Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice


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

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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 22:21

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Lasty wrote:A solution to both issues proposed in ##crawl-dev: Apocalypse temporarily destroys all rock walls/liquids in LOS.

Edit: I think we're going to not apply any solutions for now and just say "that's the consequence of making those sacrifices."

While dig might be the simplest way to get into the slime vaults, it's far from the only one. If you gave up wands and were running slime, I think it's fair to assume the player should plan a work around for getting in. Once TRJ is dead, isn't -ctele removed? You could just control teleport in. I've done this on characters who could dig just so I wouldn't have to have slimes following me and trying to eat things. Or if I just forgot a digging wand. There's also passwall and LRD, which aren't that hard to learn, although LRD will require a fair amount of spellpower. It just encourages thinking out your character and planning for alternatives to the standard solution, which is imho the best part about Ru. 90% of my games I never read a scroll of fog, use many scrolls of fear, bother with any wands that are MR resistable (polymorph, confusion, paralyze, etc)...There's a lot of useful but not necessary items in crawl. You only need about half of them to have a "complete" solution to crawl, and so I tend to never use the other half. Ru restricts your options and you therefore either have to start using something you might ordinarily drop, or you get some god-power for completely removing it from your toolkit. Both outcomes are interesting :)

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Post Sunday, 21st September 2014, 08:40

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

You could be out of tele scroll and without passwall or lrd (or having sac earth magic)

Anyway, a little "bug": it seems there isn't indicator about silenced monster (I guess because till now the only way to get that was silence aura), it would be nice to add it (like blindness or whatever).
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Post Sunday, 21st September 2014, 10:39

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

nago wrote:You could be out of tele scroll and without passwall or lrd (or having sac earth magic)

Luckily pan and abyss exist for infinite sources of all consumables if you're REALLY desperate.

(!learn add desperate I'm with ru and...)

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Post Sunday, 21st September 2014, 13:02

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Patashu wrote:
nago wrote:You could be out of tele scroll and without passwall or lrd (or having sac earth magic)

Luckily pan and abyss exist for infinite sources of all consumables if you're REALLY desperate.

(!learn add desperate I'm with ru and...)


Scumming Pan and Abyss until you find enough teleport scrolls to teleport into the slime rune chamber through sheer luck sounds like the worst idea ever. Personally, I think if a combination of sacrifices can put you into a situation where that's your best option, we may as well act as if that combination of sacrifices makes getting that rune impossible.

tasonir wrote:
Lasty wrote:A solution to both issues proposed in ##crawl-dev: Apocalypse temporarily destroys all rock walls/liquids in LOS.

Edit: I think we're going to not apply any solutions for now and just say "that's the consequence of making those sacrifices."

While dig might be the simplest way to get into the slime vaults, it's far from the only one. If you gave up wands and were running slime, I think it's fair to assume the player should plan a work around for getting in. Once TRJ is dead, isn't -ctele removed? You could just control teleport in. I've done this on characters who could dig just so I wouldn't have to have slimes following me and trying to eat things. Or if I just forgot a digging wand. There's also passwall and LRD, which aren't that hard to learn, although LRD will require a fair amount of spellpower. It just encourages thinking out your character and planning for alternatives to the standard solution, which is imho the best part about Ru. 90% of my games I never read a scroll of fog, use many scrolls of fear, bother with any wands that are MR resistable (polymorph, confusion, paralyze, etc)...There's a lot of useful but not necessary items in crawl. You only need about half of them to have a "complete" solution to crawl, and so I tend to never use the other half. Ru restricts your options and you therefore either have to start using something you might ordinarily drop, or you get some god-power for completely removing it from your toolkit. Both outcomes are interesting :)


A single sacrifice arcana could take out earth magic and translocations, which eliminates every alternative to a wand of digging that you mentioned. There's still random teleporting, but I made my stance on that clear above.

I agree that coming up with contingency plans when your usual options are gone is interesting, but I think there are limits. Ru is all about coming up with contingency plans to make up for the things you're missing. Handling resistances with only one ring and no shield, not being able to rely on potions, wands, or evokables to escape, figuring out how to make sure you have good enough defenses with 0 dodging and/or armour.

