Race Proposal: Skuggi (v2.0)


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

User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 21:30

Race Proposal: Skuggi (v2.0)

Skuggi code on Git
CDO Species Proposal

Skuggi
Rumored to be the creation of a necromantic rite gone horribly wrong, these creatures exist with magical energies entwined in every fiber of their bodies.

Inexorably mixed with magic, Skuggi cast spells using their life force, are immune to rotting, and poisons have a difficult time affecting them. Their very presence inhibits the arcane in a small area around them. As they grow their magic will either run wild or become somewhat subdued.

Skuggi may not worship Trog, as Trog believes their very existence to be an abomination. Skuggi are also vulnerable to antimagic weapons, and cannot wield them.



Species Attributes
HP: +10%, MP: No Mana Pool
Base Stats: Str 6, Int 8, Dex 10
Stat Increase: 1 Str/Int/Dex every 4 levels
Exp Gain: -1
Suggested Classes: Fighter, Monk, Transmuter, Air Elementalist, Warper, Necromancer
  Code:
static const map<species_type, species_def> species_data =
{
{ SP_SKUGGI, {
    "Sk",
    "Skuggi", nullptr, nullptr,
    SPF_NO_HAIR,
    -1, 1, 0,
    18, 6,
    MONS_SKUGGI,
    HT_LAND, US_ALIVE, SIZE_MEDIUM,
    6, 8, 10, // 24
    { STAT_STR, STAT_INT, STAT_DEX }, 4,
    { { MUT_SLOW_METABOLISM, 1, 1 }, { MUT_ROT_IMMUNITY, 1, 1 }, { MUT_POISON_RESISTANCE, 1, 1 }}
    { "You radiate an aura of Silence." },
    { "silence aura" },
    { JOB_FIGHTER, JOB_MONK, JOB_TRANSMUTER, JOB_AIR_ELEMENTALIST,
      JOB_WARPER, JOB_NECROMANCER },
    { SK_MACES_FLAILS, SK_AXES, SK_POLEARMS, SK_LONG_BLADES, SK_STAVES,
      SK_BOWS, SK_CROSSBOWS, SK_SLINGS, SK_UNARMED_COMBAT },
} }
}

Traits:
Rot Immunity:
Posion Resistance: (rPois+)
Antimagic Vulnerablility: weak to Antimagic brand, cannot wield antimagic weapons
Slow Metabolism: Skuggi are partially sustained by magic, and do not have to eat as often

Innate Abilities:
Silence Aura: (Passive) Radius=2

*** I would like to add the following, but I'm still trying to figure out how to code a forced mutation via choice ***
Expand/Contract Aura: When Skuggi reach level 7, they must choose;
Expand their magical ability into their aura, increasing its reach (gain: mut_subdued_magic 1, silence aura radius +1)
Contract their magical ability into themselves, shrinking its reach (gain: wild_magic_1, silence aura radius -1)

Aptitudes:
  Code:
static const species_skill_aptitude species_skill_aptitudes[] =
{
// SP_SKUGGI
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_FIGHTING,        0),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_SHORT_BLADES,   -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_LONG_BLADES,    -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_AXES,           -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_MACES_FLAILS,   -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_POLEARMS,       -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_STAVES,         -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_SLINGS,         -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_BOWS,           -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_CROSSBOWS,      -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_THROWING,       -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_ARMOUR,         -2),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_DODGING,        -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_STEALTH,         0),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_STABBING,      UNUSABLE_SKILL),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_SHIELDS,         -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_TRAPS,         UNUSABLE_SKILL),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_UNARMED_COMBAT, -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_SPELLCASTING,   -2),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_CONJURATIONS,   -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_HEXES,           0),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_CHARMS,         -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_SUMMONINGS,     -2),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_NECROMANCY,      0),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_TRANSLOCATIONS,  0),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_TRANSMUTATIONS,  0),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_FIRE_MAGIC,     -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_ICE_MAGIC,      -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_AIR_MAGIC,       0),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_EARTH_MAGIC,    -2),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_POISON_MAGIC,   -1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_INVOCATIONS,     1),
    APT(SP_SKUGGI,      SK_EVOCATIONS,      0),
}


Notes:
A "magic" themed species that has no MP and can cast spells using HP with a fun Risk vs Reward feel.
I don't view subdued magic as a bad mutation, as it can allow spell casting in higher ER armour, and for hybrid characters that are mostly self-buffing, I see this as a positive.

