Equipment god


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

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Post Tuesday, 4th March 2014, 22:41

Equipment god

This proposal is very much inspired by pubby's smith/fire god. It may not look like this, because the flavour changed drastically, away from metal, fire and gold costs, but it is.

The long form is on the wiki. Here in abridged form:

Piety gain
Piety gain for killing.
Bonus piety for killing with equipment you spent Enchant scrolls on.

Powers
  • Enchant Foo scrolls are identified and never fail.
  • monsters may drop their weapons, with chance based on piety vs HD (0 piety, passive)
  • enchantment caps for weapons and armour are increased by one for every * (* piety passive)
  • brand ability for wielded, mundane weapon, even if it already has an ego (* piety, active)
  • another brand ability for wielded, mundane weapon, even if it already has an ego (*** piety, active)
  • temporary defensive ego, regardless of armour worn (***** piety, active)
  • forging: turns a mundane weapon/armour item into an artefact; every altar can be used once (****** piety, altar)
Weapon brands I
  • reaping (killed monsters arise as allied zombies)
  • domination (a successful hit may temporarily enslave the monster)
  • blood bond (a successful hit with the weapon applies to all monsters of the same genus in sight)
Weapon brands II
  • shafting (a successful hit may shaft the monster; melee weapons only)
  • disarm (a successful hit may make the monster drop its weapon; melee weapons only)
  • sticky flame (a successful hit may put sticky flame on the monster; melee weapons only)
  • confusing touch (again, like the spell; melee weapons only)
  • spirit weapon (a successful hit may spawn a minor, spectral version of the weapon; melee weapons only)
  • immolating (a successful hit may put inner flame on the monster; ranged weapons only)
  • penetrating (ranged weapons only)
  • exploding (ranged weapons only)
Armour brands
  • transference (incoming damage from a monster is shared between you and all other adjacent monsters — from Brogue)
  • cursed aim (any melee attack of a monster on you has a chance to fully hit another adjacent monster instead)
  • morbid weapon (an enemy weapon hitting you has a chance to become free (spectral weapon) and attacks its owner; once the owner is dead, the weapon drops to the ground)
Any game would only have one weapon brand of type I, one of type II, and one armour brand. These could either be selected randomly, or the player can actually choose one. (This type of player-god interaction is not completely out of the question because there is more like this in the final forging ability).

Forging
This is a strategic ability, and only available at altars. (There is a gambling element here: the more altars to the god you find, the more forging opportunities you will get. I like that.) Since this god is so much about equipment, I want a more elaborate forging mechanic than the plain branding of other gods (Lugonu, Kikubaaqudgha, the Shining One), or the simple “turn item into artefact” of wizard mode. I also want the interface to be very simple, while the power should provide choices. The mechanics:

  • You have to stand at a not-yet-used and tidy (no other items) altar and invoke the forging ability.
  • You are prompted for an item, which must be weapon or armour piece, mundane (no artefact, ego is allowed), and is not allowed to have negative enchantment. This item then drops to the altar.
  • You get a list of five choices. Each of these is an artefact with the same base type and the same ego (if your chosen item had one; it will get an ego if it has none). The enchantment(s) is/are increased. The top artefact of the list is always quite simple: random increase of enchantment(s) and one random resistance; this item has no further conditions. The other four artefacts are full-blown artefacts with at most one bad property and these have conditions (such as trove quests). Thematically, the forging process needs additional magical/mythical ingredients.
  • At this point the player returns control. Trying to pick up the item leads to prompt for one of the five choices. So you can only pick up the item if you meet the conditions (or you just take the first choice).

For the player, this adds a quest-like flavour to forging. Note the crucial difference to troves and scrolls of acquirement: here you get to see the rewards alongside with the costs! The player can make a fully informed decision.

Here are some examples of what might happen if you select a +5 demon trident for forging:
  Code:
a) the +8 demon trident "Hulyip" {freeze; rF+}

b) the +12 demon trident of the Seven Heavens {flame; Dam+5 Str+2 rElec}
   This needs 5 potions of heal wounds.
   
c) the +10,+13 demon trident of the Lost Cause {pain; rC++ rF+ Curse AC+6}
   This needs the staff of Dispater.
   
d) the +7,+8 demon trident "Ootsarkem" {vamp; rN+ rMut Noisy EV+5 AC+3}
   This needs a wand of hasting (7).
   
e) the +14,+9 demon trident of the Bees {elec; rC+ MR+ Stealth +Tele}
   This needs 12 scrolls of teleportation.


