God of the Forge


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Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Tuesday, 8th March 2022, 06:53

God of the Forge

Description:
A god of the forge that strengthens and customizes the non-artefact equipment of loyal followers. Artefacts are works of art that should not be tampered with, as a matter of respect for their creators.

Goals:
Normally, players tend to eventually replace most or all their equipment with artefacts as the game progresses... which is fine, but it tends to result in the no-brainer decision to discard the non-artefact equipment and tends to make non-artefact equipment feel less exciting. This god is meant to do 4 things: make the choice between artefact and non-artefact equipment more meaningful, make non-artefact equipment more exciting, provide the ability to occasionally choose to quickly and reliably adapt to a dangerous situation at an increased cost, and tempt the player to use that ability while rewarding their patience if they choose not to.

Definitions:
A gear is a weapon (including magical staves and stacks of throwing weapons), armour (including shields, orbs, and scarves), or jewellery, excluding artefacts.
The player owns every gear in their inventory and every gear they have seen on the ground.
A gear is obsolete if the player owns enough identical or strictly better copies of that gear to fill all applicable equip slots or to fill enough such slots that equipping the item in question would provide no benefit. Throwing weapons are never obsolete.

Abilities:
------ Smelt: Destroy a gear in inventory or at the player's feet to gain piety proportional to that gear's value. Passively destroys obsolete gear the player owns as if it had been manually selected, prioritizing those with the longest pathing distance from the player.
*----- Fit: Passively improves the reduction to ER of worn non-artefact body armour from STR and the Armour skill.
**---- Maintain: Passively grants bonuses to everything the corrosion status penalizes.
***--- Expertise: Scrolls of brand weapon now imbue a brand/ego onto a chosen gear in the inventory.
****-- Strive for Perfection: Scrolls of enchant weapon and enchant armour can now improve weapons and armour beyond their maximum values, and jewellery beyond their default values, but doing so applies the Instability status to the player which gradually reduces bonuses on gear the player owns to their normal maximums.
*****- Temper: Provides gifts in the form of improvements to equipped gear and throwing weapons in inventory. This can be +1 to enhancement level to a gear below max, or a brand/ego for a weapon/armour that does not yet have one, prioritizing brands/egos.
****** Flash Forge: For a large piety cost, instantly optimises a single chosen gear by increasing enhancement level to maximum and applying a brand/ego. The brand/ego is random if the gear didn't already have one or chosen if it did.

Formulas:
(Each constant is unique and is meant to be a lever for balance tweaking for the ability it appears in.)
Smelt: Add its price if it were to be sold in a standard general store to a hidden count, then as many times as possible, subtract a constant and add 1 piety.
Fit: Multiply ER reduction by floor([Piety*n*c]/[200*e]), where n is the number of gear currently equipped, e is the number of gear slots available, and c is a constant.
Maintain: Bonus potency is floor([Piety*XL*n*c]/[5400*e]) where n is the number of gear currently equipped, e is the number of gear slots available, and c is a constant.
Strive for Perfection: Instability, each AUT, add the sum of the excess bonus points on gear the player owns to a hidden counter. When that counter exceeds a constant, randomly remove 1 bonus point weighted so that each gear the player owns has one chance per excess bonus point, then subtract the constant from the counter. When the last excess bonus point is removed, remove the Instability status.
Temper: Gifts cost the larger of 1 or v*c piety, where p is the new enhancement level if it was increased or the stack size if a brand/ego was applied to a stack of throwing weapons or 10 if a brand/ego was applied to anything else, and c is a constant.
Flash Forge: The piety cost is twice the total cost of all gifts that would be required to transform the gear from its original state to its resulting state. Note that if applied to a gear with maximum enhancement while selecting the previous brand/ego, no gifts would be needed, as there is no change, so the piety cost would be 0. Depending on the value of c, this can result in piety becoming negative if used on, e.g., a +0 crystal plate armour, in which case ------ should be displayed until piety climbs out of the negatives and back to the *----- threshold.

