Experimental branch: two state vampires


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

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Post Sunday, 21st April 2019, 00:01

Experimental branch: two state vampires

Currently in the main crawl repository under the branch two-state-vampire for those who compile at home. Online experimentals coming soon (hopefully)!

The Goals
  • No more blood micromanagement
  • Preserve strategic choice of undead state

The How

Hellmonk and Rast both posted variations on this idea somewhat recently, and it's appeared in past discussions of how to make vampires less fiddly. The specific implementation in the branch is:

  • Vampires no longer have a food clock.
  • Vampires no longer bottle blood or drink blood from corpses.
  • There are two undead states: Alive and Bloodless, their properties are exactly those of current Alive and Bloodless
  • Undead state is changed by a 5-turn delay ability (like taking off or removing armour).

The Why

  • Specifically why Bloodless is no regen and not no regen with monsters in LOS, and no bat form while Alive: to maximize the distinctiveness of the two forms, thus the strategic impact of the choice. I know that means that if you're totally safe and want to regen and then go back to bloodless you've got two extra keypresses, and I'd be happy to hear a suggested solution; however I feel it's important for a bloodless vampire to not be able to regenerate and stay bloodless easily if they're in only a marginally safe situation.
  • A similar "strategic impact" argument informs the choice of two (rather than more) undead states. The point is to be less fiddly, more blunt.

As always, I've got a strong preference for playtesting feedback over theorycrafting, so fire up a Vp-- on this experimental and let me know how it goes!

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Post Sunday, 21st April 2019, 05:15

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

It sounds like a definite improvement over the current vampire because bottling blood and managing states is awful. I think these changes could be rolled out and vampires would be immediately improved and without making any sacrifices.

That said, I'm of the opinion that any race with any mode where there is zero health regeneration will result in some weird stuff though, because it just isn't reasonable to play the game through to the end without taking a bunch of damage along the way. Because of this, I think that the race could be further improved by leaving health regeneration working in both states, and differentiating the two states in a different manner. The impact could be very substantial and preserve "maximum distinctiveness" as your goal, just not one of them being that you never regenerate health. I'd have to give it more thought for specific examples of how else they could be differentiated, but that's not my main point.

The other idea which I think would also be a further improvement would be to not have this "alive" state at all (vampires are undead after all) and then find ways to differentiate them from the other undead races. For example, coverted minions ala enslavement style, but once again those details aren't my main point although I'd be willing to think more about it if the general direction was viewed favorably.

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Post Sunday, 21st April 2019, 05:54

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

ebering wrote:I know that means that if you're totally safe and want to regen and then go back to bloodless you've got two extra keypresses, and I'd be happy to hear a suggested solution; however I feel it's important for a bloodless vampire to not be able to regenerate and stay bloodless easily if they're in only a marginally safe situation.


Make the transformations instant, but require full health to go from Alive to Bloodless. That pretty much requires you to pick a state to use in any individual fight, since a fight where you're able to heal fully is a fight where you already weren't threatened, even with fast regeneration.

If that still seems too generous in terms of tactical flexibility, a background delay (i.e. you can still move and fight) could also be added to the transformations. The transformation countdown could be extended or even paused entirely by having monsters in sight, though that may be overkill.

Zot Zealot

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Post Sunday, 21st April 2019, 07:21

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

I'd like to playtest, if you put it up online on a European server.
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Post Sunday, 21st April 2019, 08:01

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Measures that would make the transition-to-regen process more automatic and less intrusive may improve matters and many reasonable possibilities exist, but a 5 turn delay does not make the transition strategic. It just makes it a costly tactical move.

Whatever you have to do to start regenerating, if it doesn't actually cost anything, it's going to create tedious play because you can and will do it all the time. Of course, then you get into the same problems regeneration over time always has, which leads into triangulating arguments about how since it's okay without these extra Vp mechanics (it's not) the only objection can be to the Vp mechanics specifically and so forth. I suppose that's progress though, since at least the argument about vampires moves from being about food to being about regeneration.

