Assassin's Cowl (unrandart)

[Nekoatl]

My Metamagic God proposal didn't generate as much excitement as I'd hoped, and I suspect that part of the reason is that most of the features resemble existing items (ring of wizardry, staff of energy, robe of archmagi), but the ability to eliminate casting noise seems like it would enable interesting enough strategies that I want to salvage it. The best place for such an ability seems to be an unrandart, and a hat feels most appropriate. Hence:

-2 Assassin's Cowl {SilCast, Stealth+}

-2 hat

+50 Stealth
Allows spells to be cast silently, eliminating casting noise (but not spell noise), and allowing spell casting while under the effect of silence.

The ability to cast while under the effect of silence is an afterthought, but seems very appropriate thematically. Also, I think an item should exist which can defend against silencing enemies (especially silent spectres), but to offset the potential power of players casting Silence while wearing this, a -2 AC modifier seems warranted. Assassins should be trying to avoid getting hit anyway.

[Steel Neuron]

Very cool idea. I can't comment on the balance, but then again unrands aren't meant to be balanced. My only input would be to rethink the name; the assassin trope isn't usually associated to spellcasting, even if it makes sense in the context of crawl. Something more arcane-sounding would be better, like "Silent Cowl" or "Saturnine Cowl".

[Rast]

It doesn't need to be -2. +0 would be fine, or even +2.

FR: Some of the existing randart hats should be changed to helms.

[chequers]

Being able to cast while silenced is associated with demonic ("magical") abilities in Crawl, so I suggest something like a Demonskin Cowl -- +0 hat with SilCast, rN+.

[Siegurt]

I am not really sure I would wear this, Monster silence is so rare, and so rarely dangerous, that it's almost never a good idea to take this over something that actually offered some sort of protection.

Of the top of my head this would be relevant:
1. When fighting mennas
2. In Zigs
3. When fighting Ereshkigal

That means, 1 late game uncommon unique, 1 extended end boss, and post-game content.

What's more, this item obviates the whole schtick that makes those enemies unique to fight.

[Nekoatl]

I'm not attached to the name or the AC modifier. Actually, I prefer both "Silent Cowl" and "Demonskin Cowl" to "Assassin's Cowl".

The main point of this artifact is to be able to cast spells without making noise. Many spells, including most summoning and several hexes (though apparently not Confuse, for some reason ), have 0 spell noise but 1+ casting noise (... according to the chaosforge wiki). This artifact would allow a stealthy character to cast those spells near sleeping or unaware enemies without drawing their attention.

... Out of curiosity, I just fired up a Wizard mode game, and tried casting Fulminant Prism 3 squares away from sleeping enemies, immediately followed by casting Silence and keeping the prisms in the silenced area when they detonate. The monsters sleep through the prisms, suggesting that the silenced area also cancels spell noise. This suggests that a character wearing this artifact and making use of the Silence spell would be able to cast all spells without waking nearby sleeping enemies. The truly bizarre thing is that even though 20 noise explosions in the silenced area don't wake sleeping enemies, unlucky footsteps occasionally do.

[chequers]

"Sleeping" is better described as "Dozing, occasionally sleepily opening their eyes and looking around". Also, silence reduces stealth (the theory is an unnatural silence would be quite noticeable).

[Quazifuji]

My biggest concern with this is only silencing casting noise and not spell noise. It's very spoilery and limits the coolness of the item a lot, in my opinion. I'd say just let it make your spells completely silent, or at least much quieter. If that's overpowered, I think I'd just scrap the whole idea.

For a while, I didn't even know that there was a distinction between casting noise and spell noise. I'm not sure if there's anywhere in game to tell how loud a spell's casting noise is versus its spell noise. My first reaction to "silent spellcasting" is "awesome, I can use lightning bolt/fireball/firestorm/LRD/shatter without worrying about attracting a ton of enemies with the noise," but this doesn't let you do that at all because most of the noise from all those spells is spell noise, not casting noise. Making good use of this requires knowing which spells have high casting noise but very low spell noise, which is extremely spoilery.

[Nekoatl]

As I understand it, the game client displays "noise" as the louder of the two values, so I imagine that spells with no spell noise would appear as "Silent" in the spell list and spell descriptions. The client already has the ability to update spell descriptions to account for Vehumet bonuses, etc., so I don't imagine this would be too difficult code-wise, assuming it wouldn't already function like this with the existing code. So, there'd be no need to look up spoilers. Also, the item description should mention that the cowl eliminates noise from spell casting but not spell effects, which should alert players to the fact that there are 2 types of noise.

I don't think also eliminating spell noise would be OP, but there are a few reasons I'd prefer leaving spell noise intact. It would give more relevance to (and create more awareness of) the 2-noise system, which many players don't even realize exists. I think that spells which have high spell noise do so for a reason, so making it a little harder to cast those spells silently (by requiring the use of the Silence spell or similar effect in conjunction with the cowl) seems appropriate. Having a selection of spells that can be cast silently and a selection of spells that can't (at least without choosing to spend 5 MP to create a zone of silence) seems tactically more interesting. But, I'd rather see a version of this item that also eliminated spell noise than to not see this effect in-game at all.

[phloomp]

Without Quazafuji's suggestion, this would allow cheesery such as used to be possible with Projected Noise. On the other hand, Q's suggestion would introduce some weird edge cases (OoD collisions, Conjure Ball Lightning).

I'd drop the casting under silence bit as long as the player spell exists.

[Steel Neuron]

How about the cowl causing a 3x3 aura of silence on succesful evoke for a given time? (of course maintaining the ability of allowing you to cast).

[Nekoatl]

I don't know of an spell that can generate massive amounts of noise at great distances in recent versions. The closest I can think of is Fulminant Prism, which due to its delay could be used in conjunction with a few Controlled Blinks to get some distance from the explosion before it goes off, but that involves a massively larger MP cost and skill investment requirement, not to mention the drawback of having to actually travel to the target area. I'm not sure this would be broken like Projected Noise was.

Initially, I was worried that being able to cast spells while under the effects of the Silence spell might be OP, but to an extent this is already possible using decks. I just used an orb of destruction to blow up a wall right next to a sleeping newt; didn't bother him in the least. As long as that's considered fair game, I don't think allowing spellcasting in a silenced zone is too out of line. At the very least, I think trying to keep spell effects inside a shrinking zone of silence is interesting enough to warrant a trial period before writing it off.

[yesno]

I'm not attached to the name or the AC modifier. Actually, I prefer both "Silent Cowl" and "Demonskin Cowl" to "Assassin's Cowl".

Quiet Coat
Shawl of Shush
Skulking Scarf

[removeelyvilon]

The unique and clearly defining and fun feature of a -2 headgear has already been taken by hat of the alchemist.

I, newly self-declared memeforcer of the memeocracy of tavern and in accordance with the legal principle of "rule of meme",
hereby declare this proposal

OBSOLETE.

May Zin grant me the wisdom to keep law and order safe. Amen.

[pedritolo]

The unique and clearly defining and fun feature of a -2 headgear has already been taken by hat of the alchemist.

I, newly self-declared memeforcer of the memeocracy of tavern and in accordance with the legal principle of "rule of meme",
hereby declare this proposal

OBSOLETE.

May Zin grant me the wisdom to keep law and order safe. Amen.

You fool, you're misquoting the scriptures. The right meme to invoke is

IT STEPS ON THE DESIGN SPACE OF HotA

[prozacelf]

Bikeshedding Cowl {*noise, shoutitis, MR+++}