Paralysation 2


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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 11:30

Paralysation 2

All right, sorry for the bad earlier topic. I try to get the correct format now.

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.

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Vestibule Violator

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 13:09

Re: Paralysation 2

Among several other extremely unpleasant experiences with paralysation I have been instakilled by it while wearing MR after opening a door (by a Sphinx, so not related to presence in random spell sets). In random spell sets (which are listed in monster descriptions now), as a wand and as a Hell effect (these are not listed anywhere) it's even worse. Note that the problems are made worse by the generic hex resist message, so unless you have checked the description or memorized all monsters that can very occasionally paralyze you, it will often hit you unexpectedly, and occasionally immediately end your game completely unexpectedly.

I don't think I have ever seen anyone dispute these problems with paralysis, especially in random spellsets. And they have been brought up many many times in the past. I don't understand why paralysis still is the way it is after so many years.

Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 13:41

Re: Paralysation 2

Well, there are only three monsters that have para on their random spellsets: ogre mages, wizards, and liches, all of which also have slow, confuse, and banish. If they seriously had just one nasty MR-resistible spell, then that would be one thing. And liches are the only thing that would have a chance against a high XL player even without any MR stuff.

I suppose that possibly monster paralysis time could be reduced, or give you a notice (either after casting like petrification or before casting like word of recall), but I like the fact that it can turn the tide of a combat, and make you really wary around those monsters.

Tomb Titivator

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 15:11

Re: Paralysation 2

Would paralysis be too weak if you just couldn't move but could take actions? Those -more- prompts are some of the most disheartening things in the game.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 15:18

Re: Paralysation 2

Removing your EV and SH and also preventing you from moving could be an interesting effect to replace paralysis for some monsters. Preventing actions and movement without affecting defenses is another similar but weaker effect that could be interesting. Unfortunately neither of these makes as much sense as the current paralysis effect. But most people would probably easily accept these.

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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 15:24

Re: Paralysation 2

I'd make paralyze more like Pokemon's- 75% chance to not take action. If you get hit a second time, acts as it does now. This gives a shorter window than petrify, but still a chance to react.
Three wins: Gargoyle Earth Elementalist of Ash, Ogre Fighter of Ru, Deep Dwarf Fighter of Makhleb (0.16 bugbuild :( )

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 16:00

Re: Paralysation 2

I do not know how pokemon's paralyze works, but if you have 75% chance to not do anything in any given turn, that still >13% chance to get full paralysation for 7 turns (maximum now).

Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 16:13

Re: Paralysation 2

The chance of not getting any chance to act over 7 turns if you only have a 1/4 chance is (.25)^7, or 0.006%.

I do agree that either of the replacements would be as interesting as current paralysis, though I wouldn't mind current staying somewhere (possibly giant eyeballs as the previous thread suggested).

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 17:50

Re: Paralysation 2

No, it's .75^7, or 13.35%.

Barkeep

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 18:33

Re: Paralysation 2

wheals wrote:The chance of not getting any chance to act over 7 turns if you only have a 1/4 chance is (.25)^7, or 0.006%.


0.006% actually represents rather the opposite: the likelihood of being able to act for each of the seven turns with Poké-ralysis.

Anyway, I'm all for phasing paralysis out, aside from giant eyeballs. Petrification and slow are much more interesting effects.

Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 18:48

Re: Paralysation 2

it could just be shorter, otherwise by this reasoning you could argue that given a "blank" crawl most people would be against introducing banishment, traps, doors, tiles...

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 18:58

Re: Paralysation 2

adozu wrote:it could just be shorter, otherwise by this reasoning you could argue that given a "blank" crawl most people would be against introducing banishment, traps, doors, tiles...


Except that none of those things are analogous to paralysis? Banishment maybe comes kind of close but even then, it is a much better "harsh, MR-dependent effect" than paralysis, because it puts you into a tough situation that you need to respond to, rather than removing any ability to respond to the situation at hand. Even a short duration paralysis does the former, whereas slow and petrification (because of the delay) do the latter. Limiting options (for example, being mesmerized) can also be a fair and interesting way to put pressure on the player, but here again limiting options is not the same as removing one's options entirely, which is what paralysis does.