Anyway, this sounds unambiguously better than the traditional dcss Vp.
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Post Sunday, 21st April 2019, 16:53

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Can't you fix the keypress issue by having '5' automatically switch you? Would you ever not want that?

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Post Sunday, 21st April 2019, 17:37

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

I'd want to fight in undead-form, most of the time. There may be situations where it is strategic to wait without regen, to wait for a monster to wander into view. (eg Elf:3)

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Post Sunday, 21st April 2019, 18:04

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

That's a tough choice between regen and access to bat form.

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Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 04:07

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

If you get this up on a server or two before Friday I'll run a Jory Cosplay Challenge to try to get some testers. I'm not going to run the Cosplay Challenge during CSDC so this week is best for timely playtesting.
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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 05:05

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

This is now live on cpo (thanks chequers!). Give it a whirl.

The “5 auto switch” solution to resting has been added, for a silky smooth experience. It can be disabled with an rc setting.

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Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 07:00

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Preliminary observations, using Linux Tiles 0.24-a0-276-gd3f6ffcc0d

* Playing locally, trying to rest while bloodless seems to switch me to alive, then does nothing else. I can hit 5 to rest again, but I don't change back to bloodless automatically after.

* Wights don't seem to drain me in melee, even when I'm alive. Shadow dragons still can.

* I typically play Vp as either just barely full (so it wears off if I pillar-dance a little), or thirsty so I can get some partially-undead benefits while still having regen. Currently As VpGl I'm finding it easiest just to stay Alive so as to not get caught in a situation where I need regeneration, and only go bloodless for specific situations that require it. This is definitely much less fiddly, but also seems less interesting to me. However maybe I just need time to adjust.

* OTOH Vp of Gozag is no longer extremely painful to play.

* Sometimes my screen doesn't update after descending a staircase (local tiles), until I move. I don't know how this could be from this branch, but I played a local game today with latest trunk (0.24-a0-264-gf46a388040) and did not have this problem.
Last edited by kitchen_ace on Monday, 22nd April 2019, 20:16, edited 5 times in total.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 07:41

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

I'd personally want bloodless to be capable of regen out of LoS like Ghouls, because it sounds like it would be needlessly tedious to swap back and forth between states just to get regen unless there's a way to automate that, which I suppose would work better. That said, bats can kite, so the "downside" of no regen in LoS isn't very impactful and might just be better as plain no regen.
I like the idea of only being able to change form at full health as mentioned in a different comment.

There's one other reason, that being I want batform runs to still be reasonably possible because those are fun (according to literally only me but that's besides the point). No regen would make the batform run concept kinda insane.

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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 12:02

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

When reporting issues could you post the version string from the branch? I was fiddling with it last night and you might have pulled something intermediate.

Also, this is now up on cko!

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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 17:53

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

So the thing about giving bloodless vampires slow regeneration instead of no regeneration is that it doesn't actually solve the problem with of switching to Alive when resting. You want to recover health in as few turns as possible, because at the very least, you lose less piety that way. It'll still be optimal to switch for any significant amount of regeneration.

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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 18:06

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

I wouldn't do it though :D

For me convenience trumps optimalness. If I could I'd play the whole game as a bloodless vampire, for free stealth, stabbing and hungerless magic. I played a little on cpo, and when I forgot to switch back to bloodless, I got into a bit of trouble because monsters suddenly noticed me.

How can I set in the options that I don't want to automatically switch to 'alive'? (I'd much rather regulate aliveness via some custom-made macro's for 'af5' and 'ago'. It is annoying when I switch to alive despite having (almost) full hp.)
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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 20:15

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

ebering wrote:When reporting issues could you post the version string from the branch? I was fiddling with it last night and you might have pulled something intermediate.


Right, sorry. This was 0.24-a0-276-gd3f6ffcc0d, which I think has all the latest commits.
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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 20:42

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

The rc option is vampire_rest_alive set it to false to manually manage your blood.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 20:59

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Still on Linux Tiles 0.24-a0-276-gd3f6ffcc0d. When I rest while alive, and not at full health, my next movement action does nothing (excluding autoexplore). I think this is the cause of the display not updating after taking stairs - it happens if I climb stairs to rest and then go back down immediately.
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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 21:30

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Switched to online after I died offline, all the same issues happening online as well.

