Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?


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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 17:08

Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

I dunno. To me, it seems kinda weird that Demigods are a race. I mean, what kind of god hasn't looked at an octopode and said "damn, I'm gonna tap that!"

So, my suggestion:

When picking Demigod as your class, you basically play as the race of your choice, but with a restriction on gods, greatly increased stats across the board, and reduced skill aptitudes and xp gain. However, just to add a bit more of an interesting twist, if that race has any particular skill aptitudes that stand out, they are unaffected. E.G, dodge and stealth on vine stalkers, axes on minotaurs, etc...
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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 17:35

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

No. It's a race which can not worship gods. Nothing weird in that, imo.
DCSS: 97:...MfCj}SpNeBaEEGrFE{HaAKTrCK}DsFESpHu{FoArNaBe}
FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
{PaBeDjFi}OgAKPaCAGnCjOgCKMfAEAtCKSpCjDEEE{HOSu
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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 18:57

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Again the name "Demigod" representing "race that cannot worship a diety but gets great attributes" throws another person.

Perhaps the Bikeshedding Demigod thread, which attempts to remove the "Demigod" from "Demigod", will work for you instead.
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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 19:01

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Yeah, I've seen that. Frankly, though, I like the idea of being able to play as a demigod. Besides, the only part of demigod that doesn't make sense to me is the lower skill gains.
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Post Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 20:08

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Yes, everyone who wants demigods to be something else, please post your plans in the bikeshedding thread where they can be safely quarantined.

Race as background has been proposed for vampires, mummies, and demonspawn as well, and they all have a lot of the same problems (in addition to removing existing fine options). Rather than repeat the problems with that design, I encourage you to look up previous discussion on the topic(s).

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Post Wednesday, 15th October 2014, 05:21

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Why would Dg work as a class? What would they start with? Would they just start out like Healers, but without Ely? Good stats are not a starting weapon or book. -1 aptitudes to whatever your species normally has will not help you kill the first enemy you see on D1. Every distinctive thing about Dg is a "species-like" characteristic (stats, aptitudes, good HP, religious restrictions) and all of them affect you throughout the whole game. How does anything about them call out for changing Dg into a background?

Right now there is pretty good variety in that you can start a DgIE or DgTm or DgCj or DgAr or DgAm or whatever. This change would remove a pretty interesting species and replace it with a class that no one would want to play.

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Post Wednesday, 15th October 2014, 06:26

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Currently, Crawl "classes" are a bunch of stat adjustments, skill points and equipment options (and sometimes gods) that player is able to mostly ignore if he wishes (except for gods, those can be hard to ignore), and races impose permanent restrictions like "no potions", "permanent stasis" or yes, "no gods allowed". Thus Demigod makes more sense as a race in the context of Crawl.

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Post Wednesday, 15th October 2014, 10:57

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Its almost like Dg/Vp/Mu/Gh/Ds/Normal should be a third option in the character creation menu
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Post Wednesday, 15th October 2014, 11:11

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Sar wrote:Currently, Crawl "classes" are a bunch of stat adjustments, skill points and equipment options (and sometimes gods) that player is able to mostly ignore if he wishes (except for gods, those can be hard to ignore), and races impose permanent restrictions like "no potions", "permanent stasis" or yes, "no gods allowed". Thus Demigod makes more sense as a race in the context of Crawl.

This is all true, but also this is an understatement.
There is no "class" in crawl, only backgrounds. In the context of crawl, the opening post is complete nonsense.

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Post Wednesday, 15th October 2014, 11:51

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

I agree with adding it as a third option from a flavor point of view. I'm not the most skilled player (and haven't read previous discussions but this is in Yiufs) but the problem I see would be always picking the optimal race for example, a mummy, would always pick a casting race, and this wouldn't make it anymore interesting. Instead there could be mummy humans, kobolds and trolls (as random examples). That way obvious or overpowered combos would be excluded, and would add more flavor to these half races overall. If any race could have any race modifier, I could see Ds trolls, octopode, felid and etcetera get out of hand (as some examples).

Besides, none of these types of races have particularly interesting skill aptitudes anyways, they're almost all -1s or -2s. Its usually more interesting to have races that are good at some things and worse at others right?

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Post Wednesday, 15th October 2014, 12:16

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

wisp412 wrote:Its usually more interesting to have races that are good at some things and worse at others right?