The other things you mention (traps, doors, tiles (?)) are simply different categories of stuff. Some traps are good, some could use a bit of work or be removed in my opinion. Doors are simple but extremely interesting features because LOS is hugely important in Crawl.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 19:53

Re: Paralysation 2

Personally I actually like the paralyse effect as-is (it shouldn't happen from hell effects but that is a separate thing and it may have already been addressed, I haven't kept up) and I think every time I've died to it I knew I was doing something wrong. I would be fine with it not killing your EV if you want to change it, since I don't like that it is exceedingly harsh if you have low AC (and not really that bad if you have high AC).

Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 20:26

Re: Paralysation 2

i was actually making a hyperbole by using increasingly unrelated features, wasn't serious about doors or tiles but banishment and traps are already danger zone to some. figures of speech and such.

Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 20:28

Re: Paralysation 2

and into wrote:
adozu wrote:it could just be shorter, otherwise by this reasoning you could argue that given a "blank" crawl most people would be against introducing banishment, traps, doors, tiles...


Except that none of those things are analogous to paralysis? Banishment maybe comes kind of close but even then, it is a much better "harsh, MR-dependent effect" than paralysis, because it puts you into a tough situation that you need to respond to, rather than removing any ability to respond to the situation at hand.


That sounds like a fair characterization of banishment to me...

The thing about paralysis is that you respond to it preemptively by putting yourself in a position where being paralyzed would be less harmful (have harmless vanilla orcs near you on orc:4, for example, or stay in a corridor). Petrification is the same: you respond to it by being sure you can move perpendicular to the catoblepas by moving to the open.

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 20:31

Re: Paralysation 2

erolcha banishing you on early levels is genrally worse than random orc with a paralyze wand.

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 20:33

Re: Paralysation 2

crate wrote:Personally I actually like the paralyse effect as-is (it shouldn't happen from hell effects but that is a separate thing and it may have already been addressed, I haven't kept up) and I think every time I've died to it I knew I was doing something wrong. I would be fine with it not killing your EV if you want to change it, since I don't like that it is exceedingly harsh if you have low AC (and not really that bad if you have high AC).


Completely agreed about the hell effect.

As for the rest: if the spellcasting enemies who *can* cast paralysis were changed such that they either never, or always, could do so—I'd consider that a step in the right direction, actually. I do feel that petrification and slow are better, though. I think it would be better to give late game spell-using monsters a "high powered" monster-only version of the slow and/or petrification spell, such that even stacking high levels of MR aren't foolproof measures against them. (In other words, give their slow spells the "agony / pain" treatment and multiply effective spell power.)


@ edozu: Except that you *know* Erolcha is dangerous! Whereas paralysis via wand is random and out-of-the-blue (however rare). That's a very important difference.

@ wheals: Firstly, you can only respond to paralysis "preemptively" when it is clear that it is an actual threat in a given situation. For randomized spell lists I think petrification is more appropriate. As for Banishment: When you are banished you are sent to the Abyss and then have (at least potentially) some ways to deal with that. I don't like very early forced Abyss trips, either, except on uniques like Sonja, Erolcha, Psyche, and Louise. But those three probably account for the vast majority of (relatively) early banishment. I'm fine with giant eyeball paralysis, and I'd be fine with it as a guaranteed spell on a couple of enemies, or on uniques. In any case the hell effect paralysis should be removed, if it is still in the game. FWIW, I also think that making distortion brand unable to spawn except on uniques in the first 8 levels or so of the dungeon would also be an improvement to the game, I just think that represents less of a deviation from the ideals of Crawl design philosophy and thus somewhat less of a problem.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 20:47

Re: Paralysation 2

I don't really think petr and paralysis are very different at all, except paralysis is somewhat more dangerous if it actually succeeds (personally I actually like this, but I won't argue for it being a good thing since I think that is subjective). In some ways I think petr is actually worse since the ways you can generally respond to it happening to you are not things I think are good: you can decide to randomly teleport (not sure why this is a good thing to allow? but I guess it makes it less dangerous, but I personally think that that's not a good thing), you can read ?vuln (this one is kind of ok, I guess, but ?vuln is too rare for this to be a good argument in favor of petr over para. You could push also for ?vuln to become more common, and that might be a good thing; do note that ?vuln makes you more likely to get petrified again by the same monster though), or you can assume it's paralysis. None of the other actions you can take are meaningful, generally (ok some god abilities are). I don't think stasis blocks petr either but let's ignore that (if you think it's sufficiently important to discuss then you can argue why later).

