Proposal: Mummy Improvement


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

Shoals Surfer

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Post Tuesday, 3rd June 2014, 15:05

Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Mummies currently suffer from the problem that their early game survivability rate is terrible. This stems from having multiple downsides: rF- can get them destroyed by a wand of flame or an orc wizard, no potions removes their ability to remove status effects/heal quickly/get an edge, and terrible aptitudes prevent them from getting ahead of the difficulty curve quickly without scumming or extreme specialization. The few upsides for the early game that they have (poison immunity from being undead, unbreathing, hungerless) do little to improve it.

However, by the late game, mummies have enough XP and equipment to offset their downsides, allowing them to become a powerhouse like most other species, potentially even stronger. Thus, instead of messing with their aptitudes and throwing this balance off, I propose improving mummies for the early game in a different way: All items that a mummy picks up become immediately identified. In flavor terms, this could be argued that a mummy had been around long enough to recognize what something is upon touching/reading/looking at it.

The idea behind this is to allow good players to keep themselves alive easier due to knowing what options they have available. For examples, this would give mummies an advantage of knowing what early scrolls they have (instead of read IDing them or holding out until they find identify). It also allows them to sort for better quality armor and weapons without trying pieces on and risking cursed items or unexpected distortion wields. Additionally, it can allow them to plan exactly around what wands and how many charges they have, without first needing high evocations or loads of spare identify scrolls.

Overlap with Ashenzari would occur, but this is why the identification is tied to pickup only. Like DD's passive mapping or Antennae's monster detection, it would be toned down compared to Ash's version. For example, loot in vaults would still be unidentified until retrieved, keeping it an interesting bait to draw players inside. Enemy equipment would also remain an unknown danger, meaning players will still need to be cautious. This also prevents mummies from being indirectly nerfed via shop prices changing in antique stores to match the identified price.

In conclusion, I believe this could improve mummies without altering their late game potential too severely, while keeping mummies as a challenging species.

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Post Tuesday, 3rd June 2014, 21:04

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

How is it better later? Technically a human starts a mile ahead and maintains that advantage. Torment doesn't really affect 3 rune games too significantly. Hunger isn't an issue, etc.

Forgot who said it a couple days ago but was something like 'for some reason many want the mummy to be bad and boring just to make fun of it'.

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Post Tuesday, 3rd June 2014, 21:24

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Apparently the idea is specific races should be "hard mode," even though that's incredibly spoilery as nothing in the game tells you that mummies are going to be complete shit.
The devs bring it up almost every time someone suggests buffing mummies.

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 3rd June 2014, 21:37

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

khalil wrote:nothing in the game tells you that mummies are going to be complete shit

Start a game as a Mummy.
Press q.
Press A.
Press m.
Congrats, you now you know mummies suck!

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Post Tuesday, 3rd June 2014, 21:43

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

I know that's a terrible drawback, but would someone who just started playing know?
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Spider Stomper

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Post Tuesday, 3rd June 2014, 21:54

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

This would be quite cool actually. The identification could be limited to non-artifact items only though.

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Post Tuesday, 3rd June 2014, 22:35

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Mummies currently suffer from the problem that their early game survivability rate is terrible.

Is this really a problem?

If you want to argue that the specific ways in which mummies are terrible are in contradiction to the design goals, then fine. But that doesn't seem to be your argument (and I don't think there is much argument even to be made here). At least, I don't see "give all races good early survivability" anywhere in the design philosophy...
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Post Tuesday, 3rd June 2014, 22:46

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

If you want to increase Mummy survivability, I think the best way would be to give them clarity so they don't get instakilled by every other orc wizard. Of course, do we really want to increase mummy survivability at all? They are a fun challenge and if someone is discouraged because their first character was a mummy that died, they probably would have been discouraged by any species.
take it easy

Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 00:44

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

WalkerBoh wrote:
Mummies currently suffer from the problem that their early game survivability rate is terrible.

Is this really a problem?

