Kryia's mail coat


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Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 10th October 2017, 17:29

Kryia's mail coat

TL;DR
What it's now: +7 Kryia's mail coat {PotionHeal*2 rC+}
My change suggestion: +0 Kryia's mail coat {Heal*2}

Details:
It was a pretty interesting armor choice back when wands of heal wounds were around. Now that they're no longer there, Kryia's is generally OK but uses a somewhat bad base (scale mail) and will be likely changed by the player as soon as dragon scales and a few enchant armour scrolls become available.

I think changing Kryia's from "generally OK" to "interesting choice" would benefit the game. My suggestion is to decrease the enchantment by a few points + remove cold resists and increase the healing, either by giving it *3 multiplier or, preferably, let it affect all sources of healing. Numbers can be tweaked if necessary.

The reasoning behind this is to make it less of a safe but boring mid game armor choice for hybrids (good enchantment, resistance, good healing when your HP pool is still mediocre) and more of a risky choice with benefits - it'd offer less protection from damage spikes but allow to effectively deal with the results of said spikes by consuming resources.

The exact numbers would have to be discussed, but I'd imagine Kryia's to be something like +0 Kryia's mail coat {Heal*2}, which would include Makhleb's and TSO's passive healing on kills, Ely's and Ru's healing, potions and all vampiric effects but not passive regeneration (Regen+ items, mutations, Trog's Hand). I'm not sure if this effect is too powerful or not, but it'd certainly offer a more impactful choice, and it's not like we don't have very strong or very bad unrandarts already. Besides, finding a particular artifact is a rare occurence, very far from guaranteed, and I think making it fun for the player instead of mediocre or boring is a step in the right direction.

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Post Wednesday, 11th October 2017, 02:20

Re: Kryia's mail coat

First of all, if it says Heal*2 it should apply to all healing, even the sources that you personally don't like, including "passive regeneration". (See also: Harm and guardian spirit's baffling exemption of the poison status.)
Leszczynek wrote:it's not like we don't have very strong or very bad unrandarts already.
This is a reason to fix the existing ones, not a reason to add more.
I don't think I would ever wear your proposed version unless I was worshipping Ely or maybe Ru. The current version is reasonably strong, since it's only a little worse than the plate armor you use in a typical game, and doubling heal wounds/curing is still a pretty big advantage. A version that is +0 scale mail but applies to all healing is basically like the current version -7 AC for most characters, which equates to "completely trash my defenses in exchange for better healing, which I could use to make up for the extra damage I'm taking due to my trashed defenses, except whoops, all my healing is limited". So you have this item that is good for vampiric draining users, Ely users, and maybe some other gods and sucks for everyone else (maybe it would be okay for vampiric weapon users, but I'm not convinced since the main problem with vampiric brand is extreme variability which Heal*2 does nothing to correct). All the situations where healing on kills is useful are also situations where you really don't want to be wearing +0 scale mail.

I like the idea of generalizing it to all healing but choosing a disadvantage that boils down to "you take way more damage, in order to cancel out the increased healing" makes it pretty uninteresting. Something perpendicular would be a better choice. -Tele on Maxwell's Patent Armour is a good example of that.

Agreed on removing the rC+.

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Majang, nago, VeryAngryFelid

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Post Wednesday, 11th October 2017, 08:50

Re: Kryia's mail coat

We already have a body armor that gives a big bonus to healing but has poor AC

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luckless, VeryAngryFelid

Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 11th October 2017, 13:46

Re: Kryia's mail coat

duvessa wrote:A version that is +0 scale mail but applies to all healing is basically like the current version -7 AC for most characters, which equates to "completely trash my defenses in exchange for better healing, which I could use to make up for the extra damage I'm taking due to my trashed defenses, except whoops, all my healing is limited".

So maybe we could work something out here instead of just settling with stacking AC and tabbing being be-all and end-all of melee fighting (and one of the reasons healing was limited in the first place, I believe).

duvessa wrote:So you have this item that is good for vampiric draining users, Ely users, and maybe some other gods and sucks for everyone else

Yes, that was one of the main ideas actually, though I suppose you will almost never find it before choosing a god. Anyway, the numbers can be tweaked if it sucks too much.

duvessa wrote:I like the idea of generalizing it to all healing but choosing a disadvantage that boils down to "you take way more damage, in order to cancel out the increased healing" makes it pretty uninteresting. Something perpendicular would be a better choice. -Tele on Maxwell's Patent Armour is a good example of that.

