Elyvilon Reform


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 Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 01:17

Elyvilon Reform

Inspired by this thread, and in particular some ideas floated by KoboldLord, I would like to propose some changes to Elyvilon.


Elyvilon

Appreciates: Exploration of the dungeon ("Bringing the light of compassion to the unenlightened"), or something along those lines...

Lose the whole "destroy weapons" thing.

Hates all the same things as currently.
Passive abilities remain the same.


Active Abilities:

* Pacify: Smite-targeted. Attempts to pacify a hostile creature, turning it neutral. The creature will then disappear when outside of your LOS for a turn or two. You may only attempt to pacify a particular enemy once. 1-2 piety, hunger.
** Divine Protection: Works as currently implemented.
** Purification: Works as currently implemented, but I would extend its restorative effects to corrosion, drain, etc. if this has not already been done.
*** Healing: Heals self. Works the same as "Greater Self-Healing."
***** Divine Vigour: Works as currently implemented.

All abilities scale off of Invocations skill, as currently.

Pacify checks HD, with a reduced chance to work vs. demons and undead; the ability description can clarify this: "Demons and the undead are more difficult to pacify." In the manner of hexes and recite, I think it would then be fine to show the chance for pacify to work on the target (if it is changed to work off of HD, this does not leak information or run into problems with variable max HP). If you fail to pacify the creature, it becomes immune to further pacification. ("<foo> refuses to follow the path of peace," and gets an "unpacifiable" tag that appears in its description, or some such.)

I would also recommend removing the whole "you can pacify things with a wand of heal wounds," as well as the bonus to creatures of the same species (or genus, or whatever it is). I don't think this adds a lot to the game.

The benefits of these changes are, I hope, clear enough, but I'll try to outline them. No longer does it help to have a chart of some kind to figure out your pacification chances; this has all been made much clearer. No longer do you gain piety by pressing unnecessary keystrokes multiple times to kill a monster in the particular manner that gives you Ely piety. Instead you can just kill it. The small piety cost of pacify is there just so that you don't use it once on just about every enemy you encounter that you have even a small chance to pacify. In addition, the "one attempt per monster, only" thing helps differentiate pacify from other hexes and hex-like effects (Lugonu's banishment) that can effectively, if not literally, kill a target that fails a saving roll.

As for the other abilities, they are mostly the same, although they have been condensed somewhat. I think this is good, as Ely has tons of abilities already and the whole "lesser healing, lesser self-healing, greater healing, greater self-healing" thing was inelegant and a bit awkward.

Finally, "Destroy weapons" would become unnecessary for piety gain, as you don't need to pacify to gain piety in the first place. Ergo, no need to have a weird "this gains you piety up to *this* point" ability to help bootstrap you when you do not start as a **He.

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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 02:06

Re: Elyvilon Reform

This may be too niche, but I'd love for He to be a route to a pacifist challenge run. By that, I mean a win with:

  Code:
Creatures vanquished:



in your final character dump.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 02:42

Re: Elyvilon Reform

I have to say that I actually like Elyvilon. If used as I believe she is actually intended, you get excellent spot removal, panic buttons, and support abilities that let you roll from encounter to encounter without ever having to slow down. The problem that crops up is ability spamming and kiting, and my dislike for this is severe enough that as far as I'm concerned the 'true pacifist challenge run' concept is just bad. Pacifist runs are horrible in Nethack and they're horrible here. If the game can bend far enough from its core concept to support that, chances are the game is already broken.

In no particular order, a couple brainstormed ideas for modification follow:

The hunger clock really doesn't work well as a check on Elyvilon's abilities. There is a ton of permafood available, and you can just brute-force every troublesome or even mildly annoying encounter without running out. I like the idea of offering up a portion of your life force to your enemy to convince them that your offer of peace is sincere, which would be implemented as draining. Since you have to gain xp to remove existing draining, you actually have to play the game more to get more pacification attempts rather than just dipping into your consumable pile. If you try to pacify too often at odds that are too poor, your odds get worse and worse and your other skills start to suffer badly, too.

One-chance-only Pacify could be channeled for multiple turns, if somebody could come up with a control system that's easier than the one for Searing Ray. Each additional turn of channeling raises the chance of success, so yes, you can indeed pacify Rupert, but to get good odds you have to graciously allow him to axe you in the face a few times without retaliation before he gets the message. Do you dare risk that? Maybe not, but if you only get one shot you'd better make sure you can make it count. Basically the idea is to exchange risk for better odds of landing that one-shot; probably there is another flavor that would work better than channeling mechanically but it's not coming to mind.

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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 03:20

Re: Elyvilon Reform

KoboldLord wrote:Pacifist runs are horrible in Nethack and they're horrible here. If the game can bend far enough from its core concept to support that, chances are the game is already broken.


Sad as it makes me, you may be right. If this can't be fixed, the Healer background probably deserves the same axe that Death Knights recently felt.

I like the idea of offering up a portion of your life force to your enemy to convince them that your offer of peace is sincere, which would be implemented as draining. Since you have to gain xp to remove existing draining, you actually have to play the game more to get more pacification attempts rather than just dipping into your consumable pile. If you try to pacify too often at odds that are too poor, your odds get worse and worse and your other skills start to suffer badly, too.

