Sif Muna revamp


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Mines Malingerer

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Post Sunday, 9th March 2014, 13:04

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Sif is an interesting god for new and unspoiled players, because they get to try out a lot of spells. Amnesia, abundant gifts and miscast protection should stay for this reason.

FR: Sif removes anti-training.

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Post Sunday, 9th March 2014, 23:55

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Kalma: That's a very defensive stance. Sif can stay an interesting god for unspoiled players despite changes!

I think I'll suggest book lending (as opposed to gifting) for a minor 0.15 god change; it should start earlier, and the main parameter is delay for getting another lending option. This will make Sif spell access completely different from Vehumet's and Kikubaaqudgha's (I am absolutely fine with the Death God giving permanent books), will allow players to experiment as before (access to amnesia unchanged) but force more decisions in the long run (need to give book back in order to get a new one). I think that's simple and reasonable enough, and will en passent improve the flavour without much noise. Arbitrarily flashy things could be done at high end piety (visiting a physical library etc.) but that's not my concern right now.

Could happen that the resulting thought process when managing Sif books (together with standard books) is not too exciting, but the change should be small enough. The current thought process isn't really deep either.

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Post Monday, 10th March 2014, 00:12

Re: Sif Muna revamp

That sounds like it would make Sif gifts more similar to Vehumet gifts, not less - one of the defining features of current Vehumet gifts, after all, is that you only have access to one at a time.

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Post Monday, 10th March 2014, 03:49

Re: Sif Muna revamp

dpeg wrote:Kalma: That's a very defensive stance. Sif can stay an interesting god for unspoiled players despite changes!

I think I'll suggest book lending (as opposed to gifting) for a minor 0.15 god change; it should start earlier, and the main parameter is delay for getting another lending option. This will make Sif spell access completely different from Vehumet's and Kikubaaqudgha's (I am absolutely fine with the Death God giving permanent books), will allow players to experiment as before (access to amnesia unchanged) but force more decisions in the long run (need to give book back in order to get a new one). I think that's simple and reasonable enough, and will en passent improve the flavour without much noise. Arbitrarily flashy things could be done at high end piety (visiting a physical library etc.) but that's not my concern right now.

Could happen that the resulting thought process when managing Sif books (together with standard books) is not too exciting, but the change should be small enough. The current thought process isn't really deep either.

What happens when I destroy a book Sif lent me from his library? :)
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Post Monday, 10th March 2014, 06:07

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Siegurt wrote:
dpeg wrote:Kalma: That's a very defensive stance. Sif can stay an interesting god for unspoiled players despite changes!

I think I'll suggest book lending (as opposed to gifting) for a minor 0.15 god change; it should start earlier, and the main parameter is delay for getting another lending option. This will make Sif spell access completely different from Vehumet's and Kikubaaqudgha's (I am absolutely fine with the Death God giving permanent books), will allow players to experiment as before (access to amnesia unchanged) but force more decisions in the long run (need to give book back in order to get a new one). I think that's simple and reasonable enough, and will en passent improve the flavour without much noise. Arbitrarily flashy things could be done at high end piety (visiting a physical library etc.) but that's not my concern right now.

Could happen that the resulting thought process when managing Sif books (together with standard books) is not too exciting, but the change should be small enough. The current thought process isn't really deep either.

What happens when I destroy a book Sif lent me from his library? :)

Excommunication, probably.

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Post Monday, 10th March 2014, 10:55

Re: Sif Muna revamp

duvessa wrote:That sounds like it would make Sif gifts more similar to Vehumet gifts, not less - one of the defining features of current Vehumet gifts, after all, is that you only have access to one at a time.
Yes, I expected this (not specifically from you, don't worry).

However, this is just discussion. There'd be no problem (apart from slightly more overhead) with allowing access to three library books at any given time, for example.

My problems with the current Sif gifting model are two-fold: so many books are completely ignored (get book, look at book, shrug, drop book). And you are adding them to the stash (whether real stash or Ctrl-F) of spellbooks you accumulate throughout the game. With the proposal, you can keep a book as long as you like, you can take several spells out of it and you can trigger "not this one, please next one" yourself. I agree this is closer to Vehumet spell gifting than current book gifting; I try to maintain there are significant differences. It might easily be true that juggling three Siffed library books are not too much to handle (interface and player minds), and then that'd be even better -- I just want to make followers of Sif Muna start to become a little more engaged with their god.
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Post Monday, 10th March 2014, 14:01

Re: Sif Muna revamp

dpeg wrote:I think that's simple and reasonable enough, and will en passent improve the flavour without much noise.

