The Tavern

This week's Leszczynek's Obscure Complaint is about spiny frogs and how they aren't actually spiny. Sure threw me off when I finally tried the famous Borgnjor's Overpowered Clutch out, realized I can't use it against spiny monsters (porcupine), then realized spiny frogs aren't really spiny and completely vulnerable to BVC.

I understand buffing spiny frogs sounds scary, especially since porcupines can do quite a lot of damage with spikes, so maybe renaming would be in order. Explaining to a player what can resist constriction would be nice too.

Remove monster spiny.

Replace "Spiny" attribute with "Spicy".

Would this frog have a chance to drop potions of Tobasco?

Why.

Retaliation effects on monsters are mostly a way of giving them hidden extra melee damage. Porcupine spiny can sometimes change your tactics, but it does so in a dumb way (let me swap to my unskilled shortbow to kill it so I take less damage than using my 12 skill flail!). Torturous demonspawn and hell sentinel spiny damage is really low for where those monsters show up and it's trivial to have strong options besides melee attack at that point. The most important effect of spiny on those monsters is, completely without irony, making them immune to vile clutch. I imagine that the intent of spiny was to make an "anti-melee" monster, but this doesn't work at all for the latter two examples and only works for porcupine if you have bad AC and low HP. Since almost every other monster in the game is also pretty decent against bad AC melee, this strikes me as extremely pointless. The shock serpent discharge aura has a similar problem where it's mostly hidden bonus damage and doesn't really change how you approach fights with them (aside from dumb things like stepping out of its range to avoid taking damage after paralyzing them).

Translation: let's remove yet another obstacle to mindlessly tabbing.

Actually, spiny and the shock serpent aura are sometimes significant damage, particularly if you have low-moderate AC. There's nothing dumb about switching to different attack types on different enemies. That's half the game. You're upset about having to use 3 brain cells on crawl and want to use only 2?

It doesn't stop mindless tabbing at all - the characters who do utilize this "tactic" really don't give a damn about porcupine spines and only know about the other two if they check the learndb entry.

The issue is not whether one needs to think more, but whether there is any meaningful choice in the matter. If there is only one correct choice, then that choice should be made as painless as possible. If that choice is Tab, then Tab is best.

How does one use one's brain if one switches to a bow to kill a porcupine (if that is the correct choice)? Do you specifically train bows in case you meet a porcupine? This argument would be as if one were arguing that one should remove Tab because it removes the decision of whether to move left or right to attack a monster who is to one's left or right respectively. Yes, one would needs to think more, but such brain activity is mostly useless, because there's only one correct choice.

Finally, I don't know why tabbing is often paired with "mindless". Tabbing is just an interface convenience. It is no more mindless than quaffing a potion or casting a spell. If people choose to do something mindlessly, that's on them.

Did anyone even mention the difference between fast and slow weapons against porcupines itt? It's pretty big. Having/not having equipment to deal with certain enemies is a big part of the game.

I would suggest making their spines do more damage and reducing their normal melee attack damage, slightly emphasizing the importance of having an effective way of dealing with them.
Have to admit I never tried using a bow because that's too tedious so if a bow with 0 skill is enough to kill a porcupine I would drop the above suggestion because a bow is not hard to find and there wouldn't be much choice.

I don't think spiny frogs should be made spiny because they're a good enemy as is. Change the name instead.

Note that an untrained sling or hand crossbow is actually probably a better choice than an untrained bow, but I use untrained slings/hand crossbows all the time, so using them against a porcupine is not like a stretch for me at all.

If i can win the game using melee only, does that makes it the correct choice always? And because that choice has to be painless everything else has to be removed? I dont like having to zero evo zap evocables at enemies like nessos or sonja or ettins or hydra or undead creatures, can we get rid of them, or at least buff their mr/defenses? We got rid of nergalle's death door for similar reasons.

People like to go around using zero skill ranged weapons because it gives free actions over anything that doesnt have a ranged action, why do we draw the line on porcupines?

Counter Proposal: Let enemies using long blades riposte.

Ooh!

Yes please, change the name of spiny frogs. Call them death frogs or something. It makes no sense to have such a name, sporting a feature the monster doesn't have. What about coral frog?

Why not just call them toads? I mean, spiny frogs are just tougher, poisonous versions of regular frogs. A toad would be pretty much the same thing.

*Bulltoads :p

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Giant_toad

i never forgot you, giant toad

"Hello, gold and silver"

"Hi, do you guys take sports memorabilia?"

"Sure do, whaddya got"?

"I have a basketball signed by Derrick Rose. I can't believe the Chicago Bulltoads traded him away"

*click*

No way the dev team would allow anything to be named "giant" !
https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=23387&p=310503

Does it even need to be a frog or toad? It just needs to be venomous, fast, cold-blooded, and amphibian. It could be some sort of "pseudohydra" that is fast, doesn't regrow heads, but has a poisonous bite.

Or just "yellow frog".

My vote is for: "psychedelic frog", confuses you when hit with unarmed.