Make Cheibriados Better

[TehDruid]

ebarrett is making a good point. Chei shouldn't depend on haste so much. I also think a reason why most people (me included) think Chei needs a buff is because we don't use his abilities that much. Heck, I'm probably the worst kind of Chei player, I only remember to use Slouch for CC pretty much and also in very rare cases I remember to use TD to let Centaurs/Yaktaurs close in or try to make monsters run out of LOS. I mostly take the god to make defensive characters with big AC and EV and a better chance at learning support magic due to the int boost.

[crate]

Seriously chei isn't very far from good. Making str a good stat is really all he needs. We don't need convoluted solutions that change the way chei plays for no reason, or that mess with other aspects of crawl for no reason.

[jejorda2]

Make conjurations' range a function of strength, with the the idea being that you conjure up the damaging mess in your hand and then have to throw it. Maybe the double the square root of your strength is the number of spaces your conjurations can go, but never past the current limits? Go ahead and do the same thing for launchers.

At the same time, make it so a level N spell's spellpower and hunger isn't affected by any INT over 3*N. That way, there will be less reason to raise INT, there will be more room for more STR, and there is more reason to train spell schools to pick up low level spells. It would take high spellcasting to cast blink without translocations, since your effective intelligence would never be above 6.

[Lasty]

Make conjurations' range a function of strength, with the the idea being that you conjure up the damaging mess in your hand and then have to throw it. Maybe the double the square root of your strength is the number of spaces your conjurations can go, but never past the current limits? Go ahead and do the same thing for launchers.

At the same time, make it so a level N spell's spellpower and hunger isn't affected by any INT over 3*N. That way, there will be less reason to raise INT, there will be more room for more STR, and there is more reason to train spell schools to pick up low level spells. It would take high spellcasting to cast blink without translocations, since your effective intelligence would never be above 6.

This is a joke, right? If so, I don't really get it. If not, that would do a pretty good job of ensuring that all characters are primarily melee.

[jejorda2]

Make conjurations' range a function of strength, with the the idea being that you conjure up the damaging mess in your hand and then have to throw it. Maybe the double the square root of your strength is the number of spaces your conjurations can go, but never past the current limits? Go ahead and do the same thing for launchers.

At the same time, make it so a level N spell's spellpower and hunger isn't affected by any INT over 3*N. That way, there will be less reason to raise INT, there will be more room for more STR, and there is more reason to train spell schools to pick up low level spells. It would take high spellcasting to cast blink without translocations, since your effective intelligence would never be above 6.

This is a joke, right? If so, I don't really get it. If not, that would do a pretty good job of ensuring that all characters are primarily melee.

I think the second part is a better idea than the first part, but it's just a nerf to INT and not a buff to STR. INT is too useful right now, IMO, apart from being more useful than STR and DEX.

[crate]

Int is fine, dex is about as good, str is bad.

[Roy]

chei isn't bad because he doesn't let you use haste, chei is bad because you are fuckin' slow while you move around and get murdered; being blocked off from haste exacerbates this but it's still a marginal factor compared to not being able to simply walk away from 99% of things in the game even when any other char doesn't even have sources of haste. if your char doesn't need to move when there are monsters around, chei is actually pretty great. so plz everyone stop turning every chei discussion into a haste discussion, for some purposes chei even gives you a sort of reasonable haste replacement anyway (bend time)

This is why I suggested making bend time passive. Then at least you don't get pummeled when you try to run away. There would be no need to beef STR because melee opponents are no longer effectively hasted relative to you.

[pratamawirya]

Passive bend time would mean getting piety sucks with Chei.

[sanka]

• make the damage bonus of strength actually visible, especially for big twohanded weapons. I imagine something like the same damage as now for 20 strength, and +/- 1% damage per strength point for the biggest weapons. Less difference for smaller ones.
• use strength while calculating penalties for large shields, so that with high strength the penalties goes down/away with much less skill, and become actually good.
• remove the "strength requirement" for armours (it does not work very well anyway), and instead use strength in calculating the AC for armour skill (like DEX is used with Dodging)

[BlackSheep]

Discussion of a Strength stat overhaul merits its own topic as it impacts far more than just Chei balance.

[rebthor]

As usual, crate is right. Ok, let's keep the thread on topic. Here is my proposal (probably too radical).

1. Remove stat bonuses and movement delay penalty.
2. As you piety increases, Cheibriados increases the base delay of all your actions by a factor A: 1 < A < 3/2 (3/2 at full piety).
3. As you piety increases, Cheibriados increases all your outcoming damage (melee, spells, ranged) by a factor B: 1 < B < 3/2 (3/2 at full piety).
4. As you piety increases, Cheibriados decreases all the incoming damage (melee, spells, ranged) by a factor C: 2/3 < C < 1 (2/3 at full piety).