+1. Honestly, I think that this alone would mostly mitigate kiting. It would depend on how much draining a pacification attempt cost. If you wanted to particularly penalize kiting, Ely could remove some draining after a successful pacification attempt.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 03:34

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Pacifist runs were actually quite doable, without exploiting bugs, in some Crawl versions (mainly old ones, where there was more food, but also in the trunk versions with Dj). They are probably not practical now, especially since almost every level in the game now has fast monsters that can't be pacified.

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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 07:55

Re: Elyvilon Reform

These proposals will destroy the unique feeling and playing style for a follower of Elyvilon in favour of yet another god with abilities focused on game mechanics. As it it, the proposal more or less forces the player to abandon the peaceful style of playing and train to become the usual killing machine. The ability to use pacify as the main "weapon" (although it's really badly balanced) makes the pacifistig way of playing possible in the first place. It needs to be better balanced, not made into another high powered special ability that is expensive to use and must be conserved for emergencies.

If you fail to pacify the creature, it becomes immune to further pacification. ("<foo> refuses to follow the path of peace," and gets an "unpacifiable" tag that appears in its description, or some such.)

That's illogical. Pacification is not something forced upon the target against its will but convincing it that you're not its enemy by doing something good for it. So actually repeated attempts should *increase* the chance to pacify. It's just that pacification reduces risk too much.

No longer do you gain piety by pressing unnecessary keystrokes multiple times to kill a monster in the particular manner that gives you Ely piety.

= "No more gaining piety by unnecessary keystrokes that give you piety"
Why is this a benefit when the worshippers of other gods also have to do specific things to gain piety?

Instead you can just kill it.

You already can kill it if you want; the proposal "forces" the player to kill it. If you want to kill, don't choose Elyvilon.

The small piety cost of pacify is there just so that you don't use it once on just about every enemy you encounter that you have even a small chance to pacify.

See above. Pretty much destroys the "peaceful" playing style.

In addition, the "one attempt per monster, only" thing helps differentiate pacify from other hexes and hex-like effects (Lugonu's banishment) that can effectively, if not literally, kill a target that fails a saving roll.

Why do you consider this a "benefit"?

--

Other ideas to better balance pacify:

* Pacify works only on targets that are fully aware of the player (not blinded, confused, unaware of the player, sleeping, berserk etc.).
Rationale: Make pacify require more thought to use.

* Lower chance of success if the target is not injured.
Rationale: Makes it generally harder to successfully pacify in the first attempt unless the target is damaged.
Rationale: Might lead to fun tactics where you try to make monsters damage each other to improve your chances.

* Chance of success improves with more attempts on the same target.
Rationale: Persistent work has higher chance of success, but gives the target's allies more time to do bad things to the player.

* Pacify does not work on targets that have been injured by the player.
Rationale: Pacify is not an emergency button if combat against a specific target goes badly.

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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 08:00

Re: Elyvilon Reform

njvack wrote:
KoboldLord wrote:Pacifist runs are horrible in Nethack and they're horrible here. If the game can bend far enough from its core concept to support that, chances are the game is already broken.


Sad as it makes me, you may be right. If this can't be fixed, the Healer background probably deserves the same axe that Death Knights recently felt.

Pff, a game that cannot support pacifist runs with its core concept is broken, not the other way round. Because the experience system only rewards killing and no other ways of dealing with encounters. Why remove something that people actually like when it's just too efficient and needs to be tuned down a bit?

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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 08:13

Re: Elyvilon Reform

DDDD wrote:
If you fail to pacify the creature, it becomes immune to further pacification. ("<foo> refuses to follow the path of peace," and gets an "unpacifiable" tag that appears in its description, or some such.)

That's illogical. Pacification is not something forced upon the target against its will but convincing it that you're not its enemy by doing something good for it. So actually repeated attempts should *increase* the chance to pacify. It's just that pacification reduces risk too much.

I think the idea is that some monsters are just such huge jerks that they're inherently impossible to pacify, but you don't realize this until you try.

* Lower chance of success if the target is not injured.
Rationale: Makes it generally harder to successfully pacify in the first attempt unless the target is damaged.
Rationale: Might lead to fun tactics where you try to make monsters damage each other to improve your chances.

This is pretty weird when combined with your above objection. I don't think pacification at the barrel of a blowgun really fits Elyvion's schtick.

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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 08:34

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Sivar wrote:I think the idea is that some monsters are just such huge jerks that they're inherently impossible to pacify, but you don't realize this until you try.

Sunds fun, especially if it's unredictable and not linked to the monsters' type.

* Lower chance of success if the target is not injured.
Rationale: Makes it generally harder to successfully pacify in the first attempt unless the target is damaged.
Rationale: Might lead to fun tactics where you try to make monsters damage each other to improve your chances.

This is pretty weird when combined with your above objection. I don't think pacification at the barrel of a blowgun really fits Elyvion's schtick.

Does not work as you think because of this:
* Pacify does not work on targets that have been injured by the player.

I find the idea funny to first make monsters hurt themselves or each other (e.g. by making them walk into a cloud of flame or by confusing them) and then play the benefactor to appease them.

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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 13:25

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Mindless enemies can no longer be pacified, which has already effectively destroyed one's ability to do "no kill" or almost no kill runs. Have you tried an all-pacifist run before? It is not fun. The rest of the game design does not really support it well.

DDDD wrote:
If you fail to pacify the creature, it becomes immune to further pacification. ("<foo> refuses to follow the path of peace," and gets an "unpacifiable" tag that appears in its description, or some such.)

