that my version of Wir offers powerful tools to run away (slowing, disengage) so allowing ranged could make some tedious kiting playstyles possible. Thematically, by hating cowardice, I meant it in a chivalrous way, i.e. he dislikes when you shoot at enemies from afar, but he isn't necessarily against the idea of running away.

That said, if I were to go towards that route, I like your call to battle idea a lot more than pitched combat, reason being that pitched combat seems to enforce staying still, while If possible I'd like to have a god that revolves around positioning and movement

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 07:00 by Steel Neuron

Thinking further about dpeg's idea, here's another possible implementation that could feel more dynamic and random, without UI weirdness:

(Piety -): Ability to commit weapons to the collection (praying on them) and X-train boost. Weapons are sometimes summoned based on tension and piety. Walking into a weapon while in trance, not only swaps positions, but swaps the weapon too (you grab that weapon from the air and animate the one you had, behind you).
(Piety *): Blade dance: Equip a random weapon from your collection and enter Trance. You may recast Blade Dance, in which case your current weapon is animated beside you, and you get another one (subsequent casts increase in cost based on the number of summoned weapons).
(Piety **): Status effect bonuses (Virtuoso).
(Piety ***): Dissonance: Violently recalls a summoned weapon and equips it, hurting enemies on the way. (mp and exhaustion cost) As usual, your previously equiped weapon is animated.
(Piety ****): Maestro (movement based abilities from the main proposal). Again, they trigger when you grab weapons from the air.
(Piety *****): Blade Recital Get a random artifact weapon from W's arsenal.

I'm leaning towards this idea, I think it's quite organic:

First, you can modulate the amount of summoned weapons by recasting blade dance (albeit at an increased cost) surrounding yourself with more of your weaponry. At high tension, Wir will do part of the job for you.

Then, you can spot the combos as you go based on what you have floating around you, and experiment with your movement.

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 08:32 by Psieye

and into wrote:If you want to keep the "weapon cycling" aspect, I think Psieye's approach is a better way for that to work. The -1 falchion problem can be solved by having a high piety ability that swaps your weapon with a powerful artefact for a while, before being swapped to something else eventually.

Ah, I left things ambiguous. My post's solution to "-1 falchion" was "you throw a (newly generated) artifact weapon, which becomes animated that you then grab" - flaw being, that spends precious turns. My current thought is "weapons are generated at appropriate base types given your weapon skill". As in, you will not get a Falchion (unless it's at +20 enchantment) if you're at 26 skill.

Steel Neuron wrote:Ability to commit weapons to the collection (praying on them)

This detail I do not like. "Saving" your favourite weapons and thus, customising what you'll get from 'the weapon roulette' is more micromanagement than I'd like for this god.

Alternate detail: Auto-sacrifice any artifact weapon you see: the god automatically takes any artifact weapon in sight while giving you some piety. Regardless of whether that was on the floor or was being wielded by an enemy. You don't get to save it.

Steel Neuron wrote:Walking into a weapon while in trance, not only swaps positions, but swaps the weapon too (you grab that weapon from the air and animate the one you had, behind you).

Violently recalls a summoned weapon and equips it, hurting enemies on the way. (mp and exhaustion cost) As usual, your previously equiped weapon is animated.

This I do like. But without the "while in trance" requirement, and with my "you cannot manually unwield - you are always holding onto something the god lent you" restriction. Possibly combine with "you throw your currently equipped (god-lent) weapon to animate at target location (while damaging enemies in the way)". A new weapon is automatically generated in your hands when you throw your current one.

Steel Neuron wrote:What worries me a little is that my version of Wir offers powerful tools to run away (slowing, disengage) so allowing ranged could make some tedious kiting playstyles possible.

That said, if I were to go towards that route, I like your call to battle idea a lot more than pitched combat, reason being that pitched combat seems to enforce staying still, while If possible I'd like to have a god that revolves around positioning and movement

dpeg wrote:Interesting! My main worry is that melee will not change much under this god. In other words, I am afraid that one-on-one combat, backtracking to avoid groups etc. would still be the way to go.

I would really like to do something to break up standard combat.

Even without your status effects, just having lots of summoned pets makes running away easy. Very well, we want to encourage big melee combat. Let's brainstorm some ideas, we can sort them into Good and Bad later. The following are options which could be taken together or separately:

The chain that bound the heavenly bull: the god summons (without your consent) a chain that fast-pulls targets into melee range. On Turn 1, a portal opens up near you and a chain (think Malign Gateway tentacle but with metal skin) extends out to constrict the target. On Turn 2, the target is now positioned where the portal was. The chain has already been retracted and is gone together with the portal.
Divine convocations: when you are in low-tension combat, the god will randomly instant-cast Word of Recall (what Ironbrand Convokers need 3 turns to do). If you are in a corridor (i.e. there are 2 open spaces adjacent to you) then you are guaranteed to have two hostiles next to you when this happens. Any adjacent allies you had will be pushed/blinked/teleported away to make space. If you are in a killhole (i.e. there is 1 open space adjacent to you), YOU get translocated to somewhere with enemies.
the god summons a unique animated weapon next to far away enemies. This 'ally' then forcibly relocates said enemies to your vicinity, either by Force Lance-style pushing or outright Iron Giant-style throwing.
piety loss upon escaping via stairs when there's a big group of enemies around. Or outright Vaults Warden-style stairs locking when there's a big fight to be had. Teleporting is fine.
heal on encountering new enemies. Extra defences the more non-popcorn enemies you are surrounded by.

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 12:52 by Steel Neuron

Psieye wrote:This detail I do not like. "Saving" your favourite weapons and thus, customising what you'll get from 'the weapon roulette' is more micromanagement than I'd like for this god.

