The Tavern

With the Deep Elves having adapted to living underground & having extreme aptitude for magic, it might make sense for them to have lost their sight & get around with magical sense. If implemented, I could imagine any of the following effects:
1. can see invisible (because the creature's magical aura is still there)
2. can see through walls (because walls only block light)
3. can't read scrolls (because the magical sense doesn't reveal the ink)

If you're posting in GDD instead of CYC, you're not likely to get many responses unless you explain why your changes belong in the game, specifically :

• Why do you feel like the game would benefit from a species with those changes (namely a small buff, a huge buff and a huge debuff) ?
• Why do you feel like Deep elves should be removed in favor of this species ?
• Why would anyone want to play a species without access to identify and remove curse scrolls?

Deep elves are already well designed and provide a useful niche (low hp but ferocious magic aptitudes leading to very powerful casters in later game) that both give some challenge and fulfill user expectations (glass cannon blaster trope). They also dont have any gear restrictions so getting SInv isnt exactly hard, nor all that necessary once they have a modicum of AC from their equipment.

As to seeing through walls, it steps on the toes of Ash and the antenna mutation (and I guess formicids? i never played one), but also begs the question HOW DO THEY SEE THE WALLS, THEN? Not even going to get into it with scrolls or wait yes I am..... WHY in the name of the crawl gods would the ink on a magic scroll not be MAGIC?

So this post is endemic of most new posters in GDD, notably it's written from a starting point of "You know what would be really cool and thematic" and then mechanics are invented to suit a theme.

In reality DCSS mostly is improved when the opposite is done, mechanics are invented because they enhance game play, and theme is slapped on after the fact.

Starting from "Deep elves should have magic sight" might be a useful thing spur your creative process, but once you come up with mechanics that seem appropriate, you still have to work out how they enhance game play, and if you can't, then the mechanics don't belong in the game. On the other hand if you come up with mechanics that don't suit your original vision, but do enhance game play, then it's well worth exploring how they would fit into the game (and narrative can be adjusted to make room wherever needed) or even exploring an entirely new vision (which might in turn spur on more creations)

While DCSS might *appear* to be a role playing game, it's actually a mechanical game, that has role-playing elements layered over the top to give people a sense of theme and purpose.

I think flavor matters a lot and is half the draw of any fantasy game. You want to imagine yourself as a protagonist with special powers, rising in ability and status as the game progresses, and you want to be able to immerse yourself in the world of the protagonist. The more flavorful/interesting and "real"-seeming that world is, the easier and more desirable it is to immerse yourself in it. Mechanics matter too, but they aren't the only thing.

Also, if you ask me, the response to a new idea should be to work on ways to improve it. Focus on what might be good in the idea instead of dismissing the whole thing because there's one aspect you don't like.

I do like the idea of a race that can see through walls. It's a unique race concept. Yes, it encroaches on Ash's territory, but then so does deep dwarf dungeon sense. The main problem with OP's idea is that too much of the game is based around scrolls for a race not to be able to read them. Therefore, they can simply be a race with Blurry Vision 3.

There are different types of players. For instance, I don't care about role-playing at all, only mechanics matter to me.

And while I agree that immersion and flavor are important, I think they aren't *game design* points. You can reflavor virtually any mechanic to fit into nearly any story telling scenario given a far enough stretch, but a bad mechanic remains bad no matter how flawlessly it fits into your story.

The problem comes when a new mechanic is *enslaved* to it's story, when the mechanic's entire point is to tell the story, and it doesn't contribute to game play in the slightest (or even detracts from it). That isn't to say that new ideas shouldn't be explored when they're medeocre or bad, they may have enough promise that they can become a good mechanic, the problem is that when you confine yourself to the story telling elements that you're designing from to start with, you can artificially road block yourself into not improving or fixing something because it doesn't make sense for the story you want to tell.

So talking strictly from a design standpoint:

Seeing through walls is very powerful (if you've used scry in any significant measure, you'll recognize this as a true statement) giving a race this ability permanantly is significantly *more* powerful than Ash's ability (and completely supercedes it)

When looking at "a race that can always see through walls" from a design standpoint I want to ask:
First: Does this contribute a new thing to the game, would it measurably impact gameplay in a positive fashion, if you disregard the problems (I think the answer is yes)
Second: Do the costs and benefits feel equal in measure? If not maybe we would need more costs, perhaps to the point where the race would get either too weird/complicated or not fun to play. The OP's proposed costs might be proportional, but they'd also make the game un-fun (no scrolls requires a lot of additional work, and it's been explored several times with no positive resolution), Berer's suggestion of replacement with blurry vision 3 don't feel strong enough (to me) but adding more additional already-existing costs added to blurry vision to get to the point where the costs and benefits are proportional seem like they'd start to encroach into the "this is a giant hodgepodge mess of complicated un-fun-ness" so we'd likely need a new drawback invented.
Third: Would the existence of this race obviate some portion of exisiting gameplay, and if so, would it be worth it? I think 'permascry' while interesting, obviates a several more limited forms of information gathering (DD's wall sense, Formacid's antennae, and Gnoll's item sense, as well as Ash's limited-use scry) as to whether the cost is worth the benefit, probably I'd need to see a balanced proposal to get a sense of how interesting it was to play before I decided if it was worth superceding the more limited forms of information gathering.

