Make Haste Less Useful

[The Mantis]

Haste is currently superior to all other Level 6 spells.

Benefits:
* Decreases movement delay by 33%.
* Decreases attack delay by 33%.

Detriments:
* Requires skill to cast (all spells).
* Requires hunger to cast (all spells).
* Increases hunger by 5.
* Causes glow.

To make Haste worse, the amount of glow it gives could increase, its hunger cost to cast and skill required to cast could rise, it could increase hunger further, its reduction to attack delay and movement speed could be lowered, its duration could be reduced or it could have a new effect entirely.

Details:

Movement Delay:
Decreases movement delay by 33%; movement delay reduces from -
i. normal movement delay becomes 7. From 1 to 1.43 moves a turn. First cardinal is 10 moves every seven turns.
intrinsic delay 6 becomes delay 4. From 1.66 to 2.5 moves a turn. To get this: Be a Spriggan, Fast movement 3.
Attack delay:
Decreases attack delay by 33%; minimum attack delay reduces from -
i. 3 to 2 with quick short blades, either type- or brand-intrinsic, and speed-brand whips (brand). From 3.3 to 5 hits a turn.
ii. 7 to 5 with all other weapons. From 1.43 to 2 hits a turn.

Spell Costs:
A: Experience Cost:
i. The spell Haste is Level 6 and requires about 16 pure Charms to cast reliably, or 10 Spellcasting and 12 Charms, with 10 Intelligence.
B: Hunger Cost:
ii. It costs 550 Hunger when cast, and has a special hunger mechanic which decrements satiation by 5 per turn as long as it is in effect.
C: Mutation and Evasion Cost:
iii. It also produces glow: two casts of Haste at 100 Power would give you enough glow to acquire 1.8 negative mutations.

[XuaXua]

Reduce duration.

[The Mantis]

Fangs.

[mumra]

I like the idea suggested on another thread that it involves a chance of permanent stat reduction similar to high-level necromancy spells.

Flavour-wise this could be justified along the lines of "being hasted can sometimes cause accelerated ageing in the caster".

At very high spell skill the chance of stat reduction would be much lower (and potions/wands wouldn't have this effect at all).

This would make casting the spell a much more meaningful decision, and it could even be made more powerful again as a result.

[danharaj]

You can't get away with nerfing haste spell without nerfing wand of hasting.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Personally, I just say cut the spell (and possibly the wand). It'll either be too useful or too risky to use. After .11 rolls out, since I assume they're more in the bug-fixing and gameplay tweaking stage of that version now, they could just cut both the spell and the wand out in trunk and see if it ruins the game or not, which I doubt it will. If the Charms school suddenly becomes "useless" for raising, then that's a problem with Charms and not Haste. If we need a fast wand, maybe replace it with a wand of Swiftness. It'd still be darn useful, but not as powerful and the one-use, destroyable potion would be superior.

Alternatively, Haste can stay as it is and be a much higher spell. I'd say 8 or 9 if it's really a 50% performance boost. At those levels, it can be very strong because you had to work your butt off to be able to cast it.

[njvack]

If Haste gets axed, Hexes and Charms could maybe be re-merged, as you don't need to keep invis and and haste antitraining anymore.

I'm not sure the wand would need cutting. The wand is rare, and recharge scrolls aren't super common and are also useful for rods.

But: +1 on just trying Haste-less Crawl in 0.12 trunk... I wonder how the "I'm having a sad about this change" posts would compare to the MD removal.

[danharaj]

Random idea:

-Potions of Speed are left unchanged
-Spell haste and wand of hasting now have a downside: when the haste effect is over, you are slowed for 2-5 turns depending on spell power.

[varsovie]

I like this spell, but right now it's true that when you can reliably cast it, you end with the attack/move bonus anytime you need to fight/flee.

My suggestion is to introduce a delay before the spell kicks in (like the teleportation scroll) or even a smooth onset (the first 3 turn, only 11% faster, the next three only 22% faster...).

[XuaXua]

Break it up into two spells, one which affects the upper body (offensive) and one which affects the lower body (defensive).

