Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification


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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2017, 08:12

Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

1. Transmuters are one of the weakest/least successful backgrounds.

2. The potion of lignification is a reliable early-game survival tool (as long as no one has polearms), especially if you've trained some UC, which all transmuters have by default.

3. A potion of lignification gives a helpful early boost to transmuters and is also consistent with the background itself.

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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2017, 09:04

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

potion of lignifaction is dangerous but very powerful in its own right. Free pass at killing early ogres, orc warriors, menkanure and grinder. Designated hydra removal tool for melee octopodes in lair. Seen people use it in ziggurats to ignore torment.

used to hate it but now it turns my snake to stick. wood suggest quaffing
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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2017, 09:20

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

I'm not convinced. Tm already outperforms Mo at XL1 for most species (beastly appendage is better than the weapon), and as long as sticks to snakes is still a spell it definitely doesn't need any help at XL2 and above. If it needs to be better at XL1 I'd rather improve beastly appendage than give it a new tool, especially one that's basically Fi's potion of might but better.

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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2017, 09:22

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

Thanked for interesting idea. But Tm start is not that rough: Sticks to Snakes and Spider form both are very good, and castable with very little investment (it's ok to have spider form at 30% fail, for instance). I find Tm midgame to be tougher than the early game.

It would perhaps be ok to remove sticks to snakes and give them one or more lignification potions. S2S is weird and can be quite OP.

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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2017, 10:50

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

duvessa wrote:I'm not convinced. Tm already outperforms Mo at XL1 for most species (beastly appendage is better than the weapon), and as long as sticks to snakes is still a spell it definitely doesn't need any help at XL2 and above. If it needs to be better at XL1 I'd rather improve beastly appendage than give it a new tool, especially one that's basically Fi's potion of might but better.


If Mo is even weaker than Tm, then maybe we can somehow buff Mo too. I think it might be fun to have more backgrounds start with distinct consumable.
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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2017, 11:31

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

duvessa wrote:I'm not convinced. Tm already outperforms Mo at XL1 for most species (beastly appendage is better than the weapon), and as long as sticks to snakes is still a spell it definitely doesn't need any help at XL2 and above. If it needs to be better at XL1 I'd rather improve beastly appendage than give it a new tool, especially one that's basically Fi's potion of might but better.


here's a quote from another thread (https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22916&p=306317&hilit=transmuter#p306317) that prompted me to make my suggestion:
RBrandon wrote:Thankfully you don't have to use your opinion to determine if Tm is bad. It comes dead last for win rate among all currently playable classes (0.45%). Narrow that to players that have at least one win of every background (Sequell's greaterplayers) and it is still in last place (3.71%). It doesn't get much better if you just look at the same measures for the last few weeks, where Tm is second last (0.45%) ahead of only AK for all players, and third last (5.22%) ahead of only chaos knight and AK for greaterplayers.


Conventional Crawl wisdom is that the early game is the only part of the game that matters; if Transmuters' win rate is near last even among seasoned players, it's reasonable to assume that the early game (which requires the training of several skills to be effective) is at least part of the cause. If you play a monk unarmed you're much better equipped in skills and attributes to handle the early dungeon (assuming you're playing a compatible species).

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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2017, 18:27

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

Yeah I was about to say: isn't Tm considered one of the worst starts? Worse than everything except possibly Vm, thanks to the skill division and heavy use of all three stats.

S2S is busted but you can run out of arrows, and I have... it's definitely really strong but it's not stupid strong.

I like this idea because it sounds cool. Tm and Mo are the two races who want Lig the most and it fits Tm more thematically.

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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2017, 20:00

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

I like the idea of giving backgrounds 1x or 2x of various consumables, so I would support this even if Tm was strong.

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Post Friday, 3rd February 2017, 02:50

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

Rast wrote:I like the idea of giving backgrounds 1x or 2x of various consumables, so I would support this even if Tm was strong.

Making the early game easier would reduce the randomness of the game, which I don't think is wanted.
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Post Friday, 3rd February 2017, 06:50

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

Elitist wrote:
Rast wrote:I like the idea of giving backgrounds 1x or 2x of various consumables, so I would support this even if Tm was strong.

Making the early game easier would reduce the randomness of the game, which I don't think is wanted.


Randomness can be overcome by intelligent decisions and anticipation. Is it preferable to have the early game decided by things that are impossible to mitigate ahead of time because of starting kit and lack of options to respond to it?

