A suggestion regarding evocable items

[tabstorm]

Currently, we have a wide variety of objects that use the evocations skill - wands, rods, elemental evokers, and a few other items that don't fall into the above categories.

In my opinion, each of these has its own problems:

- Wands take up a lot of inventory slots. Because of their frequency, and capped charges, this leads to a whole lot of fidding with the autopickup menu in order to stop picking up junk wands that have outlived their usefulness. Many wands duplicate existing spells or closely approximate them. Many wands become more or less useless as the game goes on because of weak damage or being outclassed by better effects.
- Rods also take up inventory slots, and have some annoying mechanics like wait-recharging, have to be wielded, and most importantly (lol) use hunger for no reason. Rods also have cool, rare effects that are fun to use.
- Elemental evokers are widely considered to be overpowered and have been nerfed a few times. This leads to things like awkwardly spawning several evokers throughout the dungeon, when one use of an evoker drains all evokers in the dungeon (because they were too overpowered otherwise). Different evokers also, instead of recharging based on XP or having a fixed charge count, randomly disintegrate at a rate based on evocations.

I made a troll thread earlier in CYC about removing wands, but actually, I think the following would be a good idea: Merge all evocables into wands.

This should go along with two changes: Removing garbage/spell-duplicating wands, and removing the cap on wand charges while reducing number of charges that each one spawns with. Here is what I think the suite of wands might look like:

Wand of Ignition
Like the current Rod of Ignition, but spawns flame clouds too. A merger of the lamp of fire and rod of ignition.

Wand of Whirlpool
Hits enemies with primal wave, and makes a Twister-like water thing that damages enemies and applies a Leda's like effect. Replaces phial of floods.

Wand of lightning
Similar to the current wand/rod of lightning. Maybe its effect could be made similar to Chain Lightning (but less damage obviously). Another option would be to let you cast Orb of Electricity like some enemies can do - I think Asterion via Makhleb can do this?

Wand of energy
Basically a merger of the wand of inacc and wand of Acid. Shoots a non-elemental bolt of energy at the enemy.

Wand of elements
Summons elementals, replacing the effect of the elemental evokers and the old Summon Elemental spell.

Wand of the Swarm
Think the current sack of spiders.

Wand of beasts
Replaces the box of beasts and rod of shadows. Beasts are pretty cool.

Wand of digging
Same as now, but allows more controlled digging, so that you can select the number of squares that you want to dig. Sort of a merger of digging and disintegration. Digging is one of the more powerful abilities if you know how to use it, so its number of charges per wand should be quite low, maybe 1-2. Actually, this should probably be true of most of these wands...

Wand of Enslavement
Same as now.

Wand of slowing
Instead of the current wand, tries to apply a Mass Slow effect. Fewer charges.

Wand of paralysis
Same as now.

Wand of confusion
Same as old Mass Confusion.

I haven't though about how many charges each of these wands that spawns on the floor should have. Scrolls of recharging should also likely not add as many charges as they currently do in this regime. Anyway, I think this would keep a lot of cool effects in the game, while solving a number of inventory/interface issues.

Edit: I was just informed that the digging effect from eye of destruction/caco is likely to be removed. So I think instead we should have bolt of acid, but with more damage and less accuracy, as the acid debuff is cool.

[archaeo]

I might quibble on which evocable effects to keep (I'd argue for the Rod of Clouds effect, for example), but I'm generally with TS that the game could afford to collapse most or all evocable effects into a single class of items and move all others into consumables. It'd be preferable to combine the mechanics of these things to some degree, however. To that end, I'd suggest that whether we call them rods or call them wands or what, they:

• recharge via XP, damage done to monsters (flavored as absorbing monster's ambient magic or whatever), or similar
• can be evoked from the inventory (preferable) OR
• sit in the ranged weapon slot in Lasty's perpetually forthcoming ranged reform
• remove ?recharging or otherwise change its functioning, and make these evokers somewhat more rare
• require evocations skill to recharge these objects at a reasonable rate

I tend to think this kind of thing would reduce a lot of the friction present in the crunchy stuff going on in our current system, but I also imagine this might be too radical a change for the devs. The same is true of TS' scheme, though.

[dynast]

Better ask for a wand of tremors before digging gets removed.

[tabstorm]

I don't think digging is so powerful that it needs complete removal. It just needs a reduction in base charges and number of charges gained from a scroll of recharging.

Another thing you could do is have scrolls of recharging act as "enchants" for wands that increased their power level.

[removeelyvilon]

at this point I don't really care what happens to evocs anymore

[VeryAngryFelid]

at this point I don't really care what happens to evocs anymore

Arguably it is good. It didn't feel right when "train Evo" was an advice to most players no matter what background tjhey played. Now Evo is not different from other magic schools i.e. you need to be very lucky with item drops before training it.

