Octopodes and cloaks.

[MurderMachine]

I would like to begin with saying that I truly do enjoy playing octopodes, when I began playing crawl it was one of the first things that really surprised me, being able to play as an octopus kind of excited me, so this is my suggestion on the basis that OP needs a little love.The fact that octopodes can wear hats isn't in question, but with their large upper body above their tentacles gives them more then enough room to equip a cloak. The counter argument I've heard to this is that his tentacles would get in the way. I say to this, how so? A cloak made of cloth would not hinder his tentacles or movement in any way shape or form, this would allow octopodes to have a very small buff and would allow them to have a small increase to their AC and potential resistances without being game breaking nor impossible for such a thing to occur. My suggestion is thus:
Allow Octopodes to equip cloaks on the basis that there's no logical reason that they cannot do so.

[tasonir]

In general, arguments from flavor are given a very low priority. It probably would be acceptable flavor to allow cloaks, but the idea of the octopode is to give up as much armor as possible in exchange for more rings. Adding more armor in weakens this conduct. It is a hard conduct, but it's not impossible (mummies are harder, for example). It's meant to be played around - either go for a mage who stays away from things as much as possible, or find a way to get ac (lucky rings, ozo's armor, statue form, stoneskin).

While they're slighly below average in terms of power for most of the game, not all races are meant to be strong and I'd say Op is in a pretty good spot. They can become very strong in the late game when you have a large selection of rings.

I'm not sure why it was decided they could use a hat, although that's notable in that it's the only 0 base ac armor. Maybe someone really wanted octopodes to have +3 int.

[XuaXua]

I'm not sure why it was decided they could use a hat

If you want to get into it, the argument could be made that they should also be able to use helmets, but I don't think it's necessary to "go there".

[Siegurt]

Yeah, I think if Octopodes could use cloaks they'd have to like give up 2 of their ring slots or something, that might be worth the trade-off playability-wise, but would deteriorate their distinctiveness.

[crate]

Really I'd rather argue they shouldn't even get hats. Of course then they'd be even more similar to felids, though I would suggest octopodes have significantly fewer design problems than felids.

[XuaXua]

They just sticky that sucker up there with body mucus.

[Piginabag]

While it would make perfect sense for an octopus to wear a mantle around its mantle , I think that it would be too much of a boon for octopodes. In the early game it's an easy couple of AC, and in the late game octopodes with a couple really nice randart rings are already incredibly strong, and throwing a cloak into the mix might be a bit much.

[wisp412]

While allowing Octopode to wear cloaks would noticeably affect gameplay by providing extra early ac, it would still be nice if my Octopode wasn't naked in a damp cold dungeon. There are a variety of shawls, capes and scarves that could be flavored as unique to Octopode. They would provide 0 ac, with a small chance of being blessed (thus it has no functional bonus outside of enchanting.. It would probably be best if they gave ev instead of ac so that enchanting them doesn't give ac, and a few points of ev shouldn't really make a huge difference.). They would be as rare or rarer than the Naga's and Centaur's rare armor. Perhaps they could only be found on Octopode corpses, thus it would have no affect on existing loot generation.

For ideas, ponchos, shawls, shrouds, scarves, sashes, capes, mantles and chlamys are just some of the cloak-like clothing an Octopode could wear. Just give it an interesting name, make their lore description say something about how they're too small for anything outside of an Octopode to wear and presto my Octopode can finally strangle in style. Felids could wear it, but they already have fur to keep them warm. They're also smaller than Octopode, so a heavy cloak-like shroud would probably restrict their movements.

Edit: Alternatively make all, or most randart shrouds cursed with -ac, so that an Octopode has to trade ac for those extra resists on his rare armor.

[XuaXua]

Those sound like the sort of things that might share the Amulet slot.

[wisp412]

Some quick research shows there are plenty of loose form fitting garments, and alot of them are sleeveless, some are small and only cover the upper body like ponchos. Ruana, Chamanto, Awayu, Dusters, Surplice, Chlamys, Boubou and Sarsis are a few different types of Poncho-like clothing. Thawb, Burqa, Gaberdine, Kobeniak, Kepenek and Himation are more like robes but are still typically loose form fitting garments.

My point is that there are plenty of garments that an Octopode could have made or adapted for personal use. So a name like a ruana cloak would fit well enough without going to look anything up.

[duvessa]

It's an octopus with human intelligence going into a dungeon casting magic spells and/or beating the crap out of orcs and dragons. Putting clothes on it isn't going to make it significantly more realistic.

