Mummy Death Curse Rework


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Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 8th May 2014, 17:41

Mummy Death Curse Rework

Death Curses as Divine Wrath.

Currently, Death Curses retaliate against the player (Or whoever landed the killing blow) instantly, and includes a host of effects ranging from 'nothing actually happens' to 'stack enough rot and your character is crippled'. This isn't very interesting in the first place, and can lead to things like clearing a room with a spell and instantly dying from full health. It's also not very thematically appropriate: a curse is something that sticks with you and tries to make life hard on you until the curse is broken somehow. It's not a dead man's switch.

So my proposal is basically to rework Death Curses so they inflict an effect more like Divine Wrath, such as from going into Penance or leaving the god outright. It goes something like....

When you kill something with a Death Curse, you are 'marked'/'cursed'/'haunted'/whatever you want to call it. The point is whatever you killed is somehow attempting to get you from the afterlife. This generates a counter of a semi-random size (enemies with nastier grades of curses get longer counters, on average) which diminishes by one (Or possibly more on nastier effects?) every time the Death Curse attempts to do something to you. Furthermore, there is a delay of a semi-random length before the Death Curse can make another attempt on your life.

The Death Curse should pay attention to tension: it prefers to do things to you when you are in a bad situation and it might get you killed, not when a Goblin is the only thing in your line of sight. Furthermore, unlike the current list of Death Curse effects, the effects in question should all be things that can never directly kill you or directly damage anything: it doesn't roll 'destroy potion' or 'rot HP' or 'XDX Negative Energy damage'. It Slows you, or Confuses you when you're standing near lava or deep water, or the like.

Once the counter has fully decremented the player gets some kind of message informing them the Death Curse is over. ("Your tormentor has moved on" or "You like a dark weight life from your shoulders" or whatever. If you have a good one, suggest it!)

Things I don't have concrete ideas about: what happens with multiple Death Curses? Do they all sit in one que? Do up to three Death Curse ques get to be active at once? Do they all get one global counter, that any Death Curse adds to? Ques based on strength of Death Curse? (eg 'weak Death Curse que', 'strong Death Curse que', 'very strong Death Curse que') There's multiple solutions, and I'm not experienced enough with the game (Let alone the code) to say what would be most sensical.

Similarly, I don't know what would be a good list of effects. The ideas I've had myself are...

-Slowing. Death Curses should refuse to inflict this on players who currently know Haste and can cast it reliably/safely. (Or any other renewable effects that can clear Slowing. Berserk?)

-Siphon the player's mana. I wanna say 'all of it', all but forcing a retreat, but for all I know that's way overboard. In any event Death Curses should refuse to inflict this one characters who have no way to spend mana. I don't know what the exact bar should be. Several Invocations spend mana, but siphoning a Beoghite's mana just because of Smite is probably a relief for the player.

-Confusion. With a preference for doing so when a mistake could directly kill you. (You are currently next to lava or something) If you are benefiting from Clarity, this option should be skipped.

-Torment effect on the player. Death Curses should refuse to do this if it won't work. (eg you're a Mummy)

-Berserk one or more enemies in line of sight. (Obviously, this shouldn't be selected if everything in line of sight can't Berserk) Given the Berserk Moth was removed, this might be overboard. I'm just tossing out ideas that fit the definitions I myself provided. Doesn't mean they're good ideas.

-Spawn dangerous clouds to block the player's escape route. I don't know how practical it would be to code it so the game can tell how best to cage you, but if it is possible it would be really neat.

... and that's all I've come up with myself.

I'm just trying to imagine Death Curses as something more interesting, and incidentally flavorful.

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Post Thursday, 8th May 2014, 17:55

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Please no. Tomb is already a place of retreating and resting. Delayed death curses would add to that problem and make Tomb even more of a stair dancing and resting thing.

However more variety in them would be indeed good. As it is they mostly put your life directly in danger and decay you but don't really provide for interesting tactical variant situations. You mentioned "marked". Maybe getting marked could be one effect easily added into death curses? It's definitely interesting.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 8th May 2014, 19:38

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

DickhardLionheart wrote:Please no. Tomb is already a place of retreating and resting. Delayed death curses would add to that problem and make Tomb even more of a stair dancing and resting thing.

