No Potion Petition for mummies


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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 07:18

No Potion Petition for mummies

OK I decided to post this separately in GDD.

Since mummies and ghouls can't berserk with Trog, mummies shouldn't be able to use potion petition with Gozag.

The other alternative, of course, would be to let mummies and ghouls berserk with Trog, but I think it would be a worse solution.
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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 07:31

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

I agree. It adds up:

no berserk --> no god berserk
no potions --> no god potions

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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 16:05

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Also remove that degenerate Deep Dwarf healing under Makhleb

no healing --> no god healing

Do you have any mechanical reason to not let mummies use potion petition? Because consistency for its own sake is a weak argument.
Also, if consistency is your only goal, then a reflavour of the ability would achieve it too, without removing access to it. If you think it should be removed, please explain.
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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 16:11

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Oh yes. What the game needs most right now is a mummy nerf. Great idea.

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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 18:02

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Fingolfin wrote:Also remove that degenerate Deep Dwarf healing under Makhleb

There's a difference. DD get HP from potions, vampiric weapons or vampiric draining. If DD did not get HP from any other source, then it would be logical to not let them get HP from god either.

This is not a thread about DD, but currently I think the best choice of action would be:
Also remove that degenerate Deep Dwarf


Do you have any mechanical reason to not let mummies use potion petition? Because consistency for its own sake is a weak argument.
Also, if consistency is your only goal, then a reflavour of the ability would achieve it too, without removing access to it. If you think it should be removed, please explain.

I don't think consistency is a weak argument. Imo the point of mummies (among other things) is that they don't have access to potion effects. So they should not have access to potion effects via god either.
I also don't think Trog berserk should be reflavoured as something else to let mummies and ghouls use it.

Magipi wrote:Oh yes. What the game needs most right now is a mummy nerf. Great idea.

It's not a mummy nerf, just a 'mummy of Gozag' nerf.
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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 20:37

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

This thread was created because somebody pointed out in the "solve world hunger" thread that mummy^gozag can wait around without a piety penalty. It doesn't really have anything to do with flavor consistency. Deep Dwarves can actually regenerate under Trog, as well as gaining health under Makhleb.

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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 20:55

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

I think these Berder's tavern memes meme is a little bit overstretched here. If somebody thinks that Mu with Gozag should be prevented to wait a lot, then surely adding piety decay to Gozag is a more logical solution.

Removing potion petition for Mummies makes sense to me. Non Gozag mummies currently has no access to haste, which is quite noticeable. No potions is the only interesting thing about mummies, for me this property is the only reason for the race to exist. It feels bad that this conduct can be cheated with a god, especially that Gozag is too strong anyway.

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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 21:12

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Mu^Gozag is not too strong, so there is no reason to nerf it for balance purposes. It is true that we were talking about Mu^Gozag just recently in the context of the scumming potential, and it was in that discussion that Sprucery first suggested removing potions from Mu^Gozag.

Anyway, Gozag potions are not such a big game changer for Mummies. Mummies can get something similar to haste with okawaru. The bigger challenge of mummies is not lack of access to haste, it's lack of access to curing and the resulting risk of chain confusion. Gozag does nothing to help that. Ashenzari is the solution to that. Do you want to remove Clarity from Mu^Ash so that they can still get chain confused? Ru is another solution to it. Do you want to remove Draw Out Power from Mu^Ru so they can still get chain confused?
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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 21:25