Enchant scrolls
Scrolls of enchanting are important for this god. My goal is to make their use not entirely obvious, and dependent on your actual situation. On the one hand, scrolls of Enchant Foo are never lost, so you can apply them safely to highly enchanted gear (minding the cap, of course). That would suggest to hold out for good items, worthy of late or at least mid game.

On the other hand, you can and probably should use early enchanting scrolls to boost your piety gain. When to do so, and when to stop doing it, are hopefully interesting decisions. There is also the point that you may want to put as many enchantments into item you want forge into artefacts as possible, but that clashes with piety gain acceleration.


A comment: Some of the pieces of this god look questionable to me. However, I am really confident about the forging artefacts. I think it is simple to play and has a chance to live up to the goals. The question whether we want a god where powers are chosen randomly or even be the player is a political one: do we accept such novelty?

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Post Tuesday, 4th March 2014, 22:47

Re: Equipment god

In your examples, for all four "full-blown artefacts" you included properties that don't actually exist on randart weapons (slaying, AC, EV, rMut, +Tele). Is that supposed to be part of the god?
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Post Tuesday, 4th March 2014, 23:08

Re: Equipment god

weapon branding is permanent?
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 01:06

Re: Equipment god

duvessa: Yes. I want the randart weapons/armours to have standard properties (because it would lead to problems if players see but cannot test strange properties) but possibly in non-standard combinations. However, that is not really crucial. If a first implementation only produces normal randarts, it could still work, if a little less interesting. If the god's other (the active) weapon/armour brands work well, they should also be used for forging randarts, but that is definitely for much later.

Hirsch: No! Unlike branding spells where keeping up the brand is tedious and mostly pointless, with a god I have piety to clamp down permanent use. I want the weapon brands to be tactically relevant (I think domination, transference, blood bond, shafting are good examples of powers you might want to use in relevant fights and which might make you take on enemies a little differently) but also not to be spammed. So the brand is temporary and paid for with piety (probably also food and magic).
Last edited by dpeg on Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 03:03, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 01:42

Re: Equipment god

then random brands are a problem. getting a not useful brand will be essentially a miscast, and spending piety to get nothing would be very unpleasant.
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 01:56

Re: Equipment god

Oh, a misunderstanding! What I mean is this: there is a list of armour brands (I take armour, so I don't have to distinguish between weapon brands I and II), call them A, B, C. In *your* game, only one of them will occur. So all uses of the armour brand power provide your body with the same brand.
How the one brand is chosen among A, B, C is up for debate, I see two options: either just randomly, or let the player choose. (The latter could also be made to have the player choose from a randomly selected subset.)

I absolutely agree that different brands for different uses aren't an option. Plus, there already is a Makhleb.
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 02:44

Re: Equipment god

oh, thank Zin.
well, this is interesting. a meaningful strategic choice that will lead to meaningful tactical ones. taking away a relevant strategic decision from the player would be unfun, so I believe is not nice to make it random.
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 02:52

Re: Equipment god

Yes, I am biased towards letting the player make a choice. For weapon brand II, where there are so many options (certainly not all of equal quality -- more ideas welcome, by the way!), I would only present a randomly chosen subset to the player and let her select one of those. For weapon brand I and armour brand, the list is short enough to allow full choice.

But as I said, I am not fully convinced about this mode. I do think that the basic concept of an equipment god providing non-standard brands is sound. The standard Crawl approach would be to pick two or three and hand them out at various piety levels.

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 03:11

Re: Equipment god

Is there really an important distinction between the two weapon brand abilities? Is the idea just to give the player two options, with one coming at a later point?

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 03:24

Re: Equipment god

WalkerBoh: Yes. I want to increase player flexibility. Okawaru gives Heroism and Finesse (used to be Might and Haste), too. You shouldn't be able to afford these powers all the time, but you should be able to choose from a small range. I think that two offensive boosts and one defensive power might make for a nice set of choices.

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 04:16

Re: Equipment god

Hmm... Sound quite interesting. I think this god is one of those god you generally shouldn't take so you can enchant your weapon easily and then change for the shining one. I think penance should be quite severe, like removing lot of enchantment levels from weapons enchanted with this god abilities.

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 05:43

Re: Equipment god

dpeg wrote:duvessa: Yes. I want the randart weapons/armours to have standard properties (because it would lead to problems if players see but cannot test strange properties) but possibly in non-standard combinations.

