Mines Malingerer
Posts: 47
Joined: Thursday, 1st March 2012, 21:31
Sunday, 1st April 2012, 06:00
Bringing some love to evokable items
In my games of crawl and in reading the forums/wiki I've come to believe that some of the evokable (misc) items could use some love. Here are my assertions
The remaining items include:
I'd assert that for many of these items, having 20 levels of evocation skill would have some small effect, but make most of them unreliable enough to be truly useful. Here's what I can tell from reading the source code, and my proposal for each.
Box of Beasts
Roughly, it summons something between spammables (3 of 11) and ice beast/yak strength. While I think the break rate is too high, it at least gets better with additional skill points.
I'd propose making the chance of breaking on fail scale with evocation, so skilled users are less likely to break it.
Efreet Flask
"Hydra weapon in a bottle" is what the wiki calls this. While a friendly Efreet is nice, it is single use, has only have a 4/5s chance of being friendly even with massive skill investment.
I'd propose a 20 skill user should have 95%+ chance of friendly, else why would you actually use it in battle? If it isn't to be used in battle, we should remove and have it drop flaming weapons instead.
Disc of Storms
Scales with damage and chance of working. No theoretical complaints.
Tome of Destruction (Tome of Power in source code)
A rare "uber wand" effect, able to cast anything from crystal spear down to magic dart, randomly, scaling on evocations. Even with 20 skill, you chance is 1d23 + 1d6 > 24 of getting crystal spear. However, the 70% chance of working and possible breakage would as the wiki puts it: "The only characters who might find this useful are Trog worshipers, and even for them it is of somewhat limited use. High Evocations skill does not make this item any safer, though it improves its destructive capacity significantly."
I'd like to propose making the chance of failure and chance of breaking scale based on evocation.
Elemental Summoning
And we come to the three elemental summoning items. Even with 20 skill (and 66% chance of working on a given invocation), you need elemental skills to have a chance to get friendly elementals. Those with elemental skills most likely can use the spell, which is only level 4, and those without would be crazy to use it.
I have two suggestions. I'd propose making the summoned elementals friendly based on the greater of elemental magic or evocations (divided by some number, say 2). That way, if you have the elemental skills, you can use them, but if you don't it isn't useful given enough practice. I'd also like to propose allowing xp to be trained on the appropriate elemental magic school of the owner of this (less important if first proposal accepted).
Rod of Striking
Not choosing this for your starting artificer package was the power gamer question in previous versions of crawl.
I'd like to propose making it suck less at the very least, and possibly re-adding it as a part of the artificer starting package (or an option).
I really like the idea behind these items, but from what I can tell many of them are never used by good players, unreliable enough to use in difficult combat. Wands, rods, and decks all get reasonably better with increased skill, I think these items should as well.
One last note, if we made these items actually useful, I'd like to fixup the acquirement code to be more likely to give these items (including the book) if you selected misc if you have high evocation.
I'm very happy to hack up a patch with my opinions coded if people on the dev team think these ideas have some merit.
- Evocation provides some magical options to non-spell casters who acquire the items (Spells are generally better than the equivalent item, use food instead of charges or chance of breaking, but require light armor)
- Evocation effects should get better as xp is applied to the skill. Somebody with 20 levels in a skill should have much better luck with an item than 0 levels.
- I'm excluding wands, rods [except one], and decks in this discussion, since I believe they do get better with higher skill levels
The remaining items include:
- Box of Beasts
- Efreet Flask
- Disc of Storms
- Tome of Destruction (Tome of Power in source code)
- Elemental Summoning (Air [Fan], Fire [Lamp], Earth[Stone]
- Rod of Striking
I'd assert that for many of these items, having 20 levels of evocation skill would have some small effect, but make most of them unreliable enough to be truly useful. Here's what I can tell from reading the source code, and my proposal for each.
Box of Beasts
- Code:
60 + Ev / 100 chance of summoning random animal, 1/6 chance of breaking on fail.
100 / ((EV * 100) + 500) of NOT being friendly
Given 0 skill, you'll get 11 uses out of it before you have a 50% chance of it breaking. Each use has 80% chance of being friendly.
Given 20 skill, you'll get 20 uses out of it before you have a 50% chance of it breaking. Each use has 96% chance of being friendly.
Animal doesn't get better with skill
Roughly, it summons something between spammables (3 of 11) and ice beast/yak strength. While I think the break rate is too high, it at least gets better with additional skill points.
I'd propose making the chance of breaking on fail scale with evocation, so skilled users are less likely to break it.
Efreet Flask
"Hydra weapon in a bottle" is what the wiki calls this. While a friendly Efreet is nice, it is single use, has only have a 4/5s chance of being friendly even with massive skill investment.
I'd propose a 20 skill user should have 95%+ chance of friendly, else why would you actually use it in battle? If it isn't to be used in battle, we should remove and have it drop flaming weapons instead.
Disc of Storms
Scales with damage and chance of working. No theoretical complaints.
Tome of Destruction (Tome of Power in source code)
A rare "uber wand" effect, able to cast anything from crystal spear down to magic dart, randomly, scaling on evocations. Even with 20 skill, you chance is 1d23 + 1d6 > 24 of getting crystal spear. However, the 70% chance of working and possible breakage would as the wiki puts it: "The only characters who might find this useful are Trog worshipers, and even for them it is of somewhat limited use. High Evocations skill does not make this item any safer, though it improves its destructive capacity significantly."
I'd like to propose making the chance of failure and chance of breaking scale based on evocation.
Elemental Summoning
- Code:
(EV * 100 / 3000) chance of working
Given 0 skill, 0% chance of working
Given 20 skill, 66% chance of working
Friendly based on # summoned and elemental skill
Air = ((Air_Skill - (3 * Number_of_Air_Elementals)) / 15) * 96/100 chance of friendly
Earth = ((Earth_Skill - (5 * Number_of_Earth_Elementals)) / 5 * 96/100 chance of friendly
And we come to the three elemental summoning items. Even with 20 skill (and 66% chance of working on a given invocation), you need elemental skills to have a chance to get friendly elementals. Those with elemental skills most likely can use the spell, which is only level 4, and those without would be crazy to use it.
I have two suggestions. I'd propose making the summoned elementals friendly based on the greater of elemental magic or evocations (divided by some number, say 2). That way, if you have the elemental skills, you can use them, but if you don't it isn't useful given enough practice. I'd also like to propose allowing xp to be trained on the appropriate elemental magic school of the owner of this (less important if first proposal accepted).
Rod of Striking
Not choosing this for your starting artificer package was the power gamer question in previous versions of crawl.
I'd like to propose making it suck less at the very least, and possibly re-adding it as a part of the artificer starting package (or an option).
I really like the idea behind these items, but from what I can tell many of them are never used by good players, unreliable enough to use in difficult combat. Wands, rods, and decks all get reasonably better with increased skill, I think these items should as well.
One last note, if we made these items actually useful, I'd like to fixup the acquirement code to be more likely to give these items (including the book) if you selected misc if you have high evocation.
I'm very happy to hack up a patch with my opinions coded if people on the dev team think these ideas have some merit.
Won 2 Games - MiFi (2)