Request: change vampire_rest_alive to a percentage value instead of boolean. If I'm at 90% HP I probably don't care about going to full health, especially if I'm not somewhere safe, but I might want to rest to restore MP.
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Post Monday, 22nd April 2019, 21:58

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

ebering wrote:The rc option is vampire_rest_alive set it to false to manually manage your blood.

I didn't say it in my post but I think it should set you back to bloodless once you're full if you started bloodless.

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Post Tuesday, 23rd April 2019, 03:52

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

The first reported issue (post bloodless eating certain actions, and the related stair issue) has been fixed in commit 0.24-a0-277-gfbb80f9 on the branch. The servers will update soon.

The auto-transform already returns you to bloodless once you're done resting. Or it should. If it doesn't, it's because your rest was interrupted by something other than healing finishing (full hp, full mp, full ancestor hp, or whatever combination your rc requests you wait until). Unfortunately it will be hard to make the autoexanguination smarter than that; either a thorny and brittle knot of special cases, or a user Lua hook to ask.

Making the auto revivify on a percentage threshold should be doable.

Drain issue noted and confirmed.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 23rd April 2019, 05:30

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

ebering wrote:The auto-transform already returns you to bloodless once you're done resting.


It does not for me though (and presumably some other people), offline or online, tiles or console, version 0.24-a0-277-gfbb80f92b3. Instead what happens is:

1) Pressing '5' causes you to start the ritual of turning alive. Once you're alive, nothing else happens.

2) Pressing '5' again makes you rest as normal. Once you're at full health, you don't turn back.

In case it matters, I'm pressing '5' on the number row, not the numeric keypad, because I don't have one. I tried with a blank init.txt and macro.txt to make sure those weren't the problem.
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Post Tuesday, 23rd April 2019, 07:21

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

This all sounds a bit convoluted.

If preserving no regeneration for a bloodless state is paramount, how about just changing it so that bloodless state vampires only regenerate when resting? The regeneration rate could be the same as alive, so there is no incentive to constantly switch back and forth between states. It can't be easily taken advantage of tactically. The flavor matches lore just fine since vampires crawl into their coffins to restore their powers.

This way you won't have all these messy auto rest state change cases and options to keep track of (and only for vampires). I think it would be much simpler and more intuitive for people to understand.

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Post Tuesday, 23rd April 2019, 12:18

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

You’re going to need to give me more information about your set up and how you’re having these 5 problems. I’m unable to replicate locally or in cko webtiles, and this issue wasn’t reported by any of the several streamers who have tested the experimental on stream.

Could you provide before/after dumps from having this problem, or at least snippets of the message log.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 23rd April 2019, 20:29

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

OK I've tested on a few computers and accounts, locally and online, and they all have the same behaviour. Am I just misunderstanding something? What I thought should happen, according to this thread and the github commits, is that if I am lower than full health and bloodless, and vampire_rest_alive is true, is that pressing '5' should: (1) turn me alive (2) have me rest until I am at full health (3) turn me back to bloodless, all with the one keypress.

If that is what is supposed to happen, it isn't working for me, and here are some chardumps.

Before pressing 5: https://pastebin.com/raw/BECqvaLM

After pressing 5 once: https://pastebin.com/raw/DK48KFe6

After pressing 5 again: https://pastebin.com/raw/jFYZeerJ
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Post Tuesday, 23rd April 2019, 21:59

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

What are your RC settings? You said unthread you can replicate this on cko with default rc and macros...?

Halls Hopper

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 00:48

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Thanks for the changes ebering, hellmonk and all. I've been having a lot of fun playing a passwall/petrify stabbing VpEE and even had a pretty sweet encounter where I got shafted from D6-D9 into a vault, took a downstair and survived without breaking a sweat!

The only thing I think I would change at this point is to consider having switching take some sort of cost (like drain or something). It feels very weird constantly switch between multiple states before fighting. To compensate give vampires regen out of LOS when bloodless.

