The Tavern

As you know some amulets are not easily swappable: faith, harm, spirit shield. Yet acrobat is really like rings. I was "lucky" to find acrobat and magic regen before temple as HuVM, now it is optimal to explore with acrobat for surviving centaurs and alike and then swap to magic regen for actually fighting, that's boring (because there is no decision-making) and tiresome.

I suggest to make removing an amulet impossible until you kill a monster while wearing the amulet. It solves problem with acrobat.

rCorr has been a ring since 0.18.

Oops, for some reason I believed it was changed the other way around, from ring to amulet. Shows how much I use rCorr
I will update OP.

I agree that something should be changed but this solution seems a bit awkward (keep a bat around just for allowing fast amulet change) and not very elegant flavour-wise. For example, the suggestion of making all amulets fragile seems more intriguing to me.

I was trying to add some decision-making to fights if possible. Ideally there should be choice between running from Erolcha immediately and switching to acrobat after killing a plain orc, though my suggestion does not provide that.

Easily done, change it back into an amulet of rMut, and there will be no more swapping it off.

It would be nice if all amulets and not just those three were harder to swap. Perhaps:
1- Amulet of regenerations first don't regenerate and then slowly increase their rate.
2- Removing amulet of reflection causes confusion (because of the sudden disappeaing of the distortion energy around it?)
3- Equiping the amulet of gourmand makes you more hungry.

Wouldn't it make more sense to put a restriction on the amulet slot itself, compared to having a unique "don't be incentivized to boringly swap this" mechanic on most amulets?

eg: amulets cannot be swapped with an enemy in view. Or, amulets take 2 auts to remove and put on.

Sure, but I quite like the flavour it gives (although personally I hate amulet of harm as its penality is too strong in comparison with the rest, imho).

Amulets of regen, and magic regen already don't heal you until you get to max hps/mps while wearing them. Gourmand takes time (and therefore lets corpses rot) to give you the ability to eat chunks up to engorged.

Reflection, Rage, and Acrobat are the only ones presently without some kind of swapping limitation (It is reasonably to say that the limitation on swapping magic regen isn't sufficient, as you generally have a choice as to whether to use any MP before you decide to swap it in.)

Reflection and Acrobat are similar in their net effect, maybe they should just be merged into one amulet.

If there was a delay on Berserk being usable when equipping "Rage it'd probably be sufficient to dissuade it's use (as it's 'swap-in' use is desirable to use immediately, in an optimal world you would swap it in whenever you wanted to berserk, and always have something else equipped otherwise)

My "vote" would go for bigger penalties, like the amulet of faith, harm and guardian. The first two in particular require a certain comittment. Perhaps for rage it could exhaust you (like berserk does afterwards)?

Anyway, it's up to the team. Just don't leave it as inconsistent as it is now, with some amulet having equip/unequip effects and others not.

How about sleeping the player when you put on amulet of the acrobat

Why not just require every amulet that has a strictly positive effect to "attune to a full HP character" before it does its main effect? Leave artifact necklaces alone, so you still get your stats and resists, but you don't get the reflection piece or the regen piece until you hit max HP?