Mines Malingerer
Posts: 45
Joined: Monday, 4th December 2017, 19:23
Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread
Siegurt wrote:Cornercat wrote:Hellmonk wrote:You're aware that I post a rework/nerf Fedhas thread once every couple months, right?
e: here is a list of gods that I think should be nerfed: Fedhas, Gozag, Hep, Kiku, Nemelex, Ru, Trog, Yred
I don't want to derail this thread but I have to ask, how would you go about nerfing Nemelex? Only thing I can think of is to add in more negative card effects.
Off the top of my head: Slow down gift rate, give less power per invo investment, remove some of the better summon effects (those tend to be the most broken)
Cornercat wrote:duvessa wrote:Balance-wise, the worst thing about current Nemelex is that you get a deck immediately. Because Crawl's difficulty is so frontloaded, a god that gives you something immediately is pretty much always going to be better than the ones that don't. Most gods don't give you anything immediately, or if they do it's something very niche that you likely can't use anyway (Trog's Burn Books, back when it existed, was obviously not useful if you hadn't found a book yet), or at least has a big penalty attached (Chei's Bend Time comes at the cost of being slow).
However, Gozag, Hep, Nemelex, and Uskayaw all give you something good right away, with little or no drawbacks, so they're top tier regardless of their later abilities. A god that doesn't pay off until later cannot possibly compete.mattlistener wrote:duvessa wrote:Because Crawl's difficulty is so frontloaded
Depends on the player. Crawl's difficulty is frontloaded for highly experienced players, who after the early game have typically found a way to climb above the power curve, and have mid- and late-game threat assessment mastered. For other players, gods that are stronger mid-game or late-game would be more attractive -- wherever they most need the power or survival boost.
This is interesting as this seems to be the exact opposite reason for why the OP made the thread (that Vehumet doesn't do much until way later in the game). Hep and Usk do this by design, so its hard to adjust. As for Nemelex, what if the starting deck was just.. worse than a plain deck? Make it equal to the average wand you would have by this stage of the game but perhaps give it extra charges. Could also add the ability to 'consolidate' cards into this deck, for when you have tons of plain cards and do not want to juggle your inventory. This would obviously reduce the power of any 'consolidated' cards.
Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread anymore so I'll be making another thread on the topic of "Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread" if anyone wants to continue discussing this.
The prime offender seems to be that Nemelex immediately gifts a relatively powerful plain deck of destruction. Another offense is that summons are generally too effective. E: I made a Formicid Artificer with 0 Invo and still got great value out of plain decks. The destruction deck did at least equal damage to my 6 Evo starting wands and when drawing storm, it would create an incredibly advantageous battlefield. Roughly 1/3 of plain summons were hostile, but they were of such a higher XL than where I was at, that they made most threats at the pre-Lair stage trivial.
So I suggest three primary changes: Nemelex gifts a 'deck of many things' (name subject to change) to start. Nemelex gifts only plain decks until reaching a certain piety. Plain decks of all types are rebalanced for pre-Lair to early Lair use without heavy Invo investment. This adjusts Nemelex to be a strong mid-game god without losing any late-game power while removing the glaring issue of trivializing early threats.
The 'deck of many things' would essentially be a deck that is slightly worse than a plain deck, but can draw all card types and can store infinite cards. It starts off with roughly 3x the cards of a regular plain deck. Without Invo investment, the cards are roughly half as effective as a plain deck. There are more negative card effects, or negative cards are more common (may still have same number of positive cards overall). The player can Invoke Nemelex to make the 'deck of many things' consume any other deck (yes, it eats it). This adds all cards in the consumed deck with a 2/3rds chance of keeping the card the same and a 1/3rd chance of randomizing it, another 1/6th chance per card of adding an extra negative card (at least 1, never more than 6). Any 'discard deck' effects will instead make the deck lose 2dX cards and randomize the order of the rest. The main purpose of this change is two-fold. To reduce the power of the starting gift without simply removing it. To give Nemelex players a way to avoid some inventory management once they are swimming in plain decks at the cost of more chaotic draws and weaker card effects until reaching X Invo (as alot of players avoid Nemelex because of inventory management fears). I'm unsure how the 'deck of many things' should go about consuming decks better than plain.
(Optional ideas here:) Nemelex can be Invoked (with a small to mid piety cost) to make the 'deck of many things' draw a specific card type (EX: Destruction, Summon or Escape type cards) but this has a chance to backfire (draws negative card). If the player decides to draw from the 'deck of many things' while not worshiping Nemelex, bad things may happen (rarely). There is also potential for the 'deck many things' to scale with piety, so at higher piety it can consume higher tier decks and this unlocks more card types for the 'deck of many things' to draw, thus improving the deck over time. Heck, maybe at end game or in extended the 'deck of many things' could grow to be better than a legendary deck (still worse though because of chaotic draw). Potential for a 'deck of many things' to spawn in the dungeon, this would have more negative cards than normal (IE: Really bad cards you do not want to draw ever). This random 'deck of many things' can be a mimic. 'Decks of many things' can consume other decks of many things. Xom may occasionally "gift" a 'deck of many things'.
Thoughts?