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 02:13

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Sorry in advance for theorycrafting. I propose:

Alive state is unchanged. In bloodless state, if you spend X time without seeing a monster then you are returned to full health, where X is the amount of time that it would have taken to transform to alive, heal and transform back. Otherwise you do not heal at all.

This combines the convenience of [regeneration when enemies are out of LOS] with most of the interest of [you must make yourself more vulnerable in order to heal] in any situation where there are enough enemies around that one is likely to interrupt your rest. Which is the only situation in which that tradeoff is interesting anyway.

Halls Hopper

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 02:24

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

This already occurs in the experimental branch.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 03:20

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

ebering wrote:What are your RC settings? You said unthread you can replicate this on cko with default rc and macros...?


My normal RC settings: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/rcfiles/c ... nicCake.rc

However I've just made an account on CKO with username and password vptest, and have the same experience there, on webtiles or console. The only change I've made is a macro that binds 'p' to crawl.sendkeys("5"). Resting with either 5 or p has the same effect that I've been experiencing before. (Still on 0.24-a0-277-gfbb80f92b3)

https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/rcfiles/c ... /vptest.rc

If you can't reproduce the bug on that account then I really have no idea...

Is anyone else reading this thread having the same problems as I am? Is anyone not?

If it turns out that absolutely no one else has this problem, I'm fine with writing my own function in my rc file and chalking it up to ghosts or something.

edit: I watched blorx1 play on CKO, the auto-state swapping was working fine for him when he was using 5 on his numeric keypad. Pressing 5 on the number row had the effect I'm getting... sometimes. I pulled out an old USB keyboard but couldn't get auto-swapping to work with any key, with or without numlock.
Last edited by kitchen_ace on Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 04:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 04:03

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Finished a VpEn of Gozag. Pretty clean overall, though the autoswap thing wasn't working. Huge improvement over blood bottling. As others have said, swap while resting is kind of hacky. It would be nice to change this to no regen with monsters in los and either prohibit swapping at less than full hp, have alive speed regen otherwise, or have a strategic penalty for swapping (skill drain or whatever) so that you don't have to do this form swapping dance. No regen with monsters in los keeps the important part of the form difference, since you only need to get out of sight for enough time to change forms to get your regen back. Totally prohibiting regen and having a swap penalty is a nonstarter, since that's just DD 2.0 and has all the problems that DD no regen has.

I'm a little concerned that "bloodless" form (fr: rename this "undead") is more powerful than "alive" for most characters for most of the game. From xl 3 to the end, excluding perhaps some portions of extended and V:5, access to batform seems much better than fast regen most of the time, and bloodless has some other advantages as well. I would once again suggest nerfing batform in some way. I think an xp timeout would be good but maybe there's another way to do it. I do think this was true for old Vp as well, except you'd stay satiated or thirsty on most characters.

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 04:23

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Remove the alive state and give undead vampires no regen when monsters are in LOS.

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 08:14

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Hi. I posted a quick-and-dirty playtest of this with a VpEE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPRRJAQI8Jo

A few thoughts:

1) I can go from bloodless to alive while in bat form. I then get to move (or do something else) while in bat form, and only then do I get kicked out of bat form. This feels weird and inconsistent with other similar effects in the game, which AFAIk knock you out immediately.

2) You might want to rethink the edibility of monsters impacting our aux attack. It seems odd to me that this new system still tracks whether or not a monster has blood for butchering purposes even though we can't butcher/make potions of blood anymore. What I mean is that we still can't use our fangs on a hornet or a bee or other such monsters. I might be mistaken on this, feel free to let me know.

3) Throughout the playtest I experienced the same problem others have reported where I'd automatically go Alive while resting, but not automatically go back to bloodless. I believe you said this is not the intentional behavior. For me, I macro'd my space bar to "5," which I can't imagine would effect it but maybe it does. If I had gotten to experience the intended behavior during my game I don't think I'd have any complaints at all about the overall smoothness of the transition system. As it stands it was slightly annoying to switch back to "bloodless" every time, but not so bad.

