Improving Nemelex

[XuaXua]

Wiki link: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... od:nemelex

IMPROVING NEMELEX ABILITIES
I have read recently a common complaint that the fourth Nemelex ability, Mark Four, is kind of useless.

I would only agree in that I don't use that ability.

If it were to be replaced, I think that would be a good idea, but with what?

My suggestion is to replace it with a new ability, Count Cards, which discards one card from the deck, but provides the count of cards in the deck. In my opinion, this is truly what is missing from Nemelex and makes decks (and even uses of Draw 3) more useful.

Dangerous Cards

Shuffle (and by a lesser extent, Focus)
This card is, by far, a complete game ruiner of a card.
Much like other cards are scaled to the power of the deck, I think Shuffle should be scaled as well. 100% swap on Legendary decks is fine, but a 50% trade or a 25% trade on the lower decks respectively would cause less hardship, but still be justifiably annoying.
In worst case, I wonder if it should be temporary and the stats should be altered in such a way that they eventually set back into place, as if the stats had been drained. Use of a Restore Abilities potion might help.

Focus
Legendary Focus could allow some control of the trade, or at worst could draw one from both lesser attributes.

Torment / Venom
I believe self-infliction from Torment is the reason many don't like decks of destruction. Ditto with low-experienced users and casting Olgreb's from Venom. Just stating it.

Crusade
Unless I'm missing it, the text should indicate whether the conversion is temporary or permanent.

Damnation
This is why I went to the Abyss 4 times with my last worshiper. :/

Something against Undead
Decks of Destruction are not as useful against undead as they are against the living. There should be an undead-focused card.

Evocations Skill
What exactly does evocations determine when drawing cards? For example, with summoning and a huge Evo, you can still draw several cards from a 0-level deck of summonings and get hostile creatures. Shouldn't Evo have an effect here?

[One-Eyed Jack]

I don't think people would use that ability (count cards), either. You give up a card (and some piety, either as a cost or just because you don't get to draw that card) but you don't gain anything tangible. If Nemelex didn't throw scores of decks at you it might be worthwhile, but players rarely run out of decks past lairish.

As for improving decks of wonders or decks of destruction, there's no need to whatsoever. Nemelex is already one of the strongest gods; having negative effects on some cards is balanced and flavor-appropriate (god of chance)

As far as I know, both nemelex piety and evocation skill improve card power. Other stats (like magic skills or invocations) don't.

[Blade]

All of your proposals make one of the most incredibly unbalanced, powerful gods more powerful. That is not a good thing.

[Kate]

Mark Four could probably just be removed outright, yeah. I don't think there's any need to replace it with something else, necessarily.

Self-torment in decks of Destruction is much rarer now, it's only a legendary effect (on the Pain card). I think Destruction is in a pretty good place for the most part.

Crusade never permanently converts monsters, so that's not an issue.

[XuaXua]

OK then. If Nemelex does vomit decks continuously as mentioned by others, let me ask this one:

Why, between **** and ***** do I keep seeing a very large desert of no decks when all I'm doing is sacrificing pretty much anything I discover, as much as possible and making as few rest stops as I can? I keep running out of decks around this point.

I do tend to use Triple-Draw though, which diminishes piety, but I am just hitting this desert of nothing. And with an amulet of faith on!

[evilmike]

If you use abilities a lot you will get fewer decks (except for the first ability, which only costs mp). It's better to draw normally from decks. Even better if you're doing it blind. Triple draw is pretty expensive and also wastes 2/3 of the cards, so that's a lot less towards your piety and gift timeout.

[dpeg]

Good to see work on Nemelex!

Perhaps some comments about the old (0.2 or 0.3?) Nemelex revision can clear up some questions why the god turned out that way.

1. Old (pre-DCSS) Nemelex had no abilities. It was all about item sacrificing (using a funny "portable altar", I'm a bit sad we lost that flavour but the interface was truly painful back then), collecting decks and not using them tactically -- too dangerous. Instead, in the later game you'd prepare ideal surroundings for drawing from the decks (there were quite some strange hoops to jump through). Since Nemelex gave permanent effect like stat boosts, the god came late but was broken then.

2. We (Haran and I) wanted to keep the idea of decks and cards. The basic assumption was to make tactical card use desirable and also necessary. We added deck types and the rarities (common, ornate, legendary). Furthermore, abilities were added to allow players more control over their primary god ability.