Alternate detail: Auto-sacrifice any artifact weapon you see: the god automatically takes any artifact weapon in sight while giving you some piety. Regardless of whether that was on the floor or was being wielded by an enemy. You don't get to save it.

Hmm, I'm not sure, I kind of like the idea of having your own "pokemon team" of weapons. Problem with your artifact idea is that the game may completely screw you over (several cursed artifacts, artifacts of a type you have no aptitude for...).

If I had to put the finger on the "feeling" that got me to propose Wir, it's playing a melee character, finding an exciting artifact and realizing I just won't have a chance to use it this game, either because I have something better already or because I didn't train for it. Being able to put that artifact at the forefront of my strategy, without sacrificing the rest, is what I want Wir to do for me.

Psieye wrote:This I do like. But without the "while in trance" requirement, and with my "you cannot manually unwield - you are always holding onto something the god lent you" restriction. Possibly combine with "you throw your currently equipped (god-lent) weapon to animate at target location (while damaging enemies in the way)". A new weapon is automatically generated in your hands when you throw your current one.

I agree that as we evolve the idea, it seems like trance is less necessary. I agree that we could do away with it completely, and your proposal of only wielding gifts is good enough.

Summoning by throwing or by, well, just summoning is a bit of a last minute detail I'd say. Whatever feels best

.

Steel Neuron wrote:Even without your status effects, just having lots of summoned pets makes running away easy. Very well, we want to encourage big melee combat. Let's brainstorm some ideas, we can sort them into Good and Bad later.

Here is another one, inspired by the way you phrased the question:

Passive weapon summoning happens not based on tension, but on the melee damage you deal. The more you hit, the more weapons that appear around you. If you do anything OTHER than a-> Attacking, b-> Auxiliary maestro attacks or c-> Weapon swapping, the summoned weapons will start to disappear in two turns (One per turn).

I think this mechanic would act as a 'bravery' enforcer on itself. If you choose to stay and fight, you will manifest your weapons quicker, but if you flee, they'll disappear in very little time. You get a grace period of one turn to cast a spell or to get some extra tactical movement, but if you chain two actions that aren't weapon-related, you lose your divine help.

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 15:59 by Psieye

Steel Neuron wrote:Hmm, I'm not sure, I kind of like the idea of having your own "pokemon team" of weapons.

If I had to put the finger on the "feeling" that got me to propose Wir, it's playing a melee character, finding an exciting artifact and realizing I just won't have a chance to use it this game, either because I have something better already or because I didn't train for it. Being able to put that artifact at the forefront of my strategy, without sacrificing the rest, is what I want Wir to do for me.

I can respect that feeling, but it runs counter to my aim of "once you've touched the wealth of the god's personal arsenal, nothing else excites you". Those artifacts which are 'exciting' to other characters should feel mundane and boring to worshippers of this god. Whether that's a sensible thing to actually do from a balance perspective is up in the air, but that's the direction I'm coming from. See Fate/Zero to have your idea of 'wealth' steamrolled by Gilgamesh.

Steel Neuron wrote:Problem with your artifact idea is that the game may completely screw you over (several cursed artifacts, artifacts of a type you have no aptitude for...).

Summoning by throwing or by, well, just summoning is a bit of a last minute detail I'd say.

Mitigable given the other details of my idea:
- Curses? On-unwield bad effects like *Slow? Suppress them all. You can't unwield except by the god's methods anyway.
- No aptitude? Irrelevant. Every weapon skill acts like your highest one. A Merfolk worshipping this god can use Maces (-2 apt) just as well as Polearms (+4 apt).
- -1 Falchion? Throw it at the enemy and get another weapon. Or just pick up a better one animated besides you.

Yes, "throw and summon another weapon" is not a last minute detail in my version (seriously, Fate/Zero).

Steel Neuron wrote:
Passive weapon summoning happens not based on tension, but on the melee damage you deal. The more you hit, the more weapons that appear around you. If you do anything OTHER than a-> Attacking, b-> Auxiliary maestro attacks or c-> Weapon swapping, the summoned weapons will start to disappear in two turns (One per turn).

I think this mechanic would act as a 'bravery' enforcer on itself. If you choose to stay and fight, you will manifest your weapons quicker, but if you flee, they'll disappear in very little time. You get a grace period of one turn to cast a spell or to get some extra tactical movement, but if you chain two actions that aren't weapon-related, you lose your divine help.

This plus d-> "beseech god to throw a monster you can see into your melee range", preferably by the 'chain that bound the heavenly bull' idea.

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 17:17 by Steel Neuron

I just edited the main topic with a major revision of Wiruiamesh.

I took a lot of feedback from the thread for this new version, even if the implementation itself isn't necessarily the same as was suggested sometimes, but I hope this falls more in line with what people would like to see

Wednesday, 5th October 2016, 18:33 by Psieye

Going away from Gilgamesh was a good move, but stepping on Okawaru's flavour toes is questionable. Why not make them smiths, not war heroes?

Weapon types that already cross-trained do so at a 60% rate (from 40%), while weapon types that didn't crosstrain now do, at a 20% rate.

Make it a flat 80% crosstraining regardless of what the normal status quo is. Otherwise you severely distort the skill decisions - unless that's your intention. Still, needs to be higher so that being Lv 26 in your best weapon means you're at least Lv 20 on your best cross-trained skills for no EXP investment.

The council's rage is substantially affected by the quality of weapon stolen.

Stealing itself is an interesting twist to god abandonment. Putting in 'uber unrands' just to have bigger risk/reward wraths is unnecessary in my view. I'd rather the stealing idea be cut if that's what it takes to leave the uber unrands out of this.