[snow]

You could just raise its level and make the wand rarer.

Though... I think haste needs a bit more glow. Going invisible and hasting at the same time is ridiculous.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Break it up into two spells, one which affects the upper body (offensive) and one which affects the lower body (defensive).

So, Finesse and Swiftness?

[varsovie]

Don't we already had swiftness, and don't we have an awefull lot of dam increasing spells?

[XuaXua]

Break it up into two spells, one which affects the upper body (offensive) and one which affects the lower body (defensive).

So, Finesse and Swiftness?

Sure!

I didn't say my ideas on this thread were good; just tossing out some that the OP didn't list.

[KoboldLord]

I like the idea suggested on another thread that it involves a chance of permanent stat reduction similar to high-level necromancy spells.

Flavour-wise this could be justified along the lines of "being hasted can sometimes cause accelerated ageing in the caster".

At very high spell skill the chance of stat reduction would be much lower (and potions/wands wouldn't have this effect at all).

This would make casting the spell a much more meaningful decision, and it could even be made more powerful again as a result.

If permanent stat reduction is a too much of a downside to be considered, how about normal statrot, like Summon Horrible Things? Say, 1d3 damage to two random stats, resulting in 2d3 to one stat if it gets rolled twice. Since the vast majority of characters dump at least one stat, having your deep elf wizard get some strength rot would be a serious inconvenience, and you'd have to pace your use of Haste so you can either recover naturally or retrieve a consumable to correct the problem.

By picking all three stats at random, you wouldn't have characters that can safely ignore the drawback until a lot of stat rot starts racking up, and then correct it all efficiently. There's always the chance of getting hit on the weak stat, or being dropped below the threshold for your current armor, or being bumped up a miscast class on your high-level spells. 1d3 is just barely high enough that a single sustain abilities is no longer guaranteed to prevent it completely, and 2d3 is high enough to sometimes cause stat damage even with two rings, but not so high that it will immediately drop a typical character without any sustain abilities to zero in a stat. Sacrificing a ring slot in battle is a non-trivial cost, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to price the statrot assuming players usually choose to use zero or one level of sustain abilities.

[Galefury]

I like that idea. I also like the one where you are slowed for a few turns after haste ends. One is a strategic downside (cant use haste as often in general), the other a tactical one (cant use haste in every situation). Either would probably be fine, both at once probably not. Also, the stuff about difficulty that was said in the other thread should not be forgotten: removing or nerfing haste will make crawl quite a bit harder.

[eeviac]

I'm sure Deep Dwarves would really enjoy this new development.

[sardonica]

I always figured making you "slow" and preventing recast for a while after the spell is over, like berserk, would be easy and pretty balanced.

[galehar]

If permanent stat reduction is a too much of a downside to be considered, how about normal statrot, like Summon Horrible Things? Say, 1d3 damage to two random stats, resulting in 2d3 to one stat if it gets rolled twice.

It would have to happen during the course of the haste spell, otherwise you just switch to sustain abilities to cast, then switch back to something else.

[KoboldLord]

It would have to happen during the course of the haste spell, otherwise you just switch to sustain abilities to cast, then switch back to something else.

Yeah, there'd have to be a safety in play to prevent that exploit. If you swapped away from sustain abilities at any point before the speed bonus cleared out, I suppose the statrot you prevented with it could catch up to you immediately. Or a tally of ticks with sustain abilities and ticks without sustain abilities could be kept, and the appropriate percentage of statrot could be applied at the end. I'm not sure what would be most simple to code.

[The Mantis]

Break it up into two spells, one which affects the upper body (offensive) and one which affects the lower body (defensive).

So, Finesse and Swiftness?

Sure!

I didn't say my ideas on this thread were good; just tossing out some that the OP didn't list.

I am the opener, and I purposefully did not list them. In the introduction the post may be shown to suggest the possibility of something else entirely, which is being covered.

[mumra]

It would have to happen during the course of the haste spell, otherwise you just switch to sustain abilities to cast, then switch back to something else.