3. The first two Nemelex powers I came up with were Triple Draw and Stack Five. I believe they are the most important ones and also most flavourful. The others were added in hindsight, aiming for the obvious 1-2-3-4-5 ladder. That may have been not the smartest decision; your choice to improve matters!

4. There have been balance changes over the years but the card effects are far from finished. This was always clear to everyone, it's just a lot of work to do Nemelex. Good luck!

[crate]

Best thing you could do to Nemelex would be remove wonders and dungeons decks imo, but I guess I don't really see that happening.

[Wereox]

I agree that Nemelex would be just fine without Mark Four, which is a useless trap option. It should probably be removed entirely.

[rchandra]

I think Nemelex would be a lot more fun and a little weaker without the sacrifice weighting to different decks.
Mark Four can go. If you also cut Peek Two, you have 1-3-5 which is a fine pattern anyway.

[KoboldLord]

Two minor changes that I think would improve Nemelex:

#1: Remove the ability to weight deck gifts. This is spoilery, and demands attention for the player for every trivial bit of rubbish in the entire dungeon, because players will inevitably get the idea that they should try to avoid destruction decks, or systematically distill mutagenic corpses, or whatnot. Fixing imbalances would help, but different sorts of characters will value different decks differently even if they're roughly on par with each other, and there's no reason to even give the player the option to inflict that sort of tedium on themselves. As a side benefit, you wouldn't get 90% legendary summoning decks by the midgame in near-infinite quantities, and be able to swamp absolutely everything under high-powered summons.

#2: Provide a full-LOS sacrifice option. While the flavor of being a Combat Butler or Combat Maid of Nemelex is a distinctive and memorable flavor that I don't think shows up in any other notable roguelikes, I do think the housekeeping simulator elements of Nemelex worship are a little TOO realistic, particularly in rubbish-heavy environments such as the Orcish Mines. Every time I'm done tidying up, another pack of those blasted orcs spawn and scatters junk armor, weapons, and corpses all over the place, and that's another four or five tiles to clean up. Again. I don't think being able to clean up really fast is going to significantly impact the power of Combat Butlers with respect to obtaining actual plot coupons like Runes or the Orb, but it will make routine cleaning less tedious. There's the risk of blowing up a stash, unfortunately, but perhaps it would be sufficiently preventive to give a warning if any object in LOS is inscribed with the no-sacrifice character.

[njvack]

There's the risk of blowing up a stash, unfortunately, but perhaps it would be sufficiently preventive to give a warning if any object in LOS is inscribed with the no-sacrifice character.

Even better might be to have an LOSSac feature not kill any piles the player has touched, unless you're standing on the pile.

[XuaXua]

Two minor changes that I think would improve Nemelex:

#1: Remove the ability to weight deck gifts. This is spoilery, and demands attention for the player for every trivial bit of rubbish in the entire dungeon, because players will inevitably get the idea that they should try to avoid destruction decks

I don't understand this sentiment and it is reflected in the Crawl Playing wiki. Destruction decks are awesome. Sure Olgreb and Torment/Pain can hurt, but when the chips are down and you have a shitty caster (I am level 17 FELID and I have conquered Orc, Lair, Vault:1, Elf:1, Dungeon to 18 when it got super-hard, and 3 portals, so far the only conjuration I have found is Magic Dart which is what I started with as a Wizard!), destruction decks fill a necessary void.

It's not the deck's fault that you can't find a suitable situation to use them.

, or systematically distill mutagenic corpses

Thought distilled potion weighting was removed.

[Sojiro]

Shuffle (and by a lesser extent, Focus)
This card is, by far, a complete game ruiner of a card.
Much like other cards are scaled to the power of the deck, I think Shuffle should be scaled as well. 100% swap on Legendary decks is fine, but a 50% trade or a 25% trade on the lower decks respectively would cause less hardship

Shuffle cannot be drawn from plain decks at all.
(there was a bug that made it possible, but it has been fixed)

Something against Undead
Decks of Destruction are not as useful against undead as they are against the living. There should be an undead-focused card.

This would make Destruction decks weaker against everything else. Please, no.

Evocations Skill
What exactly does evocations determine when drawing cards? For example, with summoning and a huge Evo, you can still draw several cards from a 0-level deck of summonings and get hostile creatures. Shouldn't Evo have an effect here?