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

  Code:
-> *sequell* !lg tenpercenters mu s=god / won o=%
*Sequell* 468/3610 games for tenpercenters (mu): 6/12x Pakellas [50.00%], 133/345x Gozag [38.55%], 1/3x Jiyva [33.33%], 7/21x Hepliaklqana [33.33%], 3/10x Uskayaw [30.00%], 42/142x Ashenzari [29.58%], 2/7x Wu Jian [28.57%], 23/83x Nemelex Xobeh [27.71%], 18/67x Vehumet [26.87%], 8/31x Dithmenos [25.81%], 56/249x Sif Muna [22.49%], 11/53x Ru [20.75%], 23/114x Kikubaaqudgha [20.18%], 36/184x Okawaru
*Sequell* [19.57%], 5/27x Qazlal [18.52%], 31/171x Trog [18.13%], 10/60x Yredelemnul [16.67%], 10/62x Cheibriados [16.13%], 13/82x Makhleb [15.85%], 14/97x Lugonu [14.43%], 16/401x Xom [3.99%], 0/1389x [0.00%]
Looks like Gozag is in fact the best non-removed god for mummies, well ahead of Ashenzari and Okawaru. Therefore nerfing Gozag for mummies will improve balance.

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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 21:31

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

I meant that Mu^Gozag was not too strong relative to characters in general. It's strong for a mummy.
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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 21:50

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Berder wrote:I meant that Mu^Gozag was not too strong relative to characters in general. It's strong for a mummy.
imagine being this close to getting the point

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Post Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 23:27

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

duvessa wrote:
Berder wrote:I meant that Mu^Gozag was not too strong relative to characters in general. It's strong for a mummy.
imagine being this close to getting the point

Rude.
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Post Wednesday, 29th August 2018, 02:13

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

I thought about this and even coded up a commit to restrict Mummies from using Potion Petition. But after thinking about it, I think Crawl should go the other way. God abilities should ignore racial restrictions. Almost all god abilities work this way already. The only exception I know of is Trog's Berserk, which doesn't let undead or Formicid go berserk. Are there any other restrictions?

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Post Wednesday, 29th August 2018, 02:41

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Ashenzari doesn't allow gnolls to transfer knowledge.
Jiyva doesn't allow undead to mutate.
Cards are Nemelex-exclusive now and respect racial restrictions; Velocity won't haste formicids, Swine won't polymorph undead.
Trog/Okawaru don't gift anything to felids.
Xom respects most racial restrictions, although Xom does give potion effects to mummies (so I suppose Gozag has a perverse sort of consistency with Xom...).

Anyway, having gods (effectively) negate species' primary features is bad imo. It makes the species less unique. To me this feels like if there was a god that set your movement delay to 10 even if you were a spriggan or naga, or a god that let you haste even if you were a formicid, or a god that gave you good magic aptitudes even if you were a minotaur.

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Post Wednesday, 29th August 2018, 04:07

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Berder wrote:This thread was created because somebody pointed out in the "solve world hunger" thread that mummy^gozag can wait around without a piety penalty.

That someone was me and main reason why I called Mu of Gozag the most broken combo has nothing to do with piety. Mu is supposed to be the hardest species because of potions and then there is a god that makes Mummies above average species and even enjoyable. It is like Makhleb for DD, access to potions + no chunks + easy rF+ from shopping. But then DD is strong even without Makhleb, just annoying.
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Post Wednesday, 29th August 2018, 04:12

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

23:19:34 <Cheibriados> alexjurkiewicz https://github.com/crawl/crawl/pull/845 * 0.23-a0-138-g521304b: Allow Trog to berserk all species (67 minutes ago, 6 files, 36+ 23-) https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/521304b5218f
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Post Wednesday, 29th August 2018, 04:28

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Mechanically speaking, I think the game would be better with a cleaner definition of how divine abilities and species restrictions work.

In general, I think god abilities should override species restrictions. At the moment, some god abilities do and some do not.

My proposed rule would be simply: "divine abilities ignore species restrictions, divine gifts do not".

With this rule, Potion Petition should work for all species, as should (perhaps more controversially) Trog's Berserk, and (definitely controversially) Jiyva would mutate the undead. Nemelex, Oka, and Trog gifts would allow follow existing restrictions as they are "gifts".

(nb, Jiyva mutations are coded as "gifts", but I don't think they should be thought of as the same type of thing as item gifts)

To this end, I've submitted a PR to allow all species to be berserked by Trog. If the reasoning (and PR) is accepted, I'd look to submit further PRs to make further changes in line with this rationale, like allowing Jiyva to mutate the undead.

