The Tavern

1. It makes extended and undead branches very tedious
2. It forces player to pick TSO or makh if he wants to go extended because other gods provide no means to sustain torment damage in fight
3. It has no counterplay: rN is almost useless and you cant really kill tormentor without being tormented, kiku and demonspawn protections are unreliable
4. It is very unfriendly to new players
5. It feels increasingly reduntant with all these smite-targeted spells like smite, hellfire, draconian's upheaval, etc
6. It encourages luring because it is only right option to deal with tormentors

Remove extended

1. Maybe, but this is a slippery slope because there's a lot of problems that contribute to making extended a slog
2. This is not true even if you're implying that they're the "best gods" for extended (Zin's abilities are arguably better, TSO and Makh are just more o-tabby), a lot of gods are viable and even having a god is not strictly necessary.
3. This is traditionally heavily contested because there's various methods of breaking line of sight (walking away, scroll of fog, etc.) and that is considered one of the main methods of counterplay. Burst damage also minimizes the chances they get to use torment.
4-6. Don't really have an opinion

I'm not a big fan of torment BUT I think torment would be ok if there were more varied threats in extended, this way you don't have to use the same tactics over and over to deal with it. The frequency of it in extended bugs me more than anything. Unfortunately Crawl's current design only allows for stuff like hellfire/torment as moves that can present a roughly equal threat to a wide variety of end-game characters (unless torment immune of course), there'd have to be new mechanics and/or spells introduced to allow more threats that isn't torment.

While there might be a good discussion to be had about torment, starting a thread like this isn't the way to make it happen. In this case, less is more - I recommend picking just 1 reason and discussing around that instead of this shotgun approach.

I remember when i was a new player and got hit with torment and was like: WHAT???? 50% of my hp??? From a silly looking yellow tormentor monster that isnt even a yellow name??? And its smite targeted??? Lol did whoever made this even play RPGs before???? Man I cant wait til this blatantly OP monster ability gets patched.

My chagrin five versions later when torment still exists =(

Elf lover wrote:1. It makes extended and undead branches very tedious

This argument could be strong, but it's hard to discuss it when you don't elaborate on why at all.

2. It forces player to pick TSO or makh if he wants to go extended because other gods provide no means to sustain torment damage in fight

Kiku, who seems to always be severely overlooked by the majority of the playerbase, prvoides tournament protection too, but even if you include Kiku and Zin this isn't true at all. Those four are probably the best four extended gods, but they're not the only viable ones, and they'd quite likely still be the best four extended gods if torment were removed.

4. It is very unfriendly to new players

Why should the optional stuff that, as far as I know, is intended to be the game's hardest content (not that it is the hardest content, just that it seems like it should be in theory) be "friendly to new players"? If you just mean it's spoilery, that's somewhat true, but then you could argue that pretty much any monster ability is. Ultimately I think it's pretty reasonable to say that a new player (especially one who's gotten good enough at the game to encounter torment) should be in the habit of using "xv" to examine any new monsters they see and examining any spells they're not familiar with, and if someone's doing that then that kind of removes the spoileriness of it (unless the description is poorly-written, in which case that's it's own problem).

5. It feels increasingly reduntant with all these smite-targeted spells like smite, hellfire, draconian's upheaval, etc

6. It encourages luring because it is only right option to deal with tormentors

I would say encouraging luring is more a train of a trait of dangerous smite-targeted spells than torment in particular. This could be an argument for reducing the number of smite-targeted spells in extended, rather than removing torment altogether.

Overall, I think torment definitely has major issues, but I don't think you've made a strong case for removing it here. Partly, I feel like some of your arguments could use some elaboration (like the tedium one), and partly, I think you're making different arguments that address different qualities of torment, which means you might be making more of a case to alter torment than to remove it. For example, if torment were no longer smite-targeted, that would partially eliminate at least half of your points.

Elf lover wrote:2. It forces player to pick TSO or makh if he wants to go extended because other gods provide no means to sustain torment damage in fight

Half agree, half not.

1. Any other god is 100% viable for 15 rune win. (I've done)
But I totally agree that TSO/Zin are the easiest choices for extended.