That's illogical. Pacification is not something forced upon the target against its will but convincing it that you're not its enemy by doing something good for it. So actually repeated attempts should *increase* the chance to pacify. It's just that pacification reduces risk too much.


I don't think it is bad flavor that a sentient creature that decided "nope, I am still going to be hostile" would not suddenly change its mind one turn later when you try to appeal to its better nature yet again. Anyway, everything that follows after "that's illogical" is your own perspective about the flavor of a game mechanic that is not described that way (as far as I know) in game; the description just says "Using this on hostile monsters will try to make them neutral."

DDDD wrote:
No longer do you gain piety by pressing unnecessary keystrokes multiple times to kill a monster in the particular manner that gives you Ely piety.

= "No more gaining piety by unnecessary keystrokes that give you piety"
Why is this a benefit when the worshippers of other gods also have to do specific things to gain piety?

Instead you can just kill it.

You already can kill it if you want; the proposal "forces" the player to kill it. If you want to kill, don't choose Elyvilon.


With Elyvilon it is often good (to maintain piety) to pacify targets that are no threat to you anyway, and which you could have just killed very easily. In these cases you are not using the ability tactically or in an interesting way. Imagine a god for which you gain piety upon seeing a non-threatening (relative to your level) enemy, but only if you spend two or three turns, pay a hunger cost, and have to hit a bunch of buttons. How is that fun?

If you don't want to kill, you basically have to not play Crawl. Nearly everyone that worships Elyvilon will kill many if not most of their enemies.

DDDD wrote:
In addition, the "one attempt per monster, only" thing helps differentiate pacify from other hexes and hex-like effects (Lugonu's banishment) that can effectively, if not literally, kill a target that fails a saving roll.

Why do you consider this a "benefit"?


Because spamming a hex (or hex-like effect) against a target for a binary outcome (works or doesn't work) is not very fun. But aside from that, making god abilities distinct from each other and from other spells/effects and avoiding overlap is a positive overall, in itself.

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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 13:40

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Another option to fix spamming pacification is to make it non-brainer: monster might get its HP increased every time pacification fails so consequent attempts would be less likely to be successful. Of course it would require displaying exact chance of pacification when targeting a monster like it is already done for hexes.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 15:41

Re: Elyvilon Reform

duvessa wrote:Pacifist runs were actually quite doable, without exploiting bugs, in some Crawl versions (mainly old ones, where there was more food, but also in the trunk versions with Dj). They are probably not practical now, especially since almost every level in the game now has fast monsters that can't be pacified.

Yeah, I was trying it with Dj and then the mindless creature change dropped and there were bees and game over.

I... I didn't think it was horrible. It might just be that I like horrible things, though.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 18:48

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Personally I don't mind pacification as it is. The randomness makes some situations fun. I also think that the food cost is very relevant.
If pacification needs a change then my idea is to make it temporary, with factors determining success/length.
Edit: but then it's just a worse enslavement so nvm. The problem is not the power level but the fact that this effect already exists.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 19:08

Re: Elyvilon Reform

This patch, which just got implemented, is the only Elyvilon reform my axe-wielding DD needs.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 20:30

Re: Elyvilon Reform

DDDD wrote:
njvack wrote:
KoboldLord wrote:Pacifist runs are horrible in Nethack and they're horrible here. If the game can bend far enough from its core concept to support that, chances are the game is already broken.


Sad as it makes me, you may be right. If this can't be fixed, the Healer background probably deserves the same axe that Death Knights recently felt.

Pff, a game that cannot support pacifist runs with its core concept is broken, not the other way round. Because the experience system only rewards killing and no other ways of dealing with encounters. Why remove something that people actually like when it's just too efficient and needs to be tuned down a bit?


I don't know, complaining that the game doesn't allow pacifist runs is kind of like complaining that it's not possible to do a non-stealing run. Crawl is a game where you murder your way to Zot 5, stealing at least 3 runes along the way, so you can steal the orb.

I mean, I guess you can do pacifist and non-stealing runs by just taking the door back out of the dungeon, but you can't win that way.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 20:40

Re: Elyvilon Reform

damiac wrote:I don't know, complaining that the game doesn't allow pacifist runs is kind of like complaining that it's not possible to do a non-stealing run. Crawl is a game where you murder your way to Zot 5, stealing at least 3 runes along the way, so you can steal the orb.

I mean, I guess you can do pacifist and non-stealing runs by just taking the door back out of the dungeon, but you can't win that way.


Does Zin allow a "negotiation" run, where you can bargain your way to the Rune of Zot? This sounds like something Gozag should allow.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 20:48

Re: Elyvilon Reform

The idea of a no-killing run in Crawl seriously feels like trying to do a "no-checkmate" run in Chess or a no-goal run in Hockey. It's anathema to the axioms of the game.
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Post Thursday, 22nd January 2015, 21:05

Re: Elyvilon Reform

XuaXua wrote:
damiac wrote:I don't know, complaining that the game doesn't allow pacifist runs is kind of like complaining that it's not possible to do a non-stealing run. Crawl is a game where you murder your way to Zot 5, stealing at least 3 runes along the way, so you can steal the orb.

I mean, I guess you can do pacifist and non-stealing runs by just taking the door back out of the dungeon, but you can't win that way.


Does Zin allow a "negotiation" run, where you can bargain your way to the Rune of Zot? This sounds like something Gozag should allow.


Well I guess the bribe branch ability is kind of like that. Can you bribe zot? Does it make much difference?