Good. Otherwise, the librarian god would put you under penance!
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Post Wednesday, 12th March 2014, 17:06

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Totally random thought:

What if Sif gave you a **** star ability to attempt to memorize a spell from a book you're carrying *INSTANTLY*. This would effectively allow you to treat any spell in any spellbook you're carrying as memorized with three major caveats:
1.) You need to leave that many spell levels empty, which is a tradeoff.
2.) "Spell failure" is multiplied, since you can fail to memorize it (1) and then fail to cast it (2). So a "10%-fail" is looking closer to a "19% effective fail"
3.) Piety. Unlike spells you memorize and use the old fashioned way, this spell access costs piety for the fast memorize (possibly even scaling with spell level). Especially if you (after combat) un-memorize the spell yet again to free up your swiss-army-knife slot.

The reason I like this idea so much is because it really allows a Sif user the *unique* talent of being able to make BROAD use of their vast array of spells rather than only being able to select a narrow array and using other spells for strictly strategic purposes.

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Post Wednesday, 12th March 2014, 17:09

Re: Sif Muna revamp

I'm sorry, I just don't see a situation where I would realistically want an ability like that.

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Post Wednesday, 12th March 2014, 17:59

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Yeah, if Sif were to have an ability like that, it would be better just to have an instantaneous ability to memorize and temporarily use a spell that is available to you, even if you don't have the spell levels. In that case using it should bring up a menu with every spell you've ever seen (your full "library" of spells) so you don't need to cart around books. After the ability ends, you forget the spell. Chance for success of the ability and duration of your access to the spell depends on invocations. The piety cost could vary from low (for low level spells) to very high (for high level ones).

I'm not saying Sif needs an ability like that, but that would be the way to implement it, I think.

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Post Wednesday, 12th March 2014, 18:50

Re: Sif Muna revamp

This idea is crazynuts but Sif's goal is to promote learning right? What if Sif let you "blend" spells as an active ability? You pick two spells that are "similar" and their effects are somehow combined. This would require a lot of work, but I think could be done in a moderately simple way if some rules were applied. There would definitely need to be some special cases, but here are some general rules:

Two conjurations spells: If bolt/beam spells, shoots two bolts/beams at 50% power for the price of one. The benefit is dealing multiple damage types in one turn. If cloud spells, generates clouds of both types
Conj/Hex or Hex/Conj: Deals damage on hex success
Conj/charms or charms/conj: Deals damage in an area around you on success
Conj/transloc: Acts as a portal projectile for that spell
Transoc/conj: does the effect, but adds a trail of that element/fog/damages enemies in the path moved
Necro/element: creates simulacrum/flaming zombies/toxic zombies/etc
Transmutaiton/element: gives additional branded unarmed attacks.

These are obviously VERY rough guidelines, and this is obviously a pretty crazy suggestion...but this thread needed some crazy IMO.
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Post Wednesday, 12th March 2014, 21:45

Re: Sif Muna revamp

I personally think it is pretty important that if Sif changes, any changes that occur keep the resulting god a simple god. Sif is to magic what Okawaru is to melee: they are a simple, easy-enough-for-new-players-to-completely-understand god who helps a wide variety of characters while being unobtrusive (especially true now that Oka doesn't drain piety when your allies die). Arguably both of these gods are not terribly powerful, but that's not really something that bothers me (and I think they're certainly both strong enough to be good).

Simple gods are not bad design. I think they're a necessary thing for crawl--there is a lot to learn, so allowing for straightforward gods is a good way to overwhelm new players less. There's not really much, if any, room in crawl's pantheon for any additional simple gods, since the existing ones (Oka, Trog, Sif, Veh, maybe Kiku) cover a pretty wide design space. But changing the ones that do already exist to be not-simple seems like a mistake to me.

Changing how Sif gives spells is fine, as long as it's still a mechanic you can describe in a sentence or two. Doing something like blending spells together, that seems like something you would propose for a different god, if it's an ability worth putting in the game.

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Post Wednesday, 12th March 2014, 21:47

Re: Sif Muna revamp

crate: I absolutely agree, both about simple gods in general, and Sif gifting in particular.
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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 19:13

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Passive Channeling.

Replace Channeling with enhanced MP regeneration with regeneration speed based on current piety level; increase the constant speed of piety decrease when MP isn't at maximum (read: any time MP is being regenerated). Do not adjust speed of piety decrease based on piety level. Conceptually, this may lead to bad habits of not casting spells, but it won't.

Consequently, a penalty for enraging Sif might be a reduced MP regeneration speed.
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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 19:40

Re: Sif Muna revamp

This is probably a horrible idea, but what if Sif gave you randomized spells, all in the 5-6 level range so they are feasibly picked up.