** I've made some significant changes to this species after all the comments below, adjusting pretty much everything **
Last edited by infinitevox on Tuesday, 19th January 2016, 03:13, edited 9 times in total.
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 762

Joined: Thursday, 25th April 2013, 02:43

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 21:42

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Might want to look into Dj, which were this idea being tried and not working at all.
On IRC my nick is reaverb. I play online under the name reaver, though.

For this message the author reaver has received thanks: 2
Arrhythmia, duvessa
User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 21:51

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

I thought Dj didn't work out because the fire gimmick didn't really add anything to overall gameplay.

I don't remember Dj being mana-less or having an evokable silence, but I do take long breaks from this game every once in a while, so maybe I missed that iteration.
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.
User avatar

Barkeep

Posts: 1788

Joined: Saturday, 29th June 2013, 16:52

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 21:54

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

The last time we tried a cast-from-HP species, it was not well regarded. I think the combination of good apts, innate silence (!!), MR++, and rPois would make this species similarly OP, and that's before we get into all the mechanics that need to be special cased for a species with no MP. The "fire gimmick" was definitely a big problem with Dj, but it wasn't central to the idea; if that was the only problem, it would've been easy to fix by just removing fire immunity.

Ah, ninja'd by reaver. When I went looking for that thread, I found another about turning Dj/LO mechanics into gods, and I think it's possible that there's room in Crawl for a cast-from-HP god.

For this message the author archaeo has received thanks: 2
Arrhythmia, infinitevox
User avatar

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1591

Joined: Saturday, 3rd August 2013, 18:59

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 22:05

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

infinitevox wrote:I thought Dj didn't work out because the fire gimmick didn't really add anything to overall gameplay.

I don't remember Dj being mana-less or having an evokable silence, but I do take long breaks from this game every once in a while, so maybe I missed that iteration.


Dj were probably the most broken thing I've ever seen be put in trunk. They seemed extremely cool in theory, but no matter what changes were made, they just ended up being so fundamentally weird and broken that they had to be scrapped.

Like I said, it sounds like something interesting in practice, but in reality it was an extremely painful race to play as.

Djinni's main ability that made it unique was by far the biggest flaw(there were others, but I won't go into them). The idea was to make magic a more abundant resource while also limiting it by forcing you to take damage for casting spells. Again, sounds interesting, but in reality all it ends up being is just numbers on the board and nothing more. It rarely change your playstyle in an interesting and often put the player in a position where they would need to cast a smaller number of spells than they normally would(despite their "enormous" mana pool) because of the dangers of going below a certain amount of health in potentially deadly scenarios. This resulted in very grindy gameplay in order to play optimally and a boat load of stairdancing the entire game. I can't testify to how powerful they are since I never won with one, but I've heard many people also say they were extremely overpowered.

With all that said, I'm basing that entirely off of memory, so feel free to correct me if anybody feels as though I missed something or perhaps disagrees with my explanation. Its been a while since I've tried playing them.
To all new players: Ignore all strategy guides posted on the wiki, ask questions in the Advice forum, players with lots of posts normally have the best advice.

crawl.akrasiac.org:8080 <- take this link to play online or spectate.
User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 22:14

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

I'm always trying to come up with "new" mechanics and additions to expand gameplay, and I don't believe that something being difficult to do is a reason not to do it. I don't have a problem spending the time to go through and write the rest of the code for the species to work, and maybe I should have done that before posting the idea :p
I also look at species less from an OP/Useless standpoint and consider them more like a difficulty level choice. Some races are easier to win with than others. I'm guessing that it was just absurdly easy for Dj to win.

After reading that thread, it seems to me that there were more problems with Dj than just cast-from-HP though...
As stated by Reaver in the thread Archaeo linked:
reaver wrote:Actually, the general opinion is that the most broken thing about Djinn is no hunger channeling/healing. Getting the advantages of both HP and MP for no real cost is totally busted.