Gozag just sounds so terrible to me, I've never tried him. He turns food into money, then makes me buy food with the money, but the food keeps going up in price? It sounds more like a scam than a benefit...

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Post Friday, 23rd January 2015, 03:04

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Arrhythmia wrote:The idea of a no-killing run in Crawl seriously feels like trying to do a "no-checkmate" run in Chess or a no-goal run in Hockey. It's anathema to the axioms of the game.

I'm not saying pacifist runs in Crawl are necessary (they are honestly an edge case at best), but I disagree with this statement. There are plenty of non-direct-killing ways to deal with monsters in Crawl -- for example, summons, stealth, speed, banishment, translocations, hexes, and yes, pacification. And in a given run, no one method should be the best for dealing with all monsters.

There's no inherent reason why pressing 'aa' is worse for dealing with most monsters than tab or 'Za'.
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Post Friday, 23rd January 2015, 05:41

Re: Elyvilon Reform

njvack wrote:I'm not saying pacifist runs in Crawl are necessary (they are honestly an edge case at best), but I disagree with this statement. There are plenty of non-direct-killing ways to deal with monsters in Crawl -- for example, summons, stealth, speed, banishment, translocations, hexes, and yes, pacification. And in a given run, no one method should be the best for dealing with all monsters.

There's no inherent reason why pressing 'aa' is worse for dealing with most monsters than tab or 'Za'.

Wahaha wrote:Personally I don't mind pacification as it is. The randomness makes some situations fun. I also think that the food cost is very relevant.
If pacification needs a change then my idea is to make it temporary, with factors determining success/length.
Edit: but then it's just a worse enslavement so nvm.


In retrospect, perhaps I should have given more analysis in the OP about why I think current pacification is not ideal.

1.) Pacification gives piety when it works, and does not require piety to use. It is limited only by XP cost (you get less than full XP by pacifying creatures) and by food. The latter is not really much of a limit, unless you are going for no-kills or something silly, and also embellishes an aspect of the game that isn’t Crawl’s most fun or interesting feature, anyway (the hunger clock). The former isn't all that relevant and doesn’t really balance the ability, either (this is elaborated below).
2.) Pacification is an “either-or” effect, like most hexes. It either works, or it doesn’t. But, unlike hexes, you get very little feedback information about how likely you are to pacify a target. And since max HP is variable, the current feedback that you do get is not necessarily going to be stable from one yak to another.
3.) Unlike any hex (and unlike nearly all attacks in the game, period), pacification is smite-targeted. In combination with its binary nature, this leads to a relatively high frequency of “stale” combat situations even when compared to other spells and spell-like effects.

The first point has been discussed already, and so at this point I’d be interested to hear a defense of this feature from those who have spoken on behalf of Ely’s current implementation. Against enemies that pose no threat to you and which you could kill with whatever happens to be the most convenient (probably tab), it is strictly beneficial to use pacify, so long as you have some non-rotten chunks on hand. These non-threatening enemies are not likely to give you amounts of experience that matter to you, so the XP loss is really not a consideration; such encounters become a matter of trying to squeeze a bit more god juice out of Ely, so that you can use divine abilities more often in threatening situations. Moreover, the hunger cost means that in practice I am even more anal about carrying around fresh chunks with Ely than I am with other characters (how fun). How is this even remotely in line with Crawl’s design goals?

As for the second point: You can do substantially better under Ely if you play with charts of common monster’s HP, much more so than with hexes and monster MR in the past (and current design has rendered the latter entirely unnecessary, anyway). The fact that there are TWO different “neutralize (literally) this creature” abilities just makes this worse, since now you need another column or two.

Point three is perhaps less clear-cut and more of a subjective call, but in my experience, it tends to be true, and I stand by it. A lot of the tactical richness in Crawl stems from threat/risk assessment and determining proper positioning. In good (interesting) fights, both of these factors change dynamically as the fight progresses. One source of dynamism and potential tension in a fight is when, for instance, an unexpected quantity of damage is done to you, or by you. The value of damage changes as a function of damage already done. A hit for small damage against an enemy is extremely valuable if it finishes that enemy off. A hex-like ability is, by contrast, just as effective from one turn to another, assuming you don’t read ?vulnerability or chug brilliance or whatever. That’s not necessarily bad, just different, because at least positioning and line-of-fire still matter. Unless the hex in question is smite-targeted, in which case, suddenly the value of how you have positioned yourself becomes much less significant....

Of course, this isn’t to say that when and how to use pacify is never interesting. But I’ve found it to be rather bland even in situations where I want to use it because I want to make an enemy non-hostile, not because I just want piety. Using pacify to make an enemy neutral in a group so that it blocks and damages other enemies can be interesting, but I found that the novelty of this can wear off before too long and does not make up for the downsides. (In any event, this novel effect of pacify is something that I took care to retain in my suggestions in the OP.)


EDIT:
TL;DR: The fact that pacification does three separate things (heals target, attempts to pacify, gives you piety) ends up not being good for game play. Also, some stuff with interface and chance to pacify can probably be made more intuitive.

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Post Friday, 23rd January 2015, 07:47

Re: Elyvilon Reform

I think the discussion of pacifist runs is important here, personally, not because I think it's important that pacifist runs be possible, but because it highlights what makes pacify stand out so much: it's possible to make a character who uses pacify as their primary form of defeating enemies. A HoHe can reasonable tread invocations as their primary "killdudes" skill and weapons as a backup plan, as opposed to every other god in the game (with the possible exception of Makhleb) where invocations tend to be more of a secondary form of offense for tough battles. And that's what makes Ely interesting to me.