Charms: Two random charms effects, and one malus (contam, glow, slow, etc)
Conjurations: Damage based on level, random sub school, random "type" (beam, bolt, etc). If paired with a sub school like hexes, inflicts a malus on enemies it hits.
Hexes: Two random negative effects.
Summoning: Summons a random monster from in the game.
Translocations: No freaking idea.
Necromancy: Does a random effect to corpses in LoS (heals you from them, raises them, fuses them into an abomination, corpse rots them, etc)
Transmutations: Two words. Blade spider.
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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 21:29

Re: Sif Muna revamp

TeshiAlair: Complicated to design, complicated to balance, complicated to convey. Read crate's last posting in this thread -- he is spot on!

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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 22:48

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Yeah, I'm pretty sure part of my brain shuts off when I see the words "Sif Muna" I'm rereading this thread and just going "the hell?"
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Post Saturday, 29th March 2014, 00:22

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Sif is a god of divine knowledge, and her 'gimmick' is about books. so I think most of her abilities should be related with spellbooks.

I like the concept of delay-casting and fail-safe, but double cast and spell storm are more like Vehumet's ability.

My ideas are : keep miscast protection and book gifts. however, channeling energy and amnesia should be changed.

Channeling energy from spells : drawing magic from spellbook in inventory. amount of mana recovered is Piety/some number(I think total of 3~4 at max piety will be fit) + spell level. Once you have drawn energy from a spell, you cannot memorize it in that spellbook.
For example, book of tempests has two level 9 spells. if you have used channeling energy twice then you cannot access to shatter and tornado in that specific copy.
when all spells in a book channeled, then Sif will gladly take it back. Some flavor texts might be added, like 'You channeled energy from book of annihilation. Texts about Firestorm glowed bright for a second! your body is shaking with wild magical power!'

Trade knowledge : new version of amnesia. you can trade a memorized spell with other spell of same level (for example, if you have magic dart, you can swap it with confusing touch) with some piety. Forgetting a spell completely now requires scroll of amnesia(or destroying a book, but sif hates it). It's a nerfed version of amnesia, but I think unlimited amnesia ability is kinda broken. It's not overpowered, but scrolls exist for a reason.

New ability : Writing an arcane text. at Piety *5, you can create a spellbook filled with your favorite spells at a piety cost. Spellbook's name will be [player name]'s [foo]. for example, if I filled spellbooks with ice magic and conjuration spells, it will be jjormang's tomb of chilly confrontations. Like Xobeh's stack five ability, when you're using this ability, lists of spells you're currently memorized and available to memorize pop up. The limit of total spell levels in single book is piety based, I think 50~60 at max piety is adequate.
When having this book in inventory, there're two benefits : First, If you already memorized spells written in this book, they get power boost.
Second, Spells in this book can be casted even if you don't memorize them, without any wizardry/archmagi/fire/ice/elemental staff/etc. bonus from items.
it's possible to channel energy from this spellbook, however spells you have channeled will not get a spell power boost and cannot be casted without memorization. Only one self-written book could exist at all times, however if the spellbook is totally channeled or cannot be retrieved (like you left it in pan or zig floor) you can rewrite another text with piety cost.

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Post Tuesday, 1st April 2014, 19:46

Re: Sif Muna revamp

I like the idea of writing an arcane spellbook with the spells you picked, but rest of it is really complex. It should be much simplier. Make it a one time ability granted at 6*, and the spells you pick gain a small wizardry and spell power boost, imho. Kind of like TSO/Lucy blessing weapons, only a book. It wouldn't be required to wield the book; just have it in inventory. It could be possible to allow people to change spells for a high piety cost, but I think limiting it to once is simpler, if a bit more error prone for new players.

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Post Tuesday, 1st April 2014, 22:46

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Scroll creation? Write a memorized spell to a scroll for piety cost.
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Post Tuesday, 1st April 2014, 23:04

Re: Sif Muna revamp

That'd be neat. You could take emergency spells like cblink or whatever and turn them into scrolls because you'll probably be low on mana by the time you'll need them.
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Post Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 01:20

Re: Sif Muna revamp

XuaXua wrote:Scroll creation? Write a memorized spell to a scroll for piety cost.



I don't like the naive implementation - it's spending piety, something regeneratable, for something whos use can be delayed as long as you like. E.g. you could clear out an easy branch to get piety to write scrolls of mega doom power.

But if you limit how many custom scrolls can exist at once, it's kind of lame, like having a slightly larger spellpool or learning delayed fireball.

