Barkeep
Posts: 3890
Joined: Wednesday, 14th August 2013, 23:25
Location: USA
TSO reform, possible buffs
It is fine that some gods are better for later stages of the game, but TSO takes that to something of an extreme. This side of Chei and Qazlal (and I suppose Xom if you think of it that way), TSO has the strictest conduct, at least for most characters: In addition to all the normal "good god" conducts, like no evil weapons and no necromancy, you have your stealth nuked, you cannot become invisible, you cannot disable most sentient non-evil stuff in advance of an attack, and you are limited in your use of poison (including blowguns + needles, critically) along similar lines.
Taken together, that is a strict conduct, but also, and more problematically, a very convoluted one, in terms of keeping track of when you can or cannot do this or that action. It also means that the only god that gives direct support to allies you summoned with non-divine abilities is also the one god who is not cool with your attacking enemies because your ally is attacking it, too, which can be very awkward. It also gives rise to a bunch of unclear cases, in terms of what your allies do, versus what you can do, and what is going to make TSO angry.
Holy wrath is hampered by the uneven distribution of undead/demon enemies, encourages swapping weapons when holy-vulnerable enemies do show up, and yet again runs into problems with clarity, given that there are enemies in the game that are considered "evil" or "non-good" for various other purposes (including for TSO's very own piety gain and "chivalrous battle" conduct!), yet which do not have any holy vulnerability. With TSO you may have reason to keep track of three overlapping but not identical subsets of enemies: "evil," "non-intelligent," and "vulnerable to holy." (All of the enemies in the last group are evil, I believe, but the reverse is not true.)
DCSS is not really an RPG, but the draw of a "paladin"-type character tends to be pretty strong, especially among newer players. But TSO is not only underpowered for the parts of the game where divine intervention makes the most difference, he is also rather frustrating to play. TSO's current implementation is a missed opportunity, to say the least.
So, in short, TSO could use some simplification, similar to the treatment Zin has been getting recently. With that simplification there may be opportunities for smoothing out TSO’s usefulness curve, making him at least a somewhat more competitive choice in the non-optional portions of the game.
I'm curious to hear what others think of TSO, but here are some suggestions for ways to simplify TSO that would, I think, make him more enjoyable to play:
- Evil creatures are clearly marked as such in game, at least so long as you are worshiping TSO.
- There is no restriction on attacking distracted or disabled enemies, of any type, but stabbing is considered “unchivalrous,” and you will never get stab bonuses on your attacks so long as you worship TSO.
- Poison from any needles, weapons of venom, and poison-elemented spells should either be allowed, or else treated as unchivalrous in all cases, and forbidden.
- I'd suggest that training stealth should perhaps be disabled while worshiping TSO, or at least should appear in some special color on the skill screen that better communicates to the player that even with 27 stealth in a robe you will likely be "unstealthy" with full LOS halo, so the skill is about as useful as training armor on a Draconian (with the difference that a TSO worshiper can stop being a TSO worshiper, obviously).
Here are some other possible suggestions, more in the line of buffs, but most of them also help simplify game play:
- Increase piety gain for discovering new enemies. It still feels too slow.
- "Bless allies" comes online earlier, and scales up with piety.
- TSO simply protects your allies from any harm that would come by your hand, intentional or otherwise, without causing penance. (If this “no friendly fire” passive is considered too OP or abusable, it could incur a small piety hit every time harm is prevented in this manner.)
- Any *evil* (not just undead/demon) creature within your halo will be more susceptible to damage; you and your allies receive +slay against them on all physical attacks, melee or ranged, in addition to the +acc you get from the halo. (Credit due in large part to KoboldLord for this idea, see thread linked at beginning of this post.)
- In addition to, or in lieu of, TSO blessing a weapon of your choice with HW at max piety: Sporadically (on a gift timeout), TSO blesses your weapon with an effect identical to ?enchant weapon, upon dispatching an evil enemy. (Could be limited only to tough evil enemies, or even just to evil uniques, which is... Well, most uniques, as it turns out.)
- Cleansing flame deals its full damage to all *evil* (not just undead/demon) creatures. Perhaps cleansing flame should also do more damage to hostile, non-evil creatures. (Say, 75% of full damage, rather than only (IIRC) half.)
The ideal, I think, is to have only one type of enemy ("evil") that you need to look out for, those enemies will be clearly marked for you, and then TSO gives you abilities to help you take them down, and those abilities start being useful earlier in the game. The anti-evil support comes out sooner, and "evil" is a broader and more useful category of enemies to be strong against, especially in the early game, compared to "vulnerable to holy."
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