Devotion:
Piety gain/loss occurs only through ability usage and gifts. The player is not excommunicated for having less than 1 piety.
If the player abandons this religion, then for every weapon or armour the player owns, set its enhancement level to 0 and remove any brand/ego it may have. For every jewellery the player owns, set its numeric value to the default for that type of jewellery.
If the above penalty alone is insufficient, then also apply a corrosion effect that scales with the ratio of equipped artefacts to equipment slots and stacks with other sources of corrosion until the god is mollified.

Concerns:
I feel like this god overlaps somewhat with the design spaces of both Gozag and Ashenzari, though I think it's distinct enough from both that there's room for it to exist. Gozag's advantages are the ability to provide a much wider variety of items, the ability to bypass unwanted fights entirely through bribery, and the ability to gain entirely new items instead of merely improving existing ones; whereas the god of the forge allows retrieval of dragon scales and troll leather armours and is more reliable in providing equipment improvements which makes it much more likely that a particular brand/ego will be available when encountering early branches liked timed brances and the Lair. Ashenzari provides bonuses to a wider range of activities, provides the highly valuable clarity intrinsic, and safer dungeon navigation; whereas the god of the forge again allows for more reliable early-game performance improvements, allows for far more flexibility in reacting to threats, and allows for more specialized performance improvement in the sense that more points can be invested into a single skill without rendering the divine bonus to the activities governed by that skill obsolete.
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Zot Zealot

Posts: 991

Joined: Monday, 15th April 2013, 15:10

Location: Augsburg, Germany

Post Tuesday, 8th March 2022, 10:04

Re: God of the Forge

Nekoatl wrote:Description:
A god of the forge that strengthens and customizes the non-artefact equipment of loyal followers.

Related topic: Proposal : Smith god (other aspect) from December 2016

Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Tuesday, 8th March 2022, 21:34

Re: God of the Forge

Thematically related, at least....

Shoals Surfer

Posts: 305

Joined: Friday, 13th December 2019, 01:33

Post Tuesday, 8th March 2022, 23:27

Re: God of the Forge

I suspect Flash Forge would be tough to tune so as to make whether to use it an interesting decision. It might make more sense to make it cheaper but temporary.

For this message the author andrew has received thanks:
Nekoatl

Zot Zealot

Posts: 1004

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

Post Wednesday, 9th March 2022, 12:18

Re: God of the Forge

The only thing I'd change about this design is to remove the instability effect, and instead have the enchantment removed as part of the wrath.

Even if you could end up having end game gear with an extra +9 on your weapon and an extra 20 AC, I think it'd be fine. Oka and TSO are strong too.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Thursday, 10th March 2022, 00:22

Re: God of the Forge

I guarantee that without Instability, there would be players that would not stop at or anywhere near a mere +9 and +20... they would just keep stacking bonuses to truly absurd levels, through grindy behavior that would render much of the game's challenge completely obsolete. That's why Strive for Perfection can't exist without Instability... at least, not without removing the ability to exceed limits, which would mostly defeat the point of having the ability at all. Besides, the Maintain ability is meant to offer a persistent bonus beyond what gear is capable of, so using Strive for Perfection to do the same would be somewhat redundant. Strive for Perfection is meant to allow for an extra boost in a few rare and exceptionally dangerous battles, with the rate of decay scaling with the number of scrolls used as a soft cap to prevent farming for excessive numbers of scrolls. If that proves to be an insufficient deterrent, then in may be necessary to remove the ability entirely.

Flash Forge is meant to encourage players to wait until the cost comes down through enhancement increases from other sources, but to tempt players into using it in emergencies at greater cost. However... considering how other abilities like Maintain scale with piety, it might indeed be the case that tuning it to be an interesting decision would be impractical, in which case I'd support the suggestion to make the effect temporary at lower cost. Actually, that might not be a bad idea regardless, as it would would make the choice to use it available more often, which might be fun.

For this message the author Nekoatl has received thanks:
andrew

Zot Zealot

Posts: 1004

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

Post Thursday, 10th March 2022, 13:58

Re: God of the Forge

Ah I did read this differently than you intended then.