What if every spell could only be written to a custom scroll once per game?

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Post Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 01:30

Re: Sif Muna revamp

I think that piety gain (for any god) should require some kind of effort or sacrifice somewhere, otherwise it just happens automatically and there's no strategic element to it. On a side note, I think just killing things to get piety is also lame, since that happens no matter what and the user will never think to themselves "Maybe I should kill more things to get more piety", since they always kill everything that they can anyway. I think some of the previous suggestions are interesting, and I came up with some more possibilities that we can think about.

On one extreme, what if you could sacrifice one point of max health (similar to how DD scarifies a max MP point for a charge) to get a piety star immediately? Basically you could rocket to 5 stars immediately after joining Sif by sacrificing 5 permanent max HPs. This would be unique and an interesting strategy. It couldn't be abused too much because you would end up dead as a result. Of course the rewards of high piety must be good enough to be worth it.

Another possibility is to gain piety by casting spells. For example, casting a spell where you have less than 10% failure rate may give very little piety, but taking a risk to cast a 30-50% failure rate (for example) could give you a significant boost of piety. Flavor-wise you are being rewarded for pushing your magical limits, and exploring new territory.

Maybe you could also gain piety by going around the dungeon with 0 encumbrance (wearing only robes for example), thus leaving you free to maximize your magic potential. Most spell casters don't wear a ton of armor to begin with, but even then there's usually a little encumbrance going on. So it would take a conscious decision (and sacrifice) to reduce that to 0. Of course this couldn't be the only way to gain piety or that would leave out all of the hybrid classes, but I think it makes for an interesting option.

As far as rewards I love the idea of being able to choose a scroll as a high powered ability (costing piety of course). It might be nice to have a lower piety ability that lets you choose 1d3 scrolls from the following: magic mapping, identify, remove curse, and maybe a few other of the basic common scrolls. Then there could be a more powerful ability that costs a lot of piety and could grant one of the rarer and more powerful scrolls (invocations governing success rates of course).

Another reward could be increased magic regeneration at high piety levels (as a passive no-cost ability).

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Post Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 06:49

Re: Sif Muna revamp

It sounds like you're looking for a fundamental rework of how crawl approaches piety as a whole, not just a new idea for Sif. The only Gods I can think of that really fit what you're looking for are Jiyva and Ash. The other gods all either grant piety for things you'd do anyway, or don't require any major sacrifices to get piety for (you can easily keep Nemelex, Ely, or the corpse saccing gods happy without sacrificing anything you need). Crawl typically implements god restrictions with conducts, rather than difficult piety.

I do think a god that requires significant sacrifices for piety is an interesting concept (and there was a god being discussed not too long ago here that required making major permanent sacrifices to get permanent piety), but I don't think all the existing gods should be overhauled to that, and I definitely don't think Sif Muna makes sense as the place to experiment with the concept.

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Post Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 10:28

Re: Sif Muna revamp

jworm76 wrote:I think that piety gain (for any god) should require some kind of effort or sacrifice somewhere, otherwise it just happens automatically and there's no strategic element to it.
Piety gain is not meant to rely on strategic considerations. (As opposed to god choice, god change and use of god powers for some gods.) To me, piety is a replenishable resource, and the various piety gain methods just try to make sure that the player is actually doing something in order to (re)fill piety. There aren't terribly many ways how to do this: piety for kills, piety for exploration and piety for skill training are basically equivalent. And of these, piety for skill training has problems on its own.

On one extreme, what if you could sacrifice one point of max health (similar to how DD scarifies a max MP point for a charge) to get a piety star immediately?
This idea is interesting, which of course means it is old :) See sacrifice god proposal and a summoning god propsal with piety gain from maxhp loss.

Another possibility is to gain piety by casting spells. For example, casting a spell where you have less than 10% failure rate may give very little piety, but taking a risk to cast a 30-50% failure rate (for example) could give you a significant boost of piety. [...]Maybe you could also gain piety by going around the dungeon with 0 encumbrance (wearing only robes for example), thus leaving you free to maximize your magic potential.
These is out of the question: think about how players will try to abuse such a system.

Regarding the last Sif proposals (write scrolls/books): these all sound too complicated to me. Sif Muna is a working god. We don't want sweeping changes just for the sake of coolness.
Last edited by dpeg on Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 11:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 11:12

Re: Sif Muna revamp

To keep things super simple: why not just double the number of spell slots for followers of Sif?
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Post Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 12:00

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Robotron: We could but I say that free amnesia is a lot more interesting. Either way, you can experiment with spells, and quickly adapt. With amnesia, however, there are more choices. Choices are good.

