The Tavern

Spell power has no effect on the player blink spell. I propose that the spell gets a power cap of 100, and higher power results in greater maximum blink distance. This would make the spell less useful as a value pickup for people otherwise uninvested in the translocation skill.

My biggest worry with this proposal is that there are situations in which lower spell power might be useful. Would this add potential tedium?

I think if it effected the *average* distance, rather than the maximum, it might be less gamable and awkward.

In Brogue, Blink is always controlled, and thus controlling the distance makes sense. For uncontrolled blink, it's not clear to me that it makes sense. Perhaps it does, I don't know.

More generally, the existence of low-level spells in Crawl which don't depend (much) on spellpower is rather weird in the first place. Perhaps blink should just be raised in level.


Well, increasing the maximum would increase the average as well, wouldn't it (assuming it's uniform; I don't recall right now how blink works)?

If spellpower affected the minimum distance, that would be different (perhaps even interesting?).

Currently, the selection of the square is completely random (aka a uniform distribution.) Yes, changing the maximum distance would change the average (so would the minimum) I was suggesting leaving the maximum and minimum alone, and having spellpower influence the average distance blinked, with distances further from the average being increasingly less likely, but possible.

The reason putting a hard minimum or maximum on the distance would be gamable, is that in some circumstances, limiting the number of squares able to be targeted with an uncontrolled blink, lets you control your landing square, and putting a hard spellpower-dependant limit on it would let you control it more easily in a larger number of circumstances.

I'm not sure if spellpower influencing blink is a good way to go, but if it is, then we shouldn't thereby add a bunch of corner cases where the user can exploit having specific spellpower breakpoints.

Probably we can split the spell into several ones of level 2, 4, 6 and 8, Translocation school does not have that many spells after removing Phase Shift.
Short Blink - level 2 spell, min distance=2, max distance=3. Useful for avoiding a single monster and nothing more
Short Blink with Direction- level 4 spell, min distance=2, max distance=3, you select one of 8 directions where to blink (and always blink in that direction, if it is not possible, the direction key is not accepted). Useful for retreating but not too far.
Blink with Direction - level 6 spell, min distance=2, max distance=5, you select one of 8 directions where to blink (and always blink in that direction, if it is not possible, the direction key is not accepted). Useful for retreating. Close in power to Passage of Golubria which is overpowered IMHO
Controlled Blink (already exists) - level 8 spell, min=1, max=7, you choose tile to blink to. Life saving spell

"Blink with Direction" already exists and is called Passage of Golubria. You can make it less controlled at low spellpower if you really, really want.

As to the original proposal, sometimes blinking further away is not necessarily desirable. For a similar issue see Invisibility, where high spell power can be potentially bad/annoying (contamination too high).

Passage of Golubria requires 2 turns, you are not blinked instantly when you cast it.

I think blink is one of the best designed spells in crawl because it is so mechanically transparent (it's not perfect---im not exactly sure how blink works with odd terrain/clouds/traps) and I would hate to see breakpoints or fiddly spellpower considerations added to it. I personally don't think it is a problem that blink is so easy to get online--imo blink is a core part of crawl's movement and having a convenient way to escape speed 10 monsters is essential in a game with energy randomization. If blink is deemed op though (it's worth noting that not every character wants blink although most do) i would prefer a change in spell lv to a mechanical change.

I agree that blink has clear mechanics and that that is good.

I don't think the design is especially good though, since this effect appears on evokable equipment and as a god ability. The low level, high utility, and good availability make it a "no brainer" in a lot of games. Translocations would be pretty badly hollowed out if it were gone though. If it were me, I'd say make PoG a god ability and drop the school. Making teleportation oriented effects less available and more specialized is good.

Regardless of whether or not we keep tloc around as a school (I don't mind it, personally), please don't make a spell where you actively want to keep spellpower low in order to have an easier time predicting what it will do. Short and reliable blinks would be useful in lots of places, but the most significant comes right at the end of the game, when you may want to blink over a zot trap blocking one of the lungs. Currently, you either have to train tloc enough to have PoG or you have to use fog to reduce LOS or you have to keep blinking and hope you get lucky; this would make it so that everyone who didn't bother training tloc could reliably get over those traps.

If spellpower should do something, maybe allow picking a desired distance to blink, and with higher spellpower your destination is more weighed towards squares that far away?