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Post Wednesday, 29th August 2018, 11:37

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Wouldn't that logic also support removing racial restrictions on worship? Besides, it is much easier and cleaner to remove a bad case rather than add more bad cases in the name of "logic".

I would prefer the OP. It's removing a clear, limited case of Mummies using Gozag to get around racial restrictions. Mummies are supposed to be bad partly because they can't use potions. So Mummies of Gozag can take (and probably should receive) a nerf.

(Btw, when I tried my Deep Dwarf heal patch (which removed all DD healing), I also removed heal wounds from potion petition (and regen from Trog's Hand and vampiric draining and vamp weapons etc.).)

[Disclaimer: I don't play Mummies.]

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Post Wednesday, 29th August 2018, 12:04

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

The logic is that gods are powerful enough to provide the boons they want to their followers. The gods may still decline worship from various species.

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Post Wednesday, 29th August 2018, 15:25

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

bel wrote:Wouldn't that logic also support removing racial restrictions on worship?

As people have pointed out in the past, though...would that be an entirely bad thing? For the most part, these restrictions exist for the sake of flavor, not for any particular gameplay reason.

Beogh would lose some flavor if you made him open to other races, but it wouldn't exactly be game-breaking to have a human of Beogh. And, as people tend to point out, flavor is the easiest thing to rework. The prophesied savior of the orcs could be a non-orc, or they could be a race that believes that might makes right (and, as powerful as you show yourself to be, they see you as worth following). Any number of things. The good gods would lose some flavor if you made them open to "evil" races, but that can be remedied easily, with the standard "No, he's a GOOD [evil thing], who fights against evil/his evil nature!" It wouldn't be that hard - or that disastrous - to make gods compatible with all races. Consistency in potential god selection would not necessarily be a bad thing either.

But that's a discussion for another (indeed, many other, judging by the search function) thread.

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Post Thursday, 30th August 2018, 01:49

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

I don't think mummies are hard primarily because of lack of potions, it is mostly because of their crappy aptitudes. For one, not carrying potions means you can carry other stuff. Anyways, to the point of the topic, I like that gods can break the rules of the species. It seems appropriate that they are the only way to circumvent various limitations of race, and pathetic if they aren't powerful enough to overcome silly mortal limitations. Sure Gozag works well with mummies, but then there are other race+god combinations which work more smoothly than others. There are also race+background professions which seem to work more smoothly together as well. So, so what is the big deal if one combination is better than another.. that condition will always exist. Mummies don't seem to me to be the big game breaking imbalance because you could theoretically sit around in dungeon levels forever. They still have difficulty when it comes time to duke it out because they are always behind on skills as compared to other races. If you exclusively remove Gozag's ability for mummies, but not other races, then yes, it is picking on mummies, yes it is "nerfing mummies", especially if it is their current best combination.

As for scumming, mummy is hardly the biggest offender for scumming. You're better off with just about any living race and Zin scooping items and xp out of the abyss endlessly. Since mummies cannot worship Zin and thanks to those annoying wretched stars, your stats will likely go to zero attempting any prolonged stay there.

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Post Thursday, 30th August 2018, 02:20

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

You can give justifications for anything. I come back to my favourite thought experiment:

Suppose Mummies couldn't use potion petition, like they can't use berserk or get mutated by Jiyva. Would a GDD proposal suggesting that they could use potion petition (but not the other things) be accepted? What does this "feature" add to the game?

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Post Thursday, 30th August 2018, 03:39

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Currently, Gozag is a very dominant god for mummies, 50% (121/242) mummy games won this year are with Gozag. For all wins this year Gozag is the fourth most popular god, which is high but nowhere near dominant.

In some ways Gozag's dominance is expected because potion petition and the piety system synergises extremely well with mummy's characteristics. But having a dominant god makes mummies more one-dimensional - as duvessa said it makes them less unique. And I think this is a bad thing. From a design perspective, I think Gozag is crowding out other gods for Mummy is a problem.