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Post Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 22:50

Re: Sif Muna revamp

More spell slots would give you more tactical choices in any given situation.
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Post Saturday, 12th April 2014, 19:18

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Taking a note out of Ticket to Ride's Destination cards, what if Sif gifts let you choose 1 of 3 or 4 books, but you had to memorize the entire book? The god gift spells would have to be unforgettable until the next gift or so, and, naturally, Sif would give you spells that you *could* memorize.
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Post Monday, 28th April 2014, 03:16

Re: Sif Muna revamp

I find it interesting that most Sif Muna suggestions are player centric - double spell casting, guaranteed spell success, extra spell slots etc.

I think Sif could stand to have some godpowers that effect other spellcasters. I would like to see an ability that allows you to target an enemy and cause them to forget one random spell at the cost of piety. Could only be used once per enemy. If we were to allow you to choose which spell gets forgotten, that should have a much higher piety cost. Like Kiku, the strength of this spell should scale with your spellcasting skill.

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Post Monday, 28th April 2014, 03:47

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Leafsnail wrote:More spell slots would give you more tactical choices in any given situation.

o
Going back a bit in the conversation: I think this is a very good point. I'm playing a Sif follower right now, and unlimited Amnesia has had very little strategic effect on my play. Theoretically, it's interesting, but the fact is, Amnesia scrolls are common enough and situations where you can really do interesting things with variable spell sets are rare enough that it just doesn't seem to make a huge difference. It's a bit easier to clean out lower level spells (especially if you have spellforged servitor), you can learn situational spells like ignite poison for a branch and then drop them, but overall, it just doesn't make a huge difference.

I think the biggest issue here is that many times when a situational spell change would be nice, your skill set's not ideal for it. Trading out your cold spells for fire spells for Cocytus would be lovely, but characters who rely on cold spells will rarely have the skills to support fire spells.

Aside from that, there are spells that are particularly useful in particular branches in skills you may already have - cTele in Pan, ignite poison in Snake/Spider, Shadow Creatures in Vaults/Depths/Zot, dispel/control undead in Crypt - but overall, it just feels like there aren't enough situations where strategic spell switches are worth it to need more than the number of Amnesia scrolls you'll usually find.

On the other hand, I think having more spell levels would allow interesting tactical and strategic decisions. It would let you keep spells around that are situational and find situations where they make a difference, rather than just considering whether a spell swap or two is useful for an upcoming branch. That's not to say it's the best solution, but personally I think having more spell levels would create more interesting decisions than unlimited Amnesia does.
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Post Monday, 5th May 2014, 23:43

Re: Sif Muna revamp

dpeg wrote:Robotron: We could but I say that free amnesia is a lot more interesting. Either way, you can experiment with spells, and quickly adapt. With amnesia, however, there are more choices. Choices are good.


dpeg: your notion is that by cutting down the number of spell choices the game would be more interesting. My opinion is that doing the oppositie and offering more choices to the player the game would be more interesting.

Flavour-wise Sif is a good "who knows many secrets", wouldn't it be appropriate to let disciples of Sif learn many secrets too, rather than "I know many secrets, but you may only memorize as many as any other spell user"?
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Post Tuesday, 6th May 2014, 04:30

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Robotron wrote:dpeg: your notion is that by cutting down the number of spell choices the game would be more interesting. My opinion is that doing the oppositie and offering more choices to the player the game would be more interesting.


Removing choices is frequently more interesting because it requires the player to actually consider the limited options they have, rather than simply going straight for the single best option.

"Lemmings" would have been a considerably less popular game if on every level you got one hundred of every kind of worker.

(please say you've heard of lemmings)

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Post Tuesday, 6th May 2014, 18:17

Re: Sif Muna revamp

I really like the idea of Sif Muna allowing you to directly cast a spell from a book without memorizing it first, or something in that vein. Sif Muna is supposed to care about books, but the player really doesn't care about the avalanche of books you get because there's no real reason to care. One of the only reasons to care (Destroying a book to unlearn a spell) is both forbidden and made irrelevant by easy access to Amnesia for Piety. Otherwise books are just not valuable. Having a motivation to carry around books, or at least to care you have the book at all, would be nice. It would also make Sif Muna more distinct from Vehumet. I honestly have trouble motivating myself to worship Sif Muna because the only things Sif Muna does Vehumet does not are Channeling per se (And you get mana for kills with Vehumet, which I find more useful in most situations) and the Amnesia effect, which is trivial in practice.

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Post Tuesday, 6th May 2014, 18:32

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Miscast protection exists and is really nice.
You might argue that Veh's wizardry offers similar benefits, but it's more limited. Casting, say, Haste at 50% without having to worry about suddenly exploding is neat.