That's the issue I have with this proposal. I agree with all the issues stated, but I think one-shot pacify removes what's most interesting about Ely and replaces it with an ability that is, frankly, incredibly boring. When you can only cast it once, it isn't really a way to "kill" enemies at all. It's not a combat too. It's just"press aa when a threatening monster shows up for a chance to instantly kill it." There isn't any decision to be made besides determining which enemies are strong enough to be worth the tiny piety cost, and I don't think that's very interesting. So it's just "sometimes you don't have to fight some things." Which is a big step down from "one of only two invocations in the game that can be used as your primary form of offense."

Of course, as has been stated, pacify's binary nature, combined with the fact that it currently lacks a hexes-like interface to show success rates and its hunger cost, makes it extremely annoying to use. So, at the very least, I agree with the suggestion to change pacify to work off of monster HD, allowing it to not vary by species and show the odds of success, which would make it a lot less frustrating. But then it's still just a super-powered smite-targeted hex, which still isn't that interesting. And that's where I think this comes in:

KoboldLord wrote:One-chance-only Pacify could be channeled for multiple turns, if somebody could come up with a control system that's easier than the one for Searing Ray. Each additional turn of channeling raises the chance of success, so yes, you can indeed pacify Rupert, but to get good odds you have to graciously allow him to axe you in the face a few times without retaliation before he gets the message. Do you dare risk that? Maybe not, but if you only get one shot you'd better make sure you can make it count. Basically the idea is to exchange risk for better odds of landing that one-shot; probably there is another flavor that would work better than channeling mechanically but it's not coming to mind.


I really like this idea - maybe not the details, but the concept. What I like about it is that it turns pacifying an enemy into a multi-turn process that's more interesting that just a gamble every turn. Whether it's channeling or something else, I'd love to see pacifying require taking actions over multiple turns, making progress towards pacification each turn. This would, hopefully, allow it to serve as a good alternative to fighting enemies that can potential be used as a primary offensive tool, while making pacification more interesting than just "spam it until it works or you give up" or "try when you see them, kill them if it fails."

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Post Friday, 23rd January 2015, 10:30

Re: Elyvilon Reform

I think these are the most serious problems with Ely:

  • To gain piety, it is optimal/important to pacify popcorn monsters instead of just tabbing through them, even if it needs several tries (you don't lose too much XP, it is not a problem if the monster hits you several times). This could be solved by making the piety gain proportional to (a function of) the XP value of the pacified creature (or not giving piety for pacification).
  • It is optimal to pacify monsters and get them killed after the pacification for food. Ely doesn't care if the pacified creature gets killed by its friends in a corridor (or dies from poisoning/sticky flame after the pacification). I know that it is an interesting side effect to defeat a pack by pacifying half of it, but manipulating pacified monsters to kill others and/or get killed is tedious. I would suggest making pacified monsters stand still for a few turns and disappear after it (For example: "The outline of a shining gate start to appear around the {monster}!" (after 0..2 turns) "The gate of Elyvilon appears completely." (after 0..2 turns) "The {monster} enters the gate, which closes behind it.") If the pacified creature would be killed during this period, it disappears immediately (without leaving a corpse).
  • It would be good to see success chances. If leaking maxhp is problematic, make pacify resistable by HD and not maxhp. (Is there any case when the two resistance types give significantly different results?)

The channeled pacification is a good suggestion. If pacification can be channeled for several turns (for increased effectiveness), then it isn't unreasonable to mark monsters as unpacifiable after an unsuccessful attempt.

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Post Friday, 23rd January 2015, 15:42

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Channeling pacification from across LOS at a hill giant isn't very interesting -- it's a streamlined form of repeating 'aa', still carrying no risk -- but channeling when the monster can hurt you back is interesting, because now something is at stake -- you're gambling your hp against your desire to pacify the enemy. I think this direction would pacification would be more interesting if it triggered directly off being hit by monsters and not retaliating -- you activate "beatific presence" from the ability menu, and as long as you keep channeling it, when monsters hit you, for each hit they have an increasing chance to be pacified. Arguably you could remove the activated ability entirely and say that every time a monster hits you and then the turn gets back to the monster without you having done anything (hit .) you have a chance to pacify that monster.

You could argue that this is just standing around doing nothing while monsters kill themselves, but you could also argue that this is turning channeled pacification into a single button press instead of a multi-button press ability -- press . to channel pacification. I'm not sure this is a great idea, but I think it's better than status quo in terms of both interface and in terms of forcing a meaningful cost to trying to pacify monsters.

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Post Friday, 23rd January 2015, 16:17

Re: Elyvilon Reform

as long as you keep channeling it, when monsters hit you, for each hit they have an increasing chance to be pacified

This sounds awful to use as a player. No fun at all. Yuck. At least I'd be able to ignore it entirely and use Ely for self-healing ... right?

I don't think passive pacification is an improvement; I would argue that changing Elyvilon away from being an active god doesn't make a lot of sense (you'd be overlapping much more with Ru or Gozag (if you want to count Gozag), if nothing else). If it's worth keeping around at all then I suggest going the "make it have a real cost" route, and keep it active. The only reason to even have low-cost pacification is to allow it to be a piety gain mechanism and it's clear that that has to change anyway, so I don't think anyone should be trying to figure out a way to make pacification something that you're going to use in nearly every fight ... isn't that precisely the reason Ely is a problem right now anyway? (Also, isn't it more interesting if the ability helps you against scary things, instead of against rats? I'll stand there and let rats hit me to pacify them if I have to, I guess, but I'm not going to do that against a lich.)

