Buffs


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 Friday, 22nd July 2011, 14:16

Re: Buffs

smock wrote:I had suggested this in a previous discussion about buffs. I still like the idea and I don't remember why it didn't catch on.

How do you handle someone memorizing deflect missiles and putting on crystal plate mail?
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Post Friday, 22nd July 2011, 14:18

Re: Buffs

Galefury wrote:I thought a bit about what the "correct" max MP penalty for permanent buffs would be in the regen penalty system. With correct I mean the penalty that most closely reproduces manual buffing. My solution: when mana regeneration is completely disabled due to permanent buffs the lost max MP should be half the mana cost of all permanent buffs. Because if you manually cast all your buffs (and cast no other spells) you would on average be at max MP minus half the cost of all those buffs if mana regeneration exactly compensates for the cost of keeping them up permanently. Max MP penalties in between can be linearly interpolated.

If you could provide actual formulas for that I would be grateful.
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Blades Runner

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Post Friday, 22nd July 2011, 14:30

Re: Buffs

galehar wrote:
smock wrote:I had suggested this in a previous discussion about buffs. I still like the idea and I don't remember why it didn't catch on.

How do you handle someone memorizing deflect missiles and putting on crystal plate mail?


I'd love to see that, actually. Wouldn't it be fun to try to get such a character working? Invest in Armour and other melee skills along with charms and spellcasting just to get buffs up? All the investment in charms and spellcasting -- while being unable to cast spells at with heavy armour on -- would be quite ironic. Cool, huh?

It's only a problem if it's overpowered. In which case, yes, it would need to be handled. Heavy armours could induce hunger, glow, or partial failure of the perma-buff or complete failure (as with Condensation Shield and Ozu's Armour). Or -- and I think this might be warranted in any case -- perma-buffs could be impossible to memorize if the charms skill is less than twice (or whatnot) the level of the spell.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Friday, 22nd July 2011, 14:41

Re: Buffs

Unlike galehar's proposal which closely mimics the effects of recasting your buffs all the time and is mostly an interface convenience your proposal would require rebalancing every single buff in the game and would also upset the caster/hybrid/fighter balance. Besides, high level spells can be memorized easily with potions of brilliance and int boosters. The system you propose would need some mechanism to address this.

Spider Stomper

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Post Saturday, 23rd July 2011, 14:51

Re: Buffs

smock wrote:I like this idea:
(1) Buffs become active when memorized. They cannot be cast.

I don't like this idea.

Buffs are spells. Right now, all spells share the same system in which they are memorized and then cast when you want their effects. You are suggesting creating and balancing a completely new system for a particular type of spell. This means spells won't be consistent with each other anymore, and on top of it, you're suggesting that some buffs will be permanent and some have to be temporary, so you're not even keeping buffs consistent with each other. It makes no sense.

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Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 27th July 2011, 16:21

Re: Buffs

Galefury wrote:I noticed I got it all backwards in my previous post. In actual play you wont be prepaying the buff cost, you will be postpaying it, and there is only a cost if you are not at full MP. Cast all the buffs you need, then rest to full MP. Now a recast event happens, buff duration is renewed, but you don't lose any MP. Instead your regen is penalized if you keep it on, which adds up to the total cost of recasting the spell in the time until the next recast, but only if you have non-full MP during that whole time.


Yay, one of my ideas was taken up. I feel brushed with greatness.

I think this is backwards. I think the plan is that as soon as you cast a buff (paying mana) the regen penalty starts. This it to pay for the recast, and it effectivly means that you will pay for that first buff twice (once up front and once again during the duration). While this does give you the "free" recast, what it means in practice is that if you are streching on your buffs it may take hundreds of turns to get your mana back to full, if ever. Yes I know you can channel to get back your mana, but you could always do that so it is no different.

Galefury wrote:This is what I was talking about in the first paragraph of my previous post, I just didn't see it then. This means that only if you never rest to full MP after enabling your permabuffs you will be prepaying the cost. Lost regen at full MP equals no cost at all. I don't see this being a huge advantage in actual play, but combined with the saved turns (some of which would be in combat) I think permabuffs would actually be stronger than manual casting. It's still probably best not to implement an added penalty at first to get people to use the new system, then introduce penalties if it turns out to be imbalanced.


Yes, I agree this is a buff for auto-recasting and said so on my first post. I also agree that the edge is not so much that nerfs need to be introduced to correct for it. I also agree with others who said that by the time you can reliably cast a buff, the mana cost is not significant.

Galefury wrote:I thought a bit about what the "correct" max MP penalty for permanent buffs would be in the regen penalty system. With correct I mean the penalty that most closely reproduces manual buffing. My solution: when mana regeneration is completely disabled due to permanent buffs the lost max MP should be half the mana cost of all permanent buffs.


If mana regen is completely disabled by your buffs then you will never regen back from the inital casting. This gives you a "penalty" to your max mana equal to the cost of the buffs. For a hybrid this is no big deal, until one of your autocasts fails and you have to dip yet again into your (now half) mana pool to restart it. A caster would find this penalty ranges from crippling to trival based on how many buffs they feel are necessary (again not a problem IMO).

Galefury wrote:A way to find out how many turns between the recast events of a buff if fixed durations are used: cast the permanent version of the buff, memorize turn count. Put on plate mail and a large shield. Wait until miscast/expiry. This is not possible with high spell/armor/shield skills, but this prediction would only be relevant at low success rates anyway. The regen penalty should of course be based on the average duration, but actual recast events should use random duration IMO.