Well, slaying might be kind of silly on a weapon: isn't it just equivalent to increased weapon enchantment?

dpeg wrote:Yes, I am biased towards letting the player make a choice. For weapon brand II, where there are so many options (certainly not all of equal quality -- more ideas welcome, by the way!)

Blood bond is something I thought of a while ago while idly thinking of unrands.
How about:
humility - does 1d(monster's HD) damage, i.e. better against bigger monsters, to put them in their place.
petrification - successful hit petrifies
obliteration - successful hit does additional damage as if the monster had been blasted with a wand of disintegration

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 05:48

Re: Equipment god

basically a +12 trident with +5dam is a +12+17trident
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 05:55

Re: Equipment god

stunning stuns the monster as freeze does. some very fast weapons can become very powerful with that.
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 07:21

Re: Equipment god

dpeg: Very cool! One forging edge case you may want to consider: some altars can't be returned to (e.g. in abyss or portal vault). It'd be disappointing if offered quests which can't be completed. Perhaps a simple workaround would be that returning to the altar isn't necessary, but the forging quests can be completed via a god ability.

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 08:07

Re: Equipment god

dpeg wrote:This proposal is very much inspired by pubby's smith/fire god. It may not look like this, because the flavour changed drastically, away from metal, fire and gold costs, but it is.


Actually, I don't think your proposals are a radical departure from pubby's. In the current iteration of smithgod, gold cost is almost incidental, and the fire theme is not all that strong. For both, artefactize seems to be the best ability.

Anyway, I like your ideas. Especially I prefer this piety gain mechanism - exploration based piety on smithgod didn't really make sense (it seemed to be there only to avoid overreliance on enchant scrolls). Initially I didn't like the trove-style requirement too much, but having a default non-trove option makes it ok, IMO. On special brands - I like those as well, but as pubby pointed out adding a bunch of new brands would be a lot of work. Sure, that's not enough to automatically rule them out, but for an initial implementation I guess standard brands would be easier.

One major issue with either smithgod or equipment god which I think hasn't been sufficiently addressed - what's to prevent the player from grabbing his shiny new artefact weapon and departing for a new god posthaste? Should the god take back his gifts?

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 09:06

Re: Equipment god

nicolae wrote:
dpeg wrote:duvessa: Yes. I want the randart weapons/armours to have standard properties (because it would lead to problems if players see but cannot test strange properties) but possibly in non-standard combinations.

Well, slaying might be kind of silly on a weapon: isn't it just equivalent to increased weapon enchantment?
it's different on a launcher, or just if you throw something, or have an aux attack, but yes, it is pretty silly

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 09:26

Re: Equipment god

Only real issue I have is the forging requirements. The thing about troves is that there is a gameplay element to them: if they demand X Foo, you can make the choice to stockpile X Foo. If you don't have a forging requirement, you're out of luck. I'd have the requirements be steeper than troves, but derived from your inventory. This also allows for thematic decisions: +Vamp for every healing item you have, or cTele for all movement-modifying items (?blink, ?tele, !speed, etc ). Another cool cost might be perma HP or MP loss.

Brand ideas:

Weapons:
Riposte: give minotaur-esque counterattack
Breaking: give AC debuff on hit
Force: knockback on hit

Armour:
Spikes: damage on attack
Reflection: self explanatory
Self-preservation: +AC over time while in combat
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 10:31

Re: Equipment god

You get a choice of an immediate upgrade and one of four recipes that you then have to bring the ingredients for to the altar to forge this artifact you chose to forge.
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 14:34

Re: Equipment god

Right, but if it is your primary weapon, you are stuck leaving it there until you snag the items.
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 14:50

Re: Equipment god

I like the piety gain mechanic, passive abilities and the final gift, but I'm not really sold on the invokable brands. If they were random then it adds a weird demonspawn/draconian edge to the god, and potentially renders it useless after you've got your artifact. If they aren't random and you instead get to choose one that lasts forever that also seems odd - generally Crawl seems to try to avoid permanent, irreversible decisions (you could point to the final gifts of TSO and Kiku as counterexamples, but I'd say that's different because you can obtain holy wrath/pain/the necronomicon in other ways). Maybe if there was an expensive ability that let you reassign your activated abilities that might work?

TeshiAlair wrote:Right, but if it is your primary weapon, you are stuck leaving it there until you snag the items.

That seems like a reasonable tradeoff to me.