Also, clarify what happens when the Council summons a weapon, you grab it, then combat is over so all animated weapons go back to the Collection. Does the weapon in your hand disappear?

Thursday, 6th October 2016, 08:57 by Steel Neuron

Psieye wrote:Going away from Gilgamesh was a good move, but stepping on Okawaru's flavour toes is questionable. Why not make them smiths, not war heroes?

Good point.

How about a faint Shaolin / chinese TMA flavour? A council of seven ascended monks doesn't really conflict with anything that I can think of, and it fits the idea of martial expertise and being able to use several weapons (think Wushu forms).

Make it a flat 80% crosstraining regardless of what the normal status quo is. Otherwise you severely distort the skill decisions - unless that's your intention. Still, needs to be higher so that being Lv 26 in your best weapon means you're at least Lv 20 on your best cross-trained skills for no EXP investment.

Sounds fair to me. I think I went a bit on the low side: My intention is to require a bit of an extra investment in weapon skills, but not hugely so. I'm not that great with DCSS number crunching, but I'd expect a player worshipping Wikanna Council to spend around 50% more EXP in weapon skills that he would otherwise. What about 80% between weapons that already cross-trained and 60% between those that didn't?

Stealing itself is an interesting twist to god abandonment. Putting in 'uber unrands' just to have bigger risk/reward wraths is unnecessary in my view. I'd rather the stealing idea be cut if that's what it takes to leave the uber unrands out of this.

You know what? Fuck it, the uber unrands idea doesn't seem too well received so I'm axing it

. I'll keep the randarts, and they'll be generated via normal Acquirement code. I'll get rid of the uber stuff, and just extend the Council's rage if you steal a randart. It could be possible to spawn the ocassional unrand as well from the base game, but I'm unsure of the implications of this.

Also, clarify what happens when the Council summons a weapon, you grab it, then combat is over so all animated weapons go back to the Collection. Does the weapon in your hand disappear?

It does, but it takes a bit longer. The weapon in your hand should stay for long enough that you can comfortably find the new pack of monsters and use it there as well. It should be lost if you rest however. A time frame I'm looking at is around half the time needed for meat to rot.

The reason for this is to give you an incentive to keep pushing on when you have a cool weapon, while still making it impossible to just use it as your main one forever.

Thursday, 6th October 2016, 09:56 by Psieye

Sounds like we now have a worthwhile design to observe in an experimental branch. Exact balance details can be tweaked easily once the core features are in.

Thursday, 6th October 2016, 11:47 by Steel Neuron

Psieye wrote:Sounds like we now have a worthwhile design to observe in an experimental branch. Exact balance details can be tweaked easily once the core features are in.

Cool

. I can't wait to start coding. Let's see what other people think.

Does anyone know Chinese? If we're going with the TMA / Wushu feel, I think something like "Wxxxx xxx Council", where "Wxxxx xxx" are similar enough to sounding Chinese to sound nice, while not being actual Chinese, would be a better name.

Thursday, 6th October 2016, 11:55 by Floodkiller

Interesting idea, but I would change this:

Maces/Flails and Staves gain Disengage: When moving directly away from a monster, the monster is violently pushed back two squares and dealt 1.5 times weapon damage.

From the context, it looks like a passive ability rather than an activated (piety costing) ability. With that in mind, it heavily encourages using pillar dancing/kiting to kill by retreating until it activates, waiting until the enemy is adjacent again, then repeating until it dies.

Thursday, 6th October 2016, 12:02 by Steel Neuron

Floodkiller wrote:Interesting idea, but I would change this:
Maces/Flails and Staves gain Disengage: When moving directly away from a monster, the monster is violently pushed back two squares and dealt 1.5 times weapon damage.

From the context, it looks like a passive ability rather than an activated (piety costing) ability. With that in mind, it heavily encourages using pillar dancing/kiting to kill by retreating until it activates, waiting until the enemy is adjacent again, then repeating until it dies.

Yeah, I was worried about this. What about taking out the damage altogether? The trigger is still there, but it just pushes them back (say, via gust of wind).

I'll think about that one a bit more.

Thursday, 6th October 2016, 12:14 by Shard1697

I do like the flavor of a 'diety' that is a group/collective instead of one being.

Thursday, 6th October 2016, 12:51 by DracheReborn

I like some aspects of the revised proposal

But now I'm going to put my critical hat on :twisted:

A weapon collection supported by non-annoying Tukima's seems like a promising concept. But make no mistake, this is pretty strong. Allies in crawl are pretty good generally, dancing weapons are fast besides, and when your collection is full of good base weapons with decent brands then they can hit like trucks. Sidenote: it's also somewhat spoilery what makes a good dancing weapon - IIRC someone pointed out before that dire flails are better than GSCs because of how monster attacks work.

IMO you shouldn't have both Steel Vortex and Martial Master. Getting one set of new effects is maybe ok, but 2 is definitely too much.

I'm a bit curious what your concept of a "powerful" randart is. Do you mean huge pluses, and maybe a good base type and brand? How does it compare with, say, Plutonium Sword?

I'm not sure I like the stealing mechanic. It makes the god feel like it's designed to be abandoned - Oka for example also suffers from this. OTOH I guess the tension when you're lent a really good weapon is interesting - do you abandon the god to ensure further use of the weapon? Hmm. Pretty problematic with Divine Blade though. If you decide to abandon the god, you can spam this ability (you don't care about piety at that point) until you get a really nice weapon, then abandon.

Friday, 7th October 2016, 14:46 by Steel Neuron

DracheReborn wrote:I like some aspects of the revised proposal But now I'm going to put my critical hat on

I wouldn't expect any less!