If you want to argue that the specific ways in which mummies are terrible are in contradiction to the design goals, then fine. But that doesn't seem to be your argument (and I don't think there is much argument even to be made here). At least, I don't see "give all races good early survivability" anywhere in the design philosophy...


The main target of my proposal is related to the Balance section in the design philosophy: Crawl aims to be a game where it is challenging and contains luck, but where player skill will have the biggest impact (with the added caveat that there will be situations where a player enters an unwinnable situation). The intention is also that, upon reaching the midgame, most deaths will come at the fault of the player. Mummies are not likely to reach the mid-game (where they are able to utilize this player skill) due to their combined weaknesses sabotaging them, leaving more players encountering 'unwinnable scenarios'. Thus comes into play my suggestion, where giving the player options which are already identified and ready to be used, puts the skill and tactical factor into the player's hands at an earlier state, allowing them to have better odds of getting past the increased number of 'unwinnable' scenarios caused by mummy weaknesses.

Your argument is completely valid that 'give all races good early survivability' is not in the design philosophy, including where the sub bullet 'Many different species' states that not all combinations of background and species need to play equally well, and some should be more challenging than others. This is why I decided to take the approach of giving mummies an ability in which they are not a better start passively (such as Gargoyle resistances, Merfolk aptitudes, or Demigod stats), but rather given a better start actively (where players know the identity of their early consumables/equipment, and can make better tactical decisions to better avoid/take out threats). With the increase in skill ceiling instead of directly from power, it would still keep mummies as a challenging species to play for new players, but make them more interesting to replay as a skilled player.

Cheibrodos wrote:If you want to increase Mummy survivability, I think the best way would be to give them clarity so they don't get instakilled by every other orc wizard.


Innate clarity was something I considered, but it would have balance repercussions later in the game as well (where mummies can then abuse channeling sources that can cause confusion without worry, the ability to trivialize a bunch of shoals threats, etc.).

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 01:29

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Floodkiller wrote:The intention is also that, upon reaching the midgame, most deaths will come at the fault of the player. Mummies are not likely to reach the mid-game (where they are able to utilize this player skill) due to their combined weaknesses sabotaging them, leaving more players encountering 'unwinnable scenarios'.

Thanks for the good explanation. I don't know if I agree with the premise that mummies are so difficult that a (relatively) high proportion of their deaths are unavoidable in the early game (and thus, taking player skill further out of the equation than other races). But it's a legitimate stance to defend. I think the only real no-win situations for mummies involve being confused upon coming into sight of an orc wizard, Sigmund, or enemy with a wand of confusion/fire (many of these can also easily be no-win situations for other races too, but not at such a high rate due to the availability of early !curing).

I think another argument you can make is that mummies are so terrible at the start that they encourage abusing the lack of a hunger clock through the early game. Slow leveling and bad apts mean that with bad luck you will struggle with normal D1 fodder, which could mean lots of running around in circles, or even worse, trying to scum each level for extra EXP. Felids suffer more severely from this brand of tedium, but you could make a similar case for mummies.

In the end though, I'm not sure how your proposed solution actually helps avoid no-win situations. When you're confused as a mummy, it doesn't matter which options you have because they're all pretty much disabled. Cheibrodos' solution hits the problem on the nose more squarely.

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 04:18

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Adding clarity is a pretty big change.

The point of this proposal wasn't to eliminate deaths to confusion, but to help mitigate the power curve problem. Being able to safely find that +2 leather, pick up a branded weapon, or use that scroll of blinking on D:1 can give a little extra nudge at a time when the mummy is struggling to kill even the easiest monsters, and without fear of getting stuck with an inferior armour or a -1,-3 dagger that completely neuters melee as an offensive option.

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 04:22

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

The power curve isn't really a problem though... Except for the unavoidable confusion deaths.
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Spider Stomper

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 08:45

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

I think the main point was to make mummies more interesting, not to make then significantly more powerful.
And auto-id would accomplish that quite well imho.
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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 09:14

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Well eventually (0.16 or so) everything will auto-id anyway, so mummies will go back to being non special.
Maybe they should have something cool about them that isn't just an interface cleanup.