IMO, as long as Chei has stat bonuses it will be very difficult to achieve a balanced solution. The reason I removed the movement delay penalty is just because it is completely redundant after adding the penalty to your base delay.

I'm not sure what to do with Bend Time: remove it, or make it a very expensive ability (piety cost > 10). I want to hear your opinions.

How is this different than statue form, other that it makes casting spells marginally less bad under Che than as a statue since your spell damage is increased?

[nifboy]

When I think "Slow guy in a dungeon", I think of full plate mail and tower shields. Maybe Chei could make life easier for casters in medium/heavy armor? Either directly or by making str better.

[BlackSheep]

He does make life better for people wearing heavy armor and shields. The massive stat boosts mean you'll have no trouble meeting the strength requirements of your armor, and make your shield noticeably more effective. The int boost in particular makes casting in heavy armor much, much easier.

[Jeremiah]

What if he also made it possible to be stealthy even in heavy armour? I'm not completely sure how it works now, but I've always assumed that heavy armour kills your stealth to such an extent that it's not worth training on heavy fighters.

While slowing your movement, Chei could also deaden the noise made by your plate clanking etc.

[Steel Neuron]

What if he also made it possible to be stealthy even in heavy armour? I'm not completely sure how it works now, but I've always assumed that heavy armour kills your stealth to such an extent that it's not worth training on heavy fighters.

While slowing your movement, Chei could also deaden the noise made by your plate clanking etc.

This sounds interesting but also extremely specific. Chei shouldn't be only useful to characters which want to be heavy armored AND stealthy... It sounds like a limited demographic.


Some stupid idea thrown into the mix: What about a passive ability at certain piety, that makes you leave snail ooze as you walk? You cover a certain amount of squares behind you in ooze, and monsters have to pass a dexterity/str check to avoid being slowed or stuck. This way you can escape from a limited number of monsters in a funny way. Also, active invocations to affect the ooze could be cool.

It does feel more like a jivya ability, but thought it could go well with the snail flavour.

[njvack]

This sounds interesting but also extremely specific. Chei shouldn't be only useful to characters which want to be heavy armored AND stealthy... It sounds like a limited demographic.

I'll go out on a limb and say stealth is very strong and there's no character who doesn't want to be stealthy. Just because you want to kill all the dudes doesn't mean you want to kill them all at once. You may want heavy armour more but both would certainly be welcome.

Also Chei does help with stealth, which is influenced by dex.

Also here is how stealth works.

[BlackSheep]

Chei's impact on stealth via dex is, at most, 3*15 or +45. Plate armour imposes a penalty on stealth of -6*6^2 or -216. I wouldn't mind seeing an additional stealth bonus for Chei worshipers. It's not the fix he needs, but it'd be a little helpful and internally consistent. (Swiftness halves stealth, why not have slow movement give a stealth bonus?)

[tasonir]

It seems to me like there are so many different proposals that even the popularly accepted ones aren't getting much closer to being actually implemented. Can we all agree on some basic buffs?

1) increase the effect of strength. May buff trolls and ogres significantly as well, but those aren't terribly overpowered races (they're around medium difficulty, ogres a bit harder?) and I think this would be fine. Most other races would see a small benefit but I think that's outweighed by the gain of having a stat system which isn't always "just pick int".

2) Smaller buff to dex. This one hasn't been talked about as much so let me know if I'm overstepping any boundaries, but all I'd do is change the caps. Currently it halves at 24 and quarters at 34; which is basically only chei followers. Either raise or remove the caps? Would anyone not worshipping chei really go pure dex? A SpBe maybe? Would it be overpowered even if you did dump all your points into dex to make a dodgy berserker?

3) A buff to bend time. The most popular option here seems to be increasing it's range to 2 tiles. Other options include making it instant (possibly using a breathe timer to prevent spam) or removing the piety cost. It still costs 3 mana; it would be like a slow spell that trades having range for affecting multiple targets as long as they're near you.

Those seem to be the most agreed upon buffs. Might not make chei super powerful alone, but I'd think that doing this as a first step is a good idea, and then any other things can be done separately. I wouldn't mind seeing a buff to slouch, which has some support but didn't seem as widespread. Slouch always felt very powerful on my naga characters, but on a normal speed character it can be fairly weak. To actually kill a crowd with it is a huge blow to piety when you have to cast it 3-5 times. Of course you don't have to keep using it until everything dies, but still. Lower piety cost or higher damage, or ignore this and do 1-3 above.

