Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads


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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 5th April 2017, 12:33

Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

Is it a feature or a bug? For my own convenience (I don't like mantis) I'll assume it's a feature.

The five-headed hydra bites Ellie!
Ellie blocks the five-headed hydra's attack. x3
The five-headed hydra bites Ellie.
Ellie hits the five-headed hydra with a broad axe of flaming! <--- HIT
_Ellie burns the five-headed hydra.
The five-headed hydra bites Ellie.
Ellie blocks the five-headed hydra's attack.
The five-headed hydra bites Ellie.
Ellie blocks the five-headed hydra's attack.
_The five-headed hydra bites Ellie but does no damage.
Ellie blocks the five-headed hydra's attack.
The five-headed hydra bites Ellie but does no damage. x2
The five-headed hydra bites Ellie!
The five-headed hydra bites Ellie but does no damage.
Ellie hits the five-headed hydra with a broad axe of flaming! <--- HIT
_Ellie burns the five-headed hydra.
The five-headed hydra bites Ellie! x3
Ellie is destroyed!

If it's a feature, it's considerably counterintuitive, so either make that axe chop heads off properly or change the weapon type - knight ancestor has been nerfed so much that it's not a good idea to fight more than one dangerous opponent at a time anyway.

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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 5th April 2017, 15:31

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

I hope this is a feature, TBH, and that allies in general don't have to worry about hydra mechanics. It seems like a total pain to check derived undead/orcs/yred slaves for weapon types whenever a hydra appears, and getting the allies you want to fight the hydra to fight the hydra while getting the allies you want to stay away to stay away seems like a real-world waste of effort.

Then again, the real problems here are hydra mechanics and [allies in general], so :roll:

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Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 5th April 2017, 18:59

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

Isn't head cauterizing a random event? Which would mean you were unlucky?
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 5th April 2017, 19:43

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

pedritolo wrote:Isn't head cauterizing a random event?

Not for the player at least.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Wednesday, 5th April 2017, 22:26

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

amaril wrote:Then again, the real problems here are hydra mechanics and [allies in general], so :roll:
On that note, remove hydra head chopping or make it work the same for all weapons.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Wednesday, 5th April 2017, 22:49

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

but it does work the same for all weapons. weapons that do slashing damage remove heads. those that dont, dont. should damage type be conveyed better? maybe. or perhaps just make it based on weapon catagory. though only really polearms are confusing mixing damage types (and whips from maces) but hydra heads are really really consistent.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 01:23

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

ApsychicRat wrote:but it does work the same for all weapons.
What? No it doesn't. Depending on the damage type of the weapon the hydras will grow more heads or won't, it has two different behaviors applied to different weapons based on flavor.
ApsychicRat wrote:weapons that do slashing damage remove heads. those that dont, dont.
...which you said right here, directly contradicting yourself. What are you talking about?

It's a dumb gimmick that punishes certain weapons way more than others for no reason. Why should you not be able to melee a hydra with an axe or sword or some polearms unless it has one specific brand, but be totally fine meleeing it with maces or some other polearms? No other enemy in the game interacts with the otherwise totally flavor physical damage types, because that would be annoying. What balance consideration is this applicable to? What gameplay depth is added by making axe users carry around a morningstar or whatever, that they only switch to to fight one specific enemy?

Imagine if other enemies were designed like this. Better carry an edged weapon to deal with trolls which take no damage from mace and flails, and use it for nothing else! Better find a piercing weapon for snake(and then drop it once you leave), some enemies there get stronger if you use edged or blunt damage!
If a gimmick like this was proposed to be added to the game with the standards we have now, it would be shot down immediately. But hydra head mechanics stay in because, I don't know, it has tenure or something.

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Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 07:09

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

Shard1697 wrote:Imagine if other enemies were designed like this. Better carry an edged weapon to deal with trolls which take no damage from mace and flails, and use it for nothing else! Better find a piercing weapon for snake(and then drop it once you leave), some enemies there get stronger if you use edged or blunt damage!

So, exactly like resistance ring swapping has been since forever? Swap in that rC+ for a frost giant, swap in additional MR for a vault sentinel, oops, now rCorr for an entropy weaver aaaand back to rF+ because a fire giant is coming. Doubly so with felids. I'm not saying this is good, I'm just saying it exists. Actually forcing players to train different weapons might just be an interesting idea to combat one weapon category focus superiority.

Funnily enough dumbed down action RPGs or hack'n'slash games, whatever you call them, have this solved simply by the action of swapping taking too much time to be worth for every single opponent. In a turn-based environment of Crawl you can either get jewellery swapping to take 5 turns too or just allow one inventory setup per dungeon level/unit of time/amount of xp gained/tiles explored (I think it's not a bad idea if you can come up with anti-scumming measures for it as well). Something would have to be done with the ID game then, probably. It'd also be a pretext to get rid of stupid shit like *contam and *drain too.

But I digress. Please do something with the hydra interaction. I didn't even think of Yred/Beogh/necromancer issues of this when I was making the post. Sounds annoying indeed.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 17:51

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

Shard1697 wrote:
ApsychicRat wrote:but it does work the same for all weapons.
What? No it doesn't. Depending on the damage type of the weapon the hydras will grow more heads or won't, it has two different behaviors applied to different weapons based on flavor.
ApsychicRat wrote:weapons that do slashing damage remove heads. those that dont, dont.
...which you said right here, directly contradicting yourself. What are you talking about?