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 15:03

Re: Equipment god

TehsiAlair: of course. This is part of the decision process.

Leafsnail: as I said (perhaps more clearly on the wiki than here), both random and player-selected god powers would be a novelty. I am not sure about their popularity; it does open up some interesting design space, in my opinion. This god seems like a good precedence, as it already offers immediate player choice in the final gift(s).

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 15:46

Re: Equipment god

A bunch of people have brought this up already, but what's to stop you from worshipping equipgod for his shiny artefact, then turning around and switching to TSO or something (kinda like how people do with Okawaru)? What sort of wrath do we want to have for this god?

Personally, I'd say stuff like:
*Restore enchantment caps (and drop any overenchanted equipment to that level)
*Maybe corrode equipment?
*Maybe take away your nice shiny artefact?

Speaking of corrosion, how should smithgod interact with corrosion? I think it'd make sense for him to provide a measure of corrosion resistance, but that might be just me.
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 16:30

Re: Equipment god

Oh, he should definitely have your weapon attack you, and your armor randomly try to asphyxiate you. Death by pants.

IIRC, highly enchanted stuff has built in corrosion resistance, so he would provide some of that by default.
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 17:34

Re: Equipment god

I actually say something about wrath, but that's on the wiki. You have read the wiki text before I added it, so let me go again:

If your piety falls, then unsupported enchantments should immediately be suppressed.
An example: You have enchanted some helmet to +7 (because you were at ***** piety at some point). If your piety is only at ***, then the helmet will only work like and display as +5.

This mechanic makes it clear that abandoning the god (or also penance) leads to an immediate loss of the extra AC from increased enchantmant caps (same for weapons). (There is a minor point here whether the enchantment should be stored in case you take up the god again at some later time.)

Regarding the forging gifts: the other gifting gods don't retract their stuff if you abandon them (this applies to Okawaru, Trog, Sif Muna, Vehumet). Therefore I am not sure if this god should. However, it would seem reasonable if the god tinkered with the item, out of spite -- say by adding one negative property or something like this. Having to fight the weapon is fine.

Moreover, the active brands could now apply against you in battles.

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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 21:22

Re: Equipment god

TeshiAlair wrote:I'd have the requirements be steeper than troves, but derived from your inventory. This also allows for thematic decisions: +Vamp for every healing item you have, or cTele for all movement-modifying items (?blink, ?tele, !speed, etc ).


Great, I'll just drop my entire inventory before stepping up to the altar :D
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Post Wednesday, 5th March 2014, 23:12

Re: Equipment god

TeshiAlair wrote:Only real issue I have is the forging requirements. The thing about troves is that there is a gameplay element to them: if they demand X Foo, you can make the choice to stockpile X Foo. If you don't have a forging requirement, you're out of luck.
This is a misunderstanding. You don't have to fulfill the forging requirement right now. You have all time to collect whatever the god needs. It's just that as long as you're collecting, the item sits quietly at the altar. Deriving requirements from inventory opens all kinds of cans of worms, let's not go there.

Another cool cost might be perma HP or MP loss.
This is very thematic: the item needs your blood/essence! I am not sure if I like it mechanically, but I could be convinced :)

Brand ideas:

Weapons:
Riposte: give minotaur-esque counterattack
Breaking: give AC debuff on hit
Force: knockback on hit

Armour:
Spikes: damage on attack
Reflection: self explanatory
Self-preservation: +AC over time while in combat
I like Riposte, Force (only really good for polearms, but player choice!) and Reflection. Will add to the wiki later. Thanks!

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 00:11

Re: Equipment god

Force would be cool but possibly really broken on actual ranged weapons as well.

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 00:22

Re: Equipment god

johlstei: I was actually only think of this as a melee brand.
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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 00:24

Re: Equipment god

will Mr Smith enhance ranged weapons?
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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 00:32

Re: Equipment god

Well, I thought so. Not all brands make sense for both melee and ranged, but many do. The wiki text has more details.

