Make animate skeleton animate a random target


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Lair Larrikin

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Post Tuesday, 19th June 2018, 13:07

Make animate skeleton animate a random target

So everyone knows that animate skeleton is problematic. It is a no-brainer for any character that is not forbidden from magic/necromancy. It is way overpowered for its level. But the worst thing is that it is so tedious to use. If you are playing optimally you get to play the boring minigame of moving your char on top of every loot pile that might contain a corpse and then casting a.s. until you deplete the corpses on that square. You can also ctrl+f for "corpse" but that isn't any less tedious.

I'm sure there might be some plans to change how animate skeleton works or remove it, but while we wait for that is it a good idea to make the small change of having it animate a random corpse in LOS. It would both make it stronger and weaker, because you don't have to move to animate a valuable corpse if you are in combat, but you also have less control which corpse gets animated if there are multiples in combat.

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Malevolent

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Post Tuesday, 19th June 2018, 14:24

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

One advantage of animate skeleton is not having to pick up chunks, do you expect that will go away (introducing tedium back into the equation, sort of negating the point of your proposal) or do you propose that the chunks created will 'jump' into your inventory (which would constitute a slight power increase, if not a significant one) or that chunks will no longer be created by animate skeleton (that they will go away entirely) which is a slight power nerf (which the spell can withstand easily enough) but also requires optimal play be to walk around and look for corpses to butcher before actually trying to cast it after combat (re-introducing exactly the same tedium which you are trying to eliminate) ?
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Tungsten

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Post Tuesday, 19th June 2018, 18:02

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

Do we need Animate Skeleton in the first place, when we've already got Animate Dead?

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Lair Larrikin

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Post Tuesday, 19th June 2018, 19:41

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

Siegurt wrote:One advantage of animate skeleton is not having to pick up chunks, do you expect that will go away (introducing tedium back into the equation, sort of negating the point of your proposal) or do you propose that the chunks created will 'jump' into your inventory (which would constitute a slight power increase, if not a significant one) or that chunks will no longer be created by animate skeleton (that they will go away entirely) which is a slight power nerf (which the spell can withstand easily enough) but also requires optimal play be to walk around and look for corpses to butcher before actually trying to cast it after combat (re-introducing exactly the same tedium which you are trying to eliminate) ?

I would be fine with it not producing chunks. The walking around to find corpses to eat is no more tedium than regular eating of chunks without animate skeleton. You can alleviate that with auto_butcher, auto_eat_chunks and easy_eat_chunks. I would be even more fine with getting rid of chunks, but that's another matter

duvessa wrote:Do we need Animate Skeleton in the first place, when we've already got Animate Dead?

No, I'd be fine with removal. But in the meantime it requires much less inertia to get a small fix like this through than full removal.
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Barkeep

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Post Tuesday, 19th June 2018, 19:55

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

My suggestion:

* Remove Animate Skeleton
* Animate Dead produces skeletons instead of zombies

This nerfs necromancy a little teeny bit, removes a very very effective spell basically every character "should" learn and cast as often as possible, and also gets rid of the thing where Yred gives access to something that basically identical to a necro spell.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 19th June 2018, 20:05

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

njvack wrote:My suggestion:

* Remove Animate Skeleton
* Animate Dead produces skeletons instead of zombies

I would change this (and have suggested it in the past) so that it would produce skeletons and zombies. More spellpower would give bigger chance of zombies. This would make the spell dependent on spellpower, which is a good thing in itself.
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Post Wednesday, 20th June 2018, 04:45

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

Can we also change Animate Dead to affect a number of corpses (depending on spell power) instead of all of them?
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bel

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Post Wednesday, 20th June 2018, 05:29

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

One simple and effective way to nerf Animate Dead (or Animate Skeleton, for that matter) would be the following:

A corpse is revived as a zombie with some chance and destroyed otherwise. The chance increases with increasing spellpower and decreases with increasing monster HD.

This is roughly the approach taken in Hellcrawl (Hellcrawl did away with corpses altogether, but that's too radical a step for DCSS).

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Lair Larrikin

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Post Wednesday, 20th June 2018, 10:34

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Can we also change Animate Dead to affect a number of corpses (depending on spell power) instead of all of them?

This has one problem. Say you finish a large battle and there are corpses and loot strewn about. You cast Animate Dead. Some zombies appear. How can you know if there are more corpses left? You have to either ctrl+f for corpse after each cast or just mash Animated Dead repeatedly until you are fairly confident there are no corpses in LOS.

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Lair Larrikin

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Post Wednesday, 20th June 2018, 10:38

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

bel wrote:One simple and effective way to nerf Animate Dead (or Animate Skeleton, for that matter) would be the following:

A corpse is revived as a zombie with some chance and destroyed otherwise. The chance increases with increasing spellpower and decreases with increasing monster HD.

This is roughly the approach taken in Hellcrawl (Hellcrawl did away with corpses altogether, but that's too radical a step for DCSS).

I like this suggestion a lot. It makes learning Animated Skeleton a meaningful decision because without spellpower it will simply not do enough after the very early game.

But it doesn't remove the tedium of corpse hunting the floor and making sure you don't miss a single one.

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Post Wednesday, 20th June 2018, 15:29

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

Tungsten wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote:Can we also change Animate Dead to affect a number of corpses (depending on spell power) instead of all of them?

This has one problem. Say you finish a large battle and there are corpses and loot strewn about. You cast Animate Dead. Some zombies appear. How can you know if there are more corpses left? You have to either ctrl+f for corpse after each cast or just mash Animated Dead repeatedly until you are fairly confident there are no corpses in LOS.


You cast animate dead.
The dead rise and begin following you.
You sense there are [many more / more / some / a ] [bodies/body] in the area.

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 26

Joined: Saturday, 31st January 2015, 16:31

Post Wednesday, 20th June 2018, 16:26

Re: Make animate skeleton animate a random target

crawlnoob wrote:
Tungsten wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote:Can we also change Animate Dead to affect a number of corpses (depending on spell power) instead of all of them?

This has one problem. Say you finish a large battle and there are corpses and loot strewn about. You cast Animate Dead. Some zombies appear. How can you know if there are more corpses left? You have to either ctrl+f for corpse after each cast or just mash Animated Dead repeatedly until you are fairly confident there are no corpses in LOS.


You cast animate dead.
The dead rise and begin following you.
You sense there are [many more / more / some / a ] [bodies/body] in the area.


Great, more message spam :?

How about having a *corpse* status in your status list (next to regen, contam etc) if any corpses are in LOS and you have a corpse-interacting spell/ability. The reasoning can be that you have some sort of affinity towards corpses when you learn or gain that spell/ability

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