However more variety in them would be indeed good. As it is they mostly put your life directly in danger and decay you but don't really provide for interesting tactical variant situations. You mentioned "marked". Maybe getting marked could be one effect easily added into death curses? It's definitely interesting.


That's the point, that death curses would only tick down while you're in dangerous situations. Being marked in Tomb:3 would encourage fighting on the stairs even more, though.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 8th May 2014, 19:48

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

^ninja-ed me, basically.

In more detail: the idea is that, no, you can't just wait out the Death Curse. Death Curses would only decrement when trying to kill you, and they would only try to do that when Tension is high enough that this is threatening. You wouldn't be able to retreat upstairs, wait 1,000 turns, and the curse breaks. You'd have to actually fight. In fact, if this replaced the current Death Curse model, there'd be less stair-dancing and resting, because inevitable, unavoidable, instantaneous retaliation wouldn't occur on every Death Curse kill. Currently, even if you're clean-sweeping enemies without them ever touching you, you'll still retreat and rest because of Death Curse's smiting you and so on. Under this model, you would be considerably more able to sweep out the Tombs, and then head on your way. (Trailed by bad luck while fighting things wherever you go, whether that's Hell or whatever)
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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 00:27

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

So now optimal Tomb strategy is to
1) go down to Tomb:3 once, stairdance a bit, get a bunch of death curses
2) Wait out the death curses by doing crypt or whatever
3) When they're all gone, go back to Tomb:3 once more
?

Swamp Slogger

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 01:27

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

This would be pretty cool applied to enemies that occur occasionally throughout the game. However as people are already seizing on right now death curses are pretty much a feature of mummies, and random encounters with mummies are very occasional and limited to the lower tier. The rest and nearly all the powerful ones are solely part of Tomb, and the dominant enemies in Tomb, for which this approach then sounds highly inappropriate. I don't mean to shoot down the idea, just to point out that something about this situation would have to change.

edit: or I guess you are proposing that the effects be delayed so that they don't all hit until after Tomb? Even so accumulating that many persistent effects from one and only one area of the game does not seem like a good design and stacking this on top of hell effects or Abyss or Pan even just sounds miserable. It might be better to apply this particular sort of death curse to a new enemy (or some otherwise uninteresting existing enemy) rather than existing death-cursers which have such a loaded role in a particular part of the game.
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Dis Charger

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 01:35

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

How to fix mummy death curses: Remove mummy death curses. Vary what mummies can do normally (while undead).
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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 02:59

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Death curse: Vault Warden Effect (close all stairs)
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 04:31

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

yeah actually there is a fundamental problem with death curses and that is that they simply make you not want to fight the monster. this time you're right on bcadren.

Barkeep

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 06:34

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

I suspect/fear that death curses, in principle, are not quite going to sit right in Crawl. Particularly when an entire branch (one with a rune, no less) is based around the enemies that have them.

There's something of a three-fold problem with death curses. If enemy is weak relative to you, the death curse makes you want to artificially and awkwardly avoid attacking something that nonetheless represents no threat to you. If an enemy is powerful relative to you, then it is already a threat and the death curse is only a weird added effect that won't really change your tactics, because you'll still either want to kill the enemy immediately or else flee; in this situation the death curse won't provoke an interesting decision, but could (at most) simply annoy you as a reward for taking down a tough enemy, which is strange. The final problem is mostly just a problem in Tomb, but still: Death curses mean that you have to be careful about killing multiple enemies at once even if you are very strong relative to those enemies. In Crawl if an enemy is so non-threatening that you can take it out safely via tabbing or casting some high end spell, then that's exactly what those spells/tabbing is for: To streamline and quickly bring the tactically non-interesting combat to an end. Death curses interrupt that, and do so in part by involving dangers that are difficult to block and mess with stuff other than your HP. As an occasional thing that's not always so bad, but for an entire branch to be almost uniquely inhabited by enemies that do this... It just isn't a fun experience.

Now I'm sure there are occasions when death curses can matter in just the right way, but I think in the vast majority of cases it falls into one of the three categories outlined above.

If death curses could be reworked in a way that answered all of those problems, great. But as I said I'm somewhat skeptical. A much more reasonable approach, I think, would be to have mummies curse you while alive (er, undead) upon being in LOS, and these curses only end when they have been destroyed. (Like flaying ghosts, except with different kinds of effect than flaying.)