I may have to go find a version of crawl with Dj in it and play them out to get a better idea of what the two of you are referring to, there must be some interaction with Dj that I haven't considered that was the root of the problem. But from the species-data.h, it looks like Dj didn't require food, which IMO is a very large part of that problem.

*Edit*
It seems I've stirred up a lot of horrible memories that people have tried to suppress, and this thread has already derailed because of it.
Obviously I'm biased, so if possible, I'd like to discuss how this could be made to work and to reconsider the idea of cast-from-HP with this race :D
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.
User avatar

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1591

Joined: Saturday, 3rd August 2013, 18:59

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 22:24

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

infinitevox wrote:I'm always trying to come up with "new" mechanics and additions to expand gameplay, and I don't believe that something being difficult to do is a reason not to do it. I don't have a problem spending the time to go through and write the rest of the code for the species to work, and maybe I should have done that before posting the idea :p
I also look at species less from an OP/Useless standpoint and consider them more like a difficulty level choice. Some races are easier to win with than others. I'm guessing that it was just absurdly easy for Dj to win.

After reading that thread, it seems to me that there were more problems with Dj than just cast-from-HP though...
As stated by Reaver in the thread Archaeo linked:
reaver wrote:Actually, the general opinion is that the most broken thing about Djinn is no hunger channeling/healing. Getting the advantages of both HP and MP for no real cost is totally busted.

I may have to go find a version of crawl with Dj in it and play them out to get a better idea of what the two of you are referring to, there must be some interaction with Dj that I haven't considered that was the root of the problem. But from the species-data.h, it looks like Dj didn't require food, which IMO is a very large part of that problem.

*Edit*
It seems I've stirred up a lot of horrible memories that people have tried to suppress, and this thread has already derailed because of it.
Obviously I'm biased, so if possible, I'd like to discuss how this could be made to work and to reconsider the idea of cast-from-HP with this race :D


If you coded it then I would definitely play it to try it out. My advice though is to really try and make it so the health loss from spells is a bit more interesting than what it was before, because as I said, it was a very boring mechanic in practice and just ended up leading to tedious gameplay. If I had to suggest a way to fix this, perhaps making the species much slower could encourage less of this attitude, or maybe exponentially increasing the spellpower or even ability to cast spells as your "health" pool gets smaller.

Its not secret Dj had a million things wrong with them, so it would be a shame to denounce the idea of a species with a mix manapool and healthpool simply because Dj flopped so hard. I would definitely like to see this mechanic work out, even if I am skeptical as to that goals plausibility. In any case, people are generally very supportive of players willing to go through the trouble of programming something into the game for them, so odds are you will get at least SOME good feedback.
To all new players: Ignore all strategy guides posted on the wiki, ask questions in the Advice forum, players with lots of posts normally have the best advice.

crawl.akrasiac.org:8080 <- take this link to play online or spectate.
User avatar

Barkeep

Posts: 1788

Joined: Saturday, 29th June 2013, 16:52

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 22:32

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

infinitevox wrote:Obviously I'm biased, so if possible, I'd like to discuss how this could be made to work and to reconsider the idea of cast-from-HP with this race :D

The issue I see is that cast-from-HP requires a ton of special cases. How does this species work with Sif, Veh, and Ely? Is all channeling forbidden? Are they immune to MP draining? Are they forbidden from wearing guardian spirit? Does MP+9 work? Staff of Power?

Special cases were part of what kept Dj from getting added to the game, and I think they'd present problems here as well.
User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Wednesday, 6th January 2016, 22:39

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Tiktacy wrote:If you coded it then I would definitely play it to try it out. My advice though is to really try and make it so the health loss from spells is a bit more interesting than what it was before, because as I said, it was a very boring mechanic in practice and just ended up leading to tedious gameplay. If I had to suggest a way to fix this, perhaps making the species much slower could encourage less of this attitude, or maybe exponentially increasing the spellpower or even ability to cast spells as your "health" pool gets smaller.


Reverse Augmentation?
That's an interesting thought. Rewarding that kind of play with enhanced abilities/spellpower really does fit the whole Risk/Reward thing that I think makes for entertaining gameplay.

archaeo wrote:The issue I see is that cast-from-HP requires a ton of special cases. How does this species work with Sif, Veh, and Ely? Is all channeling forbidden? Are they immune to MP draining? Are they forbidden from wearing guardian spirit? Does MP+9 work? Staff of Power?