If you consider having a choice being boring, sure (compare choosing a weapon type for your Mf to choosing a weapon type for your Hu, for example).

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Post Wednesday, 15th October 2014, 18:33

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Slap and stab wrote:Its almost like Dg/Vp/Mu/Gh/Ds/Normal should be a third option in the character creation menu


Actually it is more like Dg/Vp/Mu/Gh/Ds/Hu should just be species.


The point of choosing stuff at the beginning of the game isn't to provide for every imaginable permutation of various characteristics. I can sympathize with the fact that people really want to live their DCSS power-gaming wet dreams and play a GrBe with demonspawn mutations or whatever, but the species and backgrounds that exist are justified based on providing a more or less unique niche, not catering to these whims.

A "demonspawn kobold" of whatever background would not be very much different from a Ds Halfling or a Ds Human or a Ds Half Elf. There might not be a lot of current differentiation amongst Ko/Ha and Hu/HE right now, granted. But if you allowed players to demonspawn-ify them it would be much worse, because the whole mutation aspect of Ds would completely overwhelm the subtle game play differences that do exist amongst these species. In other words, allowing for a third set of character building criteria would actually *remove* meaningful variety, since you would be taking away species that currently provide an interesting choice when they are mutually exclusive with other species, and instead creating many hundreds more combinations that will feel and play very similarly.

If anyone can present a plausible argument for why some specific combination of "mummy-like" characteristics and "<other species>-like" characteristics would be fun, interesting, and novel, then you have a plausible argument for a new species that combines those characteristics. But this would not be a good argument for creating a whole new axis to character creation, since you'd not only be creating this single new, interesting combination, but dozens of other combinations that are undifferentiated and lame.

In short, this is a really bad idea, even if we ignored that doing this 1.) would create a lot more complexity that new players would be confronted with directly right from the start, 2.) would be a nightmare to code, and 3.) would generate a large number of weird special cases you would have to deal with on an individual basis, adding even more opacity, ugliness, and counter-intuitiveness.

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Post Wednesday, 15th October 2014, 18:40

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

If you want high stats but enjoy slowness, just play Chei!

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 10:32

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Do you mean... you don't want to make your demigod vampire mummy troll and just roll with it?

Edit: this would be rather close to that itemless species someone proposed.
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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 11:22

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

I still say mummies should be able to join Zin. (They should be able to join Elyvilon too, but hungerless healer, now that is a wet dream)
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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 16:44

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

and into wrote:If anyone can present a plausible argument for why some specific combination of "mummy-like" characteristics and "<other species>-like" characteristics would be fun, interesting, and novel, then you have a plausible argument for a new species that combines those characteristics


Deep Mummy. Aptitudes of Deep Elf and rHunger, rRot, rTorment of Mummy. Not sure about potions and rF-. There is no easy spellcaster currently unlike melee (MiBe) and ranged (CeHu).

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 17:43

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

This will either be not much better than DE (if it's just a bunch of postend resistances and rPois) or much, much worse than DE (if you add no quaffing conduct, you know, the thing that pretty much defines a Crawl mummy).

There are plenty of strong "casters", HOFE, GrEE. It's just that DE are the archetypical "frail but powerful" caster in Crawl, and the "frail" part is not very good in a game where you go back to square one as soon as your HP reaches zero, but new players see them as "the best caster race" because they have good apts and because it's how it works in other games.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 18:04

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Sar wrote:This will either be not much better than DE (if it's just a bunch of postend resistances and rPois) or much, much worse than DE (if you add no quaffing conduct, you know, the thing that pretty much defines a Crawl mummy).

There are plenty of strong "casters", HOFE, GrEE. It's just that DE are the archetypical "frail but powerful" caster in Crawl, and the "frail" part is not very good in a game where you go back to square one as soon as your HP reaches zero, but new players see them as "the best caster race" because they have good apts and because it's how it works in other games.


My point was that it's pretty hard to die as MiBe/CeHu on D1 unlike DExx/GrEE.
Yes, I forgot about rPois which is really great early game. Thank you.

Edit. I am not sure HOFE is a good caster, no extra MP and aptitudes worse than Human

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 18:09

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Crawl already has an easy caster race and it's in the title of this thread.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 18:12

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

duvessa wrote:Crawl already has an easy caster race and it's in the title of this thread.