4) Addendum to (3) is that it feels like there's almost no reason to bother being alive, ever. The benefits of being Bloodless far outweigh anything Alive has to offer. I can think of a preciously narrow window of things you'd want to be alive for - holy pan, the first three experience levels where you don't have batform yet, etc. Using the "Alive" regen was convenient for resetting some fights, but the same effect could be accomplished more optimally by just turning into a bat and flying to another staircase. My point is that the Alive state needs some kind of added benefit for it to be worth using. Honestly, I'm with some of the other posters who have suggested to get rid of states entirely, make vampires "bloodless" 24/7, and give them no regen next to monsters and perhaps for some time after seeing a monster. Keep the vamp drain fang attack - that can be their "flavor" alongside their aptitudes.

Edit to respond to some feedback below : The holy pan thing wasn't to avoid holy damage, it was because there's no torment in there so you'd probably rather be regenerating fast than be immune to torm. Regarding transmutations, yeah - I like that it's more viable now and it is one of the rare situations where being Alive all the time is better than being bloodless all the time. My point is that barring rng luck (finding a zerk item etc) or a very specifically designed character (VpBe, VpTm, etc) it seems like you'd just always want to be bloodless.

I don't really expect a response because you outright told me you were going to give me the silent treatment awhile back and have largely followed through on it (lol) but nevertheless I hope that this feedback and video are valuable to you.
Last edited by MalcolmRose on Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 19:56, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 11:25

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Well done. Players are actually thinking about optimizing strategy instead of ease of play. That's a design acheivement in my book.
Keep in mind Vp can transmute forms and berserk in Alive state, a unique trait among undead species, which is the counterpoint of retaining this state in some form.
Fyi, Vp is always vulnerable to Dispel Undead, holy damage, and malmuate at all times regardless of satiation level.

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 15:17

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

For me also 5 turns me alive, then another keypress gets to full hp, then 5 just waits. This is on version 0.24-a0-278-gcdcf5fe154 (webtiles)
I like the suggestion of phloomp. ("In bloodless state, if you spend X time without seeing a monster then you are returned to full health, where X is the amount of time that it would have taken to heal. Otherwise you do not heal at all.") Maybe it could be implemented similarly to the Flay effect.

I haven't finished a game with the vampires yet, but I think bloodless vampires deserve a nerf. I can't think of anything particularly fitting. Maybe innate *Slow?

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 23:13

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

petercordia wrote:I like the suggestion of phloomp. ("In bloodless state, if you spend X time without seeing a monster then you are returned to full health, where X is the amount of time that it would have taken to heal. Otherwise you do not heal at all.")


This is essentially the same as "you don't heal with monsters in LOS" (the slow healing mutation) except that if a monster comes into view after resting partially, you get none of the healing rather than whatever % you had healed until then. I'm not sure the complication really amounts to much, I'd say just give them slow healing.

The risk of your 80% completed healing getting fully cancelled by a monster coming into view is just going to encourage vampires to always go up a floor or dig a kill hole and sit in it to make sure they don't rest for 75 turns and get nothing for it.

If you wanted their healing to be somewhat worse than ghouls you could have a slow healing 2 which required something like 10 turns with no monsters in LOS to start, that way they can't duck behind a corner to snag a few turns of regen, although I don't think this is a horribly critical exploit.

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Post Thursday, 25th April 2019, 04:15

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

The difference between slow regen and no regen is significant because even with slow regen you can still pillar dance, etc. You can pillar dance even better if you're in batform. Even the out of LOS regen allows you to pillar dance if you just keep rounding corners before they see you. If you add stuff like 10 turns with no monsters in sight, you'll just have people switching back and forth more often to get the regen effect going (since it's only a 5 turn switch.)

If bloodless vampires can only regenerate while resting, and not in bat form, all the complications go away, and tactical abuses would be nearly impossible. No one is going to bother switching to alive unless they want to alter their overall strategic style, which seems to be the most valid case for having multiple states, though I think it's still a somewhat problematic situation having the states in the first place. They'll have a higher turn count for not getting regen while exploring and fighting, but it should be offset by being able to get in more stealth based shots.