DracheReborn wrote:A weapon collection supported by non-annoying Tukima's seems like a promising concept. But make no mistake, this is pretty strong. Allies in crawl are pretty good generally, dancing weapons are fast besides, and when your collection is full of good base weapons with decent brands then they can hit like trucks. Sidenote: it's also somewhat spoilery what makes a good dancing weapon - IIRC someone pointed out before that dire flails are better than GSCs because of how monster attacks work.

Fair enough. I think that should be easy to modulate though, even with something as simple as a flat damage nerf from normal Tukima's. It's something I can't really tell without testing (by me and people more skilled at the game than I am, which is probably everyone).

DracheReborn wrote:IMO you shouldn't have both Steel Vortex and Martial Master. Getting one set of new effects is maybe ok, but 2 is definitely too much.

I feel like I have to justify a bit why I had two sets of skills: The reason is that I wanted to differentiate every weapon type from each other. Initially, I had a single passive that involved movement triggered attacks, and there was a different one per weapon type. It was horribly complex though, and a bit of an infodump when you reached that level.

By having two passives that apply to different pairs of weapon, I believe that I can achieve 100% differentiation between weapons without overloading the player with too much info at once, keeping it relatively simple. If this still feels complex, I might do away with the damage bonuses by hitting enemies, and leave the status effect chance only (since there is already an implicit incentive to swap weapons once you have applied the status effect, since they don't stack).

DracheReborn wrote:I'm a bit curious what your concept of a "powerful" randart is. Do you mean huge pluses, and maybe a good base type and brand? How does it compare with, say, Plutonium Sword?

I haven't thought of it in much detail yet. I'm looking at good base + brand, high enchantment level, and a few more pluses, with at least a couple guaranteed defensive ones.

DracheReborn wrote:I'm not sure I like the stealing mechanic. It makes the god feel like it's designed to be abandoned - Oka for example also suffers from this. OTOH I guess the tension when you're lent a really good weapon is interesting - do you abandon the god to ensure further use of the weapon? Hmm. Pretty problematic with Divine Blade though. If you decide to abandon the god, you can spam this ability (you don't care about piety at that point) until you get a really nice weapon, then abandon.

I'm considering whether or not Divine Blade is at all necessary. However, I think stealing is a major mechanic of this god, and isn't much worse than abandoning any gift-giving god; after all, by abandoning the Council you're already making significant sacrifices (forfeiting all of your weapon collection, for starters).

Saturday, 8th October 2016, 01:58 by dpeg

Even more interesting now!

I am not sure if the current proposal (Council) is strong enough to break the standard tactics (compare to what Uskayaw has to do in order to achieve that). But it'd be interesting to see!

Regarding the dancing weapons: as DracheReborn says, these are extremely strong. This mainly means that, at lower piety, one has to be careful (they could be rare, or need more tension to kick in; they could also be much weaker than standard dancing weapons). It is important to distinguish the weapons from standard summons, which can be used very well for fleeing -- I think you achieve this by disbanding them very quickly. I think it's best if there's no temptation to carry them into the next battle: if you have a clear rule a la "two turns without attack will dismiss all dancing weapons", then that's easy to plan for, and also creates more distance to Uskayaw.

Some questions: could this concept incentivise luring monsters, to creater bigger battles and hence stronger effects?
I'm still not sure if I understand how the weapon rotation will work out: the player is assumed to train all weapon classes a bit?
A random idea: what if enemies can swap position with your dancing weapons freely (i.e. they attack them, and swap if that makes them get closer to you)? (This is another attempt to make the weapons less summon/ally-like.)

Saturday, 8th October 2016, 02:17 by goodcoolguy

Tukima's dance-type weapons are very similar to a common Nemelex card and it sounds like this god would play a lot like a dancing weapon themed Yredelemnul, though passive summon activation probably has some UX advantages over permanent allies.

The thrown weapon idea seems kind of interesting, though targeting monsters with summons/allies is iffy in terms of balance. It would be good not to have to go through the abilities menu to use it though. If you're wielding one of the god weapons, it could just bar you from throwing anything else so that using f throws it. Should play faster. It would be nice for all the god abilities to work through movement and combat commands. You also get around some of the potential balance issue if you require the player to already be in possession of a god weapon to use the ability.

Saturday, 8th October 2016, 18:35 by Quazifuji

I have too main concerns. One is completely design-related and not about balance at all. The other is related to balance, but is less about the absolute power of the god, and more about how the interaction between the god's mechanics could make it difficult to balance out the different mechanics the god provides.

Complexity of Steel Vortex

Ignoring balance concerns, I think the concept of swapping around with your dancing weapons is really cool. That said, I'm concerned about Steel Vortex. On the one hand, I see what you're trying to do - encourage constantly swapping between weapon types to put all of the status effects on enemies and take advantage of the bonuses. On the other hand, I think keeping track of which weapons cause which status effects and which ones get bonuses against which effects could be confusing. Maybe it wouldn't actually be that bad in practice - to some extent, you can just remember Blades -> axes/M&F -> Polearms and Staves -> Blades, or even just attack the same enemy that your dancing weapons are attacking since your dancing weapons get steel vortex too. But I still feel like maybe the same basic effect could be accomplished in a way that's simpler, or at least doesn't require keeping track of as much.

With Martial Master, it might be easier to keep track of, but it's also more complicated. You're talking about adding three completely new mechanics for a single god ability.

Ultimately, while I like your goal of trying to differentiate between weapon types, I think I might abandon that idea and instead just focusing on encouraging using a variety of weapon types in the same battle. I'm not sure the best way to do this, and it makes the god a bit less interesting, but I think it could still be interesting enough while requiring the player to keep track of way less information to take advantage of the god's abilities. I think the player should be encouraged to swap with dancing weapons regularly and not just treat them as normal summons. I'm just not sure if making the player keep track of multiple different effects for each weapon type is the best way to achieve that.

