The Tavern

tl;dr at the bottom

To expand on the title: I'd like for muts that appear to heavily favor increasing the level of an already existing mut in favor of giving a new one.

When I use the term "facet" I will be referring to the 3 levels of any given mutation all-together. My proposal:

- First level of at least one facet guaranteed by level 3. This is probably already the case, but I don't know for certain.
- When a Ds levels up and makes the roll to get a mutation, the chance of getting a new mutation is 50%^(number of current Facets). So 100% chance with no facets, 50% with 1, 25% with 2, and 12.5% with 3. The roll for the actual mutation is done after this.
- This chance for a new facet is 100% if the roll to get a mutation is made but all existing facets are max level.
- Alternatively, make the chance 0% if there is a current facet not as max level, so that a player has to get all of one facet before they get another.
- Remove or fix Demonic Guardian so that the player doesn't get Ice Fiends before Lair. I don't know if this is an issue because I've never gotten max level before XL15.

Anyway, I have 3 supporting arguments.

1. Suspense
So in a way, a Ds player is similar to a 10-year-old at Christmas: a deranged savage in heavy suspense of what it's going to get. The problem is, once you've played Ds 10 or so times, chances are you know every mutation based on the message given when you obtain the very first level.

"You feel resistant to cold" aka Icemail
"You feel your magic form a resilient shield around your flesh" aka Spirit Shield and becoming the poor man's VS

Basically, once you have the first level of each of four mutations (or five, if monstrous), the suspense is gone. You already know what you're going to get. Going back to the Christmas analogy, it's as if you opened all of your presents right away and the only thing left was the big special gift your parents had for you that would be arriving in the late afternoon. Only, the day is filled with wild animals, demons, and some crazy bastard with mace hording problem that are all trying to kill you. Hence most players don't normally even think about the Tier 3 Facet until after they've gotten a rune or two and are quite a ways through Vaults.

So basically, the suspense factor is often gone by say... level 7 or 8, when you often know your Scales Facet and two Tier 2 Facets. It doesn't come back until level 20.

This proposal aims to even that out and significantly decrease the 11 or 12 level aforementioned gap by always leaving something undiscovered only a few level ups away.

2. Level 3 Muts are rare
Ds isn't a difficult race by a mile. It has normal HP and a very solid racial with no real weaknesses. However, it's not an easy one either. It's safe to say that Ds is a popular race even among new players. Subsequently, there are many players who often die before seeing level 3 of the more interesting facets before they can use them.

It'd be cool for those players to get to experience a lot of the Ds fun of 3rd level facets. Or at least, significantly more often than they do currently.

3. It reduces scumming
The penalty for being one of the most fun races in the game is to have a unique form of scumming: mut scumming.

Most mut scumming is done for one of two reasons: avoiding monstrous (or trying to get it in some rare cases) and to reroll bad muts. Quick show of hands, how many of you are likely to [Q]uit a level 16 character after discovering that your Tier 2 Facets are boring and/or ass. No hands? Great.

While there will be some people that will likely still scum with a change like this, the fact that you can't find out all of your muts right away definitely puts weight on scumming for a new Ds.

tl;dr
Ds mutations should be heavily weighted towards advancing existing mutations over giving new ones.
Pros:
1. It increases the player's suspense.
2. It lets the player have more fun with the max level of mutations.
3. It further discourages scumming for Ds mutations.
Cons:
1. There is a potential balance issue with Demonic Guardian (though again, I don't think you can get level 3 before XL 15 or so anyway)

I would support this. The demonic guardian problem could be solved by removing it from the Ds-mutation list. Something like this doesn't really have the feel of a mutation anyway. It gives you on occasional summons, which makes about as much sense as having a mutation giving you an occasional conjuration. These things should only be available through deliberate decisions, such as spells, evocables, or religion.

That's a good point. But by that logic, we should also get rid of Darkness.

Actually, considering that darkness is super boring, that sounds like a great plan.

FR: Remove demonic guardian from DS, give it to Mahk, remove Mahk active demon summoning.

really? it's one of my favorite Ds muts! Better stealth, less distance to melee, more surprises!

If Demonic Guardian is the only problematic mutation, it would be easy to special case handling for it by setting a minimum player XL for mutation level increase. eg you can only get level 2 once you're above XL10.

I actually would quit a level 16 if I found out I didn't like the combination of DS mutations I would end up with, and have quit higher level characters for less on many occasions. For me, the game is less about winning or losing and more about having fun along the way... if I stop having fun, for any reason, it's time for a new character. I have actually quit characters because they were doing too well and the game wasn't challenging enough anymore.

It seems rather degenerate to bump this, but it's been two or three months and the arguments are all still valid. I could create a new topic instead highlighting this same thing, but that would be dumb.