Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1131
Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03
Paralysation 2
I consider the existence of most forms of paralysation bad for the game from a design perspective, so I propose to remove them. I try make my point to show that if these forms were not present in current crawl, and somebody would make a proposal to add them to crawl, everybody would say that the proposal is awful and against the design guidelines.
1. Instant kills are not really good, and paralysation can be an instant kill. If anybody would propose to add abilites to enemies that can instakill any player, I think this alone would be almost enough to reject the proposal.
2. Paralysation is very rare, very unexpected and very very lethal. This combination is very bad for the game. If somebody would propose to add very very lethal abilities to random spellsets I think it would be rejected. That's because a strong, lethal ability may work well for a specific monster, so that when the player sees it, he immediately will now that he is in great danger. Paralysation is ok on Rupert or on some uniques, and it will be ok on some monsters if they *always* have it, and you may have some means to deal with it. It's very bad on some random spellsets on monsters you kill dozens in every game or on wands in the hands of orcs.
3. While it is often advised to players to wear MR items, strategical item choice could be much more interesting if random paralysation were missing from the game. That is because currently you usually need to have really good MR, which also means that no other (and more interesting) MR checking spells will affect you. So some other MR checking spells could be added and be more interesting if wearing MR were not optimal in so many situation. Even soft forcing to wear some items are bad, and MR items are little bit like the "ascension kit" item in other rougelikes.
I know you can block these form of paralysation with summons, fog, etc. But these tactics are only good and interesting if the game makes sure that the player is aware what she is facing. I usually do not forget to equip my ring of protection from fire against an orb of fire, but I frequently forget to equip my MR rings against completely random opponents.
So in short:
- remove wand of paralysation. Replace it with wand of petrification if needed.
- remove paralysation from all random spellsets. Replace it with slow, sleep, petrification, etc.
- only have a few, rare specific monsters that has paralysation. They will always have it. The player should know that they can paralyse.
- giant eyeballs of course can stay, nothing that I said applies to them.
I hope it's a more clear proposal then the one before.
- For this message the author sanka has received thanks: 2
- Leafsnail, PowerOfKaishin