Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits


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Blades Runner

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Post Sunday, 3rd April 2016, 02:36

Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

So I was thinking: what if summons usually stayed for a long time, but you had to invest part of your essence (temporary max MP loss) to summon them? This would get rid of tedium. Basically, you have to resummon your army every time it dies, AND every time you take a few hundred steps and they all dissolve into fog. The current lasting time of summons could be retained, but only for low-level summoners.

For magical summons, you could see the essence as being used to create the magic of that being. Battlesphere, etc.

In addition, summon limits (you can only summon four imps at a time, and only one familiar at a time, etc.) would be removed. A few could be kept for flavor (like buffing the familiar and keeping it only one; maybe have it help you with magic, getting stronger over time?) but the vast majority would be limited only by your max MP. If I'm correct, the less max MP you have, the slower it regenerates. So a summoner AND other_kind_of_magic_user would have to trade off summons and magic.

Naturally, there would be a way to "uncall" summons, regaining all the essence but none of the power.
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Post Sunday, 3rd April 2016, 03:20

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

Ok, summoning is a tedium now too. wtf tavern... wtf.
Jokes aside, i dont like that change, being able to sustain your summons basically means walking around guarded by a army and being able to dispose of enemies or protect yourself against them before they can do anything. Not to mention some summons are meant to be used during engagements(summon forest, malign gateway, lighting spire) and others are meant to be draged along for great lenghts(canine familiar, regular demons).
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Blades Runner

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Post Sunday, 3rd April 2016, 03:29

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

You're right, I forgot about stationary summons. Those I guess could time out after a while out of sight.

Summon Forest is more a plane intersection than anything else, and the resulting monsters aren't actually summons IIRC.

Malign Gateway times out on its own, and should stay that way. It's special.

But the familiar and demons, yeah, there should be a great chance of them staying for a long time. At high enough skills, of course.

Why is it tedium? Because people figure out their best army - and then cast it again. And again. And again. Every. Single. Level.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 3rd April 2016, 03:35

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

Because people figure out their best army - and then cast it again. And again. And again. Every. Single. Level.

also applies to literally every other way of killing enemies

--

If you think players walking around with a pre-summoned army is a problem, just lower summon durations. No one walks around with a pre-summoned hydra, because it just plain does not work.

The only change summoning really needs is removal of the xp penalty.

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Post Sunday, 3rd April 2016, 03:38

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

So instead i propose summons vanish(are abjurated, their duration depletes rapidly) when there are no durable monsters(non-summons) in sight. truth be told, you spend more key presses summoning creatures in battle than out of it.
edit: wow crate read my mind, GET OUT OF MY HEAD
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Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 3rd April 2016, 03:42

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

It's annoying enough when you lose los with a monster for some reason and they all start retreating or just take hits and die...

Halls Hopper

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 01:07

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

This is implemented in the circus animals fork. You can summon any number of creatures, but there is a steady drain to your magic until your magic can no longer sustain them, then *poof*. More powerful summons of course consume more magic. I've played many games with this mechanic. It's way more fun, and strategic, than how it was. Check out crawl.homedns.org if you want to try it.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 07:29

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

crate wrote:The only change summoning really needs is removal of the xp penalty.

Could you elaborate on that? I was thinking it would be best if the xp penalty was constant, i.e. if a summon (successfully) attacks a target, you would also get only a constant proportion of the exp regardless of who did how much damage. It could be 50% or 75% or whatever would be best for balance.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 07:59

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

I just think that summoners as they are are quite powerful and wouldn't really need the buff from no exp penalty...
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 08:03

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

You pay for that with tedium. And conjurerers are quite powerful for that matter.. as are melee-dudes. Nobody else has to lose xp for killing dudes with the skill set they choose to put points into.

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 08:06

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

The thing with XP penalty is that it both doesn't really matter and also looks prohibitively punishing to new players to the point where they refuse to use summons because they think that could cripple their characters to the point where they aren't able to progress in the game.

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 08:10

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

In the long run, no it doesnt matter. In the early game tho, every point counts. So why do it, summoners are not OP in the early game, and as Sar points out, you just push players away from the school on eventually false pretenses.

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 08:25

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

Well Su is kind of OP in the early game, but as long as Be exist I don't think that is that much of a problem.

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 12:03

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

The xp penalty is a holdover from when summons were actually too good, even though it never actually did its job then either (and then the things (mainly attacking out-of-los) that made summons too good were removed).

I have heard that ostensibly the point of the xp penalty is to encourage the player attacking alongside summons. However, even without an xp penalty, there are upsides to doing that anyway, so the xp penalty is not necessary. The xp penalty isn't important for power level (if anything I personally think summons after the starting book are too weak these days, since the increase in monster density in various places was a pretty big indirect summoner nerf), and mostly what it accomplishes is annoying players or encouraging bad play, in the way old draining xp loss did. So it should go.

(As an aside, I actually think that if summons had less of an xp penalty that would probably actually help summon+fighting more than it would help pure summoning, since summon + fighting has a higher xp demand to begin with (especially with higher enemy densities now). So perhaps it is actually doing exactly the opposite of what it is intended to do.)

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 13:16

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

Thanks crate.
edit: oh fuck, thanking got restored.
Last edited by dynast on Monday, 4th April 2016, 13:41, edited 1 time in total.
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Dis Charger

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 13:30

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

crate wrote:The only change summoning really needs is removal of the xp penalty.
I'll agree that the penalty should be removed; because it makes Summoners end up with less XP to branch out and turn into flatter squishier, more one-dimensional characters...if they are pure EARLY; summoning as support after already being a meleeist though...

That said; I don't think it's the ONLY change summonings needs. Summonings has too many PURE spells IMHO; we need to rebrand some of the pure spells into Summoning/Fire, Summoning/Air, etc. Both to increase variety of elemental spells and to make it SO MANY USEFUL SUMMONS are single school.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 14:12

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

Is the XP penalty for sure there in trunk? I've looked a few times and can't seem to find it. If I'm following the logic right, xp is awarded the same whether it's done by a "pet" or by the player. Am I missing something?
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 4th April 2016, 21:09

Re: Summoning Change: Essence Investment, Remove Limits

General Jack D. Ripper: Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.

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