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Post Tuesday, 6th May 2014, 19:50

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Sif Muna also gives you spells that aren't conjurations, and eventually all conjurations too. Not a big deal if all you want are a few decent blasts of various levels, but pretty important if you're looking for other things (e.g. you plan to rely on Silence to deal with ancient liches), or if you're looking for specific mid-level conjurations (e.g. Freezing Cloud).

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Post Wednesday, 7th May 2014, 15:30

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Re: loanable books. Some piety-level interactions could be invisible to the player but still interesting.
1) # of books allowed on loan scales with piety ('Sif Muna grants you greater access to the Library of the Arcanum'), something like ceil(*-level /2), so you get rolls for your first book at 2*, and up to three books out at max piety. A lot of spells can be covered in 3 books. I don't know how this would interact with any of the piety-spending abilities proposed that might knock you down a * or two. Probably not at all, other than limiting when your next library exchange can take place.
2) quality/level/number of spells scale with piety ('Sif Muna scrounges a smudged/burned/damaged book for you.')

and this is more of a question(s); 3) would the 'gimme another one' option be an active ability ('a' menu) with a little text warning 'Sif Muna now grants you access to the library of the aranum'? Are visits scaled with a particular piety level, or do they time out like a gift timer on piety gain? Is this a fixed amount of piety, or something that is scaling (exponential with a small base value? Or is that likely to encourage scumming to get the perfect set of spell books? Does it even matter after you find the ones you want?)
If more than one book is out at a time, do you exchange all three or one at a time? How many buttons am I going to be pressing? Does it just take the oldest one? ('Your book is due. Your new book has arrived')

Anyway, I like this concept instead of building up a mountain of Sif books on the dungeon floor, or Veh's take it or lose it option, or even Kiku's "please let this be a good book with 'x' in it, 'cause I've got it forever."
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Post Wednesday, 7th May 2014, 15:43

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Patashu wrote:
XuaXua wrote:Scroll creation? Write a memorized spell to a scroll for piety cost.

it's spending piety, something regeneratable, for something whos use can be delayed as long as you like.


That's it.

DELAYED SPELL SLOT

We have Delayed Fireball the spell (or was it removed? I don't know).
The mechanics are there.
Have Sif Muna grant the ability to save any spell in a delay status.
Piety rank at the time of saving they delayed spell (ANY SPELL) determines how much capacity is available to save a spell.
Capacity is based on piety rank; perhaps each * gives 1.5 capacity, rounded up.
With 1.5
At * you can delay one level 2 spell or 2 level 1 spells.
At *****, you can cast to delay one level 8 spell, or two level 4 spells.

The piety cost of delaying a spell nothing. The piety cost of casting a delayed spell is - Piety based on the amount of capacity used; requiring sufficient piety at the time the spell is used, possibly incurring wrath (with a warning if known!) if, perhaps, casting a delayed level 7 spell at *.

Sure, the mechanics can use some work, but ultimately, this is "give Sif followers the delayed Fireball mechanic for any spell".
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Post Wednesday, 7th May 2014, 23:14

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Color me singularly unimpressed with all the proposals for changing Sif Muna. But I would like to see the patch land where miscast chances in the spellcasting success column are colored differently so that it's clearer that Sif is protecting you. Whatever happened to that good idea?

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Post Thursday, 8th May 2014, 11:21

Re: Sif Muna revamp

The feedback was that it was probably ok but that no one had time to go over it yet. I'll probably rebase and try to convince someone to commit it over the weekend. And probably I should credit you (archaeo) for the idea, which I forgot to do so originally (mostly because I lost track of which thread it was suggested in, sorry!)

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Post Thursday, 8th May 2014, 17:26

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Here's a suggestion, going back to the 'Sif worshippers often don't have the skills to support switching all their spells out' thing. What if Sif Muna let you use Spellcasting as a school, along with the actual school(s) of a spell, to cast? For instance, Fire Storm would be Fire/Conjurations/Spellcasting, and Discord would be Hexes/Spellcasting. I know Spellcasting is already included in the spell power formula but it's not as significant as the actual schools; this would make it that significant. (More, actually, since it wouldn't remove the Spellcasting/2 from the formula.)

This allows you to cover your poor spell skills with Spellcasting without making them completely irrelevant, since they're still included in the average; you just get to include what is probably your highest skill. And it's not like anyone worshipping Sif shouldn't work at having a very high Spellcasting anyway.