Tying Weapon Swaps to Dancing Weapons

From a "coolness" standpoint, I love the idea of your collection weapons spawning as dancing weapons around you, and swapping between them by moving onto them. It's an awesome image if you imagine the character fighting that way, and it's a really neat solution to the high maintenance of the original proposal.

My concern is that you've now tied the two main mechanics of the god - being provided with dancing weapons, and being provided with alternative weapons and encouraged to swap between them - together. The god only provides alternative weapons in the form of dancing weapons, so every time you get the opportunity to switch weapon types, you're also given a new minion.

The problem is, these two things are best provided in different quantities. For swapping weapons, it seems like the goal is that it should be done frequently, and the player should have a choice in the matter. Steel Vortex and Martial Master both seem designed to make the player carefully consider which of the weapons being presented to them is the best option at the time, and to swap frequently as a tactical decision to take advantage of the effects of different weapons. So it seems like the weapon swapping is something where you want the player to very frequently be given multiple weapons to swap from. On the other hand, as others have pointed out, dancing weapons are very powerful. Even giving the player one free dancing weapon on a regular basis is a strong effect, let alone up to 6, or rarely even more when you get the special council weapons.

The problem is that, in your current proposal, these are tied together. That means there are two possibilities: either the player isregularly given many dancing weapons, which is very overpowered even if it does also make full use of the collection and weapon swap mechanics, or dancing weapons are relatively rare, but then the god's other mechanics aren't really used much.

So as much as I love the idea of collection weapons manifesting themselves as dancing weapons, it might be best to decouple those mechanics. That way you can adjust the frequency with which the player is given weapon swap opportunities independently from the number of free minions the player gets.

Saturday, 8th October 2016, 20:42 by vergil

Gimme those abilities. Just do it. They're really awesome and impressive!

You've done a great job once again rewriting this stuff and I hope to see it implemented.

Spoiler: show

Saturday, 8th October 2016, 21:11 by Steel Neuron

Quazifuji wrote:I have too main concerns. One is completely design-related and not about balance at all. The other is related to balance, but is less about the absolute power of the god, and more about how the interaction between the god's mechanics could make it difficult to balance out the different mechanics the god provides.

Thank you for your awesome post

. This is giving me the last hints that I need to have something that I'm comfortable with coding. I appreciate the in-depth analysis.

Quazifuji wrote:Complexity of Steel Vortex

I've been thinking the same. My final version of the Council addresses this, and you'll see how in a minute; but I agree, remembering the rotation is quite hard. The new version should be simpler.

Quazifuji wrote:Tying Weapon Swaps to Dancing Weapons

I think I might have been creating unrealistic expectations when I compared the effect to Tukima's. I don't want it to be as powerful, definitely

. The amount of weapons spawned should not scale linearly, so the chance to get the first and second is much higher than the chance to get any further than that.

The last version of the god that I have in mind goes as follows (will update the main proposal once more when I'm ready to start coding):

By the way, names are very much WIP. I need to ask someone who speaks chinese, but Wu Jian is the closest romanized words for "Sword Dance" that I could find.

Wu Jian Council

Powers
Piety level (-) "Disciple"

Substantially increases the effects of crosstraining. Weapon types that already cross-trained do so at an 80% rate (from 40%), while weapon types that didn't crosstrain now do, at a 60% rate. This includes Unarmed Combat.
Hitting enemies in melee has a chance to materialize weapons from your collection (or rarely, the Council's), as if they were affected by Tukima's dance. Weapons summoned this way gain all beneficial effects from Pressure Points. Walking into a weapon will cause you to equip it immediately, leaving your former equipped weapon behind (imagine a normal tile swap with a friendly minion, but the weapon changes hands).

Piety level (*) "Scholar"

Project Weapon: (small food, 2 MP, active) Throw your equipped weapon at the enemy, dealing extra damage. The weapon is immediately summoned beside the enemy. If you had no weapon when you cast this ability, you instead throw a random weapon from your collection.

Piety level (**) "Monk"

Pressure Points: All of your weapons gain the chance to inflict different status effects. Summoned weapons are also affected:
- Attacks with Short and Long blades have a chance to cause slowness.
- Attacks with Axes and Maces/Flails have a chance to cause confusion.
- Attacks with Polearms and Staves have a chance to cause weakness.

Piety level (***) "Master"

Death Palm: Your unarmed attacks, including off hand attacks and kicks, have a small chance to make the enemy explode (disintegration effect). The chance increases against confused, weak, and slow enemies.

Piety level (****) "Grand Master"

Dancing Dragon:Your martial abilities improve as your connection to the Council strenghtens. All of your weapons gain new auxiliary attacks that trigger on movement (even when grabbing and dropping weapons from the air).
- Long Blades and Axes gain Whirlwind: When moving from a space adjacent to a monster to another space adjacent to it, the monster is hit for the weapon's base damage.
- Maces/Flails and Staves gain Disengage: When moving directly away from a monster, you perform an imprecise attack. If it hits, the monster is violently pushed back two squares and dealt 0.5 times weapon damage.
- Short Blades and Polearms gain Lunge: When moving directly towards a monster, you perform a powerful lunging attack, hitting for 2.0 times weapon damage.

Piety level (*****) "Golden Sage"

No new abilities. Increases the chance of receiving powerful artifact weapons.

Piety level (******) "Red Tiger"

Steel Dragonfly Technique: (food, 5 MP, active) Projects all weapons towards a single monster, unsummoning them after the strike (all summoned weapons + your equipped weapon are thrown at once and they immediately disappear), dealing extra damage and increasing the chance to apply Pressure Point for each of them.

