New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect


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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 01:56

New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

Proposal: Add a new brand, Acid, which deals damage and can lower enemy AC. Damage would be flat, say around 3d4 or so, and have a chance of lowering enemy AC. I'd say about 50% chance of -1 ac? All numbers approximate. This would obviously be ideal for quick weapons and would be best on short blades as an alternative to slaying. Get through your enemy's AC by removing it. The brand should do enough damage to not be terrible on 2H, although probably not optimal. It would be another way for short blades to remain strong to the end game if you haven't managed to find slaying - currently the viability of short blades is pretty heavily dependant on slaying, and this is an attempt to give you another way of keeping short blades alive.

Brand shouldn't be too rare, could be gifted by trog or okawaru, and about as common as electricity?

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 03:17

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

3d4 is as much average damage as +15 enchantment

the other major problem I can see is counting the AC reduction (it seems bad to be able to count it)

sounds reasonable other than that as long as the AC reduction is temporary (otherwise you have something awful like the current draining brand (HD/MHP reduction from current draining brand really needs to be made temporary (except the MHP reduction from current draining brand should probably just be removed)))
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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 03:50

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

Would it work to reduce AC further but not actually have the damage boost at all (or have a proportional one that's lower than vorpal)? If AC is lowered by random amounts you can't count it either.
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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 05:18

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

A large, but a temporary and relatively short-lived AC reduction that immediately times out if you unwield the weapon that inflicted the acid damage—that would be cool.

I like the idea but I have to say that some of the reasoning is entirely off base:

tasonir wrote:currently the viability of short blades is pretty heavily dependant on slaying


On the contrary, there are...

Electrocution, pain, and distortion, the latter two of which have gods who can put them on one weapon permanently, as well as level 5 spells that temporarily put them on any non-branded non-artefact weapon you want. Also berserk, which has an amulet, an artefact property, a potion, and a different god dedicated to it.

Moreover: Stabbing. Which is supported by a major game mechanic (stealth factor) which is linked to one of three stats, and to one universal skill; in addition, stabbing is further supported by multiple gods, invisibility (available as spell, potion, wand, ring, cloak ego, and artefact property) and most of one entire spell school (hexes), with further help—albeit to a much lesser extent—from another spell school (summonings) and class of evocables, as allies can allow for distraction stabs; and furthermore supported by blowguns + paralysis/sleep/confusion needles, which are gifted (and thus supported by) not one, but two different gods.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 05:35

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

Also might (Although that's limited in supply, less so with the potion god (Sorry, not going to call him the gold god until I have even the slightest inclination to use one of his other abilities) )
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Dungeon Master

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 05:51

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

There's already a monster enchantment for acid, which just halves their AC and doesn't stack. I'm not sure what the power level of that is but using the monster enchantment will solve most of the design problems brought up.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 11:59

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

I think for a melee weapon, a stacking AC penalty would be better than a debuff that straight up halves the target's AC. I think it's weird if a melee brand just does it's main effect towards the beginning of a fight (you might want to switch to a different weapon once it does it's thing). I think this is why most other brands are either effects that stack well (poison, draining) or have immediate effects (extra damage, etc). Chaos is the only one that applies "normal" debuffs, but it's random enough to get away with it.

If it's a stacking effect, -1 AC per hit might be too low, though.

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 12:23

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

To keep people from switching just make the reduced AC only apply to acid branded attacks.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 19:41

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

duvessa wrote:3d4 is as much average damage as +15 enchantment

the other major problem I can see is counting the AC reduction (it seems bad to be able to count it)

If you don't want to be able to count it, just don't display a message when it works, and you won't know if you got the coinflip -1 ac. I did intend that it would stack, so that in the average case, after 6 attacks, the mob would have -3AC. This would probably have a time on it, ie, it lasts for 20 turns, and applying a new stack of acid would set the timer back to 20 turns.