But those are all general, interesting, strategic decisions. Personally, I don't think "I need to keep a way of getting into the Slime Vaults" or "I need a method of flight" for Coc is an interesting decision, primarily because the contingency plans for them if you've missed all your options are, in my opinion, tedious and awkward, not tricky. Fighting without your usual tools is interesting. Figuring out how to deal with situations like Vaults 5, or the Royal Jelly, or the Pan or Hell lords without whatever tools you've used on previous characters can lead to sum interesting and creating strategies. I'm not convinced the same is true for trying to navigate Coc 7 with no access to flight or Slime 6 with no access to cTele or digging. Scumming abyss for flight potions and teleport scrolls because you don't have access to flight, cTele, or digging is not fun.

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Post Sunday, 21st September 2014, 15:30

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Quazifuji wrote:A single sacrifice arcana could take out earth magic and translocations, which eliminates every alternative to a wand of digging that you mentioned. There's still random teleporting, but I made my stance on that clear above.

To be fair, you can't give up Conjurations also in the same Sac Arcana (it can't offer Translocations and also Conjurations at the same time), so if we restricted players to one Sac Arcana, that'd handle the Slime rune. Cocytus is a bit of a different case, since only flight will get you through, but there is the ring of teleport solution. Also, I think boots of flight auto-turn-on when worn, so you could still use those too.

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Post Sunday, 21st September 2014, 19:26

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Lasty wrote:
Quazifuji wrote:A single sacrifice arcana could take out earth magic and translocations, which eliminates every alternative to a wand of digging that you mentioned. There's still random teleporting, but I made my stance on that clear above.

To be fair, you can't give up Conjurations also in the same Sac Arcana (it can't offer Translocations and also Conjurations at the same time), so if we restricted players to one Sac Arcana, that'd handle the Slime rune. Cocytus is a bit of a different case, since only flight will get you through, but there is the ring of teleport solution. Also, I think boots of flight auto-turn-on when worn, so you could still use those too.


Didn't realize conjurations was in the same arcana group as translocations, this does give more options. That said, if you character isn't already using heavy conjurations, scumming Pan/Abyss for enough experience to cast OoD still sounds incredibly tedious, if not quite as bad as trying to get in through random teleportation.

But this isn't the most important point I'm trying to make. My issue isn't whether or not there exist ways to get the Slime and Coc runes if you're determined enough if you've sacrificed evocations and certain spell schools. My issue is that it doesn't make choosing your sacrifices more interesting, and arguably makes it less interesting.

Sacrificing two arcanas and evocations can have very interesting implications on your character's combat abilities. I think choosing whether to sacrifice evocations when you're already missing the vast majority of magic is a big one, because evocations is often used for berserkers or other characters with little-to-no magic as a way of making up for the utility they lose by not using magic. It's tricky, and trying to get by with the lack of utility that a character with no invocations and very little magic would have is interesting.

The fact that this decision also makes getting the Coc and Slime runes incredibly annoying overshadows this interesting decision somewhat. Let's say I'm interested in going for extended, but I'm missing the relevant schools of magic and presented with the possibility of sacrificing evocations, or I'm missing some of the schools and evocations and presented with a sacrifice arcana that could take the rest. The idea would be for me to think "huh, can I get by without that? I'm missing a lot of utility already, I'll be relying pretty much exclusively on consumables and god powers now. Let's see...." But instead, I might end up just thinking "if I do that I'm gonna have to random teleport around Coc and Slime 6 and I haven't found a ring of teleportation so I might have to Abyss or Pan scum to even do that. That sounds really stupid, so I'm gonna sacrifice something else to avoid that."

So instead of following the more interesting thought process, I've just decided to not bother because teleporting for those runes sounds like too big a nuisance. Is that really desirable?

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Post Monday, 22nd September 2014, 11:20

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

I have no experience with Ru, but I'd like to mention that you can access the hell runes in dragon form also.

