New Spell: Ice Wall


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Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 22nd March 2011, 22:02

New Spell: Ice Wall

Conjures a temporary, destructible wall of ice. Level 8 or 9 spell. Creates 1, 3, or 5 blocks of ice for (Ice skill < 18), (18<Ice skill<), and (Ice Skill=27), respectively. HP and duration of ice blocks should also depend on Ice skill, but I'm not too sure of numbers. This should pretty naturally synergize with Ice Cloud, Ozocubu's Refrigeration, Summon Ice Beast, Ensorcelled Hibernation, and Metabolic Englaciation.

Feedback before I post to wiki?
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 22nd March 2011, 23:15

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

Development has steadily chipped away at terrain-altering effects in the last several major versions. The last refuge of the concept appears to be god-granted abilities, with the more powerful abilities being essentially random. Fedhas has a couple such abilities, as does Nemelex, just to name two examples.

Your spell sounds a lot like the Tomb Card, which used to be a spell but was nerfed and then eliminated because it was just too powerful. The ability to instantly put a durable barrier between you and your enemies is a very powerful one, since it effectively shuts down melee as a threat.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 22nd March 2011, 23:52

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

Yeah, it would be like Tomb.

So, if it was implemented, then an ice block should have very low durability, but not zero durability (which would defeat the purpose). Perhaps, a block should be invulnerable for one turn of hitting, and then have corpse-mushroom durability. But that would be special-case coding :P.

Also, Ice Wall should hit only the targeted square: it should not be space filling.

Monsters should stop the path of the tiles. No smiting.
  Code:
...........
....1Xxx...
.....#.....
.....#.....
.....@.....

X=target square
x=adjacent ice block

Similarly, if you were to fire a column whilst in a corridor, no ice block would appear behind whatever monster you fired at, even you had the 5-tile Ice Wall.

edit: Tom -> Tomb.
Last edited by dolphin on Saturday, 23rd April 2011, 14:09, edited 1 time in total.
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Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 23rd March 2011, 13:25

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

So...essentially, it summons an immobile, high hp or AC wall "monster" in a bolt pattern, that stops when it reaches another monster. It would have the further disadvantage that you could not retreat by swapping places with the wall.

Seems like it could be balanced by comparing vs. other summons. This would not be permanent terrain alteration, right? i.e. once the ice "melts", the dungeon feature would go back to whatever it was before?

Factors to be considered:
1) Can you see through them (it's ice - but is it transparent ice, or just translucent?)
2) How tall is it - can you fire missiles/spells over the blocks?
3) Does it have a "cold aura" - i.e. would chopping through the ice block cause cold damage?

Sounds neat :-)
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Wednesday, 23rd March 2011, 14:41

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

Seems overpowered as proposed, to me. Should at least be double school to force more of an investment before you get to drop walls wherever they're convenient.

Conjurations would seem to be the obvious choice, except every primary ice caster will have trained it up already. Let's go with transmutation instead- instead of conjuring a block of ice, you're turning air to ice. ...of course, that's still overpowered, because it synergizes so well with LRD. Played right, that's defense and offense at the same time.

Dunno.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 23rd March 2011, 16:28

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

Ice/Transmutation 8-9
OR Ice/Conjuration/Transmutation 7-8

Makes 1-5 temporary blocks of ice, which are invulnerable or high HP for 1-2 turns after casting, then reduced (continuously or instantly?) to corpse mushroom HP. If they are not attacked, then duration is dependent on power, as is the number of blocks. Does no damage. Possibly it could occasionally/rarely melt into a temporary shallow water. No Fedhas-like shooting through it. Strong Fire attacks dissipate it instantly (everything but Throw Flame).

Should it be transparent or translucent? Transparent would synergize with Olgreb's Toxic Radiance, Poison Cloud, Air Strike, Ozocubu's Refrigeration, Freezing Cloud, LRD,(Firestorm?) and any other LOS or Smite-targeted attacks. Having all of that would make it REALLY powerful. If it was translucent, you might still summon through it.


Two Targeting configurations. Cycle either with standard ammo cycling or with 'a'=config 1and 's'=config 2
  Code:
...........
...xxXxx...
.....#.....
.....#.....
.....@.....

X=target square
x=adjacent ice block


Or

  Code:
...........
.....x.....
.....x.....
.....X.....
.....x.....
.....x.....
.....#.....
.....#.....
.....@.....

X=target square
x=adjacent ice block

Should targeting configuration be absolute (North/South column or East/West row) or relative (perpendicular or parallel to line of fire) to the player? I kinda think absolute would probably work better, but I dunno.

