MrMisterMonkey wrote:asdu, I'd like to note how a lot of the focus has indeed been on making it unnecessary, but if pillar dancing is still optimal (compare with item usage, for instance; I don't think it'd be easy to make squandering a magic potion better than wasting some turns dancing around a pillar, as an example), it should die.
The fact you mention item usage and describe pillar dancing as "optimal" makes me wonder if we're actually discussing the same issue.
I'm talking specifically about pillar dancing in the very early game (say, D:1-3, but mostly D:1, really). At that point it's very likely that all items that could turn the tide of a battle or allow me to escape are still unidentified and giving the ID-roulette a shot is reserved for the direst emrgencies (fast enemies, ranged attacks or being sandwiched between two monsters in a corridor).
If the game forced me to quaff an un-ID'd potion in every situation where a dozen turns of running away would do, the many unavoidable deaths that would result from it would be far more aggravating than pillar dancing itself. Nor would it be strategically more interesting, since there's nothing more to it than "try the biggest stack first".
Later on, when panic buttons of various kinds become available, pillar dancing is made much harder by the fact that many more monsters are faster than you, or have ranged attacks, or can confuse you, etc. There may be a time in the late early game (or early mid-game, whatever) when a few useful consumables have been discovered and "generic melee guy" monsters are still prevalent and retreating from one such monster while low on health to avoid wasting a potion could be a viable alternative, but even then I would hardly call it an optimal tactic. You never know which corner hides an even bigger threat. Bad players like myself fall for it all the time
So, to repeat myself, I think it would be a bad move to make drastic changes to gameplay to remedy an issue that only affects a small portion of it (for the record, I think that monster energy randomization WAS a bad move).
A solution I would support was mentioned in the thread about early game balance:
KoboldLord wrote:It might be worthwhile to start with a few consumables as an early-game emergency button. These could be motivated by mechanics (a potion of speed for berserkers, to abbreviate the aftereffects of one rage) or flavor (a scroll of fear for necromancers, to drive off a dangerous living early-game enemy and allow a reprieve), but in either case the consumables should provide a benefit early on but not later. Just potions and scrolls, basically, which can be used to alleviate RNG screwjobs early on but will eventually be popped by fire or cold effects (or just become obsolete) if the RNG screwjob doesn't happen. Transmuters already get this -- their starting potion of poison can be used to flat-out solve any one otherwise-dangerous encounter before the Temple, and the starting potions don't seem to cause any detrimental power creep for them later on.
The only thing I'd add to this is that these consumables would have to be special ones unavailable in the dungeon, to avoid everybody starting with healing potions (or whatever) already identified.