Proposal: Wand of Vulnerability/Dispelling

[archaeo]

Just dashing off this idea before getting back to work/forgetting it. Feel free to ignore it if it's a terrible idea other people have brought up before, but after a quick search I didn't find a good example of the idea coming up before.

Wand of Vulnerability is exactly what it sounds like. If it hits the target, it debuffs and gives the MR- status. If it hits reliably, it should be as rare as HW or haste wands; if it's as iffy as a hexes wand, it might be more common. Either way, it should also recharge like the top tier wands, maxing out at 9 charges.

Admittedly, this would be a powerful item, but they would be more interesting than scrolls of vulnerability. It would provide greater access to debuff instead of restricting it to only purple draconians, would present more interesting tactical problems (since you need to balance access to removing contam versus debuffing dangerous enemies), give hexers a way to land spells on difficult targets, and expand the fairly small number of wands that retain their utility through the end game. Meanwhile, it would make acquiring or finding top tier wands more difficult while further stressing a player's recharging resources.

While I think that's the best solution, maybe another way to go would be an evocations item or wand that creates an aura of vulnerability; like silence, it would surround you with a field of dispelling, allowing you to debuff enemies at the risk of being debuffed and MR-'d yourself.

I don't think this is a necessary change; scrolls of vulnerability are a bit boring, especially for how rare they are, but they're not broken. I just think this would be a fun item that could provide a useful tactical benefit while creating more interesting trade-offs than the plain scroll.

[pubby]

I like the wand idea a lot.

[Tiktacy]

I like the wand idea a lot.

I completely agree. I say it should be a rare wand that always hits.

[jejorda2]

Many enemies that used to just have high numbers for MR now are immune to enchantment. Are those still immune after being hit by this wand? I don't know how they work with the scroll.

[dck]

A new great wand, and a cool one at that.
It's a nice idea.

[Galefury]

Enemies don't usually use buffs, apart from a few uniques. And the MR reduction is almost useless for most characters, only increasing the effectiveness of hex wands. Most wands are universally useful on their own in some part of the game, this one needs you to also use something that checks MR to be useful.

Also when used by enemies this may drown or incinerate people with no warning. I don't see how this is a good idea.

[dck]

Dispelling bolts don't cancel flight immediately, do vuln scrolls?

[and into]

Like it. When hit by wand, enemy or player could be prevented from applying new buffs for a while, and get mr- status. Current buffs could be shortened, but not instantaneously removed, in order to prevent sudden drowning.

The wand would be useful for all characters who had found a wand of enslavement, or confuse, or paralyze, etc. in fact this wand would make those other wands a lot more useful in later areas of the game, so that would be pretty cool.

Completely immune enemies should stay immune, those thAt are just extremely resistant would have their mr cut down considerably. Wouldn't be a silver bullet or anything, but a powerful tool that combines well with a lot of the things many players will have available to them.

Is self-zap for glow removal also going to be a thing with this wand? If not a different name than vulnerability should be used to better differentiate the effects nominally. How about wand of debilitation? (EDIT: Lol, wand of dispelling, which is suggested in thread title, would work just fine too. Should've paid more attention.)

[BlackSheep]

Dispelling bolts don't cancel flight immediately, do vuln scrolls?

I think if flight would be dispelled, instead its duration is set to one turn.

[MoogleDan]

Due to the fact that enemies capable of buffing would (barring dumb AI) just re-buff themselves right after, I like the idea of it applying a debuff that prevents casting those spells again. Alternatively though, how about it inflicts damage based on how heavily enhanced the victim is? Think of it as a monster version of magical contamination explosions, possibly inflicting Wretched to boot. This would probably require the wand to not be usable by monsters, but frankly I think adding the threat of random monsters having Dispel is a bad way to nerf Charms.

[archaeo]

Enemies don't usually use buffs, apart from a few uniques. And the MR reduction is almost useless for most characters, only increasing the effectiveness of hex wands. Most wands are universally useful on their own in some part of the game, this one needs you to also use something that checks MR to be useful.

Also when used by enemies this may drown or incinerate people with no warning. I don't see how this is a good idea.

I don't know Galefury, I think just unhasting opponents would be useful enough, but I take your point. And the drowning and incineration bit sounds unpleasant.

How about instead, Wand of Vulnerability causes debuffs (and contam) to immediately go to the fading point and, instead of giving MR-, which I can appreciate being a little useless, causes an antimagic effect. So, instead of giving MR- (which isn't a big deal for most characters dealing with contam problems), it immediately leaks your magic and sets your various buffs to the fading away point. This would prevent the falling-into-lava problem while making it a seriously dangerous wand for an opponent to have and a very useful tool.

I'm not, however, super familiar with how the antimagic brand works; does it immediately set enemy MP to zero, or what? Given that it's a very rare brand unless you're following Trog, I imagine that the major complaint about this version of the Wand would be power creep. Maybe it should act like the hexes wands or hibernation, so that the antimagic effect doesn't work for a few dozen turns after the first zap.

[BlackSheep]

Enemies don't have MP. Antimagic inflicts a negative status on monsters that has a chance to cause them to lose a turn when they try to cast a spell. (Chance and duration based on damage dealt)

[dck]

@MoogleDan: That's not how enemies act though, for example if you dispel or vuln away cerebov's haste he won't cast it again until he just so happens to think about it.
Antimagic is really rare because it's an extremely powerful brand, making it a wand of antimagic would be just ridiculous.

[MoogleDan]

Fair enough; if the AI functions like that 90% of the time, then spending a wand charge or two to cut 50% of a monster's damage potential sounds like a bargain.