[Lasty]

Keep in mind that the reason octopodes have the slots they do isn't because it makes some kind of perfect real-world sense, but rather because it gives an interesting tradeoff of equipment slot types. Right now humans have weapon, shield, 2 rings, amulet, helmet, cloak, gloves, boots, body armour (10 slots) and octopodes have weapon, shield, hat, 8 rings, amulet (12 slots). Giving octopodes a 13th slot is, if anything, moving in the wrong direction.

[SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon]

I would like to begin with saying that I truly do enjoy playing octopodes...

Maybe someone really wanted octopodes...

Yeah, I think if Octopodes...

though I would suggest octopodes...

and in the late game octopodes...

Keep in mind that the reason octopodes...

It's settled, Octopodes!
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=14203

While allowing Octopode...

Except for the nonconformist.

[PleasingFungus]

Really I'd rather argue they shouldn't even get hats. Of course then they'd be even more similar to felids, though I would suggest octopodes have significantly fewer design problems than felids.

Hypothetical: if felids did not exist, then there would be no design overlap.

[nicolae]

Really I'd rather argue they shouldn't even get hats. Of course then they'd be even more similar to felids, though I would suggest octopodes have significantly fewer design problems than felids.

Hypothetical: if felids did not exist, then there would be no design overlap.

It wasn't curiosity that killed the cat. It was PleasingFungus.

[PleasingFungus]

It wasn't curiosity that killed the cat. It was PleasingFungus.

Without jump attack, what's the point?

[njvack]

The lichform tile, obviously.

[nicolae]

The lichform tile, obviously.

Lvl 9 Necro/Tmut, Dead Cat Form

[tasonir]

I'd argue that Fe's fast speed and no hp are a rather radical departure from Op. I do wish they still had jump attack, though, it was very cool.

[Lyrick]

The lichform tile, obviously.

Lvl 9 Necro/Tmut, Dead Cat Form

Lvl 9 Translocations/Transmutation, Schrodinger's Question.

Octopodes get 8 rings and a hat, most humanoid species get 2 rings and 5 pieces of body armor (cloak, body, helmet, gloves, boots). Yeah we're losing out on a ton of AC but you're getting 6 more rings! (What's there to complain about?)

We're not trying to balance species so that every race is equally easy/challenging.

[Laraso]

Why did they lose the jump attack, anyways? I was taking a break from the game when it happened.

[tasonir]

I believe the argument was "it's a lot of code for something that people don't use much and I'd rather remove it to clean things up", from the developer who had coded it and felt the code wasn't as high quality as their later things now that they're more familiar with crawl. I don't think it was related to mechanics of it at all.

[roctavian]

Dith's shadow step and Ru's power leap fill the same role, are available to other races, and have interesting conditions (only working on motionless enemies/AOE damage for a price)

[reaver]

The commit:

Remove jump-attack

The ability never worked particularly well in its original form. Its
original intent was to combine attacking and translocation, but
because it ended up being a low-level ability, the attack become only
a tool to ensure the repositioning wasn't brokenly powerful rather
than a meaningful thing by itself. This was particularly true for
stabbing, which had to be disabled in jump-attack so that it didn't
break stealth. Boots of jumping never saw much use, and while there
are a few fans of felid jumping, that species already has tremendously
good positioning ability.

The shadow-step ability with Dithmenos uses the core jump-attack
targeting code and is similar to jump-attack in many ways. So fans of
jump-attack can worship Dith to get an ability that works better in
general because of shadow-step's very specific (and non-annoying)
targeting restrictions, its better range, and its not having awkward
compromises from trying to combine attack with movement on a ability
requiring no investment.

Despite the shared code with shadow-step, a lot of the code most in
need of refactoring was simply removed, including the interactions
with melee-attack. I enjoyed coding jump-attack back when I was
learning the codebase, especially finally figuring out the difficult
direction UI code. But now that the feature has evolved into something
better, I'm happy to see all this code and bad gameplay go the way of
item destruction. rip in peace.

[damiac]

Dith's shadow step and Ru's power leap fill the same role, are available to other races, and have interesting conditions (only working on motionless enemies/AOE damage for a price)

By that same logic, we should remove controlled blink, scrolls of blinking (Shadow step and Ru's leap accomplish this) remove the animate dead spell (Yred does it), remove haste (total rip off of Oka's finesse) remove ozu's refrig (Essentially a cold branded slouch)...

The thing is, the felid jump attack was actually nothing like shadow step. It was kind of like leap attack, except of course you didn't have to follow Ru to use it, nor did it do AOE damage, nor could it target unoccupied squares.