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 12:16

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Well, here is the thing that needs to be asked...

Is the Tomb rune ever anyone's third rune?

I wouldn't mind death curses so much if smite attacks weren't so prevalent alongside it.
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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 12:21

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Kiku ~trivializes~ Tomb.

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 12:29

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Also trivial for Mu with Dispel Undead and Abjuration.

Sar

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 13:15

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Yeah, or just a big weapon.

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 13:50

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Tomb is safe as long as you've got your Tomb Kit together. There are really only about three types of threats you have to handle; there's just a lot of those threats to deal with at once, and if you clear all threats that are currently available there will be another set around twenty more steps in. Tomb is tedious enough after the first few times that I'll usually choose to leave it off until I've done everything more interesting first, but I've had two or three games where Vaults 5 and Abyss felt like they were a little too dangerous but Tomb was no actual trouble, and one where several dangerous uniques were having one of their tea parties on the Rune level of one of the Lair branches. Tomb safely got me the third Rune, and also enough xp so that these other areas wouldn't be dangerous any more.

I don't think Tomb fits in with current design philosophy. Fixing it is going to require diluting the current threat with other types of threats, because the current threats are severe but extremely narrow and therefore extremely predictable.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 17:42

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

and into wrote:I suspect/fear that death curses, in principle, are not quite going to sit right in Crawl. Particularly when an entire branch (one with a rune, no less) is based around the enemies that have them.

There's something of a three-fold problem with death curses. If enemy is weak relative to you, the death curse makes you want to artificially and awkwardly avoid attacking something that nonetheless represents no threat to you. If an enemy is powerful relative to you, then it is already a threat and the death curse is only a weird added effect that won't really change your tactics, because you'll still either want to kill the enemy immediately or else flee; in this situation the death curse won't provoke an interesting decision, but could (at most) simply annoy you as a reward for taking down a tough enemy, which is strange. The final problem is mostly just a problem in Tomb, but still: Death curses mean that you have to be careful about killing multiple enemies at once even if you are very strong relative to those enemies. In Crawl if an enemy is so non-threatening that you can take it out safely via tabbing or casting some high end spell, then that's exactly what those spells/tabbing is for: To streamline and quickly bring the tactically non-interesting combat to an end. Death curses interrupt that, and do so in part by involving dangers that are difficult to block and mess with stuff other than your HP. As an occasional thing that's not always so bad, but for an entire branch to be almost uniquely inhabited by enemies that do this... It just isn't a fun experience.

Now I'm sure there are occasions when death curses can matter in just the right way, but I think in the vast majority of cases it falls into one of the three categories outlined above.

If death curses could be reworked in a way that answered all of those problems, great. But as I said I'm somewhat skeptical. A much more reasonable approach, I think, would be to have mummies curse you while alive (er, undead) upon being in LOS, and these curses only end when they have been destroyed. (Like flaying ghosts, except with different kinds of effect than flaying.)


I... actually came to this idea starting from the position of 'Death Curses are stupid and cause (All the problems you talk about) and really ought to be removed outright' and then going 'but nobody will agree that wholesale removing a classic part of the game would make it better'. I do like aspects of what I came up with and think having something do it (maybe Runes have guardians you have to kill with this effect, so it's unavoidable? I dunno) could be interesting, but mostly I was trying to get the current system made less dumb, starting from the assumption that 'a cool idea for replacing the existing model' would get a better reception than 'this is dumb and should be removed'.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 19:51

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

What if curses were only removed when you pick up a rune and got more dangerous the more you have
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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 22:40

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

BrewFall wrote:What if curses were only removed when you pick up a rune and got more dangerous the more you have


People would leave the easy lair branch runes alone until they'd accumulated enough curses then~
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Post Friday, 9th May 2014, 22:53

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Here's an idea- When you are cursed, you get one stack of Curse status. Then, at some point in time, you lose ran(3) stacks, and something bad happens. There is a timeout between triggers. Greater Mummies add more stacks.

