Is buffing too powerful

[Yet Another Stupid Noob]

I am creating a poll to try to get a general feeling on the forums.

Taking my own advice, I have split this topic off of the perma-buff thread to address the topic of buffing in general.

My personal feeling is that some buffs (mainly swiftness, repel missiles, and haste) are likely too powerful and deserve a nerf, but in general any buff should have the option to be cast in a perma-buff state. If a buff is simple and useful enough that you will want to have it on all the time then having to manually recast as soon as it fades is boring but optimal. Conversely, if you add any penalty to perma-buffing then you might as well not add it at all because it will put its use firmly back into the sub-optimal camp.

[ApsychicRat]

i think the best way to deal with buffs is to infer some kind of secondary cost that causes the player to stop and think before they auto put that buff back up, what that may be im not sure, reagents dont seem like they would work in crawl but i feel like that would cause people to think before casting.

[TwilightPhoenix]

It's mostly non-transmutation spell buffs that are an issue, since those can be made to be easily castable with their only cost being a bit of MP. A few thoughts on a few that come to mind...

Swiftness - Speed gain scales with power. Have almost no power? You can barely run faster than that Ogre chasing you, but that stuff that was outrunning you before will still outrun you now. The current speed bonus should be towards the upper end of the power curve.

Control Teleport - Remove the spell. Really, being able to pop into a safe spot on demand is broken and it's obvious there's a problem when the best solution to running into a dangerous threat is to cTele away. Alternatively, make controlled teleports take significantly longer to kick in.

Flight - Perhaps give some noticeable to significant penalties when the player lacks cFlight, such as EV and accuracy reduction.

Repel Missiles - Raise it to spell level 3 or 4. (On an unrelated note, it'd be cool if projectiles got repelled off course if they missed.)

Deflect Missiles - Delete it, Repel is good enough.

Oz's Armor - Some ideas here. Give some penalties similar to armor, such as EV and accuracy reduction and spellcasting trouble. Or maybe take a pip of rFire away. Or slow the player down a little.

Stone Skin - Same basic ideas as Oz's Armor, except no negative rFire.

[Wark]

Flight - Perhaps give some noticeable to significant penalties when the player lacks cFlight, such as EV and accuracy reduction.

Alternatively, a bonus to max weight carried (and stealth, IIRC) can be removed. Then it would be more or less useless to keep flight constantly on, apart from a few special places, such as Shoals and Abyss. Tengu may keep these if they are using their innate ability, though.

[snow]

If you nerf flight in such a way that it's sometimes bad to have it on you're basically declaring that this is being done for no other reason than permanent buffs being hard to code. Flight is so ridiculously narrow in usage that having it on or off usually doesn't even matter. That's presuming it doesn't give any obscure bonuses that aren't immediately apparent... if it does it shouldn't. If you're going to nerf it just remove it instead. Levitation is just as good for getting over deep water.

If I'm not making myself 100% clear: you shouldn't have the "get over water" spell slow you, rot you, mutate you, and wake up every monster on the map just because players MIGHT use it when they're not getting over water which is somehow the worst thing ever conceived. I mean god forbid if they can get over water after casting it once instead of tediously casting it every time they encounter water.

Also why is it so bad to invest in a buff that is left permanently on? I don't think that's out of line... there should be some planning ahead in this game and every decision shouldn't be made based on the current game state. I'm not saying I support either side of this debate... it's bad if there are buffs that are easily accessed and best left on permanently like repel missiles. But if a skill takes enough investment leaving it on permanently should be an option.

Except if it's something stupid like flight. I mean seriously.

[njvack]

You'll actually find that Flight (or Levitation) is bad to have running as soon as you meet a monster with Airstrike. Makes Coc:7 a bit more interesting...

[TwilightPhoenix]

Flight gives a boost to stealth, carrying weight, and, I think, EV, all in a level 3 spell. Taking out those capabilities is not making it useless to use. And my proposal only suggests having them removed and penalties granted when the player lacks cFlight (so Tengu and Draconians would never notice this, for example). Stop overreacting.

[snow]

Flight should just be removed then.

Levitation works fine and if the design goal is really to not have any buffs that are worth having on all the time... just get rid of flight. It would finally do away with that god awful amulet too.

[crate]

Flight doesn't touch your EV. It is one of the buffs that is the easiest to do without as-is, honestly.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Flight should just be removed then.