2. I think we need torment because there are little other ways to kill players in extended even if they're uncautious.

3. IMO the best choice is to significantly buff dangers other than torments for extended.
Because torment is boring as a merely unique threat in extended.

The "torment is avoidable" claim, despite being (strictly speaking) true, is bizarre because it is only avoidable in the most general ways possible. I mean sure, you can avoid it by breaking LoS or killing the torment-capable thing, but you can avoid every other attack in the game by breaking LoS or killing its source too (bar I guess stuff like lurking horrors and deep elf elementalists, but the latter's "fireball around corner" behavior is ridiculous and spoilery and should be removed). There could be a doubletorment spell that kills you instantly from anywhere in the LoS (so Nikola, basically) and you could rightfully claim that it's avoidable in the same way that torment is.

In this way, torment is unlike other extended threats like mutations (which can be avoided by putting another monster between you and the mutator), LCS/bolt of cold/ice fiend melee (which can be avoided by slaying out of their range) and even bursty hellfire (mostly avoidable by having a high-HD non-hellfire resistant monster around you). Torment is technically avoidable, yeah, but it's also the least avoidable attack in the entire game.

Unless of course you have torment immunity, in which case you take exactly 0 damage from the attack that is supposed to act as an equalizer between endgame characters. Excellent design right here!

Elf lover wrote:1. It makes extended and undead branches very tedious
4. It is very unfriendly to new players

Show your work. I don't think either is true.

Elf lover wrote:6. It encourages luring because it is only right option to deal with tormentors

Many tormentors in extended are faster than you (tormentors, fiends, curse skulls, pan lords), so luring them is usually not a good idea. (There are some slow tormentors in Tomb). I usually either escape or kill them quickly. I am not counting ducking behind a wall or breaking LOS as "luring". If we call that luring, the whole game is filled with it.

The most common tormenting monsters can be easily shut down: mummies can be silenced, and tormentors can be one-shot or two-shot with spells or powerful ranged weapons. (Anyone with passable Int and apts should really learn Silence before doing Tomb; it really cuts down on headaches.) That leaves things like curse skulls and tier one demons, which are rare and should be scary.

I do think special torment protection (lichform/statue form/race with the equivalent) is basically required for ziggurats, but that says more about ziggurats than how things should work in the actual game.

The counterplay to torment is to stop being so scared of it. A monster has to reduce your HP to 0 to kill you, and torment literally cannot do that. A Brimstone Fiend has to use an entire action to cast a spell, if it torments you with an action then it's not going to damnation you on the same action. Torment just means you can't spend 20 turns waffling about with 1s instead of killing or avoiding them, which seems fair to me. If anything, torment waters down Brimstone Fiends since their other spell does 3d20 damage regardless of your current hp. Meanwhile, mummies are individually really bad at putting out damage since they almost never summon something capable of significantly damaging an extended character and smite only does 7-17. It's only a problem if you're trying to fight a bunch of mummies at once, which, again, you don't need to do...

That said, the way rN affects torment is really dumb and completely uncommunicated by the game, and the "tormentor" monster is pointless.

Croases wrote:The "torment is avoidable" claim, despite being (strictly speaking) true, is bizarre because it is only avoidable in the most general ways possible. I mean sure, you can avoid it by breaking LoS or killing the torment-capable thing, but you can avoid every other attack in the game by breaking LoS or killing its source too

It's not bizarre to claim something avoidable is avoidable. Nobody saying "torment is avoidable" is saying "LCS is unavoidable".

Blowing through extended as a statuepode has its perks.

Torment immunity is bull. rTorment is cool, but should be limited by either being race specific or obtainable by something with a drawback.

PowerOfKaishin wrote:Blowing through extended as a statuepode has its perks.

Torment immunity is bull. rTorment is cool, but should be limited by either being race specific or obtainable by something with a drawback.

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crown_of_Eternal_Torment
How does this look to you.

Elitist wrote:http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crown_of_Eternal_Torment
How does this look to you.

