The Tavern

Hello all, this is my first post in the Tavern, though I've been playing Stone Soup for over a year now. I've never actually gotten the orb, mainly due to my desire to constantly try new race/god combinations. Anyway, I'd like to chime in on my favorite race, the Draconian. I love these fellows, especially after the buffs they received in .9. They are a ton of fun, and I like the surprise you get later on when you mature. What I don't like however, is getting to level seven to only find out that I've been lucky enough to molt into a White Draconian (and to a lesser extent a red draconian, we will cover that later).

White Draconians are in my humble opinion one of the worst races in all of crawl. They have all of the usual disadvantages of a Draconian with none of the advantages, in their current format you may as well stay brown. Why? Well lets look over it nice and slow.

1. No real resistances or defensive bonuses. White draconians receive an amazing +1 to cold resistance, Reds receive a +1 to fire. White's bonus here is almost useless, almost no exceptionally dangerous spells are ice based and even if you are unlucky enough to get slapped by an Ice storm or a bolt of cold, you are still going to take more than enough damage to make you run away with tears in your eyes. Red fairs only slightly better, since fire spells are more common early on when the pathetic amount of resistance you have will make a difference. I feel that it's important to note that every other dragon gets an immunity of some sort, with the exception of Yellow (who makes up for it with more potent offensive abilities). I've found even a pale dragon's extremely specific immunity, to be far more useful in many situations.

1A. I feel that both of these should be, at the very least, given +2 to resistances, yes fire and ice are common spell types, but honestly they gain no immunity, lose any semblance of being able to effectively cast their opposite school of magic, and lack of utility on their breaths and secondary offensive attacks make this a viable and balanced game play wise. As well as make it fit the fluff a bit better, it's laughable to think that fire is almost as effective against an red dragon as it is to a white dragon. If we are trying to be unique maybe have frost dragons radiate cold, sort of like a weak repulsion field or an aura of very weak slowing and have reds do a very moderate amount of passive fire damage around them. If nothing else I feel they should at least be able to protect items against their element (reds protect scrolls from fire, whites protect potions from cold).

2. Subpar breath weapons. I don't think I'm understating when I say that a wand of frost is probably the least powerful offensive wand in the game by several magnitudes. Well, this is basically all a white draconian gets when they mature. The knock back against flying targets is laughable, the very most I've ever seen a killer bee or a bat fly back is a single square. And to make maters even worse, as far as I can tell it only hits a single enemy before stopping! It does horrible damage, and offers zero utility. Utility which is what saves the Red Draconian from being in the same boat as his icy kin. Red dragon breath in its self is weakish, about the equivalent to a want of flame. However it passes through multiple enemies and, more importantly, leaves a wall of fire where it lands, making it excellent for running away or moving an unique into a corner and letting the pillar of flame burn it to a crisp.

2A. Compared to the breath weapons of other dragons Reds is acceptable, and I don't feel should be changed. White's however is underwhelming in every sense of the word. The easiest way I can see it is to change it to a bolt of cold, however that may be overpowered. Maybe have it create a wall of cold vapor 2 tiles thick around you (give them immunity towards it). Give it a long recharge time and maybe make it grow at different levels (1 tile around you at level 8 up to 3 at level 15). If not that maybe have it stay frost, only change it to hit everything in a line, and give it a slowing effect or random clouds of freezing vapor mixed in.

If anyone else has any suggestions or comments please leave them. As I said before I really like the Draconian race, but the fact that these two colors are so useless in comparison to the others, which offer so much more defensive and offensive options doesn't really seem to be in the Crawl spirit.

I'm always happy to see a red or white draconian, especially when playing a caster of the opposite elemental school. -2 aptitude (+2-4) is not terrible, and it's intriguing to be able to effectively train fire and ice alongside each other. As for resistances, one pip of fire/cold resistance is excellent, and makes it much easier to reach two or three with fewer equipment slots.

The breath weapons will never be a major part of your strategy, but they're fine as-is also; the one-square knockback allows for potential staircase escapes, and the red draconian breath has obvious utility.

Also note that +2 is the highest fire magic aptitude in the game. I don't think anything should be changed.

To blade, some of thats true, but I have some problems with it.

You can train fire and ice beside each other with any race, it's most difficult with red and whites. Granted the boost you receive when playing the opposite dragonkin is nice, its nothing compared to leveling up and becoming purple or pale, who beyond getting boosts to fire (with no negitives by the way), also get far better breath weapons.