Sar

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 09:32

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Is "the most challenging race in Crawl by far" not interesting enough for you people?
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Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 10:11

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Challenging, yes, certainly. Mummies are not much fun to play, though. Usually you can kind of simulate fun on otherwise boring races by just making them good at whatever boring trait they excel at (see: Mi/DE/Hu etc). Doing well can be fun. Mu are kind of the odd ones out here, being both boring and bad. If you like challenge for the sake of challenge, more power to you. I just wish that there was something that'd make mummies a bit more interesting for the rest of us.

Unfortunately I don't think this proposal would do much. The flavor behind why mummies auto-ID is kind of neat, but it neither is a very interesting trait nor a powerful one. Not having to ID potions leaves Mummies with pretty ridiculous ID-scroll reserves, so there's not much gain from auto-IDing. You'd save maybe a couple scrolls early game by not having to guess which stack is your ID stack, but not much else.

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 13:06

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Would clarity really mess up late-game balance that much? By the late game you probably have an amulet of clarity anyway, is the ability to wear Faith as well as having that really overpowered?

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 13:31

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

I love the idea of Auto-ID. Even if it isn't realized that way, I think mummies having ancient knowledge is an amazing idea that should be exploited somehow.

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 13:53

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

If clarity is too useful late game, it can disappear at some XL.

Edit. I meant as intrinsic for Mu.
Last edited by Sandman25 on Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 15:13, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 16:00

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

What about an active ability that removes current confusion, provides clarity for a number of turns (50 - 100?) and permanently costs one spell slot?
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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 16:54

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

jejorda2 wrote:What about an active ability that removes current confusion, provides clarity for a number of turns (50 - 100?) and permanently costs one spell slot?


These aren't Deep Dwarves.

What about the same ability, but the cost is immediate exhaustion, with clarity for the duration of the exhaustion?
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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 19:26

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

But exhaustion doesn't do anything but prevent abilities that cause exhaustion. It's not a very meaningful cost if the duration is the same as the buff.
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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 20:44

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

damiac wrote:But exhaustion doesn't do anything but prevent abilities that cause exhaustion. It's not a very meaningful cost if the duration is the same as the buff.


Even if it happens immediately as opposed to an after-effect? I'm fine with letting exhaustion last longer. I figured exhaustion had other effects like diminished combat ability and slightly slow response times.
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Post Wednesday, 4th June 2014, 20:59

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

From the infallible wiki:
Exhausted is a status effect you suffer from after any of the following:

Your berserker rage expires.
Your Death's Door spell wears off.
You perform a jump attack.

There is no way to prevent this status effect from hitting you after you've completed any of the above. However, the exhausted status' only effect on you is to prevent you from using any of the above abilities again until you've recovered. Note that this one status effect prevents all three options: having recently berserked will prevent you from escaping with a jump attack or casting Death's Door to survive in your weakened state.


From my own experience, I can also say I don't believe it has any effect whatsoever, except for preventing you from using an ability which causes exhaustion.

So I don't think it really fits with an ability that cures or prevents confusion, since you're not going need to use it in close succession or anything. What if it just drained MP to 0, cured confusion, and gave 2 int drain? So you couldn't keep using it, or else your int would get drained way down. Of course, you could fix the int drain using the special mummy ability once it becomes available.

I don't know, personally I think confusion isn't even the biggest problem for mummies (although it's a big one). The biggest problem is they're purposely set up to be behind the power curve, and that only gets worse until you get to the point where experience is essentially infinite. On top of that, they can't use potions to temporarily increase their power level, making the problem all that much worse, and also removing a lot of the tactical decisions that potions present.

FR: Mummies start with potions of XP and beneficial mutation identified, so they feel extra bad when they see those awesome potions they can't have.

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 05:00

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

What if mummies with auto identify could use ID scrolls to heal themselves slightly?

That or infuse scrolls of ID with potions, so they can "use" potions, but have limited use of them.