So if we assume ?vuln doesn't exist (this is the case for most instances of para vs petr) then you get this:

Petrification is paralysis, except you get one opportunity to initiate a random teleport after you get affected. If you initiate that random teleport, then you are paralysed with special damage reduction in a random position. Otherwise you are paralysed with special damage reduction where you are. If you want to convince me that petrification is better than paralysis, tell me why allowing for a random teleport after getting petr status is a good thing, because I do not know why this is a good thing and personally I see it as a bad thing.

I like that paralysis is dangerous. Petrification feels more like a nuisance to me, except the nuisance still randomly kills you just like paralysis sometimes, and I find that worse in general. (Note catoblepas petrification is special because of how it's applied; I don't have problems with catoblepas breath.)

Monster slow is a good effect, but it is also a very different effect from paralysis. For one thing, you can actually cancel getting slowed after it happens in multiple ways (?vuln, Ely purification, stasis, or respond to it by using consumable haste in a situation where you otherwise would not).

(edit: I'm assuming that control teleport doesn't work while petrified, though I don't actually remember if that's true. I think it shouldn't work while petrified if it does, because that seems really silly to allow to me, but I also think control teleport should just go away to begin with.)

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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 21:00

Re: Paralysation 2

that's right, you know erolcha is dangerous but the same case could be made for an enemy with some random distortion weapon. i'm sure everyone got banished by that totally random kobold that hit you with a glowy dagger at some point.

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 21:02

Re: Paralysation 2

Control teleport does work while petrified, and you actually (in effect) have two opportunites to read ?teleportation. (You can take any 10 aut or less action, then read a scroll and get the effect.)

EDIT:
adozu wrote:that's right, you know erolcha is dangerous but the same case could be made for an enemy with some random distortion weapon. i'm sure everyone got banished by that totally random kobold that hit you with a glowy dagger at some point.


No, the same case cannot be made. Precisely because you know Erolcha is dangerous, but you do not expect every random enemy to have a distortion weapon, and if you played the game "preparing for the worst" in the latter case it would make the game more, not less, difficult and (much more to the point) it would make Crawl far less enjoyable.

Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 21:09

Re: Paralysation 2

i was just expressing how a random wand of paralyse is as much of a threat as a random banishment weapon at low levels. and the same enemy that could have paralyse in it's random spellset might have banishment as well (that's true for at least some of them). so to me paralyse is just as bad as banishment until that part of the game where being banished is not a big deal.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 21:09

Re: Paralysation 2

You also probably can read ?summoning, cast a summoning spell, draw from escape or (again) summoning, use an evoker while being petrified. Not sure how good of an idea that is, depends on situation.

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 21:19

Re: Paralysation 2

Yes, thanks Sar—the point being that there are (at least some) options for how to deal with it. Which is why I think it is potentially more interesting than paralysis, which just means that your terminal becomes a movie clip for a little while and either you are okay afterward, or you are staring at an inventory screen. Petrification can do that too, but at least you have a couple of chances to respond in such a manner as you increase likelihood of the former and decrease likelihood of the latter.

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 21:33

Re: Paralysation 2

Well yes, you get up to two turns to choose whether to teleport, but you can't choose to teleport twice so it's really only one decision, which was my point.

I guess summoning things while petrifying is meaningful, I had not thought about that (I did think of decks but I pretty much put that under "god abilities" like sanctuary or self-abyss or step from time (and step from time is much like teleport)). I don't personally see why this necessarily makes it better than paralysis (especially since in the case of repeatable summons you'd just use your summons to block the spell to begin with, which you also do with paralysis!) but I guess there's a bit of difference there. But then I don't think the fact the player cannot do anything after getting paralysed is a problem (perhaps I should've made this clearer above) since, except in the rare case where you get paralysed the turn you see the monster without you getting to act, you can take preemptive actions against paralysis. Either I am exceedingly lucky or I actually am doing things to prevent dying to paralysis, since I don't die to it much (the three instances I can think of where I did die to paralysis were all entirely my fault). I find the positioning and such in blocking paralysis to be interesting, and I like the extra danger from it so that if I make a mistake I get punished.