Some notes on general design: The way I'm thinking of implementing the weapon despawn is following the next two rules:

Weapons stay at minimum one full turn in the battlefield after being summoned.
After two consecutive actions from the player that aren't melee attacks or auxiliary attacks from Dancing Dragon, one weapon will despawn per turn (oldest first).

Knowing that, if you were to spam Project Weapon, since it's not a melee skill, weapons would be constantly spawning and despawning, each of them having a chance to hit exactly once (aside from the throw damage itself). So you could use this as a "cycling" mechanic to find the weapon you want, but it shouldn't create an overpowering amount of summoned weapons.

On the other hand, chance for weapons to spawn is going to be very non-linear. The first weapon will be almost guaranteed to appear after an unarmed hit, but further weapons will be less likely to spawn proportionally to the number of weapons in the field (including the equipped one). If you want the full flight of seven you will have to stay in melee very long.

I got rid of the damage bonus from Steel Vortex (now named Pressure Points) because, frankly, it was a bit boring and complicated. Non-stacking status effects is already incentive enough to switch. I instead added Death Palm, which is a lot more thematic and I think more straight forward: Unarmed attacks become the finisher, with an increased chance to blow up an enemy if they have been weakened first with the weapons. This will make what you have to do more obvious: If your enemy is already suffering from one or more status effects, switch to unarmed for the kill.

Speaking of finishers, I think Divine Blade was quite boring too, and a similar effect can be achieved by having randarts spawn more often in high tension. Instead, the capstone ability is a huge nuke that despawns every weapon and plays into the rest of the kit (and can set you up for a death palm right aftewards, which should be almost guaranteed to trigger against monsters suffering from all three status effects). On Tiles mode, it should also be quite spectacular to see the throwing animation from each weapon converging on the same mob.

Another reason for Steel Dragonfly Technique is to give you a tactical way to dispose of weapons, instead of just watching them disappear, when you are forced to retreat or abandon melee combat for any reason. It should be a good capstone ability that really reflects your mastery of the God I think, being able to conquer that small inefficiency.

Saturday, 8th October 2016, 21:13 by Steel Neuron

vergil wrote:Gimme those abilities. Just do it. They're really awesome and impressive!

You've done a great job once again rewriting this stuff and I hope to see it implemented.

Spoiler: show
That Project weapon nerdgasm. Please make it real devs. Please please please?

Thanks!! I love the enthusiasm

I hope you like the version from my last post, the Wu Jian Council, because I think I'm not going to touch it any further.

Regarding development, I haven't worked on Crawl before, but I write C for a living so I'm planning to work on it myself. However, I'd really appreciate the help of a more veteran dev that can give me some tips on how to implement the mechanics of this god, so I have a bit of a headstart.

Sunday, 9th October 2016, 16:24 by Lasty

There is some fun stuff going on in these proposals, and I think with good editing you could create something quite interesting. I think the best elements are spawning weapons on melee, throwing weapons that then dance, and being able to switch weapons midcombat by movement to get access to new effects. I think the problems with the proposal are all the fiddly choices: managing a collection, having to compare weapons constantly, tracking up to three status effects and which weapons offer them, having to switch to unarmed to get certain effects.

I think you should focus on the simple to manage ideas that transform gameplay and smooth out the rest. Have all the weapons' power level based directly on your skill in that weapon in a standard way so every time you wield the long blade you'll know what you're getting without looking. Either give 100℅ cross training or remove it completely and have each weapon skill you raise do something different. Make throwing weapons use the f key instead of the ability menu. Make it so you only switch weapons when you want access to a new effect so you don't need to do it in every fight.

You could build something really cool here. I'll try to give a more specific suggestion when I'm not on my phone.

Sunday, 9th October 2016, 16:32 by DracheReborn

Quazifuji wrote:The problem is that, in your current proposal, these are tied together. That means there are two possibilities: either the player isregularly given many dancing weapons, which is very overpowered even if it does also make full use of the collection and weapon swap mechanics, or dancing weapons are relatively rare, but then the god's other mechanics aren't really used much.

So as much as I love the idea of collection weapons manifesting themselves as dancing weapons, it might be best to decouple those mechanics. That way you can adjust the frequency with which the player is given weapon swap opportunities independently from the number of free minions the player gets.

I agree this is a key problem to solve. One way perhaps is to make this god's dancing weapons weaker than regular ones (I think dpeg already suggested this), e.g. make them attack less often + have weaker defenses, but TBH I don't have good ideas on this score. Even weak allies are still pretty useful defensively.

To OP: I think the overwhelming feedback you've received is that your god design has too many effects already, so adding another one (disintegration) may not be the best idea. IMO you already encourage UC because it means one possible extra ally - just make the chance for this greater, maybe.

IMO this proposal is promising, but needs to be streamlined. And basic issues such as what Quazifuji pointed out need to be addressed.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, project weapon and the final ability should cost piety. Cycling through project weapon before every battle isn't going to be fun.

Sunday, 9th October 2016, 16:56 by Quazifuji

A few thoughts on the new version:

More Incentive to Switch Weapons

It might be interesting to add a damage bonus (around 50-100%) for your next attack after switching weapons.

My reasoning is basically this: right now, you're somewhat incentivised to switch weapons to take advantage of their different properties, particularly to stack all three Pressure Point effects. However, switching weapons has a cost: it requires moving onto a dancing weapon, which both takes a turn, and changes your positioning. I'm concerned that even in cases where switching weapons would be useful, it wouldn't be worth it. This could especially be an issue with Dancing Dragon: Dancing Dragon's abilities all center around giving different weapons different positioning tools, except switching weapons in the first place requires potentially compromising your positioning. Sure, there could be some really cool scenarios where you're wielding a sword or axe, sidestep onto a staff to get the simultaneous whirlwind and weapon swap, then step away and get a simultaneous disengage and swap to a lunge weapon. But I'm worried that a lot of the time, switching weapons won't feel worth it.

