Proposal: god of defense


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Mines Malingerer

Posts: 41

Joined: Thursday, 24th May 2018, 16:47

Location: UK

Post Tuesday, 29th May 2018, 13:37

Proposal: god of defense

Hello,
Trog is the god of war and attack (e.g. berserk) and I think it should be accompanied (married?) by a second god of war focused on defense. Perhaps it could be a rework of Okawaru to better distinguish them.

Like Trog and Okawaru she would grant equipment, but like Trog only grants weapons this new god would only grant armor (including hats, boots, shields, etc.). Additionally prayers/abilities could grant elemental resistance (like potion of resistence?) or immunity to damage (like Zin?), perhaps at the cost of inmovability: they are not meant to give a chance to escape, but as help in the fight.

Piety would be gained not by killing enemies but by receiving attacks (even if the armor stops it), with the stronger attacks granting more piety.

Thoughts?

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Tuesday, 29th May 2018, 15:53

Re: Proposal: god of defense

Game design discussion is really intended for the discussion of complete proposals, rather than "trying to sketch out an idea and come up with a fully formed proposal"

At a minimum you'll need:
1. A rationale as to what your proposal contributes to the game that isn't already there.
2. A mostly-complete notion of all the mechanics involved.

As such this topic will probably be moved to CYC by an admin at some point. (Which just means "you need to get your idea fully fleshed out before you propose it")

Now as to the proposal itself:
1. Elemental resistances in exchange for lack of movement is a bad deal, movement is nearly always more important than elemental resistances, and elemental resistances aren't as important as they seem a lot of the time. In particular, as a counterpart to berskerk that proposed ability is a pretty bad trade, berserk not only greatly increases your offense, but *also* gives a bunch of hps for a short while, and it greatly expands how quickly and easilly you can handle some fights, with the drawback of being much much worse for 2.a short period afterwards (if your berserk runs out, and there's anything dangerous that you haven't killed left, you're probably in danger.) It's possible to create a defense-focused ability that has similar properties (massively increases your ability to survive some combats, entails some risk) but doing so without duplicating existing abilities will be hard.
2. If your proposed god overlaps other gods (or other existing abilities) too much, you'll be hard pressed to find much acceptance. If you find that your design pretty much is "wrap up some existing spells or other god abilities into a new god" it will gain pretty much no traction at all.
3. You propose using "getting attacked" as a way to gain piety, in the normal use case that's pretty much the same as gaining it on kill, however being attacked is abusable, you can drag out non-risky combats to gain piety rapidly, at no risk, just by waiting. A measurable gain with no cost other than tedium is one of the no-nos in crawl design. I get that you were trying to more closely associate your desired theme with the god, but that's just not going to work at all.
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Antares

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 41

Joined: Thursday, 24th May 2018, 16:47

Location: UK

Post Tuesday, 29th May 2018, 21:47

Re: Proposal: god of defense

Siegurt wrote:Game design discussion is really intended for the discussion of complete proposals, rather than "trying to sketch out an idea and come up with a fully formed proposal"

Alright. I thought the wiki was for fully formed proposals and this was not-fully formed ones where we are looking for feedback. :)

About the proposal, after what you said I thought there could be these piety gifts:

Piety: *
Cost: piety, 1 MP
Effect: increase your armor skill and lowers it's encumbrance
Duration: determined by invocation

Piety: **
Cost: piety, 2 MP
Effect: equivalent to potion of resistance
Duration: determined by invocation

Piety: ***
Cost: none
Effect: random presents (following the Trog/Okawaru model) but only of wearable types

Piety: ****
Cost: some piety, 4 MPs
Effect: immunity from all damage, but stasis and no mobility (or alternatively movements take twice)
Duration: determined by invocation

Alternative ideas:
- Physical damage received is converted into healing, but not things like damage caused by spells, poison, god's smite, terror, etc. This would force the character to use it during a fight (can't wait a couple of turns of peace to heal up) but it's also risky to use when HPs are very low.
- Instead of the * ability, there's a permanent decrease in encumbrance that increases with invocation.

3. You propose using "getting attacked" as a way to gain piety, in the normal use case that's pretty much the same as gaining it on kill, however being attacked is abusable, you can drag out non-risky combats to gain piety rapidly, at no risk, just by waiting. A measurable gain with no cost other than tedium is one of the no-nos in crawl design.
In terms of being similar to gaining it on kills, that's true as long as you get in the middle of fights. But if you prefer to kite or kill from afar, or even just prefer high EV rather than high AC, then you would gain piety much more slowly. In fact it would encourage using high AC because it lets you gain a lot more piety without suffering much real damage.

In terms of avoiding players dragging out non-risky fights I haven't figured the solution. I thought if they are non-risky then they probably don't cause much damage so as long as the piety depends on the damage received (pre-armor) divided by the player's level or their max HP, then it would mostly solve it. Additionally if necessary the player could lose piety with time (like it happens with other gods) so that wasting a lot of time to gain piety very slowly becomes counter-productive. Alternatively if the abilities/prayers cost is considerable piety, but piety would be gained relatively quickly in a big battle, it would encourage the player to continuously use the skills and recharge the piety.

I'm no expert, and I think balancing these sort of issues is not easy. Hence why I'm putting it here for people who know more about these sort of things. :)
Last edited by Antares on Wednesday, 30th May 2018, 01:36, edited 1 time in total.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5382

Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Wednesday, 30th May 2018, 01:25

Re: Proposal: god of defense

Antares wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Game design discussion is really intended for the discussion of complete proposals, rather than "trying to sketch out an idea and come up with a fully formed proposal"

Alright. I thought the wiki was for fully formed proposals and this was not-fully formed ones where we are looking for feedback. :)

Actually, the wiki is years behind and largely unused, this forum is a newbie posting trap, and they don't advertise the important channels much. I hear it's some combination of the letters I, R and C, though. No idea what that is though, I think it died out 20 years ago. Something about relay races in the olympics, I think.

Don't let me discourage you from posting or designing features, though, just be aware the bar for consideration is very, very high.

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 45

Joined: Monday, 4th December 2017, 19:23

Post Friday, 1st June 2018, 08:11

Re: Proposal: god of defense

If we're throwing out ideas for the god of defense. . what about the god of counter attacks? A god that enhances dodges and blocks to do counter attacks sounds fun in premise, although it probably needs more going for it than just that.

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