Each turn while Haste is active, have a fairly low chance of stat rot. This is rolled per stat, and the chance should be more likely the higher the stat is - curved such that actual stat death is extremely unlikely if not impossible, but your top stats will regularly get hit.

[pubby]

Haste is really just a mass slow that is irresistible. It seems reasonable to remove Haste and buff Metabolic Englaciation.
Keep the potions of speed though, and perhaps even make them more common.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Not really. For example, Haste gives you more time to act if one of your stats zero out (unless I'm mistaken), slow does not. There's other cases too.

[Galefury]

On the other hand, slowing everything else lets you regain more mana and health than hasting yourself. Probably much more significant than stat death. Or does haste also speed up regeneration? Also no glow and no increased hunger cost. And slow is resistible (even if it gets buffed it still wont affect magic immune enemies). There are significant differences. This sounds quite interesting, though.

[TwilightPhoenix]

You'll end up spending more mana to slow everything than you would hasting yourself. Plus you can't rest with stuff around you, so whether it's slowed or not is moot. And haste doesn't last long enough to significantly impact rest and, if you only used it once, the glow should be gone or close to it when you're done resting (depending on how much you needed to rest, of course).

The only advantages any slow in the game presently has over Haste is that it doesn't cause glow (miscasts notwithstanding) and doesn't speed up metabolism. Haste is better in pretty much every other way imaginable.

[Galefury]

I'm not talking about rest, im talking about health and mana regen during a fight. Usually not highly relevant anymore when you have the Haste spell or Metabolic Englaciation, but if you're kiting it might be.

[TwilightPhoenix]

You still regen at the same rate, you're just able to do more stuff between each tick of HP/MP.

[sardonica]

Why doesn't haste scale with charms skill?

[danharaj]

The duration scales with spellpower so...

[JeffQyzt]

Just throwing this out there - what about mechanics that made (some) monsters more dangerous while hasted? I'm struggling a bit to come up with something "reasonable", but perhaps something that feeds on the Haste spell's magical field, or hijacks it like a lamprey or something?

WRT/the suggestion for haste potentially stat-draining you - a rationalization could be that it makes you susceptible to a magical wasting disease (and could use some variation of the disease mechanics.)

[danharaj]

WRT/the suggestion for haste potentially stat-draining you - a rationalization could be that it makes you susceptible to a magical wasting disease (and could use some variation of the disease mechanics.)

You don't have to rationalize imaginary things doing different imaginary things.

[sardonica]

The duration scales with spellpower so...

Right, I meant the amount of "hastiness" as well.

[galehar]

The duration scales with spellpower so...

Right, I meant the amount of "hastiness" as well.

This was considered when haste was nerfed, but rejected because it would make the game impossible to balance. If you can reach the old 200% increase by training charms to 27, the game becomes too easy. If you increase the difficulty, now everyone has to learn haste AND maximize the spell power. Even less variety.

[sardonica]

The duration scales with spellpower so...

Right, I meant the amount of "hastiness" as well.

This was considered when haste was nerfed, but rejected because it would make the game impossible to balance. If you can reach the old 200% increase by training charms to 27, the game becomes too easy. If you increase the difficulty, now everyone has to learn haste AND maximize the spell power. Even less variety.

If there was any other spell in the game so powerful that you'd get 27 charms for it, we'd call it broken.

[danharaj]

Not really. There's plenty of schools you'd want 27 skill in. And notice that the situation being discussed is completely hypothetical. So yes, a hypothetical spell that you would want hypothetical 27 skill for is hypothetically overpowered.

[sardonica]

Not really. There's plenty of schools you'd want 27 skill in. And notice that the situation being discussed is completely hypothetical. So yes, a hypothetical spell that you would want hypothetical 27 skill for is hypothetically overpowered.

Let me rephrase that.

I have never encountered a level 6 spell that got anywhere close to compelling me to level the related spell school to 27.

[rebthor]

The duration scales with spellpower so...

Which can actually be a bad thing - glow. It seems odd that increasing your skill in charms can lead to an objectively worse haste.