3d4 was an attempt to be somewhat lower then electric brand, which I believe is around 7-20 damage? I am probably off on the exact numbers. 7-20 is an average of ~14 damage, 3d4 would be 4.5 average damage (again I never know if a d4 rolls 0-3 or 1-4 in crawl; I'm assuming 0-3 here). The goal was to have 4.5 be roughly 1/3 elec damage because elec damage triggers only 1/3 strikes, and this would trigger every strike. If it's too high because of the added -ac effect, just lower the damage. 2d3?

I don't really see an issue with someone hitting something 8 times with an acid weapon and then switching to a different weapon...I don't think it would really be incentivized, unless your acid weapon has something like -5 damage enchantment, it's probably better to just kill them with the acid weapon. If you have another vastly more powerful weapon to begin with, just start with that on, taking off 4 ac from the monster isn't going to make much difference. If anything acid brand seems a bit weak, but it'll depend on the final numbers used.

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 20:13

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

tasonir wrote:If you don't want to be able to count it, just don't display a message when it works, and you won't know if you got the coinflip -1 ac. I did intend that it would stack, so that in the average case, after 6 attacks, the mob would have -3AC. This would probably have a time on it, ie, it lasts for 20 turns, and applying a new stack of acid would set the timer back to 20 turns.

It would need to be more than -1 per hit, since even -3 AC isn't all the significant a change in damage, and in your example you'd only get that after 6 attacks. Something like removing 0-3 AC every hit would probably be more usable and also prevent counting.

tasonir wrote:3d4 was an attempt to be somewhat lower then electric brand, which I believe is around 7-20 damage? I am probably off on the exact numbers. 7-20 is an average of ~14 damage, 3d4 would be 4.5 average damage (again I never know if a d4 rolls 0-3 or 1-4 in crawl; I'm assuming 0-3 here). The goal was to have 4.5 be roughly 1/3 elec damage because elec damage triggers only 1/3 strikes, and this would trigger every strike. If it's too high because of the added -ac effect, just lower the damage. 2d3?

Whether crawl rolls 3d4 or 3d(1d4-1) is entirely optional. Some things do one, others do the other. It's probably easiest to just specify what you want than to say one thing and assume it actually means something else.

AC damage is effectively a cumulative slaying effect on future attacks that tops out at the AC value of the target, so how it affects the damage output changes significantly from target to target and weapon to weapon. I would think you'd want the flat damage piece to do an average of +2/strike rather than elec's +4.5/strike, since 1) it has less chance of being resisted, 2) it (sort of) does something more than elec does, and 3) adding another brand exactly as powerful as elec would be pretty much just a strict buff to players.

Of course, elec already does some AC-ignoring, so maybe this isn't a particularly unique effect anyway.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 20:30

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

It does share a lot of similarities to elec, which was intentional. I believe it's different enough because of the way that it builds over time rather than being fixed from the start. Another difference is acid triggers on every attack, where elec is very spiky, doing huge damage only 1/3 of the time.

If -1 ac isn't powerful enough by all means roll 0-3 or similar - I tend to err on the side of caution when trying to give numbers, it's a lot less destabilizing to add something weak and then buff it rather than unbalance the game with an overpowered brand until it can be nerfed :)

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 21:42

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

Is there a good reason to have this apply an AC debuff instead of just ignoring AC entirely (possibly without the bonus damage at all)?

Most things have 10 AC or less to begin with anyway, so applying the debuff over multiple hits is very nearly the same situation, unless you want to go 1 AC at a time.

You might note, however, that the reason that short blades "fall off" later is because they're bad weapons at all parts of the game. Cutlass is 7/12 dam/delay at skill 0; trident is 9/13. Cutlass is 7/5 at skill 14; trident is 9/6. Oh, and the trident has reaching. A spear is literally a short sword with reaching. Quick blades are the only legitimately good short blade, and even then they lose value since you almost never find one before you get to 10 skill (part of the value is that they reach min delay at 8). And even then, qblade is 5/3 at min delay, only marginally better than dwhip's 11/5 or dblade's 13/6 (and usually worse in practice, unless you have an additive brand).

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Post Monday, 2nd June 2014, 01:23

Re: New acid brand similar to reworked corrosion effect

and into wrote:Also berserk, which has an amulet, an artefact property, a potion, and a different god dedicated to it.


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