Summons abjured when summoner dies (split from poison effect)

[Sandman25]

I didn't like changes to summoners when you can just kill fragile Deep Elf Summoner and all those summoned demons disappear, that made summoners too easy to defeat. Please don't cure poison when the poisonous monster dies.

[johlstei]

I didn't like changes to summoners when you can just kill fragile Deep Elf Summoner and all those summoned demons disappear, that made summoners too easy to defeat. Please don't cure poison when the poisonous monster dies.

Spoiler: show

I hate you and everything you stand for.

Just playing but I love that change, fighting summoners was awful before.

Mod note: Let's not do the direct personal attacks.

[Sandman25]

Just playing but I love that change, fighting summoners was awful before.

... and now it is ridiculously easy.

[Sar]

Re: summoners: I'm conflicted. I love that crap that basically only existed to annoy me like vermin deep elf somethings spam poofs out, but I sort of do miss the "Oh crap" feeling when a demonologist would summon a fiend or an executioner (though you can walk away from a fiend usually anyway). I would definitely do not want the former back, though, no way.

[johlstei]

Maybe instead of poofing summons you could make them pass an MR(HD? I dunno) check or be abjured. You'd probably have the fiends and executioners resisting that, while not having to clear out hordes of chaff. That seems like a pretty good compromise.

[dck]

So if the dangerous things resist the HD check you are back to the old walk upstairs and hit 5 tactic.

[Siegurt]

Maybe instead of poofing summons you could make them pass an MR(HD? I dunno) check or be abjured. You'd probably have the fiends and executioners resisting that, while not having to clear out hordes of chaff. That seems like a pretty good compromise.

How about if they poof out, but not *immediately* i.e. the're remaining summoned turns don't immediately drop to 0, they drop to (0+d(summoner's HD)) (as an example). That way the leftover summons provide some threat that you have to deal with somehow, but you don't have to clear the hordes of chaff out, nor do you have to haul yourself all the way back to the upstairs and wait, you just have to survive a little short-term threat.

[galehar]

I've split the summon discussion from the poison thread. Since this thread doesn't really have any content or proposal, it's likely to get locked soon.

[dpeg]

galehar: Thanks for all the splitting! It's really helpful.

A desperate attempt to inject content: it is worth discussing if and how summoning could be interesting. I am convinced it can be done, although we have learned some ways which don't work very well. What's sometimes/occasionally/often/etc. not fun is: seeing a potential summoner summon a nasty monster, bail out in some form wait it out, and repeat. However, I wouldn't even dismiss this kind of summoning out of hand: if you are using a resource to bail out, then the summoning was not pointless (before I get the "no fun!!" responses: that basically depends on how often it occurs, in my opinion). Also, if the monster mechanic means that you're approach the monster in a different way, then that's something.

Two "newer" kinds of summoning in Crawl that I found to be interesting: ballistomycetes -- if unattended for too long, they turn up their level sufficiently enough to matter; curse toes -- by summoning monsters on you their summons always matter.

Some other ideas that I toyed with:
- summoners could be monsters that grew in strength every time they meet you (i.e. you flee, and they become harder)
- a summoned monster that can use stairs even if non-adjacent
- a summoner such that every summoning takes a toll (Int, say); you get it back from killing the summoner

[some12fat2move]

Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) summons poofing when the summoner dies, you could have summons poof immediately when you take stairs (that way you don't need any 5).

[crate]

The instant abjuration change is the best change in all of crawl since nausea removal, or maybe it is even better than nausea removal (I can't decide). It makes actually fighting summoners not an obviously wrong decision, and then when you do kill the summoner it removes lots of tedium. If you think summoners are too easy now (not sure I agree) then I suggest the way to fix that is to make the summoner more difficult, not revert the change.

[whitmo]

It's a major change for sure. It caught me off guard the first time I saw it happen (with a kobold demonologist). I like the change, but would support tweaks to make summoners continue to be scary.

[Lasty]

I wasn't historically someone who hated old summoners -- until I played with the new changes. As crate says, it makes fighting summoners sometimes a good idea, as well as much, much less tedious. It also does encourage different gameplay against summoners, since killing a single target becomes the focus of the encounter, and if successful, resolves the encounter fully. If they summon an executioner, sure it goes away when you kill them, but that encourages you to potentially burn limited resources to kill the summoner quicker, rather than just walk/blink/teleport away or cast Abjuration.

I absolutely would be against going back to the old system, which was boring, frustrating, and only created tedious decisions.

[reaver]

My suggestion is to keep the instant abjuration change but also make most summons appear in a durable band rather than appear when a monster casts a spell.

For example, Deep Elf Summoners would lose their summon vermin spell, instead spawning with a band of durably summoned spiders. When you kill the Deep Elf Summoner, the spiders disappear as they do currently. This removes any incentive to run away or otherwise treat the summons different than other monsters, while still keeping the neat design element of prioritizing the summoner. If killing the band over multiple encounters is considered undesirable, summoners could gain a spell/ability which replenishes their band while the player is outside the LOS.

The few cases that the actual act of summoning is interesting, like "Haunt-style" summoning spells or arguably boggarts, would be exempted from this change. The teleportation abilities of Ironband Convokers and Spriggan Druids should be enough to fill the few cases orthodox summoning is more interesting than bands.