Indeed. But how about an easy caster who can worship gods? Tutorial does not include DgGl and DgHu for some reason.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 18:19

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Well you used Mi as a point of comparison, and like MiBe gets extra melee damage (from weapon/fighting aptitudes and horns) and extra defenses (armour/dodging/fighting aptitudes and HP bonus), Dg gets extra spell damage (int) and extra defenses (dex and HP bonus).
I won't deny it's much easier for a new/poor player to win MiBe than DgIE , but that's because Be is ridiculous; it has basically nothing to do with Mi. You can substitute HuBe or HEBe or whatever for MiBe and it doesn't make a big difference.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 18:23

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Sandman25 wrote:I am not sure HOFE is a good caster

You have enormous HP and good Fighting apt and gain levels almost as fast as a human. HO are really hard to fuck up. And their magic apts are pretty good. What's their Fire? +1 or +2?

Edit: I guess they're not amazing if you're adamantly against ever using melee on your "casters", but that's a very specific requirement. Damn, that's why I don't like labels like "caster" and "melee" in context of Crawl. They make things less clear to me.
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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 18:24

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Sar wrote:
Sandman25 wrote:I am not sure HOFE is a good caster

You have enormous HP and good Fighting apt and gain levels almost as fast as a human. HO are really hard to fuck up. And their magic apts are pretty good. What's their Fire? +1 or +2?


Fire +1, Spellcasting -3, Conjurations 0.
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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 20:51

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

those are pretty good.
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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 20:58

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Well, melee is totally a viable playstyle, in fact, it's basically manditory. So a race with awesome melee apts (Like Mi) is just awesome at what they do, and maybe later they pick up some utility spells or whatever.

On the other hand, all conjurations is barely viable, and there's no race with the awesome magic apts like minotaur's melee apts, and even if there were, they still need armor, dodging, and fighting. Minotaurs don't need spellcasting, but deep elves still need fighting.

Hill orcs are a decent conjuration/melee hybrid, but to say they're 'strong spellcasters' is purposely missing the meaning of 'strong spellcaster'. It doesn't mean 'someone who can cast spells, and also has high str', it means 'someone who is really good at casting spells'.

It doesn't matter if some goodplayers don't like the labels melee and spellcaster, it's blatantly obvious some people want to play 'spellcasters', so is it so wrong to suggest there should be a race that's an 'easy spellcaster' just like minotaurs are 'easy melee'?

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 21:10

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

On my HOFE run, I learned Sticky Flame at D:4 and used it to burn my way to and through Lair. I learned Bolt of Fire and L:7 and used it extensively through the game. By the end of my 4 runes game I could cast Fire Storm at 2% failure. Are there stronger Fire spells I am not aware of? Maybe I should've gotten Fire Storm by Orcish Mines? Did I violate my caster purity by grabbing a demon whip in a volcano and getting 12 M&F? Or by having over 200 HP?

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 22:13

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Speaking about spellcasters, I had SpVM of Kiku die during orb run despite I have not used any potions/scrolls/evocables/weapons. This is what I call pure spellcaster and it is barely possible unfortunately.
That Deep Elf Mummy of Sif Mummy could make it much more viable.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 22:35

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

"Pure caster" of Kiku strongly misses a big part of going Kiku. And "pure caster" VM is pretty sketchy unless you're supporting it with something silly (like Sp I guess).

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 22:41

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

basil wrote:"Pure caster" of Kiku strongly misses a big part of going Kiku. And "pure caster" VM is pretty sketchy unless you're supporting it with something silly (like Sp I guess).


Yes, I know. This is why I wrote "it is barely possible unfortunately".

Edit. I hope you realize Cure Poison and Venom Bolt have a great synergy with no potions conduct and Kiku.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 22:48

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

damiac is right, but I think they're missing the bigger problem: how few species support pure warpers. They already struggle from pretty bad spell support -- their first kill spell is a L5 that isn't in their starting spellbook, so to get the experience you need to cast it you pretty much just have your starting displacement tomahawks, and they run out pretty fast. The situation is so bad that I don't think I've managed to win one without using wizmode to give myself a few hundred extra tomahawks of distortion. One time I found a +15 plate armour on D1, and I thought "well, maybe this isn't quite as pure as it should be, but I really want this to work." Long story short, I ended up getting trapped between a hobgoblin and a ball python and I couldn't cast Blink because of the plate armour, so I starved to death. Now I know better than to wear the plate armour.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 22:55

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

all conjurations is more viable than all melee really

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 22:58

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Sandman25 wrote:Edit. I hope you realize Cure Poison and Venom Bolt have a great synergy with no potions conduct and Kiku.