I don't see a problem with greater pacification remaining the same as it is now but attaching a noticeable piety cost to it, if you want to keep pacify around. This is what piety is supposed to be used for (for gods other than Ru, anyway), as an actual cost for divine abilities. (If you think that piety isn't doing its job there, which is a legitimate complaint, then that requires fixing more than just Ely).

The potential problems with pacification as an effect are either oddities with how pacified monsters behave (this is fixable in lots of ways), and the fact that, like hexes, there's no "partial success" and creating a partial success doesn't make any sense. But, well, slimify is allowed to exist, and that's way better than pacification.

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Post Saturday, 24th January 2015, 01:52

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Slimify is different than pacification in that it has a 100% success rate. This is technically a stronger power, but on the other hand it means I don't have to use it five times unsuccessfully on a monster that will never actually get a chance to actually attack me because I keep running to a stairwell to reset the battle. Power level and game balance is subordinate to making sure the 'best' play is also the most fun sort of play.

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Post Saturday, 24th January 2015, 03:34

Re: Elyvilon Reform

crate wrote:there's no "partial success" and creating a partial success doesn't make any sense.


I don't know if you mean it doesn't make sense flavor-wise or gameplay wise, but something like a -slaying penalty or a skipped turn (representing the monster being more hesitant to attack you) could work as a partial success. Making enemies drop their weapons could also make sense. Whether we want to add a partial success, effectively a buff, to an ability that's already a Smite-targeted chance to instakill is another matter, though.
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Post Saturday, 24th January 2015, 19:44

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Neutral navigation needs some reworking. They should head towards the exits, but if you're in the way, they either go around you or turn around. Neutrals should always be moving; many times they stop and block corridors for multiple turns.
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Post Sunday, 25th January 2015, 00:28

Re: Elyvilon Reform

XuaXua wrote:Neutral navigation needs some reworking. They should head towards the exits, but if you're in the way, they either go around you or turn around. Neutrals should always be moving; many times they stop and block corridors for multiple turns.


It seems like the general leaning is that they should probably just disappear and be not in the way as quickly as possible.

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Post Sunday, 25th January 2015, 00:38

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Also, pacified monsters should not be perfectly capable of massacring the majority of the contents of a guarded loot vault or branch end off-screen just because you tagged a critical mass just outside and there happens to be an escape hatch in there somewhere.

I am honesty very surprised that this behavior wasn't changed way back when the summoning reform went through.

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Post Sunday, 25th January 2015, 01:01

Re: Elyvilon Reform

KoboldLord wrote:Also, pacified monsters should not be perfectly capable of massacring the majority of the contents of a guarded loot vault or branch end off-screen just because you tagged a critical mass just outside and there happens to be an escape hatch in there somewhere.

I am honesty very surprised that this behavior wasn't changed way back when the summoning reform went through.

it doesn't really have anything to do with summoning

in answer to your next question: zombies and other durable undead still exist (also s2s snakes, etc)
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Post Sunday, 25th January 2015, 03:02

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Quazifuji wrote:
XuaXua wrote:Neutral navigation needs some reworking. They should head towards the exits, but if you're in the way, they either go around you or turn around. Neutrals should always be moving; many times they stop and block corridors for multiple turns.


It seems like the general leaning is that they should probably just disappear and be not in the way as quickly as possible.


That being said, they are "pacified"; is that just pacified against the player or all fighting?
In either case, something is wrong because they still attack both the player and other monsters.

Should they try to walk out of combat? Sure.

Should they make barriers when they walk the other way? Yes. I think unintentional meat shields for the player are part of the pacification behavior.

Should they actively assault others in their way? In my opinion, NO, only in retaliation.

Does it currently work that way? No.
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Post Tuesday, 27th January 2015, 01:05

Re: Elyvilon Reform

and into: Good concept!

Destroying weapons was inherited from old Elyvilon and restricted once. Probably not even worth the flavour to keep it for evil weapons (I'd like that, but I am afraid that is still too many keypresses for no other gain than flavour). Could make this a completely passive power: Elyvilon turns all evil weapons into mundane ones (neutering their ego). I know, I know, players could be keen on that pain ego for later...

I think pacification should stay in some form and (hopefully) not only because I came up with that. Old Elyvilon was *ony* about self-healing and while that's enough for a god gameplay-wise, it is too poor for a proper god, in my opinion. Some interaction with the dungeon or monsters is necessary, I think. It's true that pacifying every puny monster is again flavourful, but not fun. Players should just kill them. Pacification could work as an expensive power to address specific bad guys. (Gozag does this much better.)
Both draining cost and one-shot are reasonable ways to improve the situation. Instead of a single attempt, I suggest that you can keep going: at increased power, but double piety cost. So you will be able to pacify about anybody but the cost could be very steep. (That's has some similarities to Yredlemnul's injury mirror, but should be different enough in other ways.)

If you want a flavourful passive power, then monsters could have a chance to be so impressed by your peaceful divine radiance that they drop their weapon (and whatever else they have), turn peaceful and leave (with full xp). This would probably add substantial theme even if it happened pretty rarely.