Possible triggers:

In a fight:
1 stack: corona on you
1 stack: enemies get might-ed
2 stacks: torment
2 stacks: you get mesmerized
3 stacks: agony
3 stacks: you get paralyzed

When trying to switch items:
1 stack: item you are trying to switch gets cursed
3 stacks: all items of that type get cursed

When trying to drink a potion:
1 stack: you drop it
2 stacks: it morphs into random type
3 stacks: it rots and poisons you

When trying to cast a spell:
1 stack: miscast
2 stacks: miscast with a medium miscast effect
2 stacks: mp drain
3 stacks: miscast with a significant miscast effect
3 stacks: int drain

EDIT: all of these require a min tension and/or a minimum yellow level enemy in sight and awake, so you cant spam on popcorn to remove curses.
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Sunday, 11th May 2014, 02:58

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Or we just get rid of Death Curses.

Item curse
Slowing
Pain (light)
Pain (strong)
Rotting (light)
Rotting (strong)
Torment
Draining
Stat drain
Shadows
Demon

Of the above list, only the top four (item curse, slowing, and pain) aren't fucking terrible. How about we 'reward' players by cutting mummies' XP to 1/3 of the current, if we want Tomb to continue to be a terrible slog that makes you weaker than when you entered it.

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Post Sunday, 11th May 2014, 03:10

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Is it still the case that you can use allies to soak up death curses? I think that's also kindof awful if so.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 11th May 2014, 05:06

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Of those, only slowing, torment, and the stronger demon summons are ever relevant at all by the time a character is ready to even start thinking about Tomb. Most of those others are just a potion tax, from your massive pile of 30 curing and 10 restore abilities that you will otherwise never, ever use.

Maybe something could be modeled off of the wretched star's temporary malmutations. Mummies' death curses would give something unpleasant off of a thematic list, like slow healing 3 and so forth, and like with the wretched star they would go away only by gaining sufficient xp. Of course, mutations as a concept aren't very thematic here, and I'd hate to see people insist on getting the amulet before doing Tomb, but the mechanics could be recycled with a new skin but everything else working the same under the hood.

I suppose draining also already works this way, but there's no way for it to stack high enough to matter in Tomb as it is now. It is completely non-bothersome even with zero levels of rN+.

Naturally, the mummies would fire off their death curses specifically at the player regardless of how they died, since the whole scapegoat summoning mechanic was never a desirable function.

Slime Squisher

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Post Sunday, 11th May 2014, 06:08

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

what do death curses add to crawl (other than more resting)?

EDIT this is a serious and non-snarky question because even if you like them it doesn't make much sense to suggest a change without some idea of what parts of the mechanic should be preserved and which should be changed

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Dis Charger

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Post Sunday, 11th May 2014, 07:14

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

TheDefiniteArticle wrote:what do death curses add to crawl (other than more resting)?

EDIT this is a serious and non-snarky question because even if you like them it doesn't make much sense to suggest a change without some idea of what parts of the mechanic should be preserved and which should be changed
Prevents you from using AoE spells to kill the mummies in the tomb in a hurry. That's the only area where the effect is anything other than 'meh I don't want to kill the {foo}, because I don't want Rot status. Oh and they make you want to kill them indirectly (any summon you got, Enslavement, Control Undead, etc.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 19:09

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Brands FU on the player's forehead? I dunno.

My suggestion was intended to replace it with something that is flavorful to the idea of a curse, but also incorporated some kind of decision-influencing component to it. You kill a mummy, you get a Death Curse, you play more cautiously, aware that a tide of scarabs might spawn behind you to block your escape from OhshitUnique or some other unusual problem might crop up when it would be most inconvenient. If this is hanging over your head, maybe you'll play more cautiously: you don't just fight it out, confident you can Scroll of Blink out if things turn sour, because you know the Death Curse might render you temporarily illiterate and thus unable to use the scroll, and instead try to keep your distance or even flee from a particularly nasty unique (Or non-unique!) you only might survive/win against.
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Barkeep

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 23:13

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

So basically, Ghoul King, you kill a mummy and you get points added to some kind of virtual god wrath. So now, beating Tomb is the same, more or less, as abandoning a god you never worshipped.