I think you could use a random duration generation if you like (and the means are already there), but I don't think this is that relevent. I suppose the highly anal could track duration, but duration would vary for every spell, and even with each spell, duration depends on changing spell power. In practice, esp. if durations are tweaked a bit, then a serious buff user would find that there buffs would eventually be cycling at compeletly different times. This would make tweaking your gear for recasting sub-optimal since you would lose many turns waiting for the perfect window.

Galefury wrote:Further options for degenerate play: put on a staff of enchantment or robe of the archmagi and maybe some int rings while waiting for your MP to regenerate. This will increase the power of your buffs, raising average duration and increasing your MP regen. Wield your regular equipment for combat. This saves turns, which means food. Also it may be relevant for chars with many buffs and very slow MP regen. They may have to use an enhancer to regenerate any MP at all.


You can do this now with the buffs as they stand. In fact it is a reccomended strat for spells like necromutation. If the duration (and therefore mana rengen penalty) is set when you cast the spell, which is easiest, then you would have to be wearing those enhancers when you autocast. While this is an issue, I don't see how it would be any more of one with the new system then it is with the current one. Less of one really, since you don't really know when they are renewing.

I don't see how making those with slow mana regen or many buffs have to keep a mana enhancer on all the time is a problem at all.

Galefury wrote:Possible solution: MP regen only increases gradually when buff duration increases. Drops in MP regen should be instant of course. The problem with this is that it's not obvious, and making it transparent with a message would quickly get annoying because every skill levelup changes spellpower and switching between enhancer staves can happen quite a lot in normal play. Also delayed regen increase would just cause even more annoyance (and some extra food cost) for people with very low MP regen, it would not actually disable this behaviour, just penalize it. And you actually have to spend item slots on the otherwise possibly not that useful enhancers. So I don't think this is a big problem.


This seems finiky and does not add much utility.

Galefury wrote:I think you should not dismiss the need to let the player know about MP regen changes. A message upon reaching half the normal rate and upon going into negative regen would be good. Showing actual number of turns to regenerate full MP is not needed IMO.


This is not a bad idea.


The only think I would like to add is that I disagree with Gahler's idea of making buffs like forms. While I agree that you need to add a way to end the auto-recast of spells, I would like to have them play out their orginal duration.

There are several spells (regeneration, flight, see invis) where I can see wanting to cast only once and then have them run normal duration. The way it was originally suggested the first buff you have to pay for twice. This is not an issue if you would normally leave it up. However, if you are only wanting to use a certain spell for a finite duration the extra mana costs would add up.

Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 27th July 2011, 16:23

Re: Buffs

galehar wrote:
smock wrote:I had suggested this in a previous discussion about buffs. I still like the idea and I don't remember why it didn't catch on.

How do you handle someone memorizing deflect missiles and putting on crystal plate mail?



Nothing stopping someone from doing this now. With the change, as soon as the buff would normally run out it would try to recast, it would fizzle.

This would cause no change from the way things work now.
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Post Wednesday, 27th July 2011, 17:25

Re: Buffs

The idea is that you can cast normally with z or permanently with Z. And in the latter case, if you cancel the spell, the duration is set to the point where the spell starts to expire. Which is when you get the expiring message in normal mode, and when auto recast is done in perma mode.

Regarding my answer to smock, it was about his proposal that buffs are always active when memorised.
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 27th July 2011, 17:57

Re: Buffs

Ah, ok thank you.

In which case this seems totally awesome and I look forward to trying it out.

Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 27th July 2011, 21:40

Re: Buffs

Likewise. Whatever specific form buffs take, I'm sure it'll make Crawl much better.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Wednesday, 7th September 2011, 07:12

Re: Buffs

I would like to vote for this on the implementable list yet !

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Post Wednesday, 7th September 2011, 10:00

Re: Buffs

Danakh wrote:I would like to vote for this on the implementable list yet !


Please add this comment on the vote for implementables thread to ensure it gets taken into account! (With a link back to this thread)

Lair Larrikin

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Post Wednesday, 7th September 2011, 10:50

Re: Buffs

galehar wrote:It has been suggested to make swiftness give glow.

Why glow? Wouldn't EXH be a conceptually better solution just like Berserk/Death Door has? (since one gets tired from struttin' that ass)
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Post Wednesday, 7th September 2011, 12:22

Re: Buffs

Marten wrote:
galehar wrote:It has been suggested to make swiftness give glow.

Why glow? Wouldn't EXH be a conceptually better solution just like Berserk/Death Door has? (since one gets tired from struttin' that ass)

Hey, good idea. By the way, I've polished and wikified the permabuff proposal discussed earlier in this thread.

edit: having a spell that gives exh status seems like a very bad idea if it protects you from involuntary berserk.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Friday, 9th September 2011, 05:26

Re: Buffs

If glow got spread out with a nice rainbow of colors and maybe a halo a la TSO, I for one would leave all my buffs on -
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That would be confusing if you went red -> violet though as red is worse than yellow currently
Throw in there some stat drains, maybe random teleports or possibly banishment to spice it up who knows...
fun fun!
In all seriousness recasting is a little tedious and would be nice to have permcasts. Slowed mp regen is a fair trade.
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