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Post Tuesday, 27th January 2015, 19:45

Re: Elyvilon Reform

As someone who just won DDHe, I agree something has to be done with how spammable pacification is. The large hunger cost and half exp gain are nowhere near enough to compensate for how blatantly overpowered pacification is. Lesser pacification doesn't cost piety and from my perspective is basically a smite-targeted instant-kill invocation that scales incredibly well with invocations and leaves a neutral copy of the creature behind when it's done as a bonus. High invocation lesser pacification is ridiculous in what it can pacify; I've pacified bone dragons, stone giants, classed draconians, Orb Guardians, and all sorts of ridiculously nasty enemies that with a normal character would at the very least pose some threat.

I don't care about the hunger cost; it should not be possible to take out an Orb Guardian in 1 turn at range for just 1 MP. And it's smite targeted to boot, so anything you haven't pacified yet will have to fight through both further pacification attempts (and when it costs just ONE MP for lesser pacify you can spam it until it works) and his pacified buddies to get to you.

Greater pacification is just dumb. Either you use it to speed up pacification on anything that's really being stubborn, or you use it to pacify things that by all rights you shouldn't be able to pacify. Tentacled monstrosities. Rank 1 demons (lesser pacification at 27 invo can handle rank 2 and lower demons easily). Ancient liches. Greater mummies (granted, this one is hard). When it's easier to deal with a Hell Sentinel by healing it than by unleashing blessed fire on it or smashing it with a blessed triple sword, there is a problem.

I once managed to pacify Tiamat with greater healing. The single most difficult to pacify enemy one might see in a 3 rune game, pacified. It did take about 20 tries to stick (and the only reason I was trying was because I had no idea how hard it would be), but the fact that I was able to do it at all is just a sign that pacification is horribly overtuned in what it can pacify. At least it costs piety so it's not as inherently spammable, although Ely piety comes en-masse later on anyways thanks to how easy it is to pacify popcorn enemies without any regard for hunger or balance.

If you pick a Healer, basically the only enemies that will be relevant after early-game are those that are completely unpacifiable, and most of those you can melee down even with relatively minor skill investment. And even with the half exp penalty by endgame you'll still get enough EXP to get great maces or the like to minimum delay so you can beat to death the Orbs of Fire that otherwise would ruin your day.

And then you factor in the ability to heal yourself for more than a heal wounds potion/wand, the nice status-removal panic button that is Restoration, and the hilarity that is Divine Vigor (because what you needed was even MORE HP). None of those are anywhere near as overpowered as pacification (yes, even the self-healing), but they just pile on and make an already ridiculous god even better.

I don't feel that self-healing, restoration, or divine vigor need any changes. Just, for the sake of anything resembling balance, do something about how spammable pacification is. Please.
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Post Tuesday, 27th January 2015, 21:34

Re: Elyvilon Reform

How does one play a no-vanquished monsters Ely run when you have unpacifiable beasts such as slimes and cockroaches to deal with?
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Post Tuesday, 27th January 2015, 22:00

Re: Elyvilon Reform

by not killing them
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Post Tuesday, 27th January 2015, 23:04

Re: Elyvilon Reform

duvessa wrote:by not killing them


That's what I figured, but that is some tedious shit.
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Post Tuesday, 27th January 2015, 23:20

Re: Elyvilon Reform

well you are already playing a healer

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Post Saturday, 31st January 2015, 23:25

Re: Elyvilon Reform

...You didn't make any preliminary tests before implementing this in trunk, did you?

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Post Saturday, 31st January 2015, 23:30

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Trunk is for testing.

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Post Saturday, 31st January 2015, 23:32

Re: Elyvilon Reform

RUINED FOREVER SAGE

FOREEEEEEVEEEEEER

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Post Saturday, 31st January 2015, 23:48

Re: Elyvilon Reform

For those curious about what actually changed:
  Code:
Change Elyvilon's piety gain to only be from exploration

Removes Elyvilon's weapon destruction prayer and piety from pacification,
and gives piety for exploration, at the same speed as Nemelex. Evil weapons
are no longer identified on the floor, since they're not a source of piety
anymore.


  Code:
Rework Elyvilon's abilities

Lesser Heal Other is removed, since there's no longer any point in pacifying
junk for piety. At 1* followers gain Lesser Self-Healing, at 2* Heal Other
(which is the old Greater Healing), allowing fairly early access to
pacification but with no piety refunds. 3* provides Purification, and Greater
Self-Healing is delayed to 4*. The self-healing abilities are also renamed to
just "Lesser/Greater Healing".


  Code:
Remove the Healer background

With Pacify becoming available later and no longer being usable on every
monster as a method to gain piety, it should hopefully be somewhat less
gameplay-defining/warping, and so Healer doesn't make much sense as a
background any more.

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Post Sunday, 1st February 2015, 00:07

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Well on akrasiac healer is still an avialable chice in trunk and nothing appears to have changed with Ely either...

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Post Sunday, 1st February 2015, 00:14

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Builds are not updated instantly.
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Post Wednesday, 4th February 2015, 23:02

Re: Elyvilon Reform

KoboldLord wrote:Pacifist runs are horrible in Nethack and they're horrible here. If the game can bend far enough from its core concept to support that, chances are the game is already broken.

Yeah, no. First of all, "killing shit" is not the core concept of NetHack. The core concept of NetHack is collecting items and being prepared.

Secondly, zealous adherence to a core concept is not necessarily a good thing in the first place. Crawl, for example, puts a great deal of emphasis on playstyle, yet the way the development is headed these days it seems to be intent on ironing out openings for unorthodox playstyles.

