Monster spell proposal: Multi-OoD

[phloomp]

Dodging orbs of destruction is fun, but not very deep (since they are not so hard to avoid even without screwing up your positioning) and spoilery (since it is hard to tell how fast they are moving without tracking how long they have existed). This is a proposal to solve the first problem, by having monster cast more orbs at once.

Spell description:
Upon casting, create one orb (orb #1) heading for the player just like the usual OoD spell. Let S be the smallest square centered on the player and including orb #1. Choose 1d4 tiles on the boundary of S. Throw out each tile that is outside the player's LOS or occupied by a wall. In each of the remaining tiles, place an orb heading for the player.

Expected objections:
A monster with this spell is likely to blow itself up.
Yes, but I think not so likely that the player needn't bother to kill it.

A monster with this spell is likely to blow up other monsters.
Probably this spell should be kept out of branch ending vaults and such.

A monster with this spell is so likely to blow other monsters up, that the player would be incentivized to lure it around.
Probably not; noise alone should make that a bad tactic. It could also be prevented by only giving the spell to fragile monsters (so that it is likely to blow itself up if you lure it for too long) or only giving it to monsters with a second strong attack/hex.

[Magipi]

Dodging orbs of destruction is fun, but not very deep (since they are not so hard to avoid even without screwing up your positioning) and spoilery (since it is hard to tell how fast they are moving without tracking how long they have existed).

Starting the proposal like this immediately discredits your whole post. This might be true for a handful of experts, 0.001 percent of Crawl players. At most.

[duvessa]

Dodging orbs of destruction is fun, but not very deep (since they are not so hard to avoid even without screwing up your positioning) and spoilery (since it is hard to tell how fast they are moving without tracking how long they have existed). This is a proposal to solve the first problem, by having monster cast more orbs at once.

It may make the first problem smaller but it makes the second problem way worse.

If OOD is going to exist it should just move like a regular monster, similar to a giant spore or ball lightning. No arcing, no crashing into walls, it just pathfinds towards you. That way you couldn't just dodge it, so it'd actually be dangerous, and it'd retain the gimmick of requiring extra time in order to do damage.

[phloomp]

Starting the proposal like this immediately discredits your whole post. This might be true for a handful of experts, 0.001 percent of Crawl players. At most.

Was not communicating very well. Really I just meant "you can move to one side, and then move back." So OoD does not give a lot of pressure to move far from your starting position. It is really hard to tell when you need to move in order to avoid being hit, which I was trying to get at with the "spoileriness" clause.

Dodging orbs of destruction is fun, but not very deep (since they are not so hard to avoid even without screwing up your positioning) and spoilery (since it is hard to tell how fast they are moving without tracking how long they have existed). This is a proposal to solve the first problem, by having monster cast more orbs at once.

It may make the first problem smaller but it makes the second problem way worse.

If OOD is going to exist it should just move like a regular monster, similar to a giant spore or ball lightning. No arcing, no crashing into walls, it just pathfinds towards you. That way you couldn't just dodge it, so it'd actually be dangerous, and it'd retain the gimmick of requiring extra time in order to do damage.

You could possibly have dodging without spoileriness by making it easier to predict where the orb goes (maybe by putting an aura on the tiles it will traverse over the next few timesteps or something).

[Rast]

Dodging orbs of destruction is fun ... This is a proposal to solve the first problem

[Croases]

If OoDs hitting friendlies is a problem, that can be solved by making OoDs unable to hit friendlies. They can just phase right through.

I'm pretty sure that spell can take the buff.

[ion_frigate]

spoilery (since it is hard to tell how fast they are moving without tracking how long they have existed).

This could at least be partially solved by making the orb change color as it changes speed. This is really easy in console and probably not too difficult for tiles.