[Quazifuji]

If they're going to make it so there's only one type of evokable, I think I would prefer it to be rods instead of wands. Mostly because I think wands are closer to other mechanics that already exist. Right now, wands are kind of like a cross between a consumable that comes in large stacks and a throwing weapon that auto-mulches. Either way, I don't think they're particularly interesting. Recharging evokables, particularly ones recharging with XP, are in a more unique position as powerful effects that are limited in a semi-strategic way, with an infinite supply over the course of the game but a much more limited supply on a smaller scale. The only comparison to them is god powers. So personally, I think I like archaeo's suggestion of making every evokable something that recharges with XP.

If that's too radical, at the very least I think it would make sense to just streamline all evokables into two types: auto-recharging (pick either time or XP, I think XP is the better option for a number of reasns) and non-auto-recharging (only recharges with recharge scrolls, or remove recharge scrolls and just make them finite). So turn Box of Beast and Sack of Spiders into wands (or remove them entirely), change rods to recharge with XP instead of time, and rework elemental evokers into rods with very high mana costs and only enough mana to use their ability once.

Also, no matter what happens, if wands stay I'd like to see an issue to see duplicate wands just recharge the wand you have instead of taking up an inventory slot.

[bel]

I like Quazifuji's suggestion, more specifically the two types of evocables (non-recharging and recharging). It's nice to have two kinds - one kind you have a fixed total number (which can be increased using a consumable) but can use them without restrictions; and the other kind where you have unlimited uses, but these uses are only available with an exhaust-like timer (using XP instead of time). As an aside, perhaps Exhaust status should use XP instead of time anyway,

To make an analogy with Brogue, these correspond roughly to wands and charms. Brogue also has staffs which are somewhat like multi-use charms (there are other differences as well, but those are not important for my point here). Perhaps, a la Brogue, we could also have a ring of reaping to increase recharging rate?

[dracos369]

Wand of energy
Basically a merger of the wand of inacc and wand of Acid. Shoots a non-elemental bolt of energy at the enemy.

I don't personally like this specific one, because, imho, it doesn't take interesting part of either one of the things it is merged from.

[tabstorm]

at this point I don't really care what happens to evocs anymore

Arguably it is good. It didn't feel right when "train Evo" was an advice to most players no matter what background tjhey played. Now Evo is not different from other magic schools i.e. you need to be very lucky with item drops before training it.

The main reason for this is that evocations does not interact with armor weight. After all, we need many, many mechanics to regulate the use of Crawl's oh-so-powerful suite of spells... lol

I like Quazifuji's suggestion, more specifically the two types of evocables (non-recharging and recharging). It's nice to have two kinds - one kind you have a fixed total number (which can be increased using a consumable) but can use them without restrictions; and the other kind where you have unlimited uses, but these uses are only available with an exhaust-like timer (using XP instead of time). As an aside, perhaps Exhaust status should use XP instead of time anyway,

To make an analogy with Brogue, these correspond roughly to wands and charms. Brogue also has staffs which are somewhat like multi-use charms (there are other differences as well, but those are not important for my point here). Perhaps, a la Brogue, we could also have a ring of reaping to increase recharging rate?

What I was going for here was to have effects that are powerful, but limited so that there is an actual decision to be made about whether to use them, while also reducing inventory management and not duplicating other game effects. If we try to implement XP-gated recharging to fudge Brouge in to Crawl, we arrive back where we were with old elemental evokers, where people carried 10 of them around to unload, which will lead to more inventory fiddling, and the new rods will likely be nerfed in short order, or awkwardly placed multiple times per game (but discharging throughout the dungeon like current elemental evokers), unless you wanted to make rods basically artefacts. Crawl also has arbitrarily large amounts of experience, so xp-gated rods are not meaningfully limited. The effects I listed are all basically buffs of current evokers, too, so I think they would be considered unacceptably powerful if they were XP-gated.

Brogue also sucks, so I don't think trying to copy from it is desirable in most cases.

Wand of energy
Basically a merger of the wand of inacc and wand of Acid. Shoots a non-elemental bolt of energy at the enemy.

I don't personally like this specific one, because, imho, it doesn't take interesting part of either one of the things it is merged from.

At the bottom of the OP I said it would be better to be a corrosive bolt with lower accuracy but more damage. Call it bolt of vitriol, or something.