Sp can play a great job of keepaway, so outside of getting a D:1 blowgun kobold or something cure pois isn't all that important. And vbolt through slaves loses some of its appeal if you can run away quicklike.

I'd probably try (Sp|Ce)Cj of Veh or (Sp|Ce)Su of Sif if I wanted to do that unfun challenge.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 23:13

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

basil wrote:Sp can play a great job of keepaway, so outside of getting a D:1 blowgun kobold or something cure pois isn't all that important. And vbolt through slaves loses some of its appeal if you can run away quicklike.

I'd probably try (Sp|Ce)Cj of Veh or (Sp|Ce)Su of Sif if I wanted to do that unfun challenge.


Cure Poison did save my life a coupe of times and no, thanks, I got tired of pressing 5 waiting for MP to regen, aa of Sif Muna would make it much worse. Also Kiku provides a nice meat shield (important since I cannot teleport and read Blink scrolls) and a reliable way to deal with undead and everything else which cannot be killed easily by spells, Simulacrum was especially great. But you are right, it was very unfun sometimes.

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Post Thursday, 16th October 2014, 23:43

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Sar wrote:On my HOFE run, I learned Sticky Flame at D:4 and used it to burn my way to and through Lair. I learned Bolt of Fire and L:7 and used it extensively through the game. By the end of my 4 runes game I could cast Fire Storm at 2% failure. Are there stronger Fire spells I am not aware of? Maybe I should've gotten Fire Storm by Orcish Mines? Did I violate my caster purity by grabbing a demon whip in a volcano and getting 12 M&F? Or by having over 200 HP?


On my current mummy of trog run, I'm using exclusively swords. I have decent AC and EV, and have easily chopped my way through the game so far. So mummies are really good melee warriors.

Orcs are fine spellcasters, especially fire, but they're not to conjurations what minotaurs are to non-magical fighting. I think people would like such a thing, were it to exist, I don't know why everyone would take such offense at that. We have a few pretty easy melee races (Mi, Gr, HO), which isn't to say that they're not also good at non-melee type stuff, but there's no really easy spellcasting race, for the people who do want to play a character who has big spellcasting aptitudes across the board, with good HP and MP. Crawl isn't balanced across races, it's not supposed to be.

That's not to say I support the idea of being able to be a demigod version of existing races, but rather to say I think there is design space for an 'easy conjurer' race.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 01:52

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

damiac wrote:Orcs are fine spellcasters, especially fire, but they're not to conjurations what minotaurs are to non-magical fighting. I think people would like such a thing, were it to exist, I don't know why everyone would take such offense at that. We have a few pretty easy melee races (Mi, Gr, HO), which isn't to say that they're not also good at non-melee type stuff, but there's no really easy spellcasting race, for the people who do want to play a character who has big spellcasting aptitudes across the board, with good HP and MP.
This is exactly what Dg is! It gets a big bonus to power and success in all spell schools and has good HP and MP. Maybe "everyone" is "taking offense" because you won't even look at the races that already exist before you complain one is missing.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 02:28

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Concerning demigod being the powerhouse spellcasting race, before the recent change to stat allocation I'd disagree with them fitting the bill (though at the beginning of the game when it counts the most old dg is among the easiest casters to win with). Haven't tried new dg, but since you can now dump all stats into int guessing dg caster is probably a cakewalk since the previous disadvantages (slower leveling, mediocre apts) are more than mitigated. Heck you even get a free sustab for CBoE usage, not that it's a big concern since you're a dg.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 03:00

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

if you don't like dg or DE (or HO, or HE I guess) there are also at least dr, hu, gr, DD (and I guess technically felids are still pretty strong and are oriented toward being a conjurer-like or summoner-like character, though you can feel free to ignore them because they're felids).

if you ignore berserker then most book starts (sk and tm are the weakest, and they're the least book-y which is certainly partly why this is the case) are stronger than non-book starts, so I really don't think there's a problem here

it's true that there are reasons that book starts might be more difficult for some players than non-book starts--they're less straightforward, for one--but I'm pretty confident that they're not actually weaker

like minmay said it's entirely possible to be "pure conjurer" (I've done this in the past, though I would not do so again personally); I don't tend to recommend it for a variety of reasons but they're not necessarily focused around how strong it is. If you're good at moving back to stairs before you fight then I'm not even convinced that having melee skill actually makes crawl easier to win (though it makes it much less tedious, and the investment is small enough that you are unlikely to really notice the lost xp). (Most players do not move toward stairs before every fight, and in those cases I do believe that having some semi-competent melee attack will improve your winrate.)