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Post Friday, 3rd February 2017, 07:42

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

Is early game decided by things that are impossible to mitigate ahead of time because of starting kit and lack of options to respond to it?

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Post Friday, 3rd February 2017, 08:29

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

fwiw D:1 is often unfair for weak combos
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Post Friday, 3rd February 2017, 17:31

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

Brannock wrote:impossible to mitigate ahead of time because of lack of options to respond to it


It's part of the game. There are tons of situations like this beyond D:1 if you actually played Crawl a lot. One-shot by a Cyclops from edge of LoS as a felid, Getting pinned down on a long corridor by a two-headed ogre while running away from Urug, Erolcha's banished from edge of LoS, unlucky stairspawns etc. I could go further. A free D:1 consumable would only function as an awkward patch to help "fight" against this imaginary problem for a little bit then there would always be room to ask for more gibsmedat degeneracy. It's unnecessary.

While I'm at it I've always wondered why Fighters get a free !might by D:1. Is this a treatment similar to Minotaurs and Humans that they're intentionally allowed to be badly designed?

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Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 00:08

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

I believe fighters got the potion of might because they were considered significantly weaker than gladiators, although I don't remember all the detailed arguments as to why.

I'd support TM getting a potion of lignification - as mentioned, it's excellent theme/flavor, and TM is a very weak background. Adding one potion, while a boost, isn't going to suddenly make them overpowered. And then people can post their YASD's when they try to use it against sigmund!

Halls Hopper

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Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 00:22

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

ONIchinchin wrote:
Brannock wrote:impossible to mitigate ahead of time because of lack of options to respond to it


It's part of the game. There are tons of situations like this beyond D:1 if you actually played Crawl a lot. One-shot by a Cyclops from edge of LoS as a felid, Getting pinned down on a long corridor by a two-headed ogre while running away from Urug, Erolcha's banished from edge of LoS, unlucky stairspawns etc. I could go further. A free D:1 consumable would only function as an awkward patch to help "fight" against this imaginary problem for a little bit then there would always be room to ask for more gibsmedat degeneracy. It's unnecessary.

While I'm at it I've always wondered why Fighters get a free !might by D:1. Is this a treatment similar to Minotaurs and Humans that they're intentionally allowed to be badly designed?


The thing is though, the odds of RNG deciding to just kill you outright decreases on a large exponent the further you go into the dungeon. For some backgrounds it's close to 50% of the time on D:1, while of the characters who get to the Lair (who aren't Felids or Octopodes or whatever, who are a significant exception) I'd say about 1% of games end in that kind of way. Furthermore, if you actually play crawl a LOT, you wouldn't get into that situation to begin with - a simple way to avoid "trapped between Urug and THO" situations 90% of the time is to not flee into the black, or just knowing to start cooking a TP scroll before it's too late, as often letting the THO get a free hit in on you is worth it to avoid that: often the solution to those isn't any particular reaction but just "not getting into that situation to begin with"- or at least minimizing the odds of it happening - which is doable.

The fact of the matter is, that 1% who die beyond the Lair are a necessary evil of having a game with any RNG that doesn't have MMO-style balance. But mitigating the not-necessarily-necessary evil of that double-digit percent chance in the early game seems like a good thing to me.
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Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 05:03

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

You seriously believe it's a double-digit chance?

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Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 16:25

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

Gorgondantess wrote:a simple way to avoid "trapped between Urug and THO" situations 90% of the time is to not flee into the black, or just knowing to start cooking a TP scroll before it's too late


IMO, reading a tp scroll is pretty much fleeing into the black, but on a grander scale.
Mind you, I'm not advocating against doing it, just pointing out your contradiction.
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Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 21:49

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

I think the moral here is people really really undervalue Sticks to Snakes
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Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 22:44

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

pedritolo wrote:
Gorgondantess wrote:a simple way to avoid "trapped between Urug and THO" situations 90% of the time is to not flee into the black, or just knowing to start cooking a TP scroll before it's too late


IMO, reading a tp scroll is pretty much fleeing into the black, but on a grander scale.
Mind you, I'm not advocating against doing it, just pointing out your contradiction.

Well reading a tp scroll is better than fleeing into the black for two reasons: 1. The thing you were fleeing from is (hopefully) not still in your los chasing you, and 2. It is (hopefully) not really close to where you just were fighting stuff, making a bunch of noise, waking stuff up and attracting monsters.
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Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 23:58

Re: Start Transmuters with a Potion of Lignification

I have made the case for starting all backgrounds with a limited (out) here.

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