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 08:44

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

You guys seem to have driven off the main topic and over-analyze some non-related issue.

If you have problems with mummies, let's make it clear. OP's proposal WILL NOT SOLVE your problems. Instead it's fun, has flavor behind it and I do not see a clear reason why it couldn't be implemented. Let's have it, let's bring some breeze into embalmed mummy life.

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 10:38

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Bart wrote:You guys seem to have driven off the main topic and over-analyze some non-related issue.

If you have problems with mummies, let's make it clear. OP's proposal WILL NOT SOLVE your problems. Instead it's fun, has flavor behind it and I do not see a clear reason why it couldn't be implemented. Let's have it, let's bring some breeze into embalmed mummy life.


I couldn't agree more, Mummys only positive attribute is that they have no hunger costs but hunger is hardly a problem for any race these days. Adding in something like OPs proposal would differentiate them more - yeah, they'd still be challenging, but it'd fit well into the challenging tactical aspect of Mummys by giving them the ability to use the tools around them to survive. Late game it wouldn't make much of a difference, as you can afford to waste stuff and it's not really a problem. But earlier on it's a big deal if you've only got one scroll of blinking and you use-id it.

I do like the idea of them having intrinsic clarity from a flavour/further differentiation through, but it might be too strong I suppose.
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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 13:01

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Well intrinsic clarity would reverse one of their biggest weaknesses.

Along those lines of thought, what if confusion somehow wasn't completely bad on a mummy? Like, when confused, the mummy's memories of its past life come to the surface, and the mummy temporarily has its skills randomly shuffled for the duration of the confusion, but can still act normally. So your spell slinging MuCj is suddenly proficient at long blades for 50 turns, but has no casting skill. It's pretty out there, I know, but if any race could afford to be a little more 'out there' it's mummies.

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 13:06

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

damiac wrote:Well intrinsic clarity would reverse one of their biggest weaknesses.

Along those lines of thought, what if confusion somehow wasn't completely bad on a mummy? Like, when confused, the mummy's memories of its past life come to the surface, and the mummy temporarily has its skills randomly shuffled for the duration of the confusion, but can still act normally. So your spell slinging MuCj is suddenly proficient at long blades for 50 turns, but has no casting skill. It's pretty out there, I know, but if any race could afford to be a little more 'out there' it's mummies.


Interesting, although I imagine that there's not that many situations where it'd make a difference. In early game where you normally get confused (low MR), you're not going to have the items to deal with a rapid change of skills, and you're not going to want to move out of your 'zone', especially for the duration of a confusion so would probably run away. Furthermore, when you get confused you're usually in combat, so the likely hood of you changing weapons/armour is low, especially considering how fragile you are.

I do agree they could be made more interesting though, and probably clarity is a just too much of a straight buff.
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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 14:36

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

I know, my proposal has a lot of problems, unless it was somewhat targetted to give you actually usable skills. Having your Cj suddenly have tons of transmutation skill wouldn't do you any good. At least you'd be able to run away,but then, why even bother messing with the skills...

What if confusion just applied a drain effect to mummies? Or if they had an activated ability that converted confusion to drain? Not that early game mummies can really take being drained very much...

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 15:03

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

damiac wrote:I know, my proposal has a lot of problems, unless it was somewhat targetted to give you actually usable skills. Having your Cj suddenly have tons of transmutation skill wouldn't do you any good. At least you'd be able to run away,but then, why even bother messing with the skills...

What if confusion just applied a drain effect to mummies? Or if they had an activated ability that converted confusion to drain? Not that early game mummies can really take being drained very much...

Having confusion give an alternate effect might be quite useful, although I can't think what would be good to substitute it with. What if it dropped evasion or something - like that it didn't fully confuse you?
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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 15:12

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

What about something like the daze effect? It could either make you sometimes fail to take an action, or just make actions randomly take extra time. So you're not helpless, and you'll at least move in the right direction, but it's still a pretty major debuff. The biggest benefit would be you could still cast, although somewhat less effectively than usual.