So a race with permascry gets a ridiculously excessively large benefit when paired with passwall and stabbing, and a merely excessively large benefit without passwall, and a measly very large benefit without stabbing. So one way to impose a cost to such an ability to more quickly bring the costs and benefits into line, is to combine it with something that's not only a cost, but also a nerf to the ability itself, for example "No earth magic" or "No short blades" or "All critters immediately wake up if they are within your sight range" (or to use an existing thing, we could use Ru's sacrifice stealth) might be examples (I don't know that I like or dislike those as costs, but it's a possible exploration route, of the three the last is newish, and seems at least vaguely tied to the ability itself)

I don't think permascry is that powerful. The times when scrying is powerful with ash are when you want to see what's inside some vault. That accounts for a very small part of the game. The benefits of scrying at other times are not much greater than Ash's monster sense, just letting you know when there's a dangerous monster around the corner. Knowing specifically what kind of dangerous monster it is, is not usually going to change your reaction much.

Knowing if it's asleep or awake, or if it has buddies (and where they are) with 100% certainty is a pretty big deal. I suspect you don't play enough stabbers, or generally characters that rely on stealth as an integral part of their defense in depth.

Being able to permanently see through walls would change *every move* I make in the entire game, when I activate scry it influences every decision I make and ensures I play 100% safely at all times, most of my deaths are from walking around the corner into an unexpected situation for which I haven't prepared and from which I fail to escape, permascry would remove that possibility entirely.

You could do things like shout *near* critters to move them out of your way, and walk around dangerous things and never encounter them with 100% safety, "Oh that critter is nasty and in my way, I'll just shout in this corridor, and walk around him a different way while keeping entirely out of his LOS the whole time" is a pretty gross example of the kind of power I'm talking about here.

If you could just permanently and innately scry everything around you then there is nothing stopping you from carrying around a giant inventory full of every resistance and swapping them out prior to every fight. It adds another objectively best way to do things that requires massive investment of tedium - an idea that is traditionally anathema to Crawl's design philosophy.

What if they're nearsighted instead? For example, a mutation that increases in level at XL5/15/25 that gives innate scrying, range 2 at XL5, range 3 at 15 and range 4 at 25. This mutation also increases total sight radius by the same amount but any monsters outside of normal sight range are unidentified (as via Ash's passive detection). This helps it not step on Ash's toes as much since Ash has an objectively better, temporary scrying ability, while giving significant drawbacks in that you aggro monsters from further away but can't see what it is that's charging you down until it gets close. Short range scrying can help set up Passwall or other tactics without just giving you free sight of anything nearby - range 2 means you can see a monster through a wall, but there might be a whole pack of orcs two spaces past it that you can't see until you pass the wall.

Permascry is bad because it kills autoexplore.

I agree that losing remove curse scrolls might make the species unplayable... Would it be possible to give DE an intrinsic ability to remove a cursed item at the cost of permanent MP, similar to the Deep Dwarf ability?

w.r.t. Ashenzari: Ash would still be relevant because of the ability to identify items & buff magic skill. I like PseudoLoneWolf's suggestion to keep scrying usefull, but I worry it might be too much of a nerf to be unable to identify a caster at the edge of your line-of-sight. Would it be possible to let Ash identify potions at max piety? This wouldn't effect most players, but it would buff a player who can't use identify scrolls.

w.r.t stabbing: giving the species a low aptitude in stealth & short blades might be enough to discourage stabbing. You need high skill levels to instant-kill strong enemies, and if the aptitudes are low enough you might decide to invest the xp in conjuration instead. At the moment DE do have good stealth & short blades aptitudes. Maybe those could be nerved?

I agree Deep Elves are already a well-designed species, and I don't think there are any species which are similar to them, which is one reason not to change them. However, there are two reasons to prefer changing DE and adding a new magic-focusses species, rather then adding a new magic-focusses species with magic sight:
1. It would be interesting if DE enemies could see through walls. (although this might nerve stabbers too much )
2. It seems more thematic, especially if the other species comes from above ground.

Some further thoughts: Good translational aptitudes would be necessary to compensate for losing blink scrolls. I think See Invisible is already too common as an intrinsic. Would it be interesting if enemies always get the invisibility accuracy bonus? (because you can't see them *properly* )

Let me also point out how incredibly bad Blurry Vision 3 is. It means you wait 2 full turns before reading a scroll. Scrolls of blinking, the best last-resort escape, become useless. Teleporting out of a bad fight is also much more risky and in most cases untenable. It's almost like stasis, except that scrolls of fear - the only last resort emergency scroll that Formicids can use - are also unusable with Blurry Vision 3. I am reminded of this because I almost died to Snorg just now because I had Blurry Vision 1 and therefore could not use a scroll of blinking when he whacked me down to low HP - I had to gamble that I could quaff heals faster than I was getting damaged until I got to a point where I could use the scroll.

Also, now that I think of it, last game I saved my life once with a scroll of summoning to create blockers so I could escape a berserk salamander in a volcano. If I had blurry vision 3 I would certainly have died in that situation.