Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace


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

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 15

Joined: Wednesday, 6th December 2017, 16:51

Post Sunday, 10th December 2017, 19:30

Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

Hey guyse so I read in the 0.21 development plan that this spell should be improved or removed because, and I think this is one of the very few points really everyone on this planet can agree on, it is pretty lackluster.

It is level 5 and requires corpses (which are a valuable resource and you need to make them first to do anything) and maybe it still decays over time (may have been changed already, not sure) and the level 3 ozo's is mostly just plain better.
Cigotuvi's has a few good points over ozo's though which are:
-SH
-Possibly higher AC value
-Compatible with any armour
-doesn't slow you down
-doesn't melt (does ozo's even do that still?) from fire
-only one spell shool but this is very minor

Anyway in order to make Cigutovi's Embrace a more appealing choice I think the simplest solution would be to take the Gell's Gravitas approach and reduce it's spell level
until people start to grudgingly accept it as a spell that has some use in some situations. Didn't work for Gell's from what I know, but at least Cigutovi's does something potentially useful so there's hope.

TL;DR: Make Cigutovi's Embrace spell level either 4 or preferably even 3 and adjust it's source books as you see fit.

Sorry for noob

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

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

Post Sunday, 10th December 2017, 19:48

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

The problem isn't really that you could cast Ozocubu's Armour instead, it's that you could cast Animate Dead instead. A mass of allies is a better defense than any reasonable amount of temporary AC/EV/SH, and doubles as offense too. If you get rid of Animate Dead, Animate Skeleton, and Simulacrum, then Cigotuvi's Embrace would probably be okay.

For this message the author duvessa has received thanks:
nago

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 48

Joined: Sunday, 20th August 2017, 06:29

Post Sunday, 10th December 2017, 22:00

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

Didn't Cigotuvi's get nerfed literally because some guy got the record for "highest ac/ev/sh" in a tournament by casting it at the last second?

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 15

Joined: Wednesday, 6th December 2017, 16:51

Post Sunday, 10th December 2017, 23:23

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

@Charlatan: It was, it was made more effective with lass than 9 and less effective with 9+ corpses to avoid such extremes.

Anyway, random ideas time: what if it didn't use corpses at all, rather you activated it and when you kill something it automatically adds to your AC/SH, slightly extending duration with every fresh kill up to a maximum?
Kinda like Death Channel.

Blades Runner

Posts: 616

Joined: Thursday, 25th October 2012, 03:19

Post Tuesday, 12th December 2017, 05:13

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

charlatan wrote:Didn't Cigotuvi's get nerfed literally because some guy got the record for "highest ac/ev/sh" in a tournament by casting it at the last second?


I recall a nerf with a mention of it trivializing ziggurats.

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1822

Joined: Thursday, 31st May 2012, 15:45

Post Tuesday, 12th December 2017, 17:32

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

Make Cigotuvi's Embrace a spell that complements Animate Dead/Animate Skeleton instead of competing with it. Whenever its status effect is active and one of your zombies or skeletons dies (not simulacra or spectres), you AND all your allies gain a little bit of AC and/or SH. Instead of the derived undead collapsing into dust, bits of it are shared amongst your allies. Or if that's too strong, make it just buff the caster.
Won (52). Remaining (15): 5 species: Ba, Fe, Mu, Na, Op; 5 Backgrounds: AM, Wr, Su, AE, Ar; 5 gods: Jiyv, newNem, WJC, newSif, newFedh

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nago

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 15

Joined: Wednesday, 6th December 2017, 16:51

Post Friday, 22nd December 2017, 18:38

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

Status report: Cigutovi's Embrace (and Control Undead, for that matter) have been removend on trunk and been replaced by a new spell:

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/3 ... 2adae8ed4a

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 139

Joined: Friday, 13th March 2015, 13:33

Post Saturday, 23rd December 2017, 00:31

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

why was control undead removed though? It was a good spell i think.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

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

Post Saturday, 23rd December 2017, 03:58

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

It was a clone of Enslavement, and removed for the same reasons.

For this message the author duvessa has received thanks:
VeryAngryFelid

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5382

Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Wednesday, 3rd January 2018, 01:51

Re: Attempt to improve Cigutovi's Embrace

The version of it that I would have liked would be a non-timed buff which would stack up to X AC. The more mass of corpses you meld you get more AC, and every time you take a hit which checks AC (nearly all of them) you'd have a fixed chance to lose one point. So if you were at the max, it'd take quite a few bad rolls to lose all of the bonus AC. How many points the max bonus should be would be up to gameplay balance and whatever level the spell felt best at.

While I wouldn't mind the issue, it'd then become an alternative to animate dead used when you've mostly already cleared everything and you don't need more minions, so you're almost by definition always casting it out of combat to buff before the next big fight. Since I'm too lazy to use minions most of the time it'd basically have been +X ac which you didn't have to recast too often. Boring, utilitarian, but hey I want more AC, so gimme AC! ZOMBIE HANDS is probably a better overall idea, looking forward to trying it in the .21 tournament.

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