It determines the card level and "spell power". Some summoning cards can always summon hostiles (25%), but the more powerful they are, the more creatures are called ; that means that it becomes much more difficult for the hostiles to represent significantly more than 25% of the group, so you can use the friendly ones to crush the dissenters. So Evo does have an effect here, although it's not the obvious one, instead of making it unlikely to have hostiles, it makes it unlikely to have a significant proportion of hostiles.

There's the risk of blowing up a stash, unfortunately, but perhaps it would be sufficiently preventive to give a warning if any object in LOS is inscribed with the no-sacrifice character.

Even better might be to have an LOSSac feature not kill any piles the player has touched, unless you're standing on the pile.

Sacrificing everything would lead to so much problems, I don't see how that'd be workable. An ability replacing one of the useless ones to do it on command? Maybe. Otherwise, you can just wipe the floor clean first and clean up next. It only takes a few seconds to go through everyhting anyway.

#1: Remove the ability to weight deck gifts. This is spoilery, and demands attention for the player for every trivial bit of rubbish in the entire dungeon

It's not spoilery, the religion screens explains it clearly. Then you can just turn off those you don't want to sacrifice, and you're back to mashing "p" on everything lying on the ground. No need for micromanagement beyond turning a category on or off whenever youy change strategy (which is rare).
And the only thing you really have to avoid is Escape when you start. Destruction works great to build Piety or use as your first option. Dungeon and Wonders are just too rare to clog up your wieght selection, and Summoning to safe and powerful to be annoying. Escape Decks has a lot of cards that can kill you, and even among the safe ones their usefulness is very dependent on your situation, so drawing blind is a bad idea (especially since you need Escape cards when you can't really afford wasting time making your situation worse), which is why you'd better wait until you get Draw Three to start piling Escape decks.
There's really very little need for managing your sacrificing.

Two minor changes that I think would improve Nemelex:

#1: Remove the ability to weight deck gifts. This is spoilery, and demands attention for the player for every trivial bit of rubbish in the entire dungeon, because players will inevitably get the idea that they should try to avoid destruction decks

I don't understand this sentiment and it is reflected in the Crawl Playing wiki. Destruction decks are awesome.

Definitely. Olgreb's Toxic Radiance is unusual, slow, and not all that powerful. Torment is now only in Legendary decks. Avoid firing lightning at walls and fire at opponents right in front of you and you'll be fine. Sure you might take some damage now and then, but it should never be "BAM! you're dead now".
Destruction decks aren't very well suited to situations that went out of control where you are struggling to survive. You should be using Summoning or Escape in those cases. Destruction decks are mostly there to wipe the floor with generic opponents when you control the situation and can easily retreat.

They are safer than almost any other deck to draw blind from, and unlike Summoning you keep 100% of the XP of what it kills for you. It's something that can easily be spammed to advanced through the game while hoarding Piety.

[XuaXua]

They are safer than almost any other deck to draw blind from, and unlike Summoning you keep 100% of the XP of what it kills for you. It's something that can easily be spammed to advanced through the game while hoarding Piety.

I have determined some rules of drawing so far.

The rules in general are:

1) always have some food in case you draw Famine.
2) always have some remove curse scrolls somewhere in case you draw Curse.
3) triple draw to identify Legendary Decks.

The rules of Destruction (mostly for Fire and Spark and Olgreb) are:

1) don't blind draw plain or ornate if the target is adjacent unless you have rF+ (fireball).
2) don't blind draw legendary if the target is within 1-2 spaces unless you have rElec (exploding Spark card)
3) don't blind draw if you can't counteract a poisoning (curing, large health, or otherwise).
4) don't blind draw if poisoned at low HP, as while Pain is Torment and won't ever directly kill you, you can be reduced to death levels and poison will finish you.

The rules of Escape (mostly for Tomb and Damnation) are:

1) don't blind draw unless you have some means to escape a Tomb (dig, teleportation, a tactically-placed ally, deep water, etc.)
2) don't blind draw if Tomb will hinder the board (I did this on Vault:1 stairs once with a Felid who didn't have dig; whoops. Saved up an Orb card or a Spade card, can't recall which)
3) don't blind draw Ornate or Legendary unless there are enemies onscreen, as Damnation will definitely take you.
4) Tentative rule: don't blind draw while wearing an amulet of Stasis.
5) exercise caution when blind drawing with Strength of 5 or less; transformation into a bat will likely send you into immediate Collapse, which does NOT recover quickly post-transformation.