There isn't really a lot of design space for "good at spellcasting" races that don't already exist. "Deep elf with more HP" seems to be pretty much what this topic is suggesting (or "demigod with gods") and yeah that's (those are) not going to happen. Dg exists if you want good spellpower and better-than-usual dodging (or less penalty for armour, if you prefer to get str instead of dex) with decent hp, DE exists if you just want "good at spellcasting". Maybe if you're going to throw out crawl's existing races and start over you would do something different but I am pretty sure that redoing every race in crawl is a thing that's not going to happen and since DE (and HE, to a lesser extent) already exist....

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 06:28

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

crate wrote:if you ignore berserker then most book starts (sk and tm are the weakest, and they're the least book-y which is certainly partly why this is the case) are stronger than non-book starts, so I really don't think there's a problem here

it's true that there are reasons that book starts might be more difficult for some players than non-book starts--they're less straightforward, for one--but I'm pretty confident that they're not actually weaker


Well it's kind of meaningless to compare book vs. non-book without considering species. MiFi is going to do better than any background with a book, and DECj is easier to win with than any non-book background (excluding previously mentioned Be). Now if you want to compare book vs. non-book on a Hu or other generalist species such as Dg then it makes more sense. For most generalists I would argue against book starts more often than not because at a very low level your lvl 1 spell can fail enough/not do enough damage to leave you being chased by a hobgoblin (D1) or not do enough damage and getting owned by an adder (D2). These are situations I run into every so often, the first being completely unavoidable at times. For a Dg this isn't really the case due to high int + 1 or 2 extra MP which is a huge difference when you first enter the dungeon.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 06:35

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

damiac wrote:We have a few pretty easy melee races (Mi, Gr, HO)We have a few pretty easy melee races (Mi, Gr, HO)

You might be confusing power with simplicity here, because melee starts are very simple (at least for players who don't really bother thinking about positioning). You press Tab, things die, if things didn't die you roll another character - sooner or later you surely will reach Lair. I'm not saying melee Gr/HO are weak, but I suspect *caster* starts that play towards their apts might have better survivability (Mi is different because it doesn't have any good magic apts). HONe has a ranged attack and skeletons and potentially vamp draining and it still can pick an axe and learn to swing it very fast.

Note that I'm talking about melee starts that are not Berserks, because Trog is absurdly good.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 06:37

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon wrote:at a very low level your lvl 1 spell can fail enough/not do enough damage to leave you being chased by a hobgoblin

melee accuracy kind of exists

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 07:10

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Sar wrote:melee accuracy kind of exists

True, but as a starting melee character you can afford misses much more than a spellcaster can afford mistcasts/misses since you don't have to wait for MP to recharge and are better suited to melee combat. If melee accuracy were like spell accuracy early on it would be broken.

Also I'm not including truly horrible starts like adder/gnoll as one of the first monsters (don't think I've ever had an adder as the very first monster, pretty sure I've had gnolls) or bees on D:3 which will likely kill any but the most powerful starting combos.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 07:22

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Running out of MP in a fight is not a huge problem if you have some explored space and the monster isn't faster than you.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 07:44

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

huie and hune are way way stronger than any non-book hu start except hube

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 07:51

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

What about HuHe?