If Flight if removed, then there will be no sort of floating spell. Levitation got removed with .10.

[dtsund]

As far as I'm concerned, that would be an improvement. I fail to see how Crawl benefits from levitation and flight being possible; they're generally not tactical effects, but rather "keep them active always and forever when you need to pass bad terrain" effects. The game would, in my opinion, be better if these effects were completely absent, with dungeon and vault generation making them not needed.

[KoboldLord]

It's very tactical to move across tiles that are impassable to the enemy. Perhaps too much so, which is why the tactic has been nerfed in the past. It's also very strategically relevant to ensure that the enemy cannot do the same to you. It is possible to do this by luring every enemy laboriously away from the danger tiles, but it is often very convenient just to train some portable way to convert danger tiles to asset tiles.

While not all complexity is good, neither is it the case that all complexity is bad. Removing a whole class of terrain would almost certainly be a mistake.

[galehar]

Removing the carrying capacity and stealth bonus would probably be a good thing if my idea for glow goes in.

[Eji1700]

Various thought's i've had on buffs and things like blink-

1. Blink- Make uncontrolled blink just that, uncontrolled. Maybe lower it's level but make it so usage near deep water or lava gives you a warning because it will very much so drop your ass in it and kill you. This is good for the game because blink is less of a "roll dice to live" spell and now supports comboing with other spells in some situations. It'll still be useful in normal dugeon situations but it's less godly on it's own.

2. Levitation- bring it back and make it a lvl 1 and throw it in party tricks and a few other books. I'm mainly saying to do this so 1, you have an easy combo with blink, and 2 I plan on making fly different. Terrain navigation is very very valuable. Levitation is just underclassed because things like fly are so easy to obtain, and they shouldn't be. Adds glow to prevent too much recasting(needs some because of things like hive vault...even though that's gone)

3. Fly- Change it. Obviously terrain passing and whatnot but put some penalties on it for just having it up. Maybe keep it's current level or up it but I do think it should do significantly more, and be more of a burst spell than something you just auto/permacast. Ideally i want a few small downsides, higher level, a few more upsides.

4. Swiftness- Builds glow quickly. Wouldn't honestly mind if you just removed it though.

5. Control teleport- Needs to be NOT AT ALL ON ANY FORM OF JEWELRY. This should be the shining moment for a warper. Super powerful defensive options. A lvl 9 fighter shouldn't be able to do the same thing. That said it should have an extremely large mana cost.

6. Repel Missiles- I'd almost say just remove the damn thing or make it harder to use.

7. Deflect missiles- Ok first of call, change the name of one of these to REFLECT missiles. I can never remember which one is better just by looking at the names and that's super super poor design. If you must keep it make this one a much higher level spell with a very high chance of reflecting projectiles back at their source. Make it short duration and high cost. Idea being it'd be a neat way to wipe out a room of casters. Run in, REFLECT, watch them thin their own numbers when they attack you.

8. Necromutation- I'd honestly suggest a rework. I love the spell thematically but i think there's some more fun stuff that can be done with it, and barring that it's just going to need a lot of tweaks.

9. Haste(and all of the above)- said it before i'll say it again, WE NEED MONSTER SPELLS THAT ATTACK BUFFS. Devour magic, monster consumes buffs and becomes stronger. Slouch, monster hurts you based on how fast you move. Curse, All buffs applied to you suddenly do the opposite(maybe it shouldn't affect TM spells, but other than that Haste slows, Flight grounds and slows, Ctele stops tele, Repel missile attracts them, etc.) The biggest way to prevent permabuffing is if you know there's a chance you'll walk around the corner into an enemy who will then DESTROY you for having them up.

10- armor's and skins- Give them downsides and again see #9.

Honestly the way I see it a caster has 3 major resources to manage.
1. Mana
2. Glow
3. Distance from the thing that wants to tear him in half

If you allow permabuffing you're basically obsoleting number 3. The most interesting moments to me as a caster are when i've gotten stuck in a dead end with 3 or for mosters a few steps away from tearing into me. Do i cast a buff or two in those turns? Do i risk something higher level that might fail and give them a free turn to close? Do I just try and nuke them down? Buffs are boring because you completely remove the best decision making aspect of casting and turn it into a non issue or a chore.