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Post Monday, 22nd September 2014, 15:33

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Quazifuji wrote:Didn't realize conjurations was in the same arcana group as translocations, this does give more options. That said, if you character isn't already using heavy conjurations, scumming Pan/Abyss for enough experience to cast OoD still sounds incredibly tedious

Well, if you're going for 15 runes, there's a good chance you can scrape together 2-3x wizardry and a potion of brilliance. At that point, you don't need much investment at all to get OoD to a level where you can manage to cast it once. And this scenario only comes up when you sacrifice earth (Passwall, LRD, Shatter) and charms (controlled teleport) and also evocations, which is to say, on a tiny minority of characters.

Sac Artifice (Evo) still allows you to use boots of flying, since they're always-on, though of course they don't spawn in every game, even on 15 runes. Honestly, I see that as being more an issue with the water-heavy Cocytus layouts than anything else -- small islands could be added to bridge >3 tile gaps, allowing for Power Leap to get you through.

Quazifuji wrote:Sacrificing two arcanas and evocations can have very interesting implications on your character's combat abilities. I think choosing whether to sacrifice evocations when you're already missing the vast majority of magic is a big one, because evocations is often used for berserkers or other characters with little-to-no magic as a way of making up for the utility they lose by not using magic. It's tricky, and trying to get by with the lack of utility that a character with no invocations and very little magic would have is interesting.

I pushed a change this morning to limit players to one Arcana sacrifice -- I don't want Ru to feel too much like Trog, and it seemed like most players who sacrificed Arcana once went for twice and then ignored magic. I think it's more interesting to have players use a restricted subset of magic than to forswear it entirely.

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Post Monday, 22nd September 2014, 20:40

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

I played a couple of games with Ru and though I didn't win, I have a couple of suggestions.

1) I don't think that Draw Out Power should make you exhausted. It could be on a different timer and a possible solution could be the following: The power of the auras depends on an extra parameter that is aura strength = piety/200. The player is informed of this by an additionaly status symbol, let's call it "Aura". Whenever the player uses Draw Out Power, the parameter aura strength gets reduced as if piety got reduced by 70. If there is not enough aura strength, Draw Out Power cannot be used. The auras recover by 1 per turn.

This is a bit of a buff, since at high piety it would allow Draw Out Power to be used twice in quick succession, but on the other hand it significantly reduces the power of the auras, which is an interesting detriment.

2) There need to be additional sacrifices, especially to make Ru more appealing to hybrids who have less "obvious" sacrifices.
A couple that I can think of are: 1) Sacrifice food - monsters don't generate "fleshy" corpses anymore, just hides and skeletons (spriggans and mummies should not be allowed to make it probably) and 2) Sacrifice speed gives the ponderous effect.

While the above have a certain overlap with Gozag and Chei, it is small enough to not matter that much.

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Post Saturday, 27th September 2014, 20:14

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

I've just started trying out Ru (I've been away from Crawl for some time...)

Given the flavor and effects of Apocalypse, I really enjoy the pun in the name.

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Post Saturday, 27th September 2014, 21:22

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

tasonir wrote:While dig might be the simplest way to get into the slime vaults, it's far from the only one. If you gave up wands and were running slime, I think it's fair to assume the player should plan a work around for getting in. Once TRJ is dead, isn't -ctele removed? You could just control teleport in. I've done this on characters who could dig just so I wouldn't have to have slimes following me and trying to eat things. Or if I just forgot a digging wand. There's also passwall and LRD, which aren't that hard to learn, although LRD will require a fair amount of spellpower.


You can also look for an eye of destruction to blast a wall for you, though this may involve some scumming. You could even lure a boring beetle from lair or something capable of digging from the dungeon/depths, though having to drag a deep troll earth mage all the way from depths to slime 6 is not what most people would call fun.

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Post Saturday, 27th September 2014, 21:52

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon wrote:
tasonir wrote:While dig might be the simplest way to get into the slime vaults, it's far from the only one. If you gave up wands and were running slime, I think it's fair to assume the player should plan a work around for getting in. Once TRJ is dead, isn't -ctele removed? You could just control teleport in. I've done this on characters who could dig just so I wouldn't have to have slimes following me and trying to eat things. Or if I just forgot a digging wand. There's also passwall and LRD, which aren't that hard to learn, although LRD will require a fair amount of spellpower.