I don't think petr should be replaced entirely by paralysis (though really I don't like Jorgrun either way and he's the only monster I can think of right now where I'd suggest keeping petr over paralysis) but I don't think paralysis should be replaced by petr either.

(Getting paralysed the turn you see a monster is not something I have a problem with either, by the way: in a majority of cases you will actually see the monster at the edge of los, so the paralysis is usually not harmful; and specifically preventing paralysis spell on the first turn you see a monster is a weird special-case hack that I don't like. You could extend this to every spell, I guess, and then that might be ok, but I don't want to special-case this spell. I would agree that I don't really like crawl just killing you for autoexploring, and that this is a thing that can theoretically happen with paralysis, but the solutions I have personally come up with that might prevent that from happening are more problematic imo. Maybe you have better ideas than I do.)

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 22:45

Re: Paralysation 2

For statistal purposes, I've died while paralyzed 13 out of 1292 times in my current morgue.

5 by Grinder (I honestly don't know why I fight him), 2 by eyeball, 3 by potion (I assume while chugging unid'd potions in search of a heal or cure or something) and 2 by accursed screaming, and one while paralyzed while starving to death.

(because I looked it up, I've starved to death 3 times in the same morgue :)
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Spider Stomper

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 22:47

Re: Paralysation 2

I'm all for this suggestion.
Or just making it so that you have 1 turn before you actually become paralyzed, allowing you to react to it by reading a ?tele or ?blink or something.
Getting killed without a way to react to it is always bad.

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 23:35

Re: Paralysation 2

It's bizarre to boil down your options when being petrified to "teleport or don't teleport", even with the added concession to summons. You get all your normal options - god abilities (possibly pertinent ones include entomb, sanctuary, ally summoning, pain mirror, corruption and banishment), scrolls (blink, fog, fear, holy word, vuln and silence all seem potentially useful), decks (particularly escape stuff), utility ammo (you could spit curare or throw a net at the most dangerous monster on-screen, for instance), wands, spells...

I don't see how this argument makes any sense unless you think that the entire game boils down to a series of "should I teleport or should I not teleport" decisions.

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Post Wednesday, 5th February 2014, 23:56

Re: Paralysation 2

None of those things except god abilities (which I acknowledged but did not address) seem useful to me in a situation where getting petrified/paralysed would actually kill me. But regardless, probably I formatted my argument incorrectly anyway. Let me restate it:

I think the fact that you cannot do anything after getting paralysed is interesting, precisely because it forces you to pre-emptively avoid getting paraylsed in a situation where becoming paralysed will kill you. Petrification either 1) does not force you to do this (if your options after getting the status but before losing actions are actually useful) or 2) is not different from paralysation (if they are not). There is no recourse once you are paralysed, and I think this is a good thing. Personally I find it much more interesting than petrification (and if you suggest that 1) above is the case, I would suggest Petr is actually closer to Slow than it is to Para, except I also like Slow much more than I like Petr).

I further argue that death to paralysis is very nearly entirely avoidable, and submit for evidence my online game record. The only paralysis deaths I have personally had that were unavoidable were maybe some of the Grinder deaths. So either I am exceptionally lucky, or it is actually possible to avoid dying to paralysis.

I do think that Grinder is perhaps not an interesting use of paralysis, but I don't think that giving him petrification would really change much. I do not think that ogre magi, orc sorcerers, sphinxes, aliches (probably I am missing more monsters, but these are probably the most relevant, since they're the ones I thought of!) should get petrification instead of paralysis.

I do not think that things like trap paralysis (I think this is removed?) and hell effect paralysis are interesting, because you cannot really do anything to avoid it. I don't really like monsters using paralysis wands either (but I do not support changing it to wand of petrification, since this makes it not as interesting for players--there is no paralysis spell (and additionally attacking petrified monsters is obnoxious)). I think banishment--the effect closest to paralysis in effect, if you think that petrification is actually different from paralysis--is actually more problematic than paralysis, since banishment--unlike paralysis!!--is just as deadly when the monster uses it at the edge of your los as when the monster uses it adjacent to your character (well, and additionally I would usually rather die than go to the abyss). Additionally banishment does not care about the position of other monsters in relation to the player, while paralysis does (the ogre next to you is a big problem with paralysis, the ogre far away is not a problem; both are equally irrelevant for banishment).