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 20:35

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

confuse is not big reason for mummy early game deaths, where they are very very fragile, so i have no idea why you people keep obsessing over, making it sound like some huge flaw that needs immediate fixing.

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 20:48

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Hey... i just follow the topics wherever they go. What, I'm supposed to consider whether the problem presented is actually a problem too?

You make a fair point. I've played a few mummies, and confusion isn't what killed them. (What killed them was that they suck)
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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 21:22

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Is stat recovery based on time or exp gained like drain? it seems like this has come up before but didn't find a clear answer by searching.
It could be a good idea to give mummies a tick or a half or Sustain abilities.

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 21:39

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

KittenInMyCerealz wrote:confuse is not big reason for mummy early game deaths, where they are very very fragile, so i have no idea why you people keep obsessing over, making it sound like some huge flaw that needs immediate fixing.

Mummies are actually not that fragile right away. If you're the type of player who doesn't usually die before Lair, confusion is your biggest threat in the early game as a mummy.

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Post Thursday, 5th June 2014, 23:54

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Whether or not one finds GDD useful—please remember that this is, for better and for worse, GDD.

Please post responsibly.

(Specifically: If you propose something, give some rationale for why your proposal would be a good thing. If you disagree with someone's proposal or reasoning, state why.)
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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 17:36

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Why not just remove the fire vulnerability?

Confusion sucks, but it doesn't last very long. What makes Sigmund and orc wizards hyper lethal is that they have both the confusion spell and fire attacks (to which mummies are vulnerable).

Giving mummies clarity sounds OP, so why not just remove the other part of the monster combo?
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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 19:17

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Confusion doesn't last very long, but if something confused you once it can use the spell again and again as much as it feels like. Since a mummy can't cure the status effect period, you either die or don't die based on a completely random roll of the dice every time a monster with that spell gets line-of-sight on you. Unless you have one of a tiny handful of countermeasures already prepared, you get to laboriously tell your character to take a random action until your character dies. At least with paralysis, you don't have to role-play your character's complete helplessness one turn at a time until you receive the sweet relief of death. In the worst case, your regeneration is greater than the amount of damage the monsters deal, so you get to attempt random actions forever.

It doesn't matter how rare confusion deaths actually are or are not for mummies. It's an exceedingly un-fun death that is determined purely by random chance, so even a rare event is excessive. Monster confusion attacks are balanced on the assumption that curing is easy and readily available. In only the case of mummies is this assumption invalid.

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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 19:42

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

What if(and I know this is batshit crazy) we just let mummies drink potions. In my estimation, even if they could drink potions, they still... kinda suck. But it fixes most of their early survival issues, and makes confusion less of a problem.

I know I'm breaking tradition here... but who cares. Mummies have a lot of problems, but a good amount of them stem from the fact that they can't quaff.

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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 19:46

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

damiac wrote:What if(and I know this is batshit crazy) we just let mummies drink potions. In my estimation, even if they could drink potions, they still... kinda suck. But it fixes most of their early survival issues, and makes confusion less of a problem.

I know I'm breaking tradition here... but who cares. Mummies have a lot of problems, but a good amount of them stem from the fact that they can't quaff.

The problem is not being able to drink potions is their defining problem. A buff to their attributes or something, that'd be OK, but giving them potions just makes them shitty humans.

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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 20:37

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

I'd say their RF- is another defining problem.
Their insanely bad XP apt is yet another defining problem.
Their terrible apts are another defining problem.

If with potions, they're just shitty humans, without potions, they're just shitty shitty humans.

Anyway, their undead and non-eating status is what really defines them. Admittedly, no potions are a large part of why they suck so bad, but once again, do they need to suck so bad? They'd still be interesting without no potion conduct. Maybe even more interesting, since you'd get to see more of the game with them on average.

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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 20:43

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

damiac wrote:I'd say their RF- is another defining problem.
Their insanely bad XP apt is yet another defining problem.
Their terrible apts are another defining problem.

If with potions, they're just shitty humans, without potions, they're just shitty shitty humans.