Um... amusing, but tedious and kinda boring. Probably why it's not in the game. Should do some other stuff, like maybe give some stat bonuses.

Torment is designed as a threat that can hurt players with 80 AC and EV without making the game impossible for everyone else. It does it's job, and it does it well.

Meanwhile, people still criminally underuse Kiku's Torment ability.

prozacelf wrote:Meanwhile, people still criminally underuse Kiku's Torment ability.

Or torment scrolls. These are really very helpful, even if you're not playing an undead species.

Indeed. I usually don't carry them around just because of inventory issues, but they're still useful even when you don't have the chance of Kiku protection or torment immunity.

Can you elaborate please? If you can kill 50% HP monsters while being at 50% HP yourself, you can kill 100% HP monsters while being at 100% HP yourself unless you do it purely with spells. Being at 50% HP yourself makes it easier to die if you underestimated some monsters, you might not have enough time to teleport away. I am not talking about situation when you have allies with rTorment like Animate Dead of course.

Well, the unstated assumption there was that you generally aren't going to use ?torment while you're trying to melee a mob of dudes, but rather if you have some way to handle them at range or to sic summons/zombies/whatever on them. I feel like the reasons to use the Kiku version should be fairly self-evident.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Can you elaborate please? If you can kill 50% HP monsters while being at 50% HP yourself, you can kill 100% HP monsters while being at 100% HP yourself unless you do it purely with spells. Being at 50% HP yourself makes it easier to die if you underestimated some monsters, you might not have enough time to teleport away. I am not talking about situation when you have allies with rTorment like Animate Dead of course.

Usually it's good if you need to inflict heavy burst damage to a large HD foe who only gets dangerous when up close. Works very well if you have wands or damaging spells that you can use as finishers.
For instance, while in swamp, during a speedrun, I found tesla. I had no relec nor silence and I was very very underleveled, but the guy was in my way. So I read a couple torments and then zapped some wand a few times. He had a couple of mobs in front of him, so chain lightning wasn't a huge risk. Still dangerous, but it worked very well.
I also like using it, for instance, in the slime vaults, like once or twice to force the royal jelly to split a lot before using immol and zapping wands, which will then need only a couple hits to start the chain reaction.

Elf lover wrote: [Remove torment because] 2. It forces player to pick TSO or makh if he wants to go extended because other gods provide no means to sustain torment damage in fight

Let's ask the statistics if there were any 15-runers without TSO or Makhleb...

!lg * won urune=15 s=god

beem wrote:12506 games for * (won urune=15): 3056x The Shining One, 1485x Vehumet, 1134x Makhleb, 1013x Cheibriados, 916x Zin, 732x Ashenzari, 689x Sif Muna, 410x Okawaru, 337x Gozag, 334x Kikubaaqudgha, 275x Ru, 248x, 248x Trog, 229x Dithmenos, 223x Xom, 220x Qazlal, 176x Lugonu, 162x Jiyva, 151x Nemelex Xobeh, 113x Uskayaw, 76x Hepliaklqana, 72x Beogh, 68x Elyvilon, 61x Pakellas, 43x Fedhas, 25x Yredelem...

Turukano wrote:Let's ask the statistics if there were any 15-runers without TSO or Makhleb...

Is it possible to exclude characters who had Necromutation or Statue Form?

People pick species other than ghouls? Weird.

I would suggest keeping torment but reducing the extended games torment-spam. It should be an infrequent thing, rather than having tormentor/hell sentinel/whatever casting it throughout the entire extended game. Also, the mutation casting mobs need to be toned down a little now that rMut is nearly non-existent.

The entire extended game revolves around torment as the primary threat. Obviously there are other threats, but torment + some other boss/threat is usually what takes down a viable 15-rune run. With the removal of the Haste spell and the removal of Haste/Heal wands, surviving a 15-rune run STRONGLY favors a certain set of races and classes thereby limiting the viability of all the others.