If that ends up being the case, then adding a small damage bonus on your next attack after a weapon switch could be a way to help this issue. My thinking is that it wouldn't be so much to actively reward the player for switching weapons, as it would be to mitigate the turn cost of switching weapons. As is, any weapon swap that doesn't trigger dancing dragon is essentially a loss in damage, since you're taking a turn to switch weapon when you could have been attacking. If weapon swapping boosted your next attack, then you've essentially reduced the cost of a weapon swap.

Lunge is a bad fit for polearms, disengage makes more sense

Polearms' can attack from two spaces away. This means that polearms generally don't want to step towards a monster, because one of their main advantages is the ability to get an extra attack against an approaching melee monster that's two spaces away from you. Thus, lunge has anti-synergy with reach: it encourages you to step into melee range with monsters using the one melee weapon type that would rather be two steps away.

Meanwhile, disengage has fantastic synergy with polearms. It pushes enemies away, giving you a chance to get in another reach attack as the monster approaches.

On a related note...

Disengage is too strong and encourages tedious kiting

The main objection to putting disengage on polearms is that it would encourage repeatedly disengaging, letting the monster approach, getting in a reach attack, and then disengaging again when the monster reaches you.

On the other hand, any weapon type could kit a speed 10 melee monster through repeated disengages. Polearms just do it a bit more efficiently. Even if you make the knockback effect unreliable, or remove it entirely, you can kill any speed 10 melee monster just by running away with repeated disengages.

Overall, I think the ability to reliably damage a monster while running away from it just can't exist.

Sunday, 9th October 2016, 17:35 by Psieye

Lasty wrote:I think the best elements are spawning weapons on melee, throwing weapons that then dance, and being able to switch weapons midcombat by movement to get access to new effects.

Make throwing weapons use the f key instead of the ability menu.

It seems these should be the core skeleton features that get written, debugged and committed first. Then add the 'pokemon team of my favourite weapons' and everything else. Makes it easier to contrast what adds net value and what doesn't.

Sunday, 9th October 2016, 18:05 by Steel Neuron

I'm on mobile at the moment too (so I can't respond to everyone fully), but I was wondering: how would you feel about disengage if it had a very low chance to hit? Capped to 30% for example. That way, you'd run away from a slower monster before being able to use it, and you would still be in danger against faster monsters. Worst case scenario, it shouldn't be more useful defensively as Riposte is when you're running away.

Otherwise, we could get rid of the damage on Disengage altogether and leave the pushback, but I still think the pushback is nice tactically in how it melds with other weapon effects

.

Another option could be:

Disengage: Your attacks with polearms / maces and flails at close range push enemies back one square. Not as elegant, but it can also open up tactical plays.

Or to keep it a bit more fair:

Disengage: If you move away immediately after attacking a monster at close range, you attack and push the monster away.

Lasty wrote:I think you should focus on the simple to manage ideas that transform gameplay and smooth out the rest. Have all the weapons' power level based directly on your skill in that weapon in a standard way so every time you wield the long blade you'll know what you're getting without looking. Either give 100℅ cross training or remove it completely and have each weapon skill you raise do something different. Make throwing weapons use the f key instead of the ability menu. Make it so you only switch weapons when you want access to a new effect so you don't need to do it in every fight.

I agree. I'm whipping up a branch with the barebones stuff and I think 100% cross-train on everything works just fine; aptitudes take care of the slight preferences of your character. Throwing with F should not be a problem. I agree about not needing to change in every fight, that's why I'm somewhat unsure about the possibility of offering a damage bonus after switching. I think restricting that to unarmed is more than enough, if at all.

Sunday, 9th October 2016, 18:26 by Steel Neuron

Psieye wrote:
Lasty wrote:I think the best elements are spawning weapons on melee, throwing weapons that then dance, and being able to switch weapons midcombat by movement to get access to new effects.

Make throwing weapons use the f key instead of the ability menu.

It seems these should be the core skeleton features that get written, debugged and committed first. Then add the 'pokemon team of my favourite weapons' and everything else. Makes it easier to contrast what adds net value and what doesn't.

I agree as well, but I'm unsure how to go about implementing the weapon spawn without the collection. If I do it based on weapons from your inventory, I get into more implementation trouble and go down a path that will not resemble the final thing at all. If I just use a few defaults, Whichever weapons I default to will not be useful for the whole game... I have to think about it.

By the way, I started a branch at my fork, it's very early stuff, I need to work out how to properly integrate this with the tracker, but I just felt like writing some code. I welcome any pointers, of the non-dangling kind

https://github.com/PabloMansanet/crawl/tree/council_god

Sunday, 9th October 2016, 19:09 by Psieye

Steel Neuron wrote:I agree as well, but I'm unsure how to go about implementing the weapon spawn without the collection.

If I just use a few defaults, Whichever weapons I default to will not be useful for the whole game... I have to think about it.

This skeleton shouldn't concern itself at all with balance. Its purpose will be to let you try out the UI with Wizmode. So always generate some +0 exec axe/bardiche/etc and let the test users set all skills to 27 while they experiment. Granted, the first commit you want people to actually try out properly will have the weapon collection.

Sunday, 9th October 2016, 19:44 by Steel Neuron

Psieye wrote:
Steel Neuron wrote:I agree as well, but I'm unsure how to go about implementing the weapon spawn without the collection.