You've basically got a race that comes with nearly free torment immunity without the need to invest in spell casting at all to be able to cast necromutation, with better aptitudes than mummies, and they can quaff potions. I'm not really sure what the downsides of the bloodless vampire are. Ghouls at least have some distinct, unique disadvantages such as rotting. With Makhleb, bloodless vamps get health in big fights, and they can still rest/regen effectively, if only via a state-change gimmic. They were always powerful, but tedious to take full advantage of. Now, they're extremely powerful with the tedious part taken out, so there's not any sort of check on the power of the bloodless vampire, and I think that should be looked at.

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Post Thursday, 25th April 2019, 06:24

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

My opinion

Alive and bloodless Common: regen+, gain headache mutation(Vampire mutation: Spell(or ability) hunger causes sometime vertigo. The stronger the hunger, the higher the probability, the stronger the vertigo. (EV -2 ~ -8)

Bloodless
- You can turn into a bat.(this ability uses hp)
- You don't heal with monsters in LOS

Alive
- When you are alive, you can use your vampire ability. Gain more of your vampire ability (random hex spell) as you rise in level. The spell levels that can be obtained are 1-2 at 6 level, 1-4 at 12 level, 1-6 at 18 level.(for example, You got tukima's dance at level 6, and a slow at Level 12, and a darkness at Level 18.) you will get three ability by level 18. vampire ability uses hp instead of mp, The power is proportional to the level.

Form change does not require turn. Use hp instead.

I don't want to change to recover. Just give both form a regeneration. also, added vertigo to limit the abuse of magic. I gave new power to alive which has no advantage compared to bloodless. I think this may be a way to differentiate alive and bloodless, but others may disagree.

Temple Termagant

Posts: 8

Joined: Thursday, 10th April 2014, 22:35

Post Thursday, 25th April 2019, 13:35

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Adding more buttons is the opposite of what this reform strives for, I suppose, especially if they are redundant.

Bloodless gets 2 pips of rC compared to other undead, what is the justification? or is it a design mistake?
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Halls Hopper

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Joined: Thursday, 17th August 2017, 18:47

Post Thursday, 25th April 2019, 17:36

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

-I agree that swapping forms just to regenerate is tedious. Both forms should have normal regeneration.
-10%HP cost to transform is worth exploring as an alternative to 5 turn cost. This synergizes with the final suggestion below:

-If the problem is that Alive isn’t as good as Bloodless, why not move batform to Alive? I mean, bats have blood. Bloodless vampires can’t use other transmutations for form changing, why is this an exception?
Current Victories:
Spoiler: show
3 Runes: GrEE^Ru, CeBe^Trog, SpEn^Gozag, KoAr^Dith, TeAE^Kiku, TrCK^Xom.
4 Runes: VSFi^Qaz.
5 Runes: DsGl^Oka, MiGl^Hep, GnWz^Sif.
9 Runes: DDAr^Makh.
15 Runes: HOFi^TSO->Zin, DEFE^Veh
For now...

For this message the author Vanguardan has received thanks: 2
duvessa, petercordia

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1739

Joined: Tuesday, 13th March 2012, 02:48

Post Thursday, 25th April 2019, 18:39

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Vanguardan wrote:Both forms should have normal regeneration.

Thank you.
why not move batform to Alive? I mean, bats have blood.

Batform should be its own state.

For this message the author Rast has received thanks:
duvessa
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Halls Hopper

Posts: 77

Joined: Thursday, 17th August 2017, 18:47

Post Thursday, 25th April 2019, 20:01

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Rast wrote:
Vanguardan wrote:Both forms should have normal regeneration.

Thank you.
why not move batform to Alive? I mean, bats have blood.

Batform should be its own state.