Breath weapons do play a role in strategy, and while you can't rely on them to solve all your problems, discounting them simply because they aren't spamable to foolish. That's like saying wands shouldn't play a part in your over all strategy since they are limited. Purple dragon breath can tear haste off of that executioner charging at you, green can confuse them and give you time to run, pale can keep that balrog from hammering you with fire spells for a few turns, grey can walk under water and ignore many of the cloud spells. Can you honestly say that the white dragon kins breath is on par with these? Or that the aptitude (which is nothing amazing) and a passive ring of cold protection makes up for it?

I'm simply asking for these to be brought in line with the other kins, nothing more.

I'm very surprised you're not complaining about Yellow because that's much worse than White or Red (both of which may not be as good as Purple, Green or Pale but are still quite decent). Yellow offers rAcid: this isn't even rCorr and is only useful in exception outside of Slime, which is merely optional content and is so late you will usually have some form of rCorr anyway by then.
Yellow's breath weapon has an effect that is quite weak (armour corrosion) and otherwise Yellow doesn't have any perks beside an acidic bite, which doesn't do too much either. It doesn't even have any aptitude boosts.
A +2 aptitude isn't vital but noticable. In case you're not aware, Ice Magic is currently the strongest of the elemental schools.

Also, strength definitely depends on what type of character you're playing. If you're playing a DrBe, for instance, you're going to prefer White to the otherwise powerful Purple, because the ice breath deals decent damage when you get it and also offers a way for you to take out fleeing enemies even later on.

The argument that "you're still going to run away with tears in your eyes" to promote White over Red isn't very good. rF+ reduces fire damage by 50%, rC+ reduces cold damage by 50%... so yeah. Frederick's and Boris' Bolt of Cold are terrifying ice spells. Early IE ghosts are horrible. Frost Giants and Ice Dragons are major threats without rC. It's not as good as rF+, granted; but it's still a "real resistance".
I'll really need an example to show that rSteam is better than rC+ because there are like two enemies in the game that produce steam (non-threatening) and fire spells over water.

White draconian breath ignores AC, and can hit multiple enemies. It feels like one of the stronger breath weapons to me, and red draconian breath is probably one of the best. And as cerebovssquire says, even just a single level of rF+ and rC+ is actually pretty significant and certainly always worth having.

As long as we're complaining about colors we hate, I'd go with grey draconians. They flounder in water so the ability to swim is completely biased towards casters, and immunity to noxious fumes is boring because it's a half-baked rPois.

I actually like white draconian's breath because it ignores AC. It's not great against every target, but it's useful enough to be a great survival tool in the early game.
Yellow draconians feel like a gimmick, since acid is more of a threat to your equipment than you, but the idea that you get an acid attack and acid resistance that no one else has is at least different.
Purple draconians I'm not sure about. I know their breath is supposed to remove buffs, but it never seems to work with me. I tried it once with a chaos weapon because I figured the breath would mitigate when the brand does something you don't want, but it didn't work.
Red seems a bit awkward to me. The breath pierces enemies (which encourages you to wait until enemies are in a line), and leaves a flame cloud at the end (which encourages you to use it when enemies are far away). So it doesn't really seem like a cohesive concept to me.

There is also the interesting argument (by greensnark) that Red DrIE and White DrFE are *good* because you can slap on that ring of Fire/Ice without becoming vulnerable.

i'd lobby for removal instead. they are strong, but they play too much unlike other draconians (they are way better than average at stealth and stabbing, instead of the opposite, no breath weapon, the swimming thing). i don't know how to make them unique while keeping theme with the rest.

yellow should get rCorr instead of rAcid++, but it seems they're considered appropriate as is. if i recall correctly their breath timer was reduced, but i haven't played one since.

edit: i think the rest are fine. the recent changes were pretty good.

On the contrary, I think we should ramp up to 27 colours.

Draconian Crawl, remove all the other species and reflavor them as 27 different Draconian subspecies.

I disagree. rCorr protects your items from damage. rAcid protects YOU from damage. This implies, in the case of draconians, acid resistant scales and whatnot, which makes much more sense as far as mutations go. It's not like they're packing their gear up under their hide, or emanating some sort of force field or something.

i meant they should have the amulet intrinsic, which is to say rCorr and rAcid+. i did not specify, so that's my fault.
as for why, see cerebovsquire's post above. resistance to acid is just irrelevant outside of slime, and when dealing with a jelly or a yellow draconian you're usually more concerned about damage to your equipment, so you'll put on the amulet anyway.

Why not a force field, though? Demonspawn have mutations that give missile-deflecting repulsion fields and protects their things from burning - the laws of Crawl genetics clearly borrow more from X-Men than Mendel. Even "Your body produces a fine mist that neutralizes corrosive substances before they hit you" would work for rCorr.