Special cases were part of what kept Dj from getting added to the game, and I think they'd present problems here as well.


Easy answer is just to forbid worship of those gods, although that does put a damper on a dedicated spellcaster.
Perhaps the answer is to double or triple the hunger cost for channeling.
I would think MP draining would deal double damage to them, it makes sense thematically too.
Guardian Spirit would just do nothing.

I see where you're going here, and that's all important stuff to consider.
I'm going to see if I can finish off coding this race to play, and see what I can come up with as far as solutions go for those problems.

Thanks for the constructive feedback here folks, I appreciate it. :)
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.
User avatar

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1591

Joined: Saturday, 3rd August 2013, 18:59

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 00:23

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Vehumet could stay the same without an issue, although maybe reduce the HP/MP gains from vehumet if people find it to be too OP. To fix the issue with channeling, just make evocations and invocations -4 or -5. Its pretty easy to justify that thematicly and should be enough to make channeling significantly less appealing than with most races without making it too complicated. DO NOT try to solve it with hunger, trust me that never works.

I would make them immune to MP draining, and adding MP should probably add to their total pool(its not extremely common anyway so its not like its a huge buff for them).

They get a lot of upsides for their mixed MP and HP pool though, so try really hard not to add anything to make them too powerful. I would have very poor aptitudes for weapon skills and -2 or -3 for armor and dodging since they get such a huge boost in defense due to their shared mp pool. Try to keep them weak aptitude wise and stat wise to start off and increase as needed.

Just as a rule of thumb, people like it when weapon skills are all the same apt. and spell skills are fairly close together. The reason for this is because people dislike being restricted to specific gameplay styles since it stops them from getting to make as many interesting choices. For example, lets say somebody starts off with maces and finds a whip of elec early on, but in lair;1 they find a lajatang of ice, if your aptitudes for staves are terrible(-2 for example) but your mace aptitudes are really good (lets say +1?) then you are most likely going to choose the whip and not really consider the lajatang for a long time. But, if your aptitudes for both are the same, it becomes an interesting choice as to whether or not you want to start investing in staves instead of maces. Sorry if its not the best example, hopefully you get the idea though.
To all new players: Ignore all strategy guides posted on the wiki, ask questions in the Advice forum, players with lots of posts normally have the best advice.

crawl.akrasiac.org:8080 <- take this link to play online or spectate.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 03:29

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Crawl already has a cast from hp species, VS, along with an amulet that gives you cast from hp, a hat ego that gives you cast from hp, several fixedarts that give you cast from hp, and a species that sometimes mutates cast from hp. I think that's enough.

Sar

User avatar

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6418

Joined: Friday, 6th July 2012, 12:48

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 10:54

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

reaver wrote:the most broken thing about Djinn is no hunger channeling/healing

2015: let's remove food because it doesn't do anything!

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3160

Joined: Sunday, 5th August 2012, 14:52

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 15:05

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Every implemented form of use-hp-as-mp except Makhleb assumes that your hp and mp pools merge, which makes every form of repeatable mp restoration absurd. My reading of the OP is that this species simply wouldn't have or interact with mp at all, which would potentially limit the absurdity. Not that I necessarily think this would go well, but I think that's a difference worth highlighting.
User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 16:13

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Lasty wrote:Every implemented form of use-hp-as-mp except Makhleb assumes that your hp and mp pools merge, which makes every form of repeatable mp restoration absurd. My reading of the OP is that this species simply wouldn't have or interact with mp at all, which would potentially limit the absurdity. Not that I necessarily think this would go well, but I think that's a difference worth highlighting.


This is what I meant exactly.
I never meant to combine the two, that just seems really really silly. All the potential abuse people were talking about now makes sense though.
Thank you for helping to clarify that, it just didn't occur to me that people thought the two would be combined. o.0
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.
User avatar

Barkeep

Posts: 4435

Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 17:09

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Lasty wrote:Every implemented form of use-hp-as-mp except Makhleb assumes that your hp and mp pools merge, which makes every form of repeatable mp restoration absurd.