I acknowledge that getting paralysed without giving the player any way of avoiding it (see my post above) does happen sometimes from monsters who have the spell. If you can think of a good way to eliminate this let me know.

This should be clearer than what I said before, since really my argument is that paralysis is a good effect to have monsters use.

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 00:14

Re: Paralysation 2

crate wrote:I acknowledge that getting paralysed without giving the player any way of avoiding it (see my post above) does happen sometimes from monsters who have the spell. If you can think of a good way to eliminate this let me know.

This should be clearer than what I said before, since really my argument is that paralysis is a good effect to have monsters use.


I understand where you are coming from and I think you make good points, crate. I think I've already said what I've had to say about para vs. pet so I'll back off from that for now.

But in terms of this last question honestly I think your idea of quietly ("under the hood") preventing monsters who can cast paralysis from using it on the first turn they see you, might be most elegant way to address sudden paralysis. Upon first turn in LOS, if a monster is going to use paralysis from its spell list, just "re-roll" for a different action—this applies only once per monster (so you can't keep dipping in and out of LOS to abuse). This small safety measure could be extended to the spell banishment, as well. That seems a reasonable measure to take if people feel that paralysis and/or banishment are good effects for monsters to use, but don't want any "hit o, suddenly you are paralyzed" situations to come up (however rare those might be), and it doesn't strike me as a major nerf to those monster spells, as you are still in LOS of a monster who can cast them and that's usually pretty worrisome.

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 00:27

Re: Paralysation 2

How about making paralysis a 3 turn channeling spell that slows you by 33.3% every turn? This way you can at least use teleportation as soon as it hits you. Or at least 50% per turn, so you can do 1 action.

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 00:35

Re: Paralysation 2

Amnesiac wrote:How about making paralysis a 3 turn channeling spell that slows you by 33.3% every turn? This way you can at least use teleportation as soon as it hits you. Or at least 50% per turn, so you can do 1 action.

This defeats the entire purpose of paralysation as-is (which is you have no recourse once it hits you). This is making it into not-actually-paralysis. If you are suggesting allowing the player to do anything after getting paralysed, you are missing the point of allowing paralysis to exist.

You can argue that you do not think paralysis should exist; I have said my piece there, and I do not agree.

Dungeon Master

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 02:01

Re: Paralysation 2

I agree with crate that paralysis has gameplay potential that's interesting and not captured by petrification. I also agree that there are some shortcomings. What might be non-controversial (didn't ask around on ##crawl-dev, so it's a guess) are:
* explain the role of MR somewhere
* replace Hell paralysis by something else (Slow, Petrified)

If you want to make paralysis less harsh (at least some sources of it), then I also agree with crate that giving actions before paralysis completely defeats the point: players would generally teleport plus apply whatever's useful on further actions. Some things that might work:
* give paralysis a strength, so that an early wand user receives less turns than a lich
* give players a final action

The latter might also defeat the point but I think it would greatly remove the anticlimactic (and dreaded, from how I read the comments) death of pressing --more-- until you're dead. Instead, you'd end up with an Oh Shit situation that might give rise to different actions. (Of course, some spells and some god actions would completely dominate here, but I guess that's the fate of Oh Shit situations in general.)
Last edited by dpeg on Thursday, 6th February 2014, 03:22, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 03:03

Re: Paralysation 2

^I think everyone would agree that hell paralysis is not fun. Also, what do you mean by "giving final action"? Isn't it the same what I said - giving one action after it hits you? Or did you mean something else?

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 03:23

Re: Paralysation 2

I mean a hack that stops paralysis before you die. Consider it like Elyvilon's life saving, restricted to deaths while paralysis.

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 03:57

Re: Paralysation 2

I really like the idea of making paralysis length dependent upon strength — that is a very elegant way of handling wand of paralysis problem — and giving a final action, if it could be implemented well, would help further distinguish paralysis from petrification while also making it more fair. With those changes, and assuming hell effect paralysis is swapped out, with slow taking its place, I don't think I'd have any problem with paralysis.