You can also look for an eye of destruction to blast a wall for you, though this may involve some scumming. You could even lure a boring beetle from lair or something capable of digging from the dungeon/depths, though having to drag a deep troll earth mage all the way from depths to slime 6 is not what most people would call fun.

Jorgrun is clearly the best choice.

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Post Sunday, 28th September 2014, 16:45

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Looking for a one-stop summary that is up to date. Is the OP the most current? Trying to mentally patch together a summary from the thread's stream of updates is a bit insurmountable for me. TIA, standing at an altar right now.

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Post Sunday, 28th September 2014, 16:56

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Just take it and learn as you go! What's the worst that could happen? You die?

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Post Sunday, 28th September 2014, 16:59

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Well, no, that's likely to happen anyway! Just want to make the best use of it for the little time I can operate there. :)

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Post Sunday, 28th September 2014, 17:16

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

So what does "Sacrifice courage" do? Courage doesn't even come up in a keyword search on this thread. Is there another discussion thread somewhere?

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Post Sunday, 28th September 2014, 17:23

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Probably the best thing to do is to query it in ##crawl. I think it's pretty up to date on Ru. I'd go do it for you now but I'm not on my computer.

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Post Sunday, 28th September 2014, 17:39

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

And, um, what would a query seeking for information on "sacrifice courage" look like in ##crawl? I'm in there now.

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Post Sunday, 28th September 2014, 17:41

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

just type ??sacrifice courage. Or you can ask someone in there, usually there are plenty of people around to help you out.

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Post Sunday, 28th September 2014, 23:17

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Can't check right now but sac courage should be old sac sanity: you suffer -slay and - spellpower depending on how many dangerous monster you have in LOS at same time
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Post Monday, 29th September 2014, 02:56

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Thanks, I did manage to get the info off of ##crawl. Sequell didn't find anything on 'reject sacrifices' though. I asked and someone told me, and then I opted not to do it. Made one sacrifice (Essence - called "trivial" in the game) that didn't make a pip of piety. What happens if it finishes offering stuff and you never reach max piety? Is that a conceivable outcome?

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Post Monday, 29th September 2014, 07:37

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

What does "Sacrifice hand" do to Formicids and Octopodes?

Do octopodes lose just one ring slot and 2h weapons and shields? I have always imagined octopodes using multiple tentacles to manipulate heavy objects, since individually tentacles are not that strong, but together they can be as powerfull as any other limbs. So do octopodes become heptapodes, hexapodes or tetrapodes when sacrificing tentacles? (Hexapodes is assuming they use 4 tentacles for mobing and 4 for item manipulations, thus giving up 2 tentacles)

Formicids could loose just one out of 4 hands, making them unable to wield 2h weapons+shields and losing one ring slot. They could still wield 1h + shield. Or they could loose both hands from one side, allowing for 2h or 1h weapons, but no shield. Loosing the ability to use 2h weapons and shields and 1 ring slot, like all other species would really make this far greater sacrifice for formicids, since they are loosing their biggest asset to balance the constant stasis.

I am currently looking for a Ru altar on a formicid fighter to see how it works for now.

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Post Monday, 29th September 2014, 13:43

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Aule, I added reject sacrifices to Sequell/learndb. It's not possible to "run out" of sacrifices without either using wizmode or repeatedly abandoning and then rejoining Ru, but if you do manage to do it, Ru stops offering sacrifices.

MrRokkomies, octopodes lose one ring slot, the ability to wield shields, and the ability to wield 2h weapons. The rough flavor justification is that it takes 2x tentacles to manage what one human limb could do, so have 7 tentacles is not really more useful than 6, except for the ring that the 7th tentacle can wear.

Formicids lose access to a ring and to shields like other species, but do not lose access to two-handed weapons, because they can wield them "one-handed". In this case, the flavor is that you've sacrificed the hand on your greater non-dominant arm, and the remaining lesser arm on that side can't manage anything on its own.

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Post Monday, 29th September 2014, 13:46

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

For anyone else seeking Ru info, the most up-to-date source will be the learndb/Sequell. Enough has been changing that keeping other sources up to date is time-consuming. You can also follow the change log at http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=summary for the latest updates both to Ru and to the game in general.