On the upside, it adds amusing instadeaths from CBoE and eyes of draining ;)

More seriously, I agree with the your reading: there's no MP pool for this species, so all forms of channeling should be useless. Ely worship might be a problem (though since self-heal costs piety it might not be awful). In this proposal, they have a necro flavor, so good gods might reasonably turn them down.

Innate evokable silence might be interesting on a species or god; however, I think it would need a much harsher cost than 1% HP. Maybe a *maxHP* cost or self-torment or something, depending on whether you want it to be a strategic consumable or a tactical danger.
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 885

Joined: Sunday, 28th June 2015, 14:44

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 17:47

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Sar wrote:
reaver wrote:the most broken thing about Djinn is no hunger channeling/healing

2015: let's remove food because it doesn't do anything!


yeah, it really makes sense that the only meaningful purpose of food is to prevent you from spamming lvl 9 spells...

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 18:15

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

MP restoration gives you health now if you're a VS or wear guardian spirit. It's not doubled like it was for Dj, but there's no reason it should be doubled in the first place. I seriously don't get how you can say all these things about cast from hp being broken, when cast from hp has very visibly been in the game since 0.6.
Doubled MP restoration on Dj wasn't even unbalanced, honest. It was stupid and made no sense that it was doubled, but it wasn't unbalanced. Sif channeling was an average of 9.75 HP per turn at 27 invo, which is only a bit better than quaffing curing potions for hp (which is routinely made fun of), not remotely worth the skill investment, and required you to worship a weak god. Wucad Mu was better, being slightly better than heal wounds at 27 evo...when it succeeded. It had a nontrivial chance of damaging you (by up to 48!) instead. Never mind how rare the item was, and even for a Dj there were better fixedarts to find, like cloak of the thief. (I'm aware that MarvinPA disabled it anyway for no reason). Vehumet healing wasn't any better than Makhleb healing, and Makhleb, unlike Vehumet, has other abilities that aren't trash. A potion of magic did become equivalent to a doubled potion of heal wounds, and that was the most problematic thing, but at least there weren't a lot of them. Yes, channeling gave you very fast regeneration out of combat, but you're out of combat, faster regeneration just means less piety decay unless you're in abyss/hells in which case it still doesn't mean that much.

Cboe doesn't become nonsensical, it becomes an item that would obviously just be disabled, because if your character used it, it could instantly kill them. And who cares about eyes of draining/ghost moths? They drain 10 MP per gaze. Hellions are speed 12 and do an average of 24 damage per hellfire. Ghost moths are speed 12 and did 20 damage per gaze to Dj. Eyes of draining are speed 5. Being a Dj didn't make these enemies unfair, at all.

What WAS broken with Dj was being able to use Elyvilon's lesser healing with no hunger, which singlehandedly brought pacifist runs back into viability (though none were completed). Since heal other now costs piety, that wouldn't be an issue anymore. Ignoring all the other hunger costs wasn't a big deal, which should be pretty obvious since there are three races in the game that already do that!
User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Thursday, 7th January 2016, 20:02

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

njvack wrote:...
so all forms of channeling should be useless. Ely worship might be a problem (though since self-heal costs piety it might not be awful). In this proposal, they have a necro flavor, so good gods might reasonably turn them down.

Innate evokable silence might be interesting on a species or god; however, I think it would need a much harsher cost than 1% HP. Maybe a *maxHP* cost or self-torment or something, depending on whether you want it to be a strategic consumable or a tactical danger.


I changed the evokable silence to cost 10% of maxHP, but really and truly, that's totally arbitrary until I can start play-testing it.

I've got most of the code done for the species, I'm now in the process of trying to hunt down all the things I need to add to make it work.
Right now, I've got the silence set-up similar to the blink mutation, (Blink ability from mutation calls the cast_blink(), and looks like it pulls from spell failure)
I'm most familiar with C#, not C++, so if someone knows if this will work or not, I'd appreciate it: *Edit* Solved it.