I imagined there'd still be a cap on the enchantment level, just at +18 or +27 for the weapon and at double the AC for armours.
Flash Forge would offer an interesting decision in that at some point in the game you'd commit to a piece of equipment, flash forge it, and then dump all your available enchantment scrolls on it.
Yes you could get very strong equipment, but there also exist very strong randarts, and keeping the equipment uses up your god slot.

With your design with instability there's a possibility for grinding in that you might stockpile enchantment scrolls for a boss fight.

My main issue with Instability is that having equipment permanently degraded feels bad in the context of dcss. A large part of the fun (for me) comes from having your character steadily grow stronger.

Either way there's an issue that enchantment scrolls become an effective piety system for this design, which might not be fun.

A suggestion for a temporary flash forge (which might not be any good):
Maintain grants a bonus to equipment you wear/wield which slowly grows greater the longer you wear it. (Unequiping the item resets the bonus.)
Flash Forge now temporarily doubles the Maintain bonus, as well as greatly enchanting the item and branding it, but also inflicts the item with Instability. After Flash Forge wears off, the item resets to its original enchantment level and its Maintain bonus resets.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Thursday, 10th March 2022, 21:22

Re: God of the Forge

Strive for Perfection is meant to be used either as a quick way to get new gear tuned up without spending piety or to stockpile scrolls to read right before a dangerous fight, whether that's a boss fight, an awkward situation following a trap, or simply a large group of very dangerous enemies. However, I agree that if it's tuned too loosely, it would encourage grinding for lots of scrolls, and if that can't be avoided, then it's better just to scrap the ability entirely. But, how it's tuned really has a strong impact on whether or not there's value in grinding for scrolls. Consider an extremely tight tuning, say, the constant is 3. You'd get some (very brief) benefit from reading the first and second scroll, but no more than that, because if you read the third, it would wear off just as your next turn starts. Of course, at that tuning, there's so little benefit to over-enhancing that it's better to never do it. But, I think there's a sweet spot where it's worth using a small number of scrolls for a temporary bonus, without providing enough incentive to stockpile a huge number of scrolls. Keep in mind that even with larger constant values, there will still be diminishing returns for reading more scrolls... and if necessary, that could be enhanced by modifying the formula, e.g., the first scroll read adds 1 to the counter, the next adds 2, and so on. But, if I'm wrong, and there is no such sweet spot, then the ability should be scrapped.

As for feeling bad about the gear losing excess enhancement points, I think that's just a matter of how the player chooses to think about it. Losing a temporary bonus doesn't feel as bad as losing a permanent bonus, right? So maybe the way to handle this would be to change the color of the gear while a temporary bonus is in effect. Like, maybe start with light blue and gradually transition to red as the total excess enhancement bonus approaches the constant. Would that help?

As for enhancement scrolls becoming an effective piety system... that's true, but I don't expect it would be a problem in this case... mainly because they would serve as a perk rather than something that the kit needs to function (like how scrolls were needed to get old Ash to do anything). Also, the only way to truly decouple scrolls from piety would be to disable enchant scrolls for worshipers entirely (which I don't think players would like), and even then, there would be a workaround by grinding scrolls and reading them before joining, though this would really only be practical if the player wanted to worship some other god first... Gozag, perhaps.... In any case, I think it's better to wait and see if this is a problem before trying to solve it, as I don't expect it to be.

Hmm... I feel like that Flash Forge redesign would make it difficult to tune Maintain, as you'd have to keep the normal bonuses lower so that the doubled bonuses don't get out of control. I also don't really want Flash Forge to be a power boost, but rather a strategic and tactical flexibility tool. I feel like there are enough power boosts available through usage of the other abilities. I'm thinking more like set a gear to its maximum enhancement value and let the player choose a brand/ego, then reset the gear to normal when no enemies have been in LoS for several consecutive turns. That way, the player could use it to compensate for having recently changed gear, or to get an appropriate brand/ego for an unexpected encounter. That would keep the overall power level more consistent and make balance tuning much easier, I imagine.

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