[MrPlanck]

The instant abjuration change is the best change in all of crawl since nausea removal, or maybe it is even better than nausea removal (I can't decide). It makes actually fighting summoners not an obviously wrong decision, and then when you do kill the summoner it removes lots of tedium. If you think summoners are too easy now (not sure I agree) then I suggest the way to fix that is to make the summoner more difficult, not revert the change.

I agree, 100%.

[wizzzargh]

So when can I expect to see Draconian Callers casting Summon Dragon instead of "Summon Pathetic Lizards"

[Sandman25]

I would actually prefer to fight Dragons instead of standing in miasma cloud under sickness effect.

[wizzzargh]

Me too. Not because I find Death Drakes to be terribly threatening, but because I find it tiresome to lure Callers around corners, or up stairs, or stand in a regular poison cloud while I kill the popcorn and eventually the Caller. As someone presumably much cooler than me said, I want to be fighting enemies that threaten my HP, not my will to play the game.

I understand the point of Death Drakes is probably to prevent the "Just walk away" problem with summoners, as that tactic becomes moderately more difficult due to the slowing effects and has long term consequences due to the rotting effect, but disengaging drake spam is usually far more viable than staying put.

Haste Other+Summon Dragon could be a pretty brutal combination for Callers, given that Dragons can trample you off stairs.

[XuaXua]

I think a change to temporary summons could be to have them all artificially dying. Their health decreases each turn till they disappear. You can make them leave faster by hurting them, and... keep them around longer by healing them.

[crate]

Well death drakes are actually much more threatening than basically all dragons when you fight draconian callers. The real problem is that miasma does things that it doesn't have to do that are annoying (rotting, poison) instead of just doing the things it should do (slowing). I'd really like it if miasma clouds lost rot and in exchange slowed you every single time they affect you. This would both make them more dangerous (no chance of getting out without getting slowed) and would make them less annoying (no silly rot).

Admittedly the rest of the drakes that are summoned are not scary.

[evilmike]

I like summons being abjured after the summoner dies. It's not a new idea but I'm glad someone had the guts to implement it, and it seems to work pretty well!

I don't think summoners are too easy to fight. At least, lower level ones seem reasonable. Even at high levels, I think ancient liches are still pretty dangerous. If they needed a buff, we could give them back the old "summon greater demon" spell which could summon multiple 1's at a time (the current version of the spell is MUCH weaker). But I doubt that's necessary, really.

[nordetsa]

Don't know if trying to kill an ancient lich while having tormentor next to you can be called 'easy.' I think the problem has to do more with Deep elf summoners than the instant abjuration upon summoner's death. Summon vermin spell is rarely a threat anyway.

[earLOBe]

Well death drakes are actually much more threatening than basically all dragons when you fight draconian callers. The real problem is that miasma does things that it doesn't have to do that are annoying (rotting, poison) instead of just doing the things it should do (slowing). I'd really like it if miasma clouds lost rot and in exchange slowed you every single time they affect you. This would both make them more dangerous (no chance of getting out without getting slowed) and would make them less annoying (no silly rot).

Admittedly the rest of the drakes that are summoned are not scary.

I don't really see any problem with the poison except for the problem the other thread's trying to address (and which is much worse with swamp/golden dragons and green draconians). The other monsters that can do strategic damage to you with clouds (fire crab, blizzard demon, tengu reaver) all can have that effect reduced with cons (they're also usually less psychologically important to players, because they just take something away instead of forcing a 'lesser of two evils' choice like rot does). The really irritating, head-slapping thing about miasma is that there's no resists against its rot and you usually can't just step out of the cloud. I'd suggest that misama should either get retching instead of rot or (ideally, but in the long term) have rot be addressed as part of an item destruction reform. Players really hate rot, partly because it forces an unpleasant choice and partly because it's essentially a form of item destruction targeted at one of the most important life-saving consumables (healing).

Also, making some clouds significantly more threatening than others encourages gamey behaviour like standing in a poison cloud to avoid being breathed on. Is that really something we want?

[crate]

or just make miasma not rot you, what's wrong with that? You can remove the poison since it doesn't do anything, or you can leave it in I guess because it doesn't do anything.

i'm also pretty firmly against item destruction of any sort btw.

[earLOBe]

or just make miasma not rot you, what's wrong with that? You can remove the poison since it doesn't do anything, or you can leave it in I guess because it doesn't do anything.

i'm also pretty firmly against item destruction of any sort btw.

Well, it's clearly a popular opinion, but I personally believe that while it's easy and an improvement to remove bad things (like item destruction - which I find infuriating in its current form, for the record), it's a bigger improvement to replace them with something better. Whatever less-annoying variant of miasma we prefer, I'd hope it's something that creates interesting tactical situations and (hopefully) streamlines effectively and intuitively with whatever newpoison turns out to be. That may be simply a 'cloud of slow', or it may be something else; I'm sure the devs would come up with better ideas than me.

[crate]

Well the thing is miasma already has one very strong and noticeable effect (slowing). There is no reason and no benefit to heap on a bunch of little pointless effects in addition to that one effect. All you do is make the actual distinctive effect worse. Mashing a bunch of effects that don't belong together together does not improve things (see also: djinn).

[galehar]

I've split the summon discussion from the poison thread. Since this thread doesn't really have any content or proposal, it's likely to get locked soon.

As I expected, this thread hasn't got anywhere is and has drifted into random whining.