I'm not sure why chei statue form hasn't been suggested as the #1 extended god yet, but I'm willing to overlook that. Imho torment isn't the primary threat in extended, it's hellfire. That might just be my comfortable extended runs with resistance and regeneration cranked up, but torment is pretty non-threatening to people at 1/3 life, it stops being able to output much damage. Hellfire, especially when the monster who casts it is hasted, can take you right down from a huge range. I recently lost a character in a ziggurat right after controlled blinking away from a hasted hell sentinel because it moved back into range and hellfired me from max LOS. Torment will never do that.

Try upping your use of sources of regeneration - the spell, equipment, amulet, racial abilities, etc. Managing huge swarms in extended is more about your healing being equal to the incoming damage so that your HP remains steady. Of course, the best way to reduce incoming damage is to break up the swarm first, but assuming you want to just tab through it, raise those defenses and regeneration and you'll be fine.

Makhleb/TSO statue form are better than Chei IMHO. Heal on kills is more useful than extra damage, at least in long fights and it is hard to die in short fight in extended.

Elf lover wrote:Remove torment

Am I right that you asked to remove torment because you had problems to deal with it?

In this case I'd like to mention again an old (2011!) but still useful post of evilmike where you can get some help. (Please don't discuss these tips here as we are in the Game Design Discussion forum.)

Good luck in extended!

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Makhleb/TSO statue form are better than Chei IMHO. Heal on kills is more useful than extra damage, at least in long fights and it is hard to die in short fight in extended.

While this is a matter of preference, I find the large boost in EV that chei provides to be like a "heal on dodge" every time something doesn't hit me. You still want to pair this with regeneration abilities as certain things can't be dodged, and no matter what your EV is it can still fail, but more or less. I certainly agree mak/TSO are very powerful endgame/overall gods.

tasonir wrote:While this is a matter of preference, I find the large boost in EV that chei provides to be like a "heal on dodge" every time something doesn't hit me.

While I agree with you, EV does nothing vs torment/hellfire.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Can you elaborate please? If you can kill 50% HP monsters while being at 50% HP yourself, you can kill 100% HP monsters while being at 100% HP yourself unless you do it purely with spells. Being at 50% HP yourself makes it easier to die if you underestimated some monsters, you might not have enough time to teleport away. I am not talking about situation when you have allies with rTorment like Animate Dead of course.

Statue Form + !torment x2 absolutely annihilates TRJ with little to no cost to the user.

Without statue form you can instead summon stuff to protect yourself from acid blob bursts and then read immolation and ignite the spark

You can argue that it's risky, and it can be, but I think most will agree that having some form of !torment setup will make it substantially easier to kill that blasted jelly.

I have just tested it in wizmode. After reading torment twice I went from 323 HP to 196 HP and TRJ went from 231 HP to 58.
So I lost 127 HP and TRJ lost 173 HP. Good enough indeed.

Imo it makes great sense lore/immersion/atmoshperewise: The reason monsters cast hellfire and torment 'randomly' is that they're invoking forces beyond their control, that may not always be available from moment to moment, or that they may fail to invoke/channel/etc. These forces are always in flux, and using them is an incredible challenge even for high level demons.

Note that hell force more or less explicitly works this way. You have all of these whispering voices and minor things that can happen to you but, sometimes hell gets a lock on you and is able to teleport a dangerous pack to your destination, inflict a dangerous status effect, or invoke torment. Note that there's also a link between pandemonium and the abyss, further supporting the idea of various vast realms in flux, sometimes (rarely) intersecting/ coming together in a confluence.

Of course in game it just looks like the tormentor sits there for 3 turns doing nothing then dies for free, or randomly high rolls and torments the first two turns it's in LOS, but imo if you imagine what it's supposed to represent, makes amazing sense and adds a lot to the endgames lore and feel.

edit: also rN+ is a pretty big deal against torment. Torment twice at rN0 puts you at 25%hp, torment twice at rN+++ puts you at, I believe, 42(.25)%hp. Given that getting tormented then hellfire high-rolled is one of the biggest threats lategame, I think that extra hp cushion is a pretty big deal. rN+ leaves you at I think 30%. Though I mean maybe it could be stronger, I don't know.

edit2: also isn't luring kind of dumb anyway?

The Tavern

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