Once things settle down, I'll post an update that captures the current state of Ru's mechanics.

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Post Monday, 29th September 2014, 18:42

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Lasty wrote:Aule, I added reject sacrifices to Sequell/learndb.

Could you also add something like "ru abilities" for an overview, as well? If the OP is current in that regard, then just disregard.

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Post Monday, 29th September 2014, 19:04

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

I think the OP is fairly up-to-date, but in case it isn't, try asking Sequell "??ru[2" to get a list of powers. For details, try ??ru redirection, ??ru retaliation, ??draw out power, ??power leap, and ??apocalypse -- as separate queries of course.

Edit: also set ??ru abilities to redirect to ru[2].

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Post Monday, 29th September 2014, 19:06

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Is he Iashol or Ru? The OP says Iashol a lot... and it reads like it sounds.
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Post Monday, 29th September 2014, 22:40

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

XuaXua wrote:Is he Iashol or Ru? The OP says Iashol a lot... and it reads like it sounds.


The god is named Ru, I assume Lasty didn't feel like going back to edit all the references to Iashol.

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Post Tuesday, 30th September 2014, 14:08

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Yeah, the god's name was originally Iashol, but got changed to Ru after it was pointed out that Iashol is usually read as "I, asshole". The original post has been left as-is in the interest of historical accuracy (read: laziness).
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Post Friday, 3rd October 2014, 01:23

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

lessens wrote:It was actually probably more interesting in this game than most others because I often found myself choosing spells based on their lack of blood, particularly IOoD, which basically made it impossible to cast after a single use. It also forced me off the Vaults:5 stairs, which was neat.


Now we gotta allow you to sacrifice sight, so you can keep your sanity in check.

Sacrifice LOS: You can only see 180 degrees in front of you.

Sacrifice perception: You can't see color, and are unable to distinguish foes.


Also, a comment on "free piety" (e.g. sacrificing magic as trolls or minos)

Why not have the piety gains scale off the aptitude of the skill sacrificed?
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Post Friday, 3rd October 2014, 01:38

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Lyrick wrote:Now we gotta allow you to sacrifice sight, so you can keep your sanity in check.

Sacrifice LOS: You can only see 180 degrees in front of you.

Sacrifice perception: You can't see color, and are unable to distinguish foes.


The player doesn't really have a "front". I've seen other suggestions for mutations/effects that keep you from identifying monsters outside a certain radius, that might work.

(And, since it's been on my mind: Sacrifice Potential: each time you take it your maximum level cap is reduced, so your XL and skill levels all max out at 26 (or 25, 24, based on however many times you made the sacrifice). It's much more of a strategic thing than a tactical one, though.)

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Post Friday, 3rd October 2014, 12:59

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Lyrick wrote:Also, a comment on "free piety" (e.g. sacrificing magic as trolls or minos)

Why not have the piety gains scale off the aptitude of the skill sacrificed?

Aptitude isn't really that significant. More significant would be scaling off a combination of aptitude, intelligence, and number of wizardry object discovered, but that's not a great approach, because that piety is already not free -- they can't use the magic schools sacrificed, and if they hadn't done that, they could have. Would they have? That's hard to judge. But for even the stupidest troll, it can mean losing access to spells like Stoneskin, Ozo's Armour, Swiftness, Repel Missiles, etc.

If your minotaurs and trolls never learn any spells, then you're already making an uncompensated sacrifice. Ru just gives you credit for your sacrificial conduct.

nicolae wrote:Sacrifice Potential: each time you take it your maximum level cap is reduced, so your XL and skill levels all max out at 26 (or 25, 24, based on however many times you made the sacrifice).

Getting skills to 27 isn't that good anyway, and your 27th experience level is one of the least important ones. I had something similar but less long-term in mind:
* Sacrifice Experience - lose two experience levels immediately. Piety value scaled by aptitude, since that applies directly in this case.
* Sacrifice Skill - Your skill aptitudes get -1 and your current skill level in each skill is recalculated based on new aptitude.