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 12:56

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

huhe is really hard because you want to quit playing crawl instead of playing healer
ely as a god kind of works but you should not be allowed to start as a healer

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 13:22

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

crate wrote:huhe is really hard because you want to quit playing crawl instead of playing healer
ely as a god kind of works but you should not be allowed to start as a healer


Why? It is better than Sk or Wr IMHO, with Ely you can at least split experience between weapon and invocations and be fine.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 14:18

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Try fighting cockroaches with 0-skill unarmed.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 15:32

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

duvessa wrote:
damiac wrote:Orcs are fine spellcasters, especially fire, but they're not to conjurations what minotaurs are to non-magical fighting. I think people would like such a thing, were it to exist, I don't know why everyone would take such offense at that. We have a few pretty easy melee races (Mi, Gr, HO), which isn't to say that they're not also good at non-melee type stuff, but there's no really easy spellcasting race, for the people who do want to play a character who has big spellcasting aptitudes across the board, with good HP and MP.
This is exactly what Dg is! It gets a big bonus to power and success in all spell schools and has good HP and MP. Maybe "everyone" is "taking offense" because you won't even look at the races that already exist before you complain one is missing.


Ah yeah, -1 apts, no god, just like minotaurs are with melee...

If someone is brand new at crawl, and they just want to win, a MiBe is a great suggestion. A DG anything is a terrible suggestion.

Now, let's say that person finally won with their MiBe, and they say "That was fun being super strong and getting good at everything fast, now I want the spellcasting version of that!

What do you say? DE? Terrible HP apt(especially compared to a Mi) HU? A fine character, but not super strong or high apts.

We have races which are just flat out terrible, like Fe, Mu, Op, etc. We have races which are essentially crawl easy mode, like Mi, Gr, DD(although they come with a pain in the ass healing problem). So what's wrong with a race that's got like +2 apts across the board for magic, with +1 or even +0 HP apt, who can worship a god, and wear normal equipment? Yeah, it'd be boring for people who are good at crawl, just like Mi, but nobody will force you to use them. But those people who just want to sling level 9 spells and totally ignore melee would have the option, just like you currently have the option to swing the biggest weapons and totally ignore spells, and play melee easy mode.

Anyway, I've said my piece, maybe someone who enjoys proposing races will propose a race that fits this niche, maybe not. I doubt I'd play them much, just like how I don't play many Mi or Gr anymore, but I'm sure there's a lot of people who'd enjoy it, no matter how wrong people think it is that they dare to want to play that way.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 16:18

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Symmetry is not an end in itself or a design goal (and sometimes goes against other design goals).

Moreover, weapon aptitudes and magic aptitudes are already very different in terms of what they mean in practice. Having really good weapon aptitudes across the board like Mi is not *that* much different from a species that has one very good melee weapon aptitude. It is nice to have Mi because some people don't like axes or polearms, so the flexibility is welcome, but in terms of winning the game there isn't a huge difference. This is because you generally do not want to train more than one type of weapon, certainly you don't want to train more than one weapon skill very high. Magic aptitudes are different in that you generally want or even need to train multiple schools. At the very least a character doing a lot of blasting to kill stuff will want to invest in spell casting, conjurations, one elemental school (usually), and charms, often tloc, and you will often have reason to put a smaller investment in summoning and/or necro. So having +2 magic apts across the board—which is very close to what DE already pretty much have, but w/e—has a really big impact over the course of the game for a "caster" because the experience discount accumulates across all those schools.

Anyway, DE, HE, and Te exist and all of them are well suited to very caster-centric strategies, and are pretty damn close to "+2 magic apts across the board," and HE even have okay HP. A DECj of Sif, in particular, can be played pretty close to a "pure caster" throughout the game, though you should still just melee rats and orc skeletons on D8, and you should train defensive skills obviously. If you want good HP though, then yeah, *something* has to give. Aside from HO**, a DrCj is really solid.

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Post Friday, 17th October 2014, 16:37

Re: Make Demigods a class instead of a race... somehow?

Well, a 'spellcaster' needs HP and defenses just as much as a 'melee character', and probably needs some weapon skill as well. A 'melee character' does not need any spells.

It's true, symmetry isn't needed. However, all the 'good casters' you listed have a negative HP apt. DEs and TEs actually seem to be built based on the idea of a 'glass cannon' casters.

But it's true, just good apts at casting spells isn't enough to make a new race from. They'd still need some unique characteristics, otherwise they're just 'super DEs', which isn't desirable.

I'd just like to say, if the same logic that's being thrown around in this thread was used in the development of the game, we wouldn't have HEs, HUs, MIs, HOs, MFs. Because I'm being told here that -1 apts and +2 are essentially the same, so if that's the case we should just remove all these extra races and just leave humans. You want a good melee fighter? HU! Want a good mage? HU! What do you mean you want a strong melee race? Use a HU!
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