Thanks for the feedback so far.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Thursday, 24th March 2011, 02:18

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

I doubt it would be as overpowered as most people who posted here think. Conjure Flame does exactly this in the early game, and has the added bonus of killing most things that actually do step into it if you can tank them for a few rounds. Mephitic Cloud has close to the same effect the proposed ice wall would have against enemies vulnerable to poison. And lets not even talk about the weapon of mass destruction called freezing cloud. You and the enemies can still fire through clouds, and if you're a primary casters this is usually good for you (you have DMsl, they don't). Semicontrolled blink or clouds usually let you stall melee enemies long enough (with clouds often killing enemies they don't stall). So stopping ranged enemies from attacking you for a few rounds would be the main benefit of this spell over the alternatives.

Double school and level 6 would be fine IMO. Maybe just have each wall tile shatter after a fixed number of attacks, like two for example, maybe scaling with power. The wall tiles could dissolve into a freezing cloud when killed (further blocking weak enemies, but not ranged attacks) and should be vulnerable to fire in some way (example: single fire attack to destroy, no freezing cloud because it melted).

A proper wall would probably be overpowered, but even making a permanent straight transparent five tile wall is far from as strong as tomb.

Blades Runner

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Post Thursday, 24th March 2011, 18:15

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

This is a good idea but, like so many other things, it would encourage retreating to tunnels.

Here's a slight modification that might encourage casting ice wall in rooms: Ice wall creates blocks of ice centered around the target (perhaps as described above). The spell explains that "In confined spaces, the ice wall is brittle." Thus, the wall can be broken easily in tunnels -- one hit from anything destroys it. So it's only good to use in rooms. Which would make it cool and distinguish it from conjure flame.

Might be fun to call it Glacier and make it ice/earth schools, which would be a first, I think.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 24th March 2011, 20:13

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

I thought about Ice/Earth, but I figured that since it was a high-level spell, it shouldn't try to tie together schools that don't currently, even if it fits thematically. (Glacier is a much better name, too)

I do like the idea of the walls (Earth?) weakening the Ice. I had been wondering about how to distinguish it from Conjure Flame, and I think this does nicely.

I think an instant entombing would be too powerful (but situational) considering the spells you would have available at that point. A lot of late-game baddies come in swarms (making disabling a single enemy less relevant) or summon stuff and smite you (a transparent tomb would just give them armor). I think impeding/redirecting many baddies > disabling one.

Glacier should be limited to 3 walls at a time, to keep you from complete trapping enemies or entombing yourself. Possibly, after a set amount of time, the oldest wall could dissipate completely when you cast the new one, so you couldn't just keep casting walls as the baddies moved, but you weren't stuck with the remains of 3 walls after the baddies broke through.

Another thing: parallel walls would have to be 2 tiles apart to prevent creations of dead-end corridors.

I don't think this is a Level 6 spell. Impeding enemies and blocking attacks whilst you bombard them with Ozocubu's Refrigeration or Ice Cloud or Metabolic Englaciation (or anything else Smite or LOS targeted) is really powerful.
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Blades Runner

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Post Thursday, 24th March 2011, 21:23

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

I think there are many way to make this more or less powerful, so it could fit wherever is is needed.

If the ice walls randomly generated near the targeted square, with weighting toward an arc formation, but not next to existing (rock or stone) walls, then it might take multiple casts to seal off an enemy. This would weaken the spell.

You could just assert that the ice wall has to be free-standing -- so it won't put ice next to walls. This would wreck snails but centaurs would barely notice.

Making it ice/earth would also weaken it, as it would required dedicated XP to cast in most builds.

Letting high HP or high damage-dealing monsters break through would weaken it as well.
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Friday, 1st April 2011, 18:01

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

I like the idea. Though I think that:

-The wall's HP / AC should degrade on a timer to simulate 'melting'
-The wall should be 'extra vulnerable' to fire (and make the AI aware of that)

I'd make it a lower / middle level Ice / Tr spell and nerf it to that. It's far less game breaking than any version of dig IMHO.

edit: venerable to vulnerable
Last edited by Shade on Wednesday, 27th April 2011, 21:54, edited 1 time in total.

Temple Termagant

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Post Saturday, 23rd April 2011, 12:59

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

I like the idea of more terrain altering spells.

Although from the collective experience of the cloud spells and tomb i can see how they might become too powerful and easily abusable.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Saturday, 23rd April 2011, 13:49

Re: New Spell: Ice Wall

@Radiant: That's pretty much where I sit with it. I think it would be fun, but would it end up being too powerful? However, Glacier is destructible AND temporary, which may be enough to keep it from being overpowered.

Aw, what the heck. I'll go ahead and add it to the wiki.
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