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Post Friday, 3rd October 2014, 14:28

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Why not lower XP aptitude and do the same thing? Maybe yours is a harsher penalty up front which might be better, hard to say.

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Post Friday, 3rd October 2014, 22:45

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Lasty wrote:Getting skills to 27 isn't that good anyway, and your 27th experience level is one of the least important ones.


I'd considered that, but I figured that the first sacrifice (from 27->26) would be a relatively minor one, with subsequent offers taking off more levels at a time (-2, -3, -4... or even -2, -4, -8...) and giving more piety.

I had something similar but less long-term in mind:
* Sacrifice Experience - lose two experience levels immediately. Piety value scaled by aptitude, since that applies directly in this case.
* Sacrifice Skill - Your skill aptitudes get -1 and your current skill level in each skill is recalculated based on new aptitude.


Sacrifice Skill would be painful, especially since the higher powers use Draining as a cost.

Just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on sacrifices, like the level cap sacrifice, that don't immediately effect the character but might cause problems for them later?

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Post Friday, 3rd October 2014, 22:48

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

nicolae wrote:
Lasty wrote:Getting skills to 27 isn't that good anyway, and your 27th experience level is one of the least important ones.


I'd considered that, but I figured that the first sacrifice (from 27->26) would be a relatively minor one, with subsequent offers taking off more levels at a time (-2, -3, -4... or even -2, -4, -8...) and giving more piety.

I had something similar but less long-term in mind:
* Sacrifice Experience - lose two experience levels immediately. Piety value scaled by aptitude, since that applies directly in this case.
* Sacrifice Skill - Your skill aptitudes get -1 and your current skill level in each skill is recalculated based on new aptitude.


Sacrifice Skill would be painful, especially since the higher powers use Draining as a cost.

Just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on sacrifices, like the level cap sacrifice, that don't immediately effect the character but might cause problems for them later?


Losing levels earlier in the game is a lot more meaningful than losing them later. Sure, there's some difference between a level 24 character and a level 27 one, but it's a difference that's a lot less likely to get you killed than the difference between a level 12 character and a level 15 one.

Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Saturday, 4th October 2014, 01:44

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

johlstei wrote:Losing levels earlier in the game is a lot more meaningful than losing them later. Sure, there's some difference between a level 24 character and a level 27 one, but it's a difference that's a lot less likely to get you killed than the difference between a level 12 character and a level 15 one.


That's also a good point. Oh well.

(On a less-serious note: Sacrifice Power: Give up "Draw out power" for piety!)

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 4th October 2014, 01:52

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

sacrifice life, for felids only

Spider Stomper

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Post Saturday, 4th October 2014, 08:43

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Little thing I saw on my local version :
When you redirect an enemy's attack, you can see its name, even if he is invisible. I had "you redirect the unseen horror's attack", without seeing invisible :)

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 13:23

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

With sac love, weapon animated with tukima's dance are still friendly. Is this intentional or an inattention?
Furthermore, neither necro nor summoning spells state that formed creatures will be hostile to player - I believe it would be good to say somewhere in spell description (tried with a. skeletons and sbutterflies, don't know others)
screw it I hate this character I'm gonna go melee Gastronok

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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 17:16

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

It's not intended that tukima's dance should create friendly weapons. I'll put that on my list.

I'm fine with necro/summoning spells not warning the player explicitly for two reasons: 1) it's not particularly easy to support, and 2) it doesn't seem necessary to me. The player was already warned that everything will hate them, so it's not like it's a surprise, and if I put warnings on spells, I'd probably also have to put warnings on evocables, on wand of enslavement, etc, and the way descriptions work it's not particularly clean to add text to them based on changing states. Worst-case scenario, the player tries it once, gets a surprise, and then says to themself, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Won't do that again."

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 18:05

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Why not do the same thing you do to enslave, and just make all summoning spells unavailable once you sacrifice love. I just played a Ru game, and after I sacrificed love, I couldn't memorize enslave. So it seems natural to extend that to all summons.

Alternatively, make summons come out neutral rather than friendly or enemies, so they still retain some use.