Anyway, their undead and non-eating status is what really defines them. Admittedly, no potions are a large part of why they suck so bad, but once again, do they need to suck so bad? They'd still be interesting without no potion conduct. Maybe even more interesting, since you'd get to see more of the game with them on average.

I'm definitely of the opinion they should suck less, but No Potions is their specific suckitude that no-one else has. Bad apts, on the other hand, can be found in other places(Ogres trying to do anything other than GSC + Trog).(Rf- is also mummy specific, but it also results in 1 hit kills and should probably be removed.)

Barkeep

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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 21:10

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

My two cents:

1.) Keep no potions conduct, keep current (bad) apts, lose the rF-, lose the rC+ (it isn't like that's particularly interesting/neat either).
2.) Make mummies a special case such that they gain short-term immunity to confusion after being confused once (prevent chain-confusion).

Sar

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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 21:22

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

Would intrinsic clarity really be that OP? I mean, if confusion deaths are bad (and they probably are!) it would just stop it. I guess it would also prevent mesmerise, fear, some miscasts and allow for easier use of some channeling items, but I don't think that'd be that large of a buff.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 11th June 2014, 21:31

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

None of the buffs in this thread would make mummies OP. They would need several very large changes at the same time (all apts to 0, able to use potions/clarity, remove rF-) to start to become above average. I don't think anyone's suggesting all of those changes together.

The question is if they are officially crawl's challenge race or if improving them towards average race strength is a desirable goal. I don't think there's ever been official word on that. For the record the mummies I've played rarely ever have any problems with confusion - mummies have pretty good natural MR and you can just wear one MR item and never be confused. What kills me more is not having access to regeneration (the spell). This lead to my recent death in the abyss at level 26: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 183127.txt. I really shouldn't have bothered going for the abyssal rune and just won, but hindsight is 20/20. I don't think I was ever confused once in that game.

Bim

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Post Thursday, 12th June 2014, 16:54

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

tasonir wrote:None of the buffs in this thread would make mummies OP. They would need several very large changes at the same time (all apts to 0, able to use potions/clarity, remove rF-) to start to become above average. I don't think anyone's suggesting all of those changes together.

The question is if they are officially crawl's challenge race or if improving them towards average race strength is a desirable goal. I don't think there's ever been official word on that. For the record the mummies I've played rarely ever have any problems with confusion - mummies have pretty good natural MR and you can just wear one MR item and never be confused.


Agreed, although clarity stops a few other effects and I have been caught with clarity problems (mesmerise) but it's certainly not OP.

I don't think there's any need for a dedicated 'challenge class' (although mummys will still stay difficult) because you can just choose a completely terrible race/class combo if you want a challenge.

Giving mummys clarity would be enough of a buff to help out on occasion.
2012 Winner of fewest proposed ideas implemented by devs.

Sar

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Post Thursday, 12th June 2014, 18:03

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

MuNe being bad isn't a spoiler because you can play any other Ne and realize that MuNe is bad.

Barkeep

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Post Thursday, 12th June 2014, 18:22

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

I don't think something qualifies as a "spoiler" if you can reasonably experience/learn about it through normal game play. The game doesn't tell you right off the bat that curare is really powerful and you should use it, but the first time you play an assassin, you'll learn that on your own. By your definition anything that the game does not explicitly tell you beforehand is a "spoiler." That's a bad definition of spoiler.

An example of a true spoiler would be something like "Elbereth" in Nethack or bread-swinging in Crawl. The fact that the former is a huge aspect of game play in Nethack while the latter is a niche practice of some speedrunners in DCSS does tell you something about differences in the nature of these games and that Crawl does try to avoid spoilerish stuff.

EDIT: Thx Koboldlord, didn't realize that Nethack explained Elbereth in the manual. (Agree that it is a horrible mechanic though.)

Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Thursday, 12th June 2014, 18:37

Re: Proposal: Mummy Improvement

It's not a spoiler, but I think it could needlessly put off new players.
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