I'm going to try and get it to compile tonight or tomorrow, and then I can start going through and figuring out what gods/items/spells/etc could be problematic.
I know this isn't the place for it... but is there another obvious file I'll need to edit other than the ones I've already done?
  Code:
ability.cc      // add silence ability, cost, failure, etc
aptitudes.h      // obvious
enum.h         // ABIL_SILENCE
mon-data.h      // monster version
ng-restr.cc      // no berserker
player.cc      // no mana pool, resists, mp calc = 0
religion.cc      // no trog
species.txt      // race desc
species-data.h   // skuggi species info
tilepick-p.cc   // which tile (currently set to human)


I also plan on uploading to git at some point if anyone wants to look at my changes.
Last edited by infinitevox on Saturday, 9th January 2016, 00:02, edited 1 time in total.
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.
User avatar

Barkeep

Posts: 4435

Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28

Post Friday, 8th January 2016, 02:10

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

I meant a permanent maxhp cost, like borg's, or if you want a temporary cost torment. If it's just "cast silence for some small HP cost for this species that casts from MP" then it's literally just casting the silence spell except you don't need to find it or train it.

I wouldn't worry about a monster version of the species; player species don't often make good monster species.
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.
User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Friday, 8th January 2016, 23:59

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

njvack wrote:I meant a permanent maxhp cost, like borg's, or if you want a temporary cost torment. If it's just "cast silence for some small HP cost for this species that casts from MP" then it's literally just casting the silence spell except you don't need to find it or train it.

I wouldn't worry about a monster version of the species; player species don't often make good monster species.

Ahhhh, I see. That's... an interesting thought. I'll keep this in mind. And I also see what you're saying about silence spell. My original idea was that they permanently had an aura of silence around them (maybe 1-2 squares around them, excepting their own), but I'm not sure how well that would work out.

A player species has to have a corresponding monster version or it won't work, code-wise.

Speaking of code, I forked Crawl and made my changes for this species:

https://github.com/infinitevox/crawl/commits/master

I have not compiled yet, but I'll be doing that tonight, and then commence play-testing.
"My" version of Crawl is based off of the commit that was current as of 6pm EST.
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Saturday, 9th January 2016, 04:28

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Jeez, what is it with you guys and the idea that silence is somehow overpowered? Silence is a level 5 spell and is a really bad spell that is rarely worth learning, let alone casting. Silence on a species would be stronger, since you could at least use it on orc wizards and orc priests, but it's not as good as having, say, a better hp aptitude.
User avatar

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1591

Joined: Saturday, 3rd August 2013, 18:59

Post Saturday, 9th January 2016, 04:49

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

duvessa wrote:Jeez, what is it with you guys and the idea that silence is somehow overpowered? Silence is a level 5 spell and is a really bad spell that is rarely worth learning, let alone casting. Silence on a species would be stronger, since you could at least use it on orc wizards and orc priests, but it's not as good as having, say, a better hp aptitude.


Its not meant to be better, its meant to be different. I've never found silence to be even close to worth the investment, but as a starting ability it might be a different story.

I think having silence as a starting ability is interesting enough to be in the game. Its pretty useful for dealing with otherwise dangerous uniques(sigmund comes to mind) in the early-mid game as well as various humanoids(ogre mages come to mind as well). It naturally drops off in usefulness after that though, as do many early game abilities.

It should have a cooldown based on exp gain though. Its not valuable enough to give up max HP and will end up being used extremely sparingly due to its already limited usefulness. You could almost get away with making it only damage you slightly.
To all new players: Ignore all strategy guides posted on the wiki, ask questions in the Advice forum, players with lots of posts normally have the best advice.

crawl.akrasiac.org:8080 <- take this link to play online or spectate.
User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Saturday, 9th January 2016, 22:40

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi

Skuggi code now on Git, updated the OP

Everything compiles and runs like a champion, and I think I caught most of the obvious stuff for the species.
Lots of changes made after reflecting on the comments above.
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.
User avatar

Slime Squisher

Posts: 354

Joined: Thursday, 14th April 2011, 17:28

Post Tuesday, 19th January 2016, 03:15

Re: Race Proposal: Skuggi (v2.0)

Sorry for the bump, but I figured it was better than creating a new topic... :D
infinitevox on akrasiac & berotato
Busy dying horrible deaths from chugging too many pots of Mutation.

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 92 guests

Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.