Sorry, bad wording. I meant, batform should be an *ability for Alive vampires*, for the reasons I listed above.
Current Victories:
Spoiler: show
3 Runes: GrEE^Ru, CeBe^Trog, SpEn^Gozag, KoAr^Dith, TeAE^Kiku, TrCK^Xom.
4 Runes: VSFi^Qaz.
5 Runes: DsGl^Oka, MiGl^Hep, GnWz^Sif.
9 Runes: DDAr^Makh.
15 Runes: HOFi^TSO->Zin, DEFE^Veh
For now...
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Mines Malingerer

Posts: 42

Joined: Wednesday, 18th July 2018, 23:51

Post Friday, 26th April 2019, 02:45

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Won an enchanter. I think giving bloodless an additional -10% HP penalty is maybe a quick solution to balance it against Alive. I do think having some alternative to needing to switch to alive to heal is desirable, but I personally didn't find it overly fiddly, even without the vampire_rest_alive shortcut working for me. Perhaps because I'm comparing it to normal vampire behaviour, which needs you to drink blood all the time to keep your hunger state.

Bloodless should also probably only have one level of rC+, as was noted earlier.

The Cosplay Challenge discord had some discussion about rebalancing Vampire's aptitudes a little. -3 conjurations is pretty harsh, and makes IE and EE less desirable backgrounds, especially given than En is so strong for them. This has nothing to do with the state changes, other than it might be a good time to make other changes to them as well.

For other people playing: here's a function that will make 'c' change states when you're a vampire. Does nothing to check what version you're playing so don't use it if you're playing a vampire in stable/trunk. You might need to change sendkeys "af" and "ag" if you reassign them in your ability screen.
  Code:
macros += M c ===VAMP_SWITCH
{
  function VAMP_SWITCH()
    if you.race() == "Vampire" then
      if you.hunger_name() == "alive" then
        crawl.sendkeys("af")
      else
        crawl.sendkeys("ag")
      end
    else
      crawl.do_commands({"CMD_BUTCHER"})
    end
  end
}
EthnicCake on CKO. It's an anagram.

Spider Stomper

Posts: 200

Joined: Sunday, 11th May 2014, 11:26

Post Friday, 26th April 2019, 04:40

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

wj69 wrote:Adding more buttons is the opposite of what this reform strives for, I suppose, especially if they are redundant.


The addition/remove of buttons is not the essence of reform. The essence of reform is to reduce fatigue and complexity.
For example, why don't we combine the powers of Nem, Draw Escape, Draw Destruction, and Draw Summoning together? There will be only one button left, but the fatigue and complexity of using it will increase.


kitchen_ace wrote:I think giving bloodless an additional -10% HP penalty is maybe a quick solution to balance it against Alive.

Personally, I'll use bloodless even if it changes. Even if you give a bat form to an alive, that's the same thing. I think need more attractive options to choose alive.
For example, It turns into fog when it's moving or stop(acrobat). Or something like enslavement?

Zot Zealot

Posts: 1004

Joined: Thursday, 16th August 2018, 21:19

Post Friday, 26th April 2019, 06:43

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

I got into some fights whilst bloodless before XL 3 (so no batform). With no regen and speed 10, it was pretty brutal. (I got into this situation after failed stabs.)
I think moving batform to Alive and keeping the feature that bloodless vampires don't regenerate with monsters in LOS (as is the case now, in addition to not regenerating ever) would be enough to make me consider using Alive form sometimes.
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Halls Hopper

Posts: 77

Joined: Thursday, 17th August 2017, 18:47

Post Friday, 26th April 2019, 12:13

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

sdynet wrote:
kitchen_ace wrote:I think giving bloodless an additional -10% HP penalty is maybe a quick solution to balance it against Alive.

Personally, I'll use bloodless even if it changes. Even if you give a bat form to an alive, that's the same thing. I think need more attractive options to choose alive.
For example, It turns into fog when it's moving or stop(acrobat). Or something like enslavement?


Fog would be OP, I think, fog scrolls are kind of rare in the game.