[crate]

Dex doesn't need buffed seriously it's about as good as int right now.

[galehar]

Weren't those stepdowns smoothed already?

Yes they were. All stepdowns have been because hhe function stepdown_value has been changed.

[Jeremiah]

What if with high enough str, characters could wield weapons one size class larger than usual. So normal sized characters could wield GSC and kobolds/halflings could wield 2-handed weapons. It wouldn't affect ogres and trolls much since they can already use the biggest weapons (maybe they could then use normal 2-h weapons in one hand?)

Depending on where the threshold was set, you could make it so that only Chei worshippers could realistically get that much strength, or maybe that other characters (demigods?) who focussed on increasing str could get to it as well. (Yes I know, thresholds are bad, not sure what to say about that.. )

[Galefury]

Yay, breakbpoints! Those are the best! -.-

Also it's a bad idea for several other reasons, including making races of different size less distinct.

[tasonir]

Weren't those stepdowns smoothed already?

Yes they were. All stepdowns have been because hhe function stepdown_value has been changed.

How does the new stepdown work? Smoothing it out is a good thing, certainly, but it still being there at all seems questionable. Why penalize someone for having a lot of dex, when there is a god with the ability to boost your stats by tremendous amounts? It is also unique in that it is the only stat which is penalized like this - there is no stepdown to int, or strength. Stacking str doesn't help much but stacking int is optimal play for nearly everyone. Dex stepdowns is very spoilery; even I didn't know it had been changed because it doesn't explain itself anywhere in game and it -does- have a direct impact on picking what stat I want to gain every 3 levels.

[crate]

Um, actually int has enormous stepdowns because the spellpower formula does.

[galehar]

How does the new stepdown work?

stepdown(x, step) = step * log2(1 + x/step)

[tasonir]

How does the new stepdown work?

stepdown(x, step) = step * log2(1 + x/step)

At what value does that start? Without knowing x or step I can't calculate that. For example there's the much easier to follow explanation of spell power: halve the part over 50, halve the part over 100, halve the part over 150, and plain cap at 200. The outdated formula for dex used to be: halve over 24, halve again over 34. Can you put the new formula in those terms?

Um, actually int has enormous stepdowns because the spellpower formula does.

True, but that's just for spellpower. Spell hunger has no stepdowns, and I believe spell success also does not. Spell hunger generally isn't that big a deal but spell success is pretty important early on, when it counts. Correct me if I'm wrong about spell success.

[galehar]

How does the new stepdown work?

stepdown(x, step) = step * log2(1 + x/step)

At what value does that start?

step

Without knowing x or step I can't calculate that.

x is the value which is being stepdowned. Spell power or dexterity in the 2 given examples.

For example there's the much easier to follow explanation of spell power: halve the part over 50, halve the part over 100, halve the part over 150, and plain cap at 200. The outdated formula for dex used to be: halve over 24, halve again over 34. Can you put the new formula in those terms?

For spellpower, it's simple, the step is 50. The evasion formula calls the old stepdown function: stepdown_value(you.dex(), 10, 24, 72, 72). This means that the stepdown has a step of 10 but only starts at 24. It's smooth anyway since the old function now calls the new one for a smooth result. Go read the code if you want a better understanding.

Um, actually int has enormous stepdowns because the spellpower formula does.

True, but that's just for spellpower.

And the dex stepdown is just for evasion.

[Martyr of Zot]

Hmm, this is a very old interesting thread. Nice to see it's still going. I don't feel I can contribute to the play-balance side of things but the OP was also looking for thematic hooks. I have a few not all compatible, some better than others.

Delayed reinforcements. Chei has some very powerful minions, but they are very slow and will turn up a long time after you request. (Probably a joke item, but it might work well with srep-from-time)

Ageing effects. It could work like draining.

Gravity effects. This feels appropriate to me, though I am not sure that this is entirely logical. It would make missiles fall short, and maybe give monsters trouble with heavy equipment.

Living statues become neutral/friendly. They are slow yes? (Naturally Fedhas has already baggsied all the flora.)

Improved hearing (because your breathing and heartbeat have slowed right down, and because you move so slowly you get to filter out the ambient noise). I include this because I take Ritalin, and for me Chei is also the god of taking Ritalin. Hearing well over background noise is one of the first things I noticed when I first took it.

Other point on the hearing. I thing some sort of scrying would be very useful to a slow moving character, but this is in another god's domain.

Slower = more accurate. (But then we get into the formulas which I don't want to be getting into)

[Martyr of Zot]

Improved hearing (because your breathing and heartbeat have slowed right down, and because you move so slowly you get to filter out the ambient noise). I include this because I take Ritalin, and for me Chei is also the god of taking Ritalin. Hearing well over background noise is one of the first things I noticed when I first took it.