The core point is that I want a target audience as broad as possible given the theme (here: equipment). Since you wield and enchant launchers, I am all for having them work well with the god. I think that's possible.
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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 00:40

Re: Equipment god

what about a launcher brand that innerflames the target? :3
EDIT: not 100% of the time, of course.
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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 00:47

Re: Equipment god

dpeg wrote:Weapon brands II
  • shafting (a successful hit may shaft the monster; melee weapons only)
  • disarm (a successful hit may make the monster drop its weapon; melee weapons only)
  • sticky flame (a successful hit may put sticky flame on the monster; melee weapons only)
  • confusing touch (again, like the spell; melee weapons only)
  • spirit weapon (a successful hit may spawn a minor, spectral version of the weapon; melee weapons only)
  • immolating (a successful hit may put inner flame on the monster; ranged weapons only)
  • penetrating (ranged weapons only)
  • exploding (ranged weapons only)

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 00:59

Re: Equipment god

my brain just failed me.
I read this like 3 times, and failed to see this line until you turned it red.
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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 06:34

Re: Equipment god

HP/MP loss as a potential artefacterize cost sounds cool.

TeshiAlair wrote:Death by pants.

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 06:54

Re: Equipment god

Re: inner flame brand: https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commit/87dd2e8cf17f19245328737dec40c15912b3ab6d
  Code:
New artefact: Firestarter

+7 great mace of flaming. rF++, scrollcons, inner flames monsters on hit.

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 10:24

Re: Equipment god

I have updated the wiki text about wrath, forging on non-persistent levels and TehsiAlair's brands.

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 12:29

Re: Equipment god

Having a massive list of abilities for a god seems kindof bad to me. The god could be a lot better or worse based on random chance (I think you get to choose from a random selection, right?) and it's difficult to gauge what exactly you get from joining him.

He could upgrade your weapon brands passively instead, maybe (eg draining brands gain reaping, flaming ranged weapons gain immolation).
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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 12:33

Re: Equipment god

I think by the big list of selectable brands the thought is to have single abilities that function like scrolls of acquirement and not separate brands as separate abilities.
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  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 12:43

Re: Equipment god

Sometimes it's hard to get across thoughts. Here is what I think will definitely help:

The god provides an active ability which gives a temporary, strong, non-standard brand. (In fact, I think the god will be better with two or three such powers, but that's a detail at this point.)

The question is how to provide the brand. There are various options:
1. We pick one, once and for all. This is the standard approach to god-making in Crawl.
2. We provide a list, and the game selects one randomly at game start.
3. We provide a list, and the game asks the player at the relevant piety threshold.
4. Variant: we provide a list, the game selects a subset, of which the player chooses one.
5. Leafsnail's upgrade: the ability improves standard egos in deterministic fashion.

What I don't want: an ability where the brand differs from one use to the next.

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 12:57

Re: Equipment god

3 just seems like it would be a really overwhelming decision. You have tonnes of options, you aren't really sure what they do and it's irreversible.

I agree that having a random scummable ability would be bad though.

Barkeep

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 13:15

Re: Equipment god

I think having one brand be selected at random for each category of brand weapon ability upon joining, which is then revealed upon getting sufficient piety, is the best way to go. It adds an element of randomness while still being strictly beneficial—kind of like Demonspawn mutations—which would be a distinctive characteristic for a religion, adds novelty on replay, and neatly sidesteps certain issues of inter-brand balance as well as problems with having it randomly choose brand upon use.

If it is randomly determined each time you use ability, that unreliability prevents one from possibly making strategic decisions around its use, which makes the ability much more one-dimensional; plus, as Leafsnail said, random brand for each use encourages scumming.

As for choosing from menu: Clunky interface, for one thing. Plus, if brand is selected randomly at joining and consistent, then so long as any one of the brands is not overpowered and all of them are helpful, small imbalances in overall usefulness are not a problem; there's much less pressure to have perfect power balance amongst the possible brands. (Again cf. Ds mutations.) However, if you can choose from a menu, the brands would need to be well balanced and carefully suited to different kinds of situations—a more difficult and limiting game design goal—otherwise one or two brands would simply be the better "default choice" nearly every time you use the ability, in which case the menu allowing you to choose would just be misleading window dressing. I think it leads to more interesting decisions if worshiping the god means, "Okay, you will get a definitely beneficial unique brand that you can apply to your weapon, but you don't know in advance which brand it will be, nor how best to take advantage of it."
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 15:50

Re: Equipment god

reaping will make eating a living hell.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 15:54

Re: Equipment god

The Equipment god wrath should also include having him animate your weapon to attack you. It could also gain one or both brand types at random.* Just think of your +9 +9 Giant spiked club of crushing flying at your head.

