Wednesday, 18th September 2013, 00:30 by and into
I think badposting from a few people in favor of item destruction reform might have turned a few devs off to what I think is a very good idea.
Galehar is correct to point out that bringing all your scrolls along ALL the time does have a major impact for certain areas: Abyss and Pan. I think the benefits of item destruction reform outweigh, but don't eliminate, that concern. This does make any change here trickier, though; like food reform, it will involve doing at least two or three (if not more) things at once, which is more labor intensive and harder to balance off the bat. Nonetheless I think it is worth it, as item destruction rework is actually the single biggest thing we can do to make stashing unnecessary. There's a lot of irrational stashing behavior in some people's gameplay (my own included sometimes), but the RATIONAL part of it is protecting that cure mutation potion and those acquirement scrolls until you need them, whether you stash in Lair 2 or just anywhere out of the way on the dungeon floor.
So here would be my stab at a proposal:
1.) Heat and cold work basically the way bcadren originally proposed. The more damage you take from either source, the higher the percentage chance that using a consumable of the appropriate type (fire --> scroll, cold --> potion) will fail. Note that this means that rC and rF will naturally help, without hardcoding special stuff: The less damage you take from a source, the better for your ability to use consumables.
2.) Conservation / Preservation largely negates, but does not completely eliminate, the chance of the consumable you attempt to use being destroyed without having effect.
Now, the Abyss / Pan problem:
3.) A stack of more than X scrolls or potions takes up more than one slot. This actually makes sense somewhat "realistically," though in a game where magical cats kill dragons I know that's not a very good reason to implement any proposal. So like if you lug around more than 2 scrolls of *foo*, it takes up another space; if you lug around more than 3 potions of *foo*, it takes up one space in your inventory. You get 52 spaces in inventory, one for each letter of alphabet, lower and upper-case. Since ammo reform has already been implemented, this shouldn't be an undue burden on reasonable play, limits but does not eliminate (like fairly generous carrying capacity) stashing, penalizes (but doesn't prevent) taking all your blinking into Pan.
4.) In addition to / replacing 3, the random nature of these branches could make it so that item destruction (as CURRENTLY implemented) applies every time you are "dragged to a new area of the abyss" or else has an X% chance of happening every time you go to a new area of Pandemonium. This particular form of item destruction could be special-cased to apply only to CERTAIN items: NOT "enchant foo," but yes to all tactical items. This can be flavored as a malevolent, semi-conscious force that operates in these areas.... Abyss and Pan *feel* evil, ya know? Not like just the stuff in it, but the branches themselves. They are nasty. They like to mess with you. "The Abyss seeks to cripple you"—one of your heal wounds goes bye bye. Etc. For abyss you can have this ramp up as you go to deeper levels, with Pan it is less common overall, but a constant, flat risk every time you go through a portal to a new area of Pan.
So, just getting abyssed and being unlucky about an exit, it isn't going to kill your consumables on average any more than now, for levels 1 and 2. But if you want the abyssal rune, you better be willing to pay the price. Much higher rate of consumable destruction. "You are dragged into a new area of the Abyss.... Not everything came with you!" -- Again, this item destruction would be limited to CERTAIN tactical items, not strategic ones.
Would that address all the concerns?
EDIT: Crossposting from thread delarado started:
Personally, I think this would all be in the numbers, though. If a single hit from an arrow of flame meant 50% failure, yeah, that's one thing. But if it scales up with damage (or whatever), kind of like antimagic but for consumables, I could see that being a much better take on consumable limiting. Also, that damage could be "absolute" (not relative to HP), so in early game it would make hardly any difference when a puff of frost or flame hits you from an orc wizard (since the fact that not many consumables have probably spawned by that point is a natural limiting factor early on), but becomes a major factor later, when consumables become, IMO, all TOO reliable in terms of letting your character escape when he needs to.
Last edited by
and into on Wednesday, 18th September 2013, 00:40, edited 2 times in total.