I'm glad that dpeg and crate are not as prejudiced toward paralysis as I (apparently) am, because that's a much better way of handling the problem than removal. :)
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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 04:08

Re: Paralysation 2

"With your last breath, you leap into motion!"

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 04:09

Re: Paralysation 2

new zot:5 strategy: put on a ring of teleportation and paralyse yourself every turn until you land on the orb

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and into, Arrhythmia

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 04:10

Re: Paralysation 2

and into wrote:I'm glad that dpeg and crate are not as prejudiced toward paralysis as I (apparently) am, because that's a much better way of handling the problem than removal. :)
As in life, so in Crawl: we just love to be paralysed!

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 04:17

Re: Paralysation 2

duvessa wrote:new zot:5 strategy: put on a ring of teleportation and paralyse yourself every turn until you land on the orb


Damn duvessa I was trying to think of a way you could milk self-paralysis with dpeg's "final action" safety measure implemented, but couldn't come up with one. Well done. (You'd need D. Door or revivification or Zin's sanctuary or something, though.)

Anyway, an exception for self-paralysis would have to be added, obviously. Also I feel the "final chance" should only apply if you weren't about to die just before paralysis hits. (In other words, it only applies if, say, you were paralyzed at greater than 50% of your max HP.) — It would be weird to have an enemy hit you with paralysis, have it stick, and immediately dispelled. Especially if this could happen multiple times, while the enemy wastes turn after turn. Also, failing an MR check should never be potentially better than not failing it (however rare and obscure the conditions under which that could possibly happen).

As for flavor, if you want to have a message when it occurs: something something about the mortal danger you are in and the rush of your survival instincts kicking in negating the paralysis.

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 04:31

Re: Paralysation 2

Also, failing an MR check should never be potentially better than not failing it

time to remove banishment?

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 04:44

Re: Paralysation 2

And much more importantly, tele other (i think duvessa has a good tv where he was so desperate in the snake:5 vault that his only choice was to reduce his MR as low as possible and wait for a naga to teleport him).

Barkeep

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 04:53

Re: Paralysation 2

crate wrote:
Also, failing an MR check should never be potentially better than not failing it

time to remove banishment?


Good point—but I think that could be worked around in various ways, though, short of removal.

Probably the best (that occurs to me right now) is to cause banishment of players to have something like a "mirror" effect of where they were when they failed the check; the tear in reality that consumes you also absorbs an "impression" of the non-abyssal reality, causing a brief parallel between the two worlds. (Or some flavor to that effect if this must be justified.) In terms of game play, what this would mean is that if there are six enemies of a certain HD level in LOS when you are banished, there will be a high likelihood of 4 to 6 similarly strong (based on HD) abyssal enemies spawned in your LOS in the abyss. With that change, being abyssed via banishment can never be a net gain—at best you have a more or less lateral move.

This wouldn't apply to Lugonu's self-banishment, obviously. It could be applied to Zot-trap banishment or distortion, though—but (e.g.) intentionally stepping on a Zot trap as a crazy desperation move, due to the extremely high risk involved, bothers me less than the possibility that failing an MR check could randomly benefit you.

EDIT: Ah, good point wheals. How about this: Unless counteracted by your own cTele, then hostile teleports have a strong tendency to drop you into equally, or more, enemy-dense areas of the level than the place you currently are. Think of it as hostile teleport, plus hostile cTele controlled by AI. :)

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 05:10

Re: Paralysation 2

Also, failing an MR check should never be potentially better than not failing it

I just don't see why this is true. There are issues with not being able to die while paralyzed (I think the concept of having a "last chance" is okay at heart), but don't see why this generalizes to "failing an MR check should always be bad".

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 05:31

Re: Paralysation 2

WalkerBoh wrote:
Also, failing an MR check should never be potentially better than not failing it

I just don't see why this is true. There are issues with not being able to die while paralyzed (I think the concept of having a "last chance" is okay at heart), but don't see why this generalizes to "failing an MR check should always be bad".


I think having more MR should always be better than having less MR, for similar reasons to why having higher skill level in something should always be better than having lower skill level. (Lowering MR is generally easier than lowering skill level, but with draining the latter is possible.) How *much* better can and should vary—but I think it is important that it is better. That leads to more intuitive and clearer game play decisions, and also (IMO) more interesting ones, as you are basing your decisions on what improvements are most important for your character, rather than figuring out how to min-max your dude. (There's some min-maxing in Crawl due to inflection points but outside of weapon min-delay it is not a meaningful factor, in my experience.)