Another wrath could be to animate and summon all armors on the current dungeon level to your location with a very rare possibility of having cursed aim or morbid weapon brand.*

*All branding would be temporary and dissipate when the animated equipment is defeated.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 16:20

Re: Equipment god

Sounds interesting. The current gods are Crawl's single haven of reliability in a random dungeon, but this god seems extremely random, with the random choice of artifacts when forging and the huge reliance on enchant scrolls. So I think the player should at least get a choice for the brand abilities. If all the powers are random this god would fall completely outside the current role of gods in crawl. I think making the branding abilities customizable within limits would be better than randomly determining them at game start.

Allowing a choice of brands requires very good balance between them, which may be problematic. Maybe the different brands could have different piety costs. Bonus points for consistent flavor with forging: the power of the brands could be variable (x% chance to have an effect would work for many of them), and the player gets offered a subset of brands with randomized power and correspondingly scaled piety cost.

The second weapon brand ability should probably pick one melee brand and one ranged one or be split into two abilities. I think it would be bad if it was useless for one kind of weapons, especially if the player doesn't get to choose.
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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 17:21

Re: Equipment god

Leafsnail wrote:3 just seems like it would be a really overwhelming decision. You have tonnes of options, you aren't really sure what they do and it's irreversible.

I agree that having a random scummable ability would be bad though.

Brand Weapon II has the biggest selection of options, and it only has five - with the only irreversible thing being the loss of piety for branding a weapon, since you can still brand branded weapons.
(And if you didn't want to lose the brand the weapon had before, why did you overwrite its brand in the first place?)
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<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 17:31

Re: Equipment god

Another possible idea: the god grants jewellery as gifts (maybe just amulets, since most amulets are sortof boring) that grant these unique brands. So he could, for instance, gift you an Amulet of Reaping. They'd probably have to stop working when you aren't in the god's favour.

The weaker effects could be gifted earlier on, of course. You could require a xertain number of piety stars to start getting the stronger ones.

This seems like a more intuitive way to choose what brand you want him to grant. It also means the equipment god's effects involve would involve types of equipment.

Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 17:37

Re: Equipment god

Bloax wrote:
Leafsnail wrote:3 just seems like it would be a really overwhelming decision. You have tonnes of options, you aren't really sure what they do and it's irreversible.

I agree that having a random scummable ability would be bad though.

Brand Weapon II has the biggest selection of options, and it only has five - with the only irreversible thing being the loss of piety for branding a weapon, since you can still brand branded weapons.
(And if you didn't want to lose the brand the weapon had before, why did you overwrite its brand in the first place?)

I think you misunderstand the nature of the power. The brand is temporary, but under proposal 3 you'd have to make an irreversible choice about which temporary power you want to have access to. There are 8 possibilities under Brand II, which would be a lot.

Spider Stomper

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Post Thursday, 6th March 2014, 22:29

Re: Equipment god

I like Leafsnail's idea for upgrading existing brands. The only question would be what sort of effects we'd put for the upgrades. Here's some of my ideas (a couple of which are shamelessly cribbed from 0.14 unrands):
    no brand -> riposte for melee, penetration for ranged
    vorpal -> blood bond?
    flaming -> immolation, or perhaps sticky flame
    freezing -> glaciation (ice plus some sort of slowing effect)
    *electrocution -> static electricity
    *venom -> curare
    *draining -> reaping

Should Mr. Smith be unable to upgrade brands that are "exclusive" to other gods (i.e. pain/distortion/holy wrath)? Also, would you be able to upgrade temporary brands like those applied by Charms or the Blade card?
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Dungeon Master

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Post Friday, 7th March 2014, 00:54

Re: Equipment god

I am late in today, but I thought about the branding, and I really like Leafnsail's proposal. (I am not alone with this, I see :)) My main reason is that it leaves the brand choice in player's hands, which is good (decisions!) and really befits the theme, as I see: this is a god who really wants followers to work with their gear, so picking (and subsequently enchanting) weapons for their brands, or branding yourself should be supported!

Then I wanted to make a list of upgrades but spudwalt beat me to it. Thanks and cheers!

One idea I had is that perhaps for the vorpal brand weapon type could play a role (this is because vorpal is easily achieved via the scroll). For example, upgrade vorpal on flails could be shafting, upgraded vorpal on long blades riposte etc. (Don't worry overly about apparent differences in power here: we can make Riposte trigger all the time, and Shafting as rarely as we like, or better link it to damage. This is about getting a system that might work.)

I also wondered if all of this could be sensible explained to the player within game, and arrived at the conclusion that yes, it can be done.
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