Enslavement or something similar exclusive to Alive would be cool though. Like Na poison spit, but a hex (someone mentioned this earlier). So success % would scale off XL and monster HD rather than spellpower.
Whether paralysis or enslave would be more balanced, idk. Both would be thematically appropriate for a vampire.
Current Victories:
Spoiler: show
3 Runes: GrEE^Ru, CeBe^Trog, SpEn^Gozag, KoAr^Dith, TeAE^Kiku, TrCK^Xom.
4 Runes: VSFi^Qaz.
5 Runes: DsGl^Oka, MiGl^Hep, GnWz^Sif.
9 Runes: DDAr^Makh.
15 Runes: HOFi^TSO->Zin, DEFE^Veh
For now...

Zot Zealot

Posts: 1004

Joined: Thursday, 16th August 2018, 21:19

Post Friday, 26th April 2019, 13:04

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

I think enslave would easier to balance (Paralysing Hell lords with shear force of will and then 1-shot stabbing them sounds overpowered) & more fun, because there is no HD-based enslave atm.

I shudder to imagine the aptitude nerfs that could be necessitated by buffing Alive vampires this way.
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Halls Hopper

Posts: 77

Joined: Thursday, 17th August 2017, 18:47

Post Friday, 26th April 2019, 14:45

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

petercordia wrote:I think enslave would easier to balance (Paralysing Hell lords with shear force of will and then 1-shot stabbing them sounds overpowered) & more fun, because there is no HD-based enslave atm.

I shudder to imagine the aptitude nerfs that could be necessitated by buffing Alive vampires this way.


Oh dang you’re right. I was going to express skepticism but pan lords only have 18 HD.

Maybe if there was a stepdown of some kind based on some other stat to keep from trivializing stabs on late game baddies.

Enslave would be more fun for sure though. Short duration, definitely, and maybe have it only work on living enemies (that seems like a thematic vampire thing).
Current Victories:
Spoiler: show
3 Runes: GrEE^Ru, CeBe^Trog, SpEn^Gozag, KoAr^Dith, TeAE^Kiku, TrCK^Xom.
4 Runes: VSFi^Qaz.
5 Runes: DsGl^Oka, MiGl^Hep, GnWz^Sif.
9 Runes: DDAr^Makh.
15 Runes: HOFi^TSO->Zin, DEFE^Veh
For now...

Spider Stomper

Posts: 200

Joined: Sunday, 11th May 2014, 11:26

Post Friday, 26th April 2019, 16:43

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Vanguardan wrote:
sdynet wrote:
kitchen_ace wrote:I think giving bloodless an additional -10% HP penalty is maybe a quick solution to balance it against Alive.

Personally, I'll use bloodless even if it changes. Even if you give a bat form to an alive, that's the same thing. I think need more attractive options to choose alive.
For example, It turns into fog when it's moving or stop(acrobat). Or something like enslavement?


Fog would be OP, I think, fog scrolls are kind of rare in the game.


Sorry. My explanation was strange. I meant that alive vampire had 'acrobat' by nature. What I intended was an image that said, 'They are usually not as clear in shape as fog, but only reveal themselves at the moment of attack.'

Halls Hopper

Posts: 81

Joined: Monday, 18th March 2019, 22:11

Post Friday, 26th April 2019, 17:47

Re: Experimental branch: two state vampires

Am currently playing a VpEE of Dith and have snagged 3 runes: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/tabtab/tabtab.txt.

I do concur that bloodless seems a bit too strong as well and I do agree that one pip of rC is enough (honestly it would be plenty strong even with no rC). Not sure how a -10% hp debuff in bloodless would work when you have the ability to freely switch states though I would be in bloodless for this character regardless. For my character the biggest draw to using the alive state is statue form. I would support giving more incentives to be in an alive state if we want vampires to be an easy species to play.

General thoughts on an EE start as a vampire. The book is quite strong as for a vampire and stone arrow is the worst spell in the starting book for them. I found a lot of success using the vampire as a stabber making good use of passwall and petrify until I found good hexes and went the invis stabbing route. I do think reducing their -3 conj apt to -2 or would probably increase the viability of other vampire starts. In particular, I think VpFE would be more viable as it could be a hybrid casting conjure flame/sticky flame and VpIE would be more viable as well.
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