Ely is fine the way she is.

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Post Thursday, 5th February 2015, 01:25

Re: Elyvilon Reform

mechanicalmaniac wrote:
KoboldLord wrote:Pacifist runs are horrible in Nethack and they're horrible here. If the game can bend far enough from its core concept to support that, chances are the game is already broken.

Yeah, no. First of all, "killing shit" is not the core concept of NetHack. The core concept of NetHack is collecting items and being prepared.
"yup this is true, im probs gonna thank this post. lets see what the next paragraph is"

mechanicalmaniac wrote:Secondly, zealous adherence to a core concept is not necessarily a good thing in the first place. Crawl, for example, puts a great deal of emphasis on playstyle, yet the way the development is headed these days it seems to be intent on ironing out openings for unorthodox playstyles.
"wat"

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Post Thursday, 5th February 2015, 03:14

Re: Elyvilon Reform

Since apparantly Ely is as unpopular if not even more unpopular than before and I seem to be the only one who tested the changes I'll give my two cents.

+no weapon sacs. Im glad about that change, it added absolutely nothing to the game other than you spending 10 minutes clearing 8 floors of weapons or making weapon bonfire stashes reaching temple beforehand which was kinda silly

-pacified monsters still run amuk into all directions or just stand still like stones and block trap you. some things never change it seems.
-I rly dont think that exploration is the right choice for piety gain here as unlike with nemelex, you want to be able to use your abilites without fear of losing a * after every lesser heal
-that whole "only one pacification attempt" seems to have been scratched...
-You need high invo skill if you want to use pacify as a tactical means to remove troublesome enemies like spellcasters from the battle but now that your piety is limited and your in constant fear of losing a * after a failed attempt... I dont see how this will end in a good way.
-lesser self healing is okay I guess, purification is a very expensive way of cleansing if youve run out of potions, and greater self healing is costly and I feel that you usually spend your turns better in trying to get away as you the healing does not compensate for the damage you take. just a very piety heavy way of buying time. protection is okay I guess it's reliability is a little shakier than I'd like it to be (Im sure I died under activated prot more than once)

tl;dr1: I'd rather worship a god that provides me with abilites im actually allowed to use (and are more useful anyway)

tl;dr2: - old ely may have some ability clutter and silly weapon sac but it's still miles better than what it is now and was never broken to begin with (despite being unpopular) but I blame the fact that ely runs feel like playing a different game which may not be for everyone.
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Post Thursday, 5th February 2015, 03:36

Re: Elyvilon Reform

comebackshane wrote:old ely was never broken to begin with


uh, about that...
take it easy

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Post Thursday, 5th February 2015, 05:30

Re: Elyvilon Reform

New ely seems pretty good to me, a dramatic improvement from a design and enjoyability standpoint (and a much-deserved nerf in the power department). Infinite healing is still good, as you can probably guess. I like new pacification, and since you don't need to use it on everything now it's probably fine that the enemies stay around after getting pacified, though still odd that they're bloodthirsty killing machines (but from a strictly gameplay perspective it's kind of cool).

I would suggest that probably something about pacification should be changed now, since it's not clear to unspoiled players how it works. With old ely you could kind of overlook that since you'd at least be pacifying so many things you would learn over time; that's not the case any more. Some change that lets success rate be displayed is probably ideal (since it's pretty similar to a hex); I leave it up to the devs to decide what the best course of action is here since several obvious possibilities have been suggested already (HD, fixed monster HP). Looking at how it scales with invo and deciding whether to keep that similar to the status quo is worth doing also; ely characters will, inevitably, end up with less invocations skill now that 27 invocations doesn't win the game on its own. A change is perhaps (probably?) not necessary, since I still would see myself getting to at least 20 invocations for better healing/pacification/vigour power, but it's something to consider.

edit: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate ... 171655.txt

Finished up my healer game. Feels pretty good from a gameplay standpoint. The piety costs are noticeable (you can see I dropped to 4* at the end) but still plenty usable.
Last edited by crate on Thursday, 5th February 2015, 17:27, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Thursday, 5th February 2015, 13:55

Re: Elyvilon Reform

There's some more discussion on the technical details of changing Pacification so that its success rate could be displayed in the comments of #8472 on Mantis, and a patch implementing some such change would be likely to be accepted - I'd tend towards suggesting just fuzzing the maxHP value that pacification uses a bit, basing the formula on HD instead of maxHP would be a bigger change but also sounds reasonable.

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Post Thursday, 5th February 2015, 21:27

Re: Elyvilon Reform

duvessa wrote:"yup this is true, im probs gonna thank this post. lets see what the next paragraph is"


I missed the "quote" button and hit the "thank" button.

duvessa wrote:"wat"


Changes that have been made in the last few versions that decrease the number of possible playstyle choices include, but are not limited to the following:
-New Nemelex gives the player no influence over what decks they get. I did not mind playing dungeon janitor at all if it let me have a chance at the rare decks.
-As of .15, player clinging is no more. For what pvrpose? The only reason why you would want to remove this, along with the swift boost, from spiderform is to limit the number of applications of the spell.
-Projectile traps no longer provide ammo.
-As of trunk, Twisted Resurrection is no more. Instead of trying to fix a very interesting and fun spell, they removed it altogether. TR was one of the things that really made you feel like a mad magician when playing a high-level necromancer.
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