I don't think speed quite fits with the current flavour of cheibriados

It works differently if you actually have ADHD , which reminds me..

DISCLAIMER: Remember kids, Ritalin is not a recreational drug. It totally sucks as a recreational drug. Don't bother. Ever! God, some people will take anything!!

[tasonir]

For spellpower, it's simple, the step is 50. The evasion formula calls the old stepdown function: stepdown_value(you.dex(), 10, 24, 72, 72). This means that the stepdown has a step of 10 but only starts at 24.

That's what I was looking for, thanks. I'd recommend tweaking it to something like stepdown_value(you.dex(), 10, 28, 72, 72) to make it a bit less harsh on chei followers, but if people hate that proposal we can just stick with the strength changes which are already happening.

Um, actually int has enormous stepdowns because the spellpower formula does.

True, but that's just for spellpower.

And the dex stepdown is just for evasion.

the point I was making here is that int has meaningful bonuses besides spell power: spell success and spell hunger. What meaningful bonuses does dex give besides evasion? There is the strength/dexterity weighting of weapons, and accuracy, but both are considered insignificant and not worth considering. Dodging is more or less the entire point of dex. For some ranged characters it can impact how quickly they reach min delay with a bow, but otherwise it's entirely dodging.

[jejorda2]

http://crawl.develz.org/info/inline.php?q=stealth

It helps shield blocking unless you're using a large shield.

I think it contributes to the chance of getting a stab on a distracted monster, which admittedly isn't that important, and also to the amount of damage you get from a stab, which is more important.

[crate]

Int as a stat is about as good as dex as a stat right now. There are some people who disagree with me but there are other good players who do not.

There are a lot of spells where the main benefit of int (spellpower) is actually not very important. Int does not boost spell success by enough to make it raising int just for spell success, and spell hunger is mostly not a problem anyway and also never something you raise int for.

Basically the spell success boost and spell hunger reduction from int are a lot like the stabbing damage boost and the stealth boost (or extra SH for a buckler, if you want) from dex.

[mattlistener]

For what it's worth, I won with a Naga Transmuter of Chei back in 0.10 and had tons of fun. I used all of the abilities -- to get ranged things close to me, to hurt groups, and the emergency button -- which saved my lumbering skin several times. Took me 12 or so tries with that build before I got one past Lair. So I don't personally think Chei needs an overhaul.

The gameplay has a unique feel compared to other gods -- letting things run into your maw of death rather than hunting them down.

It also serves a build-diversity role as a god that supports hybrids.

I'd say all that's needed is the discussed buff to Strength (perhaps as a purely defensive stat for casters), and a redo just for Bend Time (which gets resisted too much to be worth using, and anti-synergizes with Slouch).

[brendan]

I'm a bit late to the party here and haven't read all of the replies: I'm ambivalent about moves to make Chei more powerful for the sake of achieving parity. People continue to win games with Chei. If elliptic or stabwound were to declare NgEn Chei unwinnable I would reconsider this position.

Not every god has to be good. The winrate for GhTm Trog is probably downright awful, but this isn't a reason to let Ghouls berserk or use forms. Perhaps my view diverges from dpeg's, but I envision Chei as being a niche deity.

[Schpwuette]

I have barely 2 weeks of this game under my belt, but what I want to address isn't really about balance, so hopefully that won't matter.

As other people have said in this thread, it seems to me that some of Cheibriados' flavour is strange. What is it about slowness that he(?) loves? Why does he slow his followers' enemies? Surely a god who loves to be slow, to take it easy, would punish his enemies by hurrying them.

Slow and steady wins the race, right? Being slow with Cheibriados should grant you additional chance to succeed at tasks, and lower the chance you suffer mistakes (i.e. increase accuracy, lower the chance that your shield or armour gets in the way, increase spell success chance and so on). Perhaps there could be an invokable ability that halves your speed temporarily but gives an added percentage *point* increase to success chances - for example, numbers chosen randomly, a spell with a 15% chance to fail becomes a 5% fail. Or 10% becomes 0%. This would mean risky moves would become surefire, but you still wouldn't be able to cast firestorm at level 10.
On top of that, Cheibriados feels that speed is foolish. There could be an ability that hastens enemies in your LoS (or just strongly affects fast enemies, like slouch), but makes them much more likely to screw up. For flavour, you could make them clumsy in more ways than just accuracy etc, for example they might drop their weapon, trip over their feet or fire a spell in the wrong direction.

Anyway, it's not that I dislike him in his current form, it's just that I feel his theme isn't being fully explored.