Now in this particular case I agree it is very minor, but wheals did provide an example of this being used in practice. I do like that certain, off-the-wall tactics can pay off in Crawl, but there is a question of how it is paying off. The difference is subtle and I'm not sure I can really describe it well, except to say that I like the fact that, in Crawl, creative and slightly unorthodox use of the tools available to you might be able to provide useful ways to *avoid* banishment; yet I feel that there being cases in which banishment is actually *good* strikes deeply against Crawl's design philosophy. I guess it is a question of the former being "unorthodox, creative, but something you could figure out on your own without intimate spoilery knowledge of how the game works 'under the hood'" while the other is "unorthodox, creative, and deeply unintuitive." I guess I feel that it is a subtle and minor point—but a point nonetheless—of the differences between Crawl and Nethack that make me like the former but dislike the latter.

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 07:17

Re: Paralysation 2

Well now you're talking about something different. I agree that in general MR should be helpful - this is not controversial. But I don't see why it's necessary to start trying to design all of these workarounds for, e.g. banishment and tele other, based on the premise that getting hit with it should always leave you worse off.

One time I was about to die to Psyche. She had poly'd me into a porcupine and I was at about 10hp, trapped against a wall with some orcs nearby. Then a miracle happened, she hit me with her chaos dagger and banished me. I healed up, managed to find a quick exit, escaped, and died a horribly tragic death sometime later. But being banished undoubtably benefited me in the short term. Are situations like this undesirable? I don't see why, if so.

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 07:39

Re: Paralysation 2

When I was looking at Paralysis at one point, I was thinking it might come on in stages, one per round:

1st round: slow movement "You're legs start to go numb at the extremeties"
2nd round: No movement, half EV "Your legs are completely paralyzed"
3rd round: Half attack speed, half SH, 0 EV "Your arms start to go numb"
4th round: 0 SH, No attacking, scrolls, potions, or evocations "Your body is completely paralyzed from the neck down"
5th round: Silenced, no invocations/spellcasting (at this point you're pretty much traditionally paralyzed) "You are completely paralyzed"

I was thinking that the duration of paralysis would last it's roughly 1-7 rounds, with the "coming on" phase being part of the total duration, (So if you are only paralyzed for 3 rounds, you never suffer the full no-action paralysis, and if you are are paralyzed for the full 7, you are actually only completely paralyzed with no actions available for 3 rounds.

This is somewhat similar to Petrification, but the slow onset of bad effects, combined with the possibility that you *might* get out of it without severe detriment poses some interesting decisions I think.
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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 07:43

Re: Paralysation 2

You get more MR as you level up, which is an otherwise pretty straightforwardly desirable thing.

If you do in fact think MR should always be good you could implement a "get banished y/n" prompt for resisted banish effects which seems fine in the abstract but would possibly be problematic in practice

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 08:03

Re: Paralysation 2

  Code:
You feel tempted by the call of Lugonu. Enter the abyss? (Y/n)

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 08:38

Re: Paralysation 2

situations where resisting a spell is bad require vanishingly rare circumstances (that snake:5 thing only happened because i accidentally dropped all my scrolls of teleportation) and i don't see how they are a problem at all anyway, this seems like a significantly less useful topic than the original one

WalkerBoh wrote:One time I was about to die to Psyche. She had poly'd me into a porcupine and I was at about 10hp, trapped against a wall with some orcs nearby. Then a miracle happened, she hit me with her chaos dagger and banished me. I healed up, managed to find a quick exit, escaped, and died a horribly tragic death sometime later. But being banished undoubtably benefited me in the short term. Are situations like this undesirable? I don't see why, if so.
also, chaos banishment doesnt check MR

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Post Thursday, 6th February 2014, 09:34

Re: Paralysation 2

Is this an MR problem or paralysis problem?

Consider if the number of turns paralysed was dependant on how easily the spell got pass your MR (ie at high MR your paralysed 1-2 turns, if at all), would this make paralysis a decent monster spell, or is there still a fundamental problem there?
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