I don't really hate the idea of handling mummy curses as we would handle god wrath, but it would only make me want to do Tomb even less than I do now. At least with current Tomb, I know exactly what's expected and can gauge without a problem how Tomb-capable a character is. With mummy curses as a kind of pseudo-god wrath, I'd still need a lot of the same protections (since greater mummies are still going to torment me, and there are few Tomb strategies that account for curses and not torment) but I'd also have to spend the next non-Tomb portions of the game dealing with the built up wrath of the mummy gods, or whatever. And since I'm likely to do Tomb last with every character that can't flatly "trivialize" it, that means that Tomb becomes the branch of "have fun doing Zot with scarabs flying out your butthole."

I think I rank the status quo barely behind "remove death curses," and I haven't really heard an idea that would get ranked above that.

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 23:36

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Here's an idea for Mummies cursing you upon being in LOS:

Each mummy (regardless of type) may curse you. This takes up a turn, and it is smite-targeted and irresistible. This adds a "curse point." One mummy cannot add multiple curse points, but the curse point will remain so long as the mummy is not dead and is still in LOS (it fades quickly but not immediately upon being outside that mummy's LOS).

The likelihood of a curse effect triggering scales up with total curse points. The total number of simultaneous curse effects scales up with total curse points. The severity of the possible curse effects scales up based on the total HD of all mummies currently cursing you (thus lots of mummy priests and greater mummies on screen give harsher effects).

X curse points: up to 1 curse effect
Y curse points: up to 2 curse effects
Z curse points: up to 3 curse effects (max)


Possible curse effects:
(not in any exact order, but roughly less severe to more severe):

You have difficulty swapping items until you are no longer cursed.
Your stats are drained until you are no longer cursed.
You may become confused until the curse is lifted.
Your skills are drained until you are no longer cursed.
Your melee capabilities are weakened until the curse is lifted. (negative slaying)
Your spell casting is hampered until the curse is lifted. (spellpower and/or spell success is hurt)
You lose a % of max HP/MP until you are no longer cursed.
You may be hit with slow until the curse is lifted.
You may suffer negative energy damage randomly until curse is lifted.
You have difficulty using consumables until you are no longer cursed.
You may be "'blinked' into the future"* so long as the curse remains.

*An idea for a less severe kind of paralysis: You jump 4 or 5 turns into the future, with enemies having turns as usual in the meantime, but you cannot be damaged or targeted by any effects in the meantime. This is still very dangerous in Tomb because it means more enemies will come onscreen, and the summoners will summon stuff.)

This keeps more reasonable cost/benefit from killing mummies, including multiple mummies at once, while still making mummies provide a unique threat that scales up with the total number of mummies (of whatever type) around. Also, all curse effects are lifted immediately upon the curses ending, which happens when the mummies die or when you escape (get out of LOS for a certain number of turns). So no annoying rest spam.

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Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 13th May 2014, 00:13

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

I like this idea a lot. Probably refine the list of specific effects, but it sounds a lot cooler/less obnoxious than the current approach. (And my own suggestion for that matter)

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Post Tuesday, 13th May 2014, 05:50

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Trying to flesh out that idea with some numbers, in terms of how this could work under the hood:

+ Each mummy of any type can curse you, which adds one curse point as long as it is in your LOS. (Slight delay before removing curse point once it is out of your LOS. Instantaneous removal of curse point if you destroy a mummy cursing you.) One mummy cannot add multiple curse points to you, just one.

Then maybe something like:

Chance for one curse effect: (curse_points / 5), rolled every 2 or 3 turns while you have at least one curse point
Chance for two curse effects: (curse_points / 10)*100%, rolled every 2 or 3 turns iff you already have one curse effect active
Chance for three curse effects: (curse_points / 20)*100%, rolled every 2 or 3 turns until successful, iff you already have two curse effects active

If a curse effect triggers, you get "Cursed" displayed as a status, with "Cursed x 2" and "Cursed x 3"

If a curse point is removed by killing a mummy or being outside of its LOS for sufficient (short) duration, there is a chance to remove your last gained curse effect. Maybe something like:

[(1+ (2*HD of mummy killed or escaped)) / (1 + 3*Total HD of all mummies cursing you)]*100%

Severity of a gained curse effect is determined by total HD of mummies cursing you. This affects both new curses gained, and less severe curse effects may be upgraded. Maybe something like

Severity
Tier 1: (Total HD of all mummies cursing you) <= (3 + d13), otherwise check tier 2
Tier 2: (Total HD of all mummies cursing you) <= (9 + d20), otherwise Tier 3

Every 2 or 3 turns, if you have any curse points, tier 1 severity curse rerolls for an upgrade to Tier 2.
Every 2 or 3 turns, a tier 2 severity curse rerolls for an upgrade to tier 3.
A curse cannot jump in severity from tier 1 to tier 3 in one go.