If I just use a few defaults, Whichever weapons I default to will not be useful for the whole game... I have to think about it.
This skeleton shouldn't concern itself at all with balance. Its purpose will be to let you try out the UI with Wizmode. So always generate some +0 exec axe/bardiche/etc and let the test users set all skills to 27 while they experiment. Granted, the first commit you want people to actually try out properly will have the weapon collection.

Thanks, will get on that

By the way, I think I solved the Disengage issue, with a version that is roughly a million times more fun.

I wanted to think of another movement triggered attack, but I just couldn't think of one. There aren't many places you can't move that aren't toward, beside, and away from a monster. Then it hit me... There are walls! Alas, here is the new version:

Whirlwind: Just as before, but with short and long blades.
Charge: Like Lunge used to be, but with maces and axes.
Pole Vault: If you move towards a wall (or any other solid dungeon feature) when wielding a Polearm or Staff, you jump against the wall and pole vault 2 squares in the exact opposite direction, hitting all enemies around your new position.

Now, Pole Vault can only be done if you can land exactly two squares away from your position, directly opposite to an adjacent wall (if you try to use it when that condition doesn't hold, you will just be warned that there is no room to pole vault). This makes it impossible to abuse as a runaway tool in tight corridors, but offers you a lot of mobility, specially to grab weapons that have ended up far away from you. You can use it to gain distance on monsters (by vaulting from a wall directly to their side) but kiting would require thought and awareness of the dungeon layout.

Monday, 10th October 2016, 07:41 by Steel Neuron

Ah well, I should've known better than calling this version "final"

.

@Lasty, I've been thinking about your comment specifically, and I agree that the current unarmed effects are a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. Also, I share everyone else's concerns about Project Weapon and its balance concerns (namely, weapon cycling). In order to fix that and streamline the god further, here's a new revision:

Powers
Piety level (-) "Young Dog"

Substantially increases the effects of crosstraining. All weapon types + Unarmed Combat cross-train fully (100% skillpoints shared).
Hitting enemies in melee has a chance to materialize weapons from your collection (or rarely, the Council's), as if they were affected by a weaker Tukima's dance. Weapons summoned this way gain all beneficial effects from Pressure Points.
Walking into a weapon will cause you to equip it immediately, leaving your former equipped weapon behind (imagine a normal tile swap with a friendly minion, but the weapon changes hands).
Collect: (active, free): Select a weapon from your inventory to be kept in your collection, replacing the previous weapon of that type.

Piety level (*) "Young Crane"

You can throw weapons using the 'f' key. Weapons can be thrown at an enemy (in which case they will be summoned nearby after the hit) or at an empty square.

Piety level (**) "Young Tiger"

Flowing Blade:Your martial abilities improve as your connection to the Council strenghtens. All of your weapons gain new auxiliary attacks that trigger on movement.
- Long Blades and Axes gain Whirlwind: When moving from a space adjacent to a monster to another space adjacent to it, the monster is hit for the weapon's base damage.
- Maces/Flails and Short Blades gain Lunge: When moving directly towards a monster, you perform a powerful lunging attack, hitting for 2.0 times weapon damage.
- Staves and Polearms gain Pole Vault: When moving directly towards a wall, you vault two spaces in the opposite direction, hitting all enemies around your landing spot. Can't be used if the landing spot is occupied.

Piety level (***) "Red Sash"

No new abilities.

Piety level (****) "Golden Sash"

Pressure Points: All of your weapons gain the chance to inflict different status effects. Summoned weapons are also affected:
- Attacks with Short and Long blades have a chance to cause slowness.
- Attacks with Staves and Maces/Flails have a chance to cause confusion.
- Attacks with Polearms and Axes have a chance to cause weakness.

Piety level (*****) "Red Dragon"

Flowing Master When unarmed, you can perform any of the Flowing Blade abilities, in which case an appropriate weapon will be summoned in your hand.

Piety level (******) "Golden Dragon"

Steel Dragonfly Technique: (food, 5 MP, active) Projects all weapons towards a single monster, unsummoning them after the strike (all summoned weapons + your equipped weapon are thrown at once and they immediately disappear), Confused, weak and slow enemies have a chance to explode.

A summary of the changes and why I think they streamline things:

Project Weapon is gone. Instead, the 'f' key is used to throw, and it can only throw a weapon you have equipped (easier to balance).
Death Palm is gone. The exploding effect is now part of Steel Dragonfly Technique, which is already a flashy finisher.
Advanced followers can now go unarmed and then do any of the maneuvers, which will summon them a weapon capable of doing it (still, you never know if you're getting a staff or a polearm when you vault, for example). This finally gives Unarmed combat a role (maximum flexibility) and ties with the new throw. Note this will be balanced to respect the summon mechanic (you can't obtain artifacts this way, and the total number of summoned weapons will remain stable)
Pole Vault instead of Disengage, which is a more interesting and easier to balance ability. Status effects and Flowing Blade effects have been moved around a bit

Tuesday, 11th October 2016, 15:29 by Quazifuji

Do the Flowing Blade effects happen automatically? For Whirlwind and Lunge it makes sense, but for Staves and Pole Arms it sounds really annoying if it makes it actually impossible to move adjacent to a wall when there's an empty spot two spaces in the opposite direction. I'm imagining trying to move into a safer position forgetting that I'm wielding a staff or polearm and then being launched in the opposite direction and that sounds awful.

I also don't like flowing master. If the goal is to give you more control over what weapon types you get, then having to do it through different movements is awkward. If the goal is to make the god interact with unarmed, then filling your hands with a weapon as soon as you try to move around enemies while unarmed seems counterproductive.