If potion petition was removed for Mu^Gozag, I would expect gozag to become a relatively unpopular god (for mummy). Distraction aura, shops, and bribe branch are still pretty good though, so it wouldn't ruin Gozag.

My earlier wish for all species restriction / god power interactions to become consistent is probably not a good aim -- it's more important for the game to allow a variety of play styles than it is to be consistent. Inconsistency adds mental burden to the player and isn't intrinsically good, but the cost of it here is relatively low in exchange for allowing a variety of gods with mummy again.

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Post Wednesday, 5th September 2018, 21:18

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

Besides being bad, what else do mummies have to offer?

The issue, as I see it, is that mummies have no interesting mechanic that makes you think, this species can actually be fun to play in these circumstances. No potions, mutation attempts hurt them even harder than living races, food clock is almost completely irrelevant, negative energy protection is easy to get - yet dispel undead has no counter, torment immunity only useful in 15 rune runs where most characters can obtain lich form, which is superior to being a mummy in every way, bad skill gain, etc.

That said, removing the no potions penalty through a specific god isn't a solution I like. I agree with many others that this is the wrong way to go about solving the problem. Mummies do need to offer more with their list of disadvantages, though. I think total mutation immunity wouldn't be out of the question. The ancient dead, unlike vampires and ghouls that still retain certain physical needs, shouldn't be affected by mutation at all. It's like trying to mutate a skeleton - doesn't make sense. Such a change would actually offer mummies a significant game play advantage in the abyss and pandemonium, as opposed to right now where they merely trade one set of disadvantages for another - ie instead of being vulnerable to torment and drain, instead they're vulnerable to mutation, dispel undead, and damnation due to no potions.
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Post Wednesday, 5th September 2018, 22:04

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

No potions is what makes mummies interesting. And to some extent bad apts putting them lower than normal on the skill curve, but that's not as big of a deal.

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Post Thursday, 6th September 2018, 00:24

Re: No Potion Petition for mummies

The attraction of mummies is supposed to be the lack of hunger. The issue with that is that none of the hunger costs in DCSS are (or were) significant except for 1. preventing you from farming indefinitely, and 2. old Elyvilon. Mummies couldn't worship Elyvilon in the first place without exploiting a bug. So the only real advantage it confers is that you can farm.

In 0.5 and earlier, Mu could safely farm D:1 (and all other levels) indefinitely, because monsters never stopped respawning and the OOD timer was a joke at the time. In theory, this was quite strong, but you had to be able to clear D:1 to be able to farm it, and D:1 was actually potentially hard back then. So Mu wasn't an attractive streak race even if you were willing to spend hours farming. This is not theoretical, by the way - you can find quite a few old games where players farmed with mummies for hundreds of thousands of turns, such as this one.

In 0.6 (I think?) the OOD timer was made a lot harsher, and grinding Dungeon was not a viable strategy since you had to be able to deal with the centaur warriors etc. that would start spawning. However, you could grind Lair for 20,000 turns per level fairly easily, since Lair didn't really have any OOD monsters in it, and monster spawns stopped after 20,000 turns. Eventually you could do the same with other branches too if you wanted, and were powerful enough to deal with the most dangerous monsters there. But doing it starting on D:1 was nigh impossible - you can look at the logs for the mummyrobin account (a round-robin account dedicated to the practice) to see how hard it is.

And now recently monster spawns have been removed altogether in most branches, so mummies (and vampires) have a bigger advantage again; they won't get much extra xp from waiting for thousands of turns, but they sure can get a lot of extra safety. No need to explore into dangerous terrain, you can stand on good terrain and wait for all the monsters to wander there. Got some monsters on the other side of a staircase? Just wait 10,000 turns and they'll disappear. This is a pretty powerful ability, though obviously not enough to make up for losing potions. It's also no fun at all and blatantly violates DCSS's design goal of preventing grinding.

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