[archaeo]

What I was going for here was to have effects that are powerful, but limited so that there is an actual decision to be made about whether to use them, while also reducing inventory management and not duplicating other game effects. If we try to implement XP-gated recharging to fudge Brouge in to Crawl, we arrive back where we were with old elemental evokers, where people carried 10 of them around to unload, which will lead to more inventory fiddling, and the new rods will likely be nerfed in short order, or awkwardly placed multiple times per game (but discharging throughout the dungeon like current elemental evokers), unless you wanted to make rods basically artefacts. Crawl also has arbitrarily large amounts of experience, so xp-gated rods are not meaningfully limited. The effects I listed are all basically buffs of current evokers, too, so I think they would be considered unacceptably powerful if they were XP-gated.

This is a good counterargument, but "unless you wanted to make rods basically artefacts" is exactly what I'd suggest, probably. I feel like having a third category for consumables is pretty confusing; are wands just consumables for effects that you point at something? Attack consumables? Meh. I'd rather that they were qualitatively different from other items, and I think the best way to do that is the XP-gated rod mechanic. The inventory screw concern would be ameliorated by collapsing rods, wands, and evokers into one set of things, and the rod MP mechanic would prevent the dumb "using one uses every one in the dungeon" kludge.

But I think it's possible you're right anyway. :\

[tabstorm]

are wands just consumables for effects that you point at something? Attack consumables?

yup

This is actually the case for all non-digging wands right now (I think)

[prozacelf]

This is a good counterargument, but "unless you wanted to make rods basically artefacts" is exactly what I'd suggest, probably. :\

I'd say in an average game I see quite a few more artifacts than I do rods.

[bel]

I like Quazifuji's suggestion, more specifically the two types of evocables (non-recharging and recharging). It's nice to have two kinds - one kind you have a fixed total number (which can be increased using a consumable) but can use them without restrictions; and the other kind where you have unlimited uses, but these uses are only available with an exhaust-like timer (using XP instead of time). As an aside, perhaps Exhaust status should use XP instead of time anyway,

To make an analogy with Brogue, these correspond roughly to wands and charms. Brogue also has staffs which are somewhat like multi-use charms (there are other differences as well, but those are not important for my point here). Perhaps, a la Brogue, we could also have a ring of reaping to increase recharging rate?

What I was going for here was to have effects that are powerful, but limited so that there is an actual decision to be made about whether to use them, while also reducing inventory management and not duplicating other game effects. If we try to implement XP-gated recharging to fudge Brouge in to Crawl, we arrive back where we were with old elemental evokers, where people carried 10 of them around to unload, which will lead to more inventory fiddling, and the new rods will likely be nerfed in short order, or awkwardly placed multiple times per game (but discharging throughout the dungeon like current elemental evokers), unless you wanted to make rods basically artefacts. Crawl also has arbitrarily large amounts of experience, so xp-gated rods are not meaningfully limited. The effects I listed are all basically buffs of current evokers, too, so I think they would be considered unacceptably powerful if they were XP-gated.

Brogue also sucks, so I don't think trying to copy from it is desirable in most cases.

There are several points here. "Powerful but limited" is just the way potions and scrolls work, don't they? Of course, one can arbitrarily make some effects potions, some scrolls and some wands. Currently, potions mostly have effects on the player and scrolls mostly have effect on monsters/items. Wands can be thought of as potions or scrolls that you point at monsters, and are helped by training Evo.

Regarding XP-gated items. Firstly, about inventory management: one can either allow elemental evokers to stack so that they recharge faster, or simply make them unrandarts (either is fine with me). Secondly, I don't understand the point about gated XP. Of course, there's lots of XP in crawl, but the point of XP-gating is that one can't simply use the item in an unlimited fashion in a fight (I have never understood why disc of storms is unlimited). Currently, rods (or player MP/HP) charge with time, which is even worse than charging with XP. Would one really "game" the system by using an evoker once (thus draining it), go someplace else to gain XP to recharge it, come back and use it again? This is only a bit worse than going someplace else (easier than the current place) to get more consumables/skills before attacking a hard area. For instance, one may want to leave branch ends till later so that one is stronger/has more consumables.

That said, I would be fine with simply having one class of evocables (wands).

There are several bad things about Brogue - secret doors/traps, allies and item destruction are my main peeves. But I don't think the charms system there is necessarily bad. Charms shouldn't be spells; they work better as items, in my opinion. [A haste charm item makes more sense than the haste spell (RIP). A haste consumable is also fine.]

[Siegurt]

(I have never understood why disc of storms is unlimited).

It predates the XP gating mechanic and the elemental evocables, and it wasn't considered broken before their addition, so i assume the rationale was "if it's not broken, why fix it"

[duvessa]

Disc of storms is unlimited for the same reason spells are unlimited.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Disc of storms is unlimited for the same reason spells are unlimited.

FR: Spells cost no MP with spellcasting 27 (I am serious). Or better make disc of storms action cost 9 MP.

[duvessa]

Disc of storms costs HP to use and it's more of a restriction than MP will ever be.