[and into]

Dith's shadow step and Ru's power leap fill the same role, are available to other races, and have interesting conditions

By that same logic, we should remove controlled blink, scrolls of blinking (Shadow step and Ru's leap accomplish this) remove the animate dead spell (Yred does it) [...]

You could argue that shadow step and power leap do not have interesting conditions that affect their use, or you could argue that the jump attack ability has sufficiently interesting conditions (need a valid target), but neither roctavian nor gammafunk (see the first paragraph of the commit in particular) is simply arguing "this thing is similar to these other things, ergo it can be removed." They are arguing that it is a less interesting, not-as-well-designed version of the things it is similar to. So the "By that same logic" argument does not actually apply.

Of the things you list, I do happen to agree that Yred's first ability is redundant with fairly common spells that exist in a starting book, but he has enough other stuff going on that it doesn't bother me too greatly. (Though surely it would be an improvement if some dev gets a neat idea for how to replace Yred's animate remains/dead shtick with something more unique.) Removing the DK background was a good move though, because the ability to start with DK did make the overlap with Ne even more obvious.

[XuaXua]

rip in peace.

Rest.

[tasonir]

rip in peace.

Rest.

GNU's Not Unix!

[daggaz]

I'm not sure why it was decided they could use a hat

If you want to get into it, the argument could be made that they should also be able to use helmets, but I don't think it's necessary to "go there".

They should be able to hide inside of their helmets, too.

[bananaken]

I think Octopodes could stand to have a slightly less oppressive early game and it's way more likely to find a cloak of some form first before coming close to filling your ring slots. It doubt it'll make a huge difference unless you find a good randart cloak, even though technically you're more than doubling your AC from armor slots (+2 AC from a hat to potentially +5 including cloak). To balance it out you could always remove an Octopode's starting +1 AC.

At the end of the day it's still a challenge race and it'd be fine to leave as is, but I'd certainly enjoy being able to wear cloaks. I doubt I would feel that Octopodes suddenly got too easy because of it.

[and into]

They wouldn't be too easy or anything, but it would somewhat diminish one of the characteristics that is supposed to make Op distinctive and unique. Taking away innate +1 AC but allowing cloaks would make the early game (even) harder for Op, on average, by the way.

[bananaken]

They wouldn't be too easy or anything, but it would somewhat diminish one of the characteristics that is supposed to make Op distinctive and unique. Taking away innate +1 AC but allowing cloaks would make the early game (even) harder for Op, on average, by the way.

TBH, I don't think Octopode would fall into an identity crisis for having a cloak. They're unique to me because they wear 8 rings, they become super stealthy when swimming, they constrict things, and they're challenging. The no-armor "conduct" is still basically there, you're still going to be trying to compensate for your lack of armor slots through your rings and other abilities.

And yeah, innate +1AC will always protect you, as opposed to the theoretical cloak you've yet to find. I was sort of just brainstorming in a situation where +3 AC through an equipment slot was deemed overpowered Starting as an OpAs would theoretically offset the lack of innate +1AC, at least (and provide some protection from acid).

I'm mostly talking for a gameplay perspective that it'd be interesting to have a cloak, but if they absolutely *must* have only hats or no armour at all; then I would lean towards having nothing at all and some extra innate passive/active ability to compensate. Octopodes don't really need help in lategame (which can happen with a good randart cloak), but I'd love something that gives them a little extra push in the early game. Maybe this is something better suited for a separate topic..

[Sar]

they become super stealthy when swimming

They do? Huh.

[bananaken]

they become super stealthy when swimming

They do? Huh.

They do, even in shallow water IIRC.

[twelwe]

i`m not one of those guys who thinks octopodes or felids need cloaks but i am one of those weirdos that thinks they should be able to mate

[XuaXua]

i`m not one of those guys who thinks octopodes or felids need cloaks but i am one of those weirdos that thinks they should be able to mate

I don't think I want to know about octopodes mating with felids.

[Siegurt]

i`m not one of those guys who thinks octopodes or felids need cloaks but i am one of those weirdos that thinks they should be able to mate

Spoiler: show

You and Ian Fleming:

[jejorda2]

Lose the +1AC and the stealth, and let all Octopodes start with a +1 ring of protection and a ring of stealth. When you find more rings, you can decide which ones to keep. Give 'em innate rC-/rF-, and starting resistance rings while we're at it.

[Phillip]

It's an octopus with human intelligence going into a dungeon casting magic spells and/or beating the crap out of orcs and dragons. Putting clothes on it isn't going to make it significantly more realistic.

Yeah...