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Post Thursday, 8th May 2014, 18:33

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Almacia wrote:Here's a suggestion, going back to the 'Sif worshippers often don't have the skills to support switching all their spells out' thing. What if Sif Muna let you use Spellcasting as a school, along with the actual school(s) of a spell, to cast? For instance, Fire Storm would be Fire/Conjurations/Spellcasting, and Discord would be Hexes/Spellcasting. I know Spellcasting is already included in the spell power formula but it's not as significant as the actual schools; this would make it that significant. (More, actually, since it wouldn't remove the Spellcasting/2 from the formula.)

This allows you to cover your poor spell skills with Spellcasting without making them completely irrelevant, since they're still included in the average; you just get to include what is probably your highest skill. And it's not like anyone worshipping Sif shouldn't work at having a very high Spellcasting anyway.


This would just make training tons of spell casting the norm for everyone worshiping sif. Besides sif already provides miscast protection for all spells, which lets you get away with lower spell failure. I agree with other posters that the manner in which this affects your spells could be made clearer, however, and I do really like the idea of having sif refund some of your MP from a failed spell (I like that idea more than any of the active abilities I initially proposed in the OP, in fact).

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Post Thursday, 8th May 2014, 23:58

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Edit: wow, I did ramble on! If you want to see just my suggested change, scroll down to the last two paragraphs.

Hi folks,

Sif Muna is a long time favorite of mine. I know it's been covered but I want to recap why I like her and why she's pretty good. (I do think there's room for change; I just want to explain where I'm coming from first.)

Channeling: Sif's one and only panic button. It's great early on and it's great late game. It can get you out of some tight situations. It's food intensive, but in food-rich areas like the lair it can actually expedite food management. Kill a yak pack, channel & chow, you end up with mana and you're well fed. This spares you the agony of getting hungry just as all your chunks rot. It also speeds up your progress and thus your piety gain.

Amnesia: this serves several roles. First, it gives new players some leeway to experiment without screwing themselves. Second, it compensates for the no-book-burning conduct, which is meant for flavor, not as a challenge. Finally, it lets experienced players fine tune their spell selection based on where they are playing. Ignite poison is the classic example of a spell you only learn for certain areas, but there's other uses. You never have to hesitate to learn a low level spell in order to start training a new school, you never have to wait to level while you're stuck with a spell you don't really need.

Miscast protection: this is fantastic for some spells, irrelevant for others. Obviously you don't want an important damage spell to fizzle and waste your mana, but spells like haste stay in the red for a long time. Sif Muna lets you cast them confidently. The suggestion to give a color cue is a great one.

Piety via training: I think this is pretty good. It's thematic, and Sif Muna has very low piety loss rate. It does hamper early hybridizers, but not too badly.

Who benefits, who doesn't: Playstyles vary, of course. I like Sif Muna best for relatively high-int species who start as dedicated casters. These characters already have good spell power, and they benefit a lot from Sif's channeling and versatility of spell selection come in handy, and you get piety fastest if you're not diversifying your training too early. I find Sif Muna so-so for early hybridizers who start out using spells for offense, but who branch into melee early on. It's not that SM is bad, but she faces stiff competition from other gods who offer more panic buttons. Channeling is not as necessary if you already extend your mana by doing a fair bit of melee. I rarely if ever choose Sif Muna for characters that kill things via melee from the beginning, even if they also have a spellbook (like skalds). Sif Muna does seem a bit narrow compared to gods like Ash or Kiku.

Power level: again, I'm offering a purely subjective opinion with no math or stats to back me up. I find SM a trifle weaker than Vehumet. It seems like Vehumet's early power boost helps me survive better than SM's early channeling.

Flavor: Sif Muna's flavor is part of why I love her so much. Right now she has a really consistent, cohesive feel. She is the god of magical knowledge and she rewards you for learning about spells. The way she rewards you is by giving you the chance to (dum dum dum) learn more spells! She allows you to forget spells, because she understands that frail little mortal heads can only absorb so much...but it costs piety, because she doesn't really approve. It's simple and it works.

Possible changes: In theory suggestions that boost spell power can be argued as thematic, but I don't like them. I feel like Sif Muna wants you to learn things yourself, not put her personal power behind your spells. That's flavor of course, but a game balance reason would be that Chei and Ash both indirectly boost spell power, so that niche is covered by them. I also think that making Sif Muna more accessible to players who don't start with a spellbook is maybe not such a good idea, because IMO she's not that great of a god for players who don't start with a spellbook! Other boosts to destructive capabilities maybe trod on Vehumet's turf.

I think that the god of magical knowledge should offer only one type of reward: more magical knowledge! Quite a few suggestions have been made. In the context of this thread, they seem overly complicated, but I think part of that is just the temporary chaos of tossing so many ideas around. I think it might be possible to simplify one of these ideas so that it fits.