That will make sense only on the condition that it also gives rAcid+.

True, I picked that under the assumption that it would be rCorr plus rAcid+, but "Your body produces a field that protects items from corrosion" wouldn't be any goofier than what Demonspawn get.

Maybe grey draconians should get rN+, a draining breath weapon and +2 necromancy aptitude - that might bring them more into line with the other colours in terms of the type of abilities and resistances they have.

How about grey draconians get iron dragons-like breath and natural armour?

Nice! Thanks for the idea - I had believed the opposite and always used to hate getting the "wrong" coloration; but now you've convinced me that would be an awesome late game fire+ice storm casting combo...

Sadly this has given me the mental picture of a species that oozes out a slime that neutralizes the acid and coats their gear, thereby protecting it too.
That would make some logical sense, but: Ewwww!
Perhaps it should also slow your reading? Learning spells should take an extra few turns because the damned pages keep sticking to your slime.

(Oh, and I totally support the rCorr and rAcid idea by absolutego too).

Draconians have always been one of my favorite species, and I love it when their scales turn red. One pip of rF+ is useful throughout most of the dungeon and gives you a lot more flexibility in your armor and ring choice. White is good because ice spells are common and strong, and the effect of your breath weapon is not that big of a deal (unless you're a pale draconian). Personally, I'd say red and white draconians about on par with the others, sans pale and purple which are just stronger.

Grey draconians are strange but not necessarily weak. They could be overhauled to be similar to others by giving them an element, such as earth (+2 earth, -2 air, iron breath). If any draconian is weaker than the others it would be yellow, which gets no useful resist and no strong aptitudes. rCorr or some kind of aptitude bonus would be good.

Yellow Draconian

+2 Transmutation --> because they like to "transmute" stuff (by corroding it, for example)

Giving Yellow Draconians rCorr would make no sense at all, and having them grow a slimy field, etc. would be entirely inconsistent with the rest of the Draconian colours; they are not Demonspawn to get a ton of bizarre mutations. Draconians should not expand at all beyond scale colour as far as mutations go.

I wouldn't mind seeing Yellow Draconians removed as a playable option, although I would be disappointed to see them go from Zot; they present an interesting challenge.

No need for an X-Men like force field.

Yellow Draconians could produce a slimy substance which protects their equipment from corrosion; it would be a little more realistic than an unknown force field, and preserve the effect.

I just read through the "Draconians" page on the wiki, and I like the idea that yellow draconian breath could erode natural armor.

Playing around in wizard mode a bit more, I apologize for my ignorance. White aren't nearly as bad as I initially thought (despite the fact that it seems like they have a much higher chance of appearing than any other color). And yellow, I found well, lacking.

Though the fact you can basically rapid fire spit acid to soften up larger targets is nice, it would be nicer if they had some extra bonus of some sort. Attributes or, what I like the idea more of, acidic bonuses to their attacks. Like they "sweat" a weak form of acid. Passive item protection seems like a bit of a stretch, both lore wise and game play wise (it would frankly be sorta meh even if it did protect against corrosion), but an extra bit of damage on unarmed attacks would be unique and useful.

Grey draconian I feel are worth preserving. Breathless is useful, though I feel they should be given back improved health and their spiked tail.

I guess my point is they could be the more melee oriented draconian colors, they have good aptitudes for unarmored monk fighters, so why not have colors that reflect that.

Though after all is said and done, I still stand by my original statement. That Purple and pale draconians and to a slightly lesser extent black are more desirable in almost all situations to the other kins, and I feel like they should be buffed somewhat.

Why are there no earth magic using draconians? What about a brown form that shot Ledas Liquefication for a breath weapon and got like 5 AC or something when hitting level 7?

Innate passwall ability.

I agree with whoever said grey draconians are really unappealing; they're not so much weak or anything like that, they just don't have any of the sorts of perks that I kind of expect from draconians to actually make them interesting (this also applies somewhat to yellow but at least they have a breath weapon)

[/quote]Innate passwall ability.[/quote]

I think that would be cooler for some sort of spectral undead race like a specter or wraith. Neat idea though.

I think you don't realise that you can target red draconian breath with '.' to leave the flame cloud at that location. For example you can tank the hits of an enemy while you put a cloud on top of him, or kill someone behind another enemy with a flame cloud.

It's definitely the most damaging breath weapon that is to anything non rF+, maybe even rF++.

Gnomes. Look them up on the wiki.