It's a dumb gimmick that punishes certain weapons way more than others for no reason. Why should you not be able to melee a hydra with an axe or sword or some polearms unless it has one specific brand, but be totally fine meleeing it with maces or some other polearms? No other enemy in the game interacts with the otherwise totally flavor physical damage types, because that would be annoying. What balance consideration is this applicable to? What gameplay depth is added by making axe users carry around a morningstar or whatever, that they only switch to to fight one specific enemy?

Imagine if other enemies were designed like this. Better carry an edged weapon to deal with trolls which take no damage from mace and flails, and use it for nothing else! Better find a piercing weapon for snake(and then drop it once you leave), some enemies there get stronger if you use edged or blunt damage!
If a gimmick like this was proposed to be added to the game with the standards we have now, it would be shot down immediately. But hydra head mechanics stay in because, I don't know, it has tenure or something.


so i respect that you disagree with me but please take my statement as a whole and dont try to pretend that you can dissect it by each sentence fragment. i immediately went on to mention that we could perhaps better convey weapon damage type. in fact i think if we better convey weapon damage type we could make more enemies like hydras that interact differently with different melee weapons.

personally every melee game i watch for a flaming axe or longblade so i can disregard hydra's. your at like a 70ish percent chance to find one before lair so i use it as a tool in my belt. no training even needed. "oh is that a hydra? away with my war axe, out with the flaming scimitar i found. quaff lig for some defence if im scarred and hack off some heads" i actaully quite like the mechanic as it makes me look at glowing long swords and axes. then once i have one i can safly know that hydras arnt scary and i dont need to avoid them.

Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 18:31

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

The way hydra head mechanics work cannot be justified in terms of the logic of the game itself. There is no reason for notions like "slicing," "chopping," "piercing," or "crushing" damage to exist in crawl. This is simply a holdover from advanced dungeons and dragons rules, itself an arcane and antiquated system. It is unnecessary complexity that results from trying to jam a lot of stuff into a game without any standard for what's worth including.

The existence of just one thing in the game that distinguishes classes of weapons is not a cool, fun feature. Checking glowing junk items to find a marginally useful item is not a cool, fun feature. What is cool and fun is clean, consistent gameplay. So for example, weapons that are distinguished by factors like attack patterns (e.g. single target vs. cleaving) or extra stab damage is fine. No hydra head chopping plus everything's either a knife, sword, or axe would be an actual improvement in gameplay.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 18:46

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

Should it be noted that head chopping is almost uniform by weapon class? long swords? chop. short blade? no chop. axe? chop. maces? only whips do (id vote to change that)

polearms get sticky in that regard as like half chop and half dont.

Personally i belive that if the information was better comunicated that we could use it as another layer of depth that the game could benefit from.

only reason daggers are used as "stabbing" weapons is cuz assassin classes start with them, game doesnt really tell you "short blades do more damage to unwitting dudes"
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Barkeep

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 19:11

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

ApsychicRat wrote:short blade? no chop.

Unless I'm mistaken (item-prop.cc:474), Captain's Cutlass is a short blade that does behead hydras for some reason.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 19:18

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

njvack wrote:
ApsychicRat wrote:short blade? no chop.

Unless I'm mistaken (item-prop.cc:474), Captain's Cutlass is a short blade that does behead hydras for some reason.


that was because cutlasses used to be in the short blade category but were replaced with rapiers. one could argue that the caps blade theirfor should either be a long blade now or do stabbing instead of slashing for consistencies sake
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 19:44

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

ApsychicRat wrote:maces? only whips do (id vote to change that)

They do? Since when?

Btw. wiki says
Any such attack that deals 1-3 damage has a 50% chance of removing a head, while 4+ will always do so.

and if that really is the case then I learned something new (the 1-3 damage thing).
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 19:50

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

Sprucery wrote:
ApsychicRat wrote:maces? only whips do (id vote to change that)

They do? Since when?

Btw. wiki says
Any such attack that deals 1-3 damage has a 50% chance of removing a head, while 4+ will always do so.

and if that really is the case then I learned something new (the 1-3 damage thing).


The wiki states that whips do slashing damage so the assumption is they cut off heads, ill admit i dont usually use whips so i am not sure.

and ya i wasnt aware there was a damage threashhold on the head cutting. how often do you only do 1-3 damage on an attack though?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 21:05

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

Whips do slashing damage. Slashing damage does not cut hydra heads.

Also, monsters that attack hydras do cut off heads, but they only have 25% the chance that the player does (unless they are spectral weapons in which case they get the full chance, even if the spectral weapon is Asterion's and not yours).

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Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 6th April 2017, 22:43

Re: Make knight ancestor chop off hydra heads

duvessa wrote:Whips do slashing damage. Slashing damage does not cut hydra heads.

Also, monsters that attack hydras do cut off heads, but they only have 25% the chance that the player does (unless they are spectral weapons in which case they get the full chance, even if the spectral weapon is Asterion's and not yours).


welp, my brain must have lumped them together. they are the only weapon according to the wiki that does that damage type (obviously lumping in demon whips and holy scourges)

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