Here's my stab at an idea that already got shot down: an extra spell. Yes, spell limits are a good thing; nobody should be able to learn every spell they want. But I think ONE low-to-mid level spell would still leave players with the need to think about their choices, and it would fit Sif Muna's theme. Here's how I would implement it: When you reach 6* piety, Sif Muna offers to bless your knowledge of a spell. This spell must be of level 1-3, and you must have the spell memorized. When you pray at her altar, a menu of suitable spells is called up, and you choose one. The spell is then colored blue in your spell list, and you are refunded the spell levels you used to learn it. If you drop below 6* piety, the spell is greyed out and you can not cast it until you return to 6*.

I would love one extra spell. I don't think it would break the game, but I would be thrilled to have it. I think it's thematic and reasonably simple.

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 20:22

Re: Sif Muna revamp

Perhaps + 1 MP for every book you are actually carrying or standing on?

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 20:37

Re: Sif Muna revamp

cjo wrote:Here's my stab at an idea that already got shot down: an extra spell. Yes, spell limits are a good thing; nobody should be able to learn every spell they want. But I think ONE low-to-mid level spell would still leave players with the need to think about their choices, and it would fit Sif Muna's theme. Here's how I would implement it: When you reach 6* piety, Sif Muna offers to bless your knowledge of a spell. This spell must be of level 1-3, and you must have the spell memorized. When you pray at her altar, a menu of suitable spells is called up, and you choose one. The spell is then colored blue in your spell list, and you are refunded the spell levels you used to learn it. If you drop below 6* piety, the spell is greyed out and you can not cast it until you return to 6*.

I would love one extra spell. I don't think it would break the game, but I would be thrilled to have it. I think it's thematic and reasonably simple.


This is a tremendous amount of work for +3 spell levels. Sif could just give +3 spell levels automatically on joining. It isn't that powerful of an effect. People have mentioned doubling your spell levels in this thread (or was it another?) already. I think dpeg stated he prefered being able to easily forget spells through amnesia as a way to get around the spell limit instead, though.

A level 1-3 spell shouldn't really be that critical by the time you're at 6* piety. You're likely going to give some special, signature status to a low level buff like repel missiles, swiftness, or regeneration. Seems odd.

Honestly I can't really say I ever run into spell limits as a serious issue. If you need a few more spell levels, then raise your spellcasting.

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 23:39

Re: Sif Muna revamp

ohmi wrote:Perhaps + 1 MP for every book you are actually carrying or standing on?


That just encourages cluttering your inventory, and even effects that encourage cluttering your inventory for interesting effects (e.g. Nemelex) are considered annoying, let along loading yourself with books for some extra mana.

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Post Tuesday, 13th May 2014, 04:37

Re: Sif Muna revamp

What if Sif allowed you to cast spells from books by wielding them instead of memorizing them? It would be a massive increase in short-term versatility, but given the fact that
1) You can amnesia away unwanted spells and go memorize new stuff already with nothing but some piety and autotravel
2) Haste, Bolt of Foo, and a few self buffs are more than enough to 15-rune the game anyway

I don't think it would be particularly game-breaking.

Also I just really like the image of a wizard hobbling around with quickdraw bookmarks and holster-pouches for his tomes.
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Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 00:13

Re: Sif Muna revamp

For a piety cost, sif allows you to instantly/very quickly memorize a spell.

You wouldn't want to use this all the time, because then you'd drain piety, and no longer get books. But now, as a reward for carrying around books, you can swap in and out spells situationally. See a bunch of draconians? Yeah, now seems like a good time for some hexes! Oh crap, orb of fire (ignoring how you could get blindsided by one of those, for a second); ring of flames was taking up too many slots to carry it around, but it would be real useful right now... from 0-> rF++ in 30 aut!

Since spell levels aren't THAT limited, this ability probably wouldn't work in the long run; but I think it's interesting.
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Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 04:24

Re: Sif Muna revamp

ohmi wrote:Perhaps + 1 MP for every book you are actually carrying or standing on?


1 slot for staff, 3 slots for jewellery, 6 slots for armour,

Leave 4 slots for scrolls, 4 slots for pots, 4 slots for evocables, and 3 slots for food,

27 slots left for your spellbooks of magical power.
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Post Thursday, 15th May 2014, 04:32

Re: Sif Muna revamp

i'm just going to say that there is zero chance of sif rewarding the player for carrying spellbooks (more than already--you can certainly argue that infinite amnesia does reward this behaviour) getting added to crawl

see also: nemelex

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