[archaeo]

Antimagic is really rare because it's an extremely powerful brand, making it a wand of antimagic would be just ridiculous.

Yeah, dck, I'm just spitballin'.

[duvessa]

Dispelling bolts don't cancel flight immediately, do vuln scrolls?

You get a margin of like 5 aut at most and if your last action took more than 10 aut then you may not get any action at all. So what you are proposing is to give the player a chance of instantly dying every time they fly over water/lava in ANY branch (since all of them can generate wand-using monsters) unless they also never use statue form or get slowed or worship chei or attack with a high delay or get unlucky with mutations or even play a certain species, in exchange for adding an item that duplicates the effect of an existing item. And even if they don't use any of those things they also have to either have potions of flight or the spell at 0% fail or some source of 0% fail blink and in the latter case they also have to always keep within 7 squares of land.
Jesus christ man, do you seriously think that's better than just generating more vulnerability scrolls?

[archaeo]

Jesus christ man, do you seriously think that's better than just generating more vulnerability scrolls?

Yeah, it's possible - just possible - that I did not think this through sufficiently before proposing it.

I mean, what if the game returned a message "The explosion of magical energy tosses you to shore!" and blinked you if you got hit with dispelling over water?

What if we made new fixedart wands, 1 recharge scroll per charge, with vulnerability/antimagic/dispelling/whatever, fire storm, and other powerful effects?

Or, and this is probably the only proposal that's going to happen, what if I shut up and let grown-ups handle coming up with ideas for crawl.

[duvessa]

What if we made new fixedart wands, 1 recharge scroll per charge, with vulnerability/antimagic/dispelling/whatever, fire storm, and other powerful effects?

Well, none of those are nearly as good as one charge of healing/hasting most of the time, let alone the several that you get from one recharging scroll.

[and into]

I think a wand that, when zapped, hit the target enemy with

1.) applying the MR– debuff,
2.) reducing length of buffs (but not as much as dispelling bolts!)—something like cutting down to 1/3 current time, with guarantee of at least 2 turns
3.) preventing further buffs (of all kinds) for a period of time

would be an interesting effect to have used against you occasionally, by enemies, and a useful (if situational) tool in the player's arsenal as well. So I'd be for that wand. Especially because it would extend the period of usefulness for a lot of other wands in the game that quickly become lackluster as you progress in the game.

[dck]

You get a margin of like 5 aut at most and if your last action took more than 10 aut then you may not get any action at all. So what you are proposing is to give the player a chance of instantly dying every time they fly over water/lava in ANY branch (since all of them can generate wand-using monsters) unless they also never use statue form or get slowed or worship chei or attack with a high delay or get unlucky with mutations or even play a certain species, in exchange for adding an item that duplicates the effect of an existing item. And even if they don't use any of those things they also have to either have potions of flight or the spell at 0% fail or some source of 0% fail blink and in the latter case they also have to always keep within 7 squares of land.
Jesus christ man, do you seriously think that's better than just generating more vulnerability scrolls?

What the fuck, 5 aut? Why in the world is the purple draconian and lava zot vault allowed to exist? I thought it just set it to regular expiring range since that still leaves time for a tele (?) and doesn't kill people in half a turn. In fact people may recognize the normal looking expiring flight status and think "oh okay, I've had this before it'll be fine" and then fall and die.
Jesus.

[drywall]

If flight's expiration time isn't balanced I don't think that's a demerit against this item - it could just be increased to a more fair time.

I like the idea of a reliable utility wand though. I would very rarely use it if it had to pass an MR check like the other hex wands first.

[duvessa]

You get a margin of like 5 aut at most and if your last action took more than 10 aut then you may not get any action at all. So what you are proposing is to give the player a chance of instantly dying every time they fly over water/lava in ANY branch (since all of them can generate wand-using monsters) unless they also never use statue form or get slowed or worship chei or attack with a high delay or get unlucky with mutations or even play a certain species, in exchange for adding an item that duplicates the effect of an existing item. And even if they don't use any of those things they also have to either have potions of flight or the spell at 0% fail or some source of 0% fail blink and in the latter case they also have to always keep within 7 squares of land.
Jesus christ man, do you seriously think that's better than just generating more vulnerability scrolls?

What the fuck, 5 aut? Why in the world is the purple draconian and lava zot vault allowed to exist? I thought it just set it to regular expiring range since that still leaves time for a tele (?) and doesn't kill people in half a turn. In fact people may recognize the normal looking expiring flight status and think "oh okay, I've had this before it'll be fine" and then fall and die.
Jesus.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, if your last action took 10 aut then you get 1 aut. Most you can get would be 8 aut (you get hit by vuln immediately after attacking with a quick blade while hasted), I think.

[dck]

No no, you were clear enough, just don't see how killing players who haven't had to deal with bullshit like that for most of the game this way is good at all.

[crate]

aren't vaults great

[Wahaha]

This is only a problem with two? stupid vaults, not vaults in general.

[dck]

the quicksilver one was removed already so I think only one.

[Kate]

Surprisingly enough, minmay is completely wrong and hasn't tested how monster vulnerability actually works before claiming that the way it works causes instant deaths. A slowed Naga of Chei and a hasted Spriggan both get the same amount of Flight duration after being hit by purple draconian breath (11 aut).

I'd still agree that if vulnerability were to become more common then just making the scrolls more common would be a better way of doing it, though.

[duvessa]

Oops I tested it with the scroll, that was stupid of me