Necromancy school suggestion: -MaxHP costs

[mattlistener]

This is a small suggestion, but I couldn't find a recent thread about Necromancy in which to post it.

An overall check on the power of Necromancy (while endeavoring to preserve its fun value) is suggested in https://github.com/crawl/crawl/wiki/0.2 ... lease-Plan.

The linked plan page mentions the possibility of having most Necromancy spells cost HP as well as MP. That change would push players even harder toward HP-generation (divine, arcane, racial, consumable) as a way to offset this.

Instead, add a "temporary reduction to Max HP" cost to spells in the school, which you then work off via XP. Just like Drain, this would be represented by a -MaxHP status which gradually scales up as you incur more such cost and down as you work it off. Use appropriate dangercolor scaling (according to what total % of your MaxHP you are currently missing), but no hard breakpoints.

"Why not just use Drain?" Unlike Drain, -MaxHP doesn't directly scale back your ability to killdudes.

How impactful this would be is a matter of tuning. But the gameplay impact, once tuned suitably, would be "play more carefully as there are temporarily more situations that can burst you to death" instead of "arrange to be generating HP fast enough you don't care about HP you lose."

I'd submit this has major thematic value too. Necromancy shouldn't be "there's a cost but I can beef up to ignore it" but instead "I feel the cost but it's worth it because HAHAHAHAHAH!"

[petercordia]

I like this idea.

There'd be some advantaged to merging Necro -Hp with rot, amplifying some of the rot already in the dungeon, and making both recover with xp. (I think)

[mattlistener]

I like this idea.

There'd be some advantaged to merging Necro -Hp with rot, amplifying some of the rot already in the dungeon, and making both recover with xp. (I think)

Rot can be cured with consumables, which to me seems fine (for Rot). -MaxHP being removed by the same consumables that remove Rot, seems not good. Necromancy costs are meant to be paid, not quaffed away.

For comparison, Cancellation does not remove Drain, which is also a "don't overuse this" cost on some powerful player actions, even though Drain is arguably a "magical effect". Presumably Drain is on Cancellation's exception list for this same reason.

[chequers]

I submitted a PR that proposed re-adding regeneration with an extra rot cost, but it was knocked back. However, this seems like a broader and possibly more interesting change.

Having two different forms of rot seems really confusing, so I agree you would have to unify them. Most rot sources now could generate necro-rot, and the remaining ones could simply be removed.

One issue is how to scale the amount of rot. A level 1 spell like pain would have to rot less than 1hp at XL1. But then you would want the most expensive spells like Necromutation / Haunt to rot a significant amount. Maybe with this change Necromancy should have several spells removed, and the remaining ones made into extremely powerful but high downside spells that you couldn't use consistently through the game.

[Hellmonk]

xp-gated rot sounds a lot better than rot that you cure with a common potion, or xp-gated skill drain for that matter. Perhaps the time has come to merge these mechanics.

[Aean]

One issue is how to scale the amount of rot. A level 1 spell like pain would have to rot less than 1hp at XL1. But then you would want the most expensive spells like Necromutation / Haunt to rot a significant amount. Maybe with this change Necromancy should have several spells removed, and the remaining ones made into extremely powerful but high downside spells that you couldn't use consistently through the game.

I wonder if you could scale the amount of rot with spellpower. Then the more powerful a spell gets, and the more it helps you - and from a flavor perspective, the more necromantic energy you have flowing through you - the more HP are rotted. So Pain could rot no HP at first, but start to rot HP as you gained more power.

Then it becomes a more direct "You sacrifice more health to make your spells more powerful" mechanic.

...alternatively, Necromancy could be reworked to gain power very slowly, and offer an option to sacrifice a chunk of health to give you a temporary Necromancy enhancer.

[njvack]

xp-gated rot sounds a lot better than rot that you cure with a common potion, or xp-gated skill drain for that matter. Perhaps the time has come to merge these mechanics.

Oh my goodness if Ru could literally rot you to death it would be amazing

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not convinced necromancy is that much stronger than alternative schools/similar xp investment elsewhere. What leads us to have such a suspicion in the first place?

[b0rsuk]

I'm not sure about power, but for this spell school it's simply quite thematic. It might lead to removal of Sublimation of Blood and Death's Door, because it in effect makes them redundant. I think it's not a bad idea simply because it makes the school more distinct.

On the other hand, do we want Naga, Ogres to turn to Necromancy?

[njvack]

In Crawl, allies are pretty strong. Necro gets you lots of allies, for cheap, that scale with monster strength. Also borg's and ddoor are pretty good.

Having Animate Dead cause a little bit of rot (healed by XP) would still lead to me raising some zombies, but I'd need to think a bit about when to use it instead of just raising every rat that leaves a corpse. That sounds good.

Deciding on "how much rot" and "how much XP to heal rot" and "what else would a change like affect about the necro spells" are definitely things, but I think the basic idea is a solid one.

[phloomp]

I like this idea but would prefer if drain were not replaced with xp-gated rot. Serious drain is pretty different from rot since it can occasionally move a spell that you are relying on from mostly castable to mostly non-castable, which was an interesting situation to be in the couple of times it happened to me. Whereas rot feels more like a general "your character now sucks a little more" without forcing you to move to different tools.

[chequers]

Idea: remove the MP cost of necro spells, so they only cost whatever this new resource is. It would make them much more powerful (you could always cast Borg's), but much simpler UX

[mattlistener]

One issue is how to scale the amount of rot. A level 1 spell like pain would have to rot less than 1hp at XL1. But then you would want the most expensive spells like Necromutation / Haunt to rot a significant amount.

Pain's cost would be represented by dangercolor Grey, analogous to an amount of contamination which is not yet enough to make a difference. If you spammed Pain, it would next progress to White indicating you're down at least 1 MaxHP.

Necromutation: instead of incurring its own -MaxHP cost, during lichform -MaxHP status does not diminish with xp-gain.

In Crawl, allies are pretty strong. Necro gets you lots of allies, for cheap, that scale with monster strength. Also borg's and ddoor are pretty good.

Having Animate Dead cause a little bit of rot (healed by XP) would still lead to me raising some zombies, but I'd need to think a bit about when to use it instead of just raising every rat that leaves a corpse. That sounds good.

One approach would be to add necro-rot to ally spells (plus certain others?), but leave it off of non-undead spells. That way a given player has the option to balance self-rotting magic vs. non-self-rotting magic within the school.

Idea: remove the MP cost of necro spells, so they only cost whatever this new resource is. It would make them much more powerful (you could always cast Borg's), but much simpler UX

If the whole school is going to be redesigned, that'd be above my pay grade. I'd point out that this would leave a ton of mana available for other purposes -- evokables, divine abilities, Spirit Shield. Or heck, Conjurations.