Severity of your curses affects the color of your Cursed display. Light yellow means "only tier 1," darker yellow means "at least one tier 2," light red means "at least one tier 3," dark red means "at least two tier 2/3 curses." (Or some such.)
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Post Tuesday, 13th May 2014, 07:45

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

and into wrote:If an enemy is powerful relative to you, then it is already a threat and the death curse is only a weird added effect that won't really change your tactics, because you'll still either want to kill the enemy immediately or else flee; in this situation the death curse won't provoke an interesting decision, but could (at most) simply annoy you as a reward for taking down a tough enemy, which is strange.

At worst the game will outright kill you for winning the fight.
Which is awful, awful, awful.
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

Did you know that I like ruining crawl every now and then? Go check it out.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 13th May 2014, 18:35

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

So you would need five Mummies in LOS to have a 1% chance of a curse afflicting you? Seems a bit low to me, honestly. Or am I misunderstanding the math? I'm not exactly a math wizard.

On the other hand, sitting in LOS for a long time without killing things could add up to a hilariously large stack of curses so maybe it's not I dunno.

Barkeep

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Location: USA

Post Tuesday, 13th May 2014, 19:06

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Ghoul King wrote:So you would need five Mummies in LOS to have a 1% chance of a curse afflicting you? Seems a bit low to me, honestly. Or am I misunderstanding the math? I'm not exactly a math wizard.

On the other hand, sitting in LOS for a long time without killing things could add up to a hilariously large stack of curses so maybe it's not I dunno.


No, sorry if it wasn't clear: (curse points / 5) chance of getting your first curse effect, on scale of 0 to 1 (with 1 being 100%). With five curse points you have a 100% chance of getting your first curse effect.

Severity of curse effect depends on total HD of all mummies cursing you. If total HD is less than (3 + d13), it is tier 1 severity. If greater than that, but less than (9 + d20), tier 2. If greater than that, tier 3.

This is all subject to tweaking though obviously, and this would be "under the hood." What players would actually see/experience would be, "If one or two mummies curse me, I may get a curse effect after four or five turns. If three or four curse me, I always get a curse effect in one or two turns. More than that cursing me, and I can risk getting two or even three curse effects simultaneously. Lots of strong mummies make the curse effects more intense."

Maybe even that is too low, though. Perhaps should be more like

  Code:
If you have at least one curse point and no currently active curse effects, then
every two or three turns you have a (curse points / 2)*100% chance for first curse effect

if you already have one curse effect, then
every two or three turns you roll with a (curse points / 8)*100% chance for second curse effect

if you already have two curse effects, then
every two or three turns you roll with a (curse points / 12)*100% chance for third curse effect

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 13th May 2014, 20:03

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

and into wrote:If a curse effect triggers, you get "Cursed" displayed as a status, with "Cursed x 2" and "Cursed x 3"

I like the overall system: one small tweak: cursed should show in yellow, then cursed x2 is light red, cursed 3 is dark red. Or does it usually go dark red then light red - whatever the typical order for drain, pois, etc is.
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Pandemonium Purger

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Location: Sydney, Australia

Post Wednesday, 14th May 2014, 06:42

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

I assume this is a precursor to a hypothetical Tomb Reform? (Because it doesn't solve Tomb by itself, but it could allow for more interesting Tomb design in the future)

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 50

Joined: Saturday, 26th April 2014, 18:09

Post Wednesday, 14th May 2014, 18:06

Re: Mummy Death Curse Rework

Making Tomb more interesting following this being implemented would be fantastic.

1/5 chance with 1 Curse Point. OK then, I just don't know math representation that well.

Well, what kinds of effects are we talking about at this point? Directly threatening things ("Your curse calls the wrath of an ancient and hateful god. You are smitten!"), things that just interfere with your ability to keep yourself alive ("You are paralyzed with fear"), Torment, what exactly?

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