Barkeep

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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 18:26

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Even hostile summons would still block LOF. I assume that's why Enslave is greyed out entirely—it has literally zero effect (except I guess to turn neutral creatures in Ely's altar vault into hostile ones). The elemental evocables also create effects other than just summoning stuff. Etc.

Neutral creatures are kind of awkward (see Sar's recent thread about some changes to Ely's pacification, which had support from devs, including dpeg) so spawning summons as neutral rather than hostile would probably not be good.

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 19:10

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Ah, good point. In fact, summoning hostile butterflies sounds like a much better thing than friendly butterflies, as the enemies won't kill them, and the hostile butterflies won't hurt you anyway.

A bunch of bad stuff coming down the hall? Throw a spammal out, and laugh as your enemies line up behind the quokka that can't hurt you.

Enemies can only trade places with similar enemies, right?

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 19:19

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Pretty much yes.
I haven't tried it in actual combat situations but hostile (low level) summoning could be an extremely good and annoying escape tool for that reason - skeletons also (even better, as they're slower than you)

Oh, another thing I haven't understood: I've reject sacrifice word and hand at some point, and Ru never offered me them again. Just a case, or when you refuse something you can't have it again later?
screw it I hate this character I'm gonna go melee Gastronok

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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 20:03

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

nago wrote:Pretty much yes.
I haven't tried it in actual combat situations but hostile (low level) summoning could be an extremely good and annoying escape tool for that reason - skeletons also (even better, as they're slower than you)

Oh, another thing I haven't understood: I've reject sacrifice word and hand at some point, and Ru never offered me them again. Just a case, or when you refuse something you can't have it again later?

There's nothing that prevents Ru from offering the same sacrifices again once rejected -- in fact, Ru could offer you the same sacrifices over and over if you get unlucky. There are enough sacrifices that it's not uncommon for a given sacrifice to not appear during the course of a game.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 13th January 2015, 15:08

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

damiac wrote:Ah, good point. In fact, summoning hostile butterflies sounds like a much better thing than friendly butterflies, as the enemies won't kill them, and the hostile butterflies won't hurt you anyway.


You can't move through them as quickly.

===

QUESTION: Not sure if this was already addressed, but...

If you sacrifice Love, then switch gods to Ely, can you still pacify successfully? Have deity-switching contingencies (switching to Beogh after sac Love) been considered/accounted-for?
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Tuesday, 13th January 2015, 16:40

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon wrote: You could even lure a boring beetle from lair or something capable of digging from the dungeon/depths, though having to drag a deep troll earth mage all the way from depths to slime 6 is not what most people would call fun.


I did the deep troll thing in my Og of Ru win. It sucked so hard because of needing to keep as much LoS as possible.
Three wins: Gargoyle Earth Elementalist of Ash, Ogre Fighter of Ru, Deep Dwarf Fighter of Makhleb (0.16 bugbuild :( )

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Post Tuesday, 13th January 2015, 18:52

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

XuaXua wrote:QUESTION: Not sure if this was already addressed, but...

If you sacrifice Love, then switch gods to Ely, can you still pacify successfully? Have deity-switching contingencies (switching to Beogh after sac Love) been considered/accounted-for?

I haven't tested it, but the expected outcome is that you would not be able to pacify anything successfully. Ely might give you piety for it, tho. You will not have any converts from Beogh in this situation, but I'm not familiar enough w/ Beogh to know if that'll cause wrath. Yred will gift you hostile undead, and Fedhas's plants should be hostile, not friendly.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 13th January 2015, 19:26

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

Lasty wrote:
XuaXua wrote:Have deity-switching contingencies (switching to Beogh after sac Love) been considered/accounted-for?

I haven't tested it


Probably going to need to run through these edge cases then. :-)
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 14th January 2015, 13:52

Re: Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice

  Code:
4eef910 | 2015-01-13 20:36:22 -0500 | Corin Buchanan-Howland

Prevent players with certain sacrifices from joining certain gods
Specifically Ely, Beogh, or Jiyva can't be joined with Sac Love and Nemelex can't be joined with Sac Artifice. It breaks their core mechanics, and so they wouldn't want you.
"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessa
Did I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!
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