I'm not sure what you mean by "perpendicular". Just the disadvantage not being in opposite of the advantage or some particular direction?

Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 11th October 2017, 15:36

Re: Kryia's mail coat

duvessa wrote:First of all, if it says Heal*2 it should apply to all healing, even the sources that you personally don't like, including "passive regeneration". (See also: Harm and guardian spirit's baffling exemption of the poison status.)
[...]
Agreed on removing the rC+.

Harm hasn't had exceptions for poison damage for a long time. The only reason it ever did was that I had been convinced that there was a "double-dipping" factor such that applying harm to the poison damage would effectively multiply damage by 1.3 * 1.3, which, once I investigated, was not the case.

Why remove rC+? Is the concern power level, flavor, elegance, or something else?

Spider Stomper

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Post Wednesday, 11th October 2017, 16:17

Re: Kryia's mail coat

Rast wrote:We already have a body armor that gives a big bonus to healing but has poor AC

in that spirit, here's a proposal: remove Kyria's mail coat, and replace the robe of vines's NoDeviceHeal with Kyria's DeviceHeal*2. (Thus, the robe of vines has no drawbacks, apart from the very significant drawback of being a robe.)

I don't think Kyria's has much of a niche without wands of heal wounds, and I don't know if it's worth trying to mess with the item to provide one. otoh, perhaps changing the robe of vines to something that greatly improved healing in general would make it good enough to be potentially worth using.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 11th October 2017, 16:17

Re: Kryia's mail coat

What if we just left everything else as is and just generalized it to heal*2? I dont think it would constitute a massive power upgrade, or make it super overpowered or unbalanced.


I think that historically, having things apply to regen but not healing or vise versa is consistently done and clear enough. I can't off the top of my head think of anything that influences both, so if this did so, it would make this item the odd man out, not that there is any strong reason it shouldn't be.

Reamoving the rc+ is mostly meaningless, having it be there is mostly meaningless too.

As long as it isn't a fun gimmick wrapped up in an awful, self defeating unusable body armour, it is probably fine.
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Leszczynek
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Post Wednesday, 11th October 2017, 17:26

Re: Kryia's mail coat

I personally like Luckless' proposal of slapping regen + device heal on robe of vines. If you just want regen without device heal, you can easily get it as a VS.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 12th October 2017, 01:04

Re: Kryia's mail coat

Leszczynek wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "perpendicular". Just the disadvantage not being in opposite of the advantage
Yeah. To give a really direct example, Bullseye was a +15 shield with EV-5; it gave you an increase in one defensive stat, and its disadvantage was a decrease in another, extremely similar defensive stat. This was boring and pointless. Your proposed change to Kryia's certainly isn't as bad as that, but healing and defensive stats ultimately have the same role: they're both about mitigating incoming damage. So buffing healing at the expense of defensive stats is not very interesting. Another example of a fixedart that is bad in this respect is hat of the alchemist; it's just about trading AC for resistances, both of which do very similar things (resistances are just more specialized). Such an item does very little to transform your character in an interesting way.

The characteristic advantage of Maxwell's patent armour is that it gives you a lot of defense. For a disadvantage, it doesn't choose to take away some of your other defenses, because that would be boring. Instead, it takes away some of your mobility with -Tele (and your spells, but the -Cast is a lot less interesting than the -Tele imo).

Mind you, there's generally no need to saddle an item with some horrible disadvantage unless it's actually going to be too powerful without that disadvantage. A version with decent AC and Heal*1.5 could be just fine.

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Post Thursday, 12th October 2017, 05:58

Re: Kryia's mail coat

duvessa wrote:Maxwell's patent armour takes away some of your mobility with -Tele (and your spells, but the -Cast is a lot less interesting than the -Tele imo).


I would generally agree with you here, but the arrival of Gnolls has made the -Cast ego more interesting. My Gnoll was badly mutated (couldn't find many potions in my game) and had teleportitis by the time I needed to clear Zot 5. I did find Maxwell's patent armour and decided to wear that, because of the -Tele ego. But it also meant that I couldn't cast, and with the help of Comrade Chei I was easily able to cast Iron Shot in crystal plate by that time. But then again, a Gnoll seems to be the only species where you can make the decision to turn from a caster to a melee tank in the blink (no pun intended) of an eye.
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