The rules of Dungeons (mostly for Trowel) are:

1) don't blind draw unless you are in an area you can sacrifice (not by primary entry stairwell or by your stash).
2) don't blind draw unless standing on plain ground, preferably in the main Dungeon branch (for Trowel).
3) don't blind draw without some means of escape (Trowel can create hostile statues).

The rules of Wonder are:

1) don't blind draw if you have contamination as Wild Magic may add contamination.
2) preferably blind draw while rMut+ due to Wild Magic contamination.
3) don't blind draw ornate or legendary due to Shuffle.
4) don't blind draw if you have a preferred Sage active.

The rules of Summoning are:

1) draw in an open area with a means to escape hostile summons, not in a corridor where you can be trapped.

[rebthor]

XuaXua, you should put that on the wiki and remove the info about "don't use decks of destruction."

[XuaXua]

XuaXua, you should put that on the wiki and remove the info about "don't use decks of destruction."

I'm not stopping anyone from taking the initiative.

[TehDruid]

I have determined some rules of drawing so far.

Good pointers.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Personally, I always triple draw Wonders. Wild Magic, Shuffle, plain Helix, and Focus cards can be annoying. It's very rare to draw two or more of the cards you do want in a triple draw.

[XuaXua]

Personally, I always triple draw Wonders. Wild Magic, Shuffle, plain Helix, and Focus cards can be annoying. It's very rare to draw two or more of the cards you do want in a triple draw.

My last Legendary deck of Wonders was 6 cards; first Triple Draw (identified) was 2 Experience and a Wild Magic, the second Triple Draw was Helix and two Shuffles.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Losing out on the Experience card would suck, but unless you're undead that Legendary Helix would likely give you good mutations or remove some bad ones. And drawing both of those Shuffles would have really sucked (lest you were trying to Shuffle a Troll or something) which is partly why I always Triple Draw from those.

[XuaXua]

Losing out on the Experience card would suck, but unless you're undead that Legendary Helix would likely give you good mutations or remove some bad ones. And drawing both of those Shuffles would have really sucked (lest you were trying to Shuffle a Troll or something) which is partly why I always Triple Draw from those.

What I'm getting at is that even doing a Triple Draw isn't safe if there is one card left in the deck because that card automatically applies.

Hence, my original suggestion to replace Mark Four with Count Cards.

[banei]

Am I the only one who first triple draw wonder decks, then stack five?
Also, distilling mutagenic corpses is to take advantage of high evocations + legendary helix card.

I do not know if it's possible with the new abyss, but in the past, you could enter abyss with a bunch of wonder cards and +-stat equipment, entomb yourself, wear an amulet of faith, two rings of sustain abilities, cast necromutation, and blind draw from the decks of wonder. You could rebalance your stats as you want (with sufficient stat modifiers) and maximize all skills. As a bonus, you're in a good spot to drop nemelex.

[rjrrt]

I like the original proposal for Count Cards instead of Mark Four.
I would certainly use it for decks of wonders. I've used triple draw on a deck of wonders only to find 1 card left.
Of course it was shuffle. Of course it was on a high level spriggan caster and int became a single digit.
Could not get another shuffle card before dying. I thought I was being safe using triple draw.

It would be good if there was a way to avoid this kind of instant ruination.

[XuaXua]

I like the original proposal for Count Cards instead of Mark Four.
I would certainly use it for decks of wonders. I've used triple draw on a deck of wonders only to find 1 card left.
Of course it was shuffle. Of course it was on a high level spriggan caster and int became a single digit.
Could not get another shuffle card before dying. I thought I was being safe using triple draw.

It would be good if there was a way to avoid this kind of instant ruination.

Your situation is identical to the one that brought me to the Count Cards conclusion. It would be useful and it would have other uses.

I don't understand the posters who talk about Nemelex dumping too many decks on you.
Yes it happens, but it happens infrequently because I have had way too many spans of no decks or no gifting.
Counting Cards is a safety measure, like knowing the charges in a wand.
The only other finite resource where you can't guarantee the quantity in some manner are the randomly 1-3 Use Scrolls of Identification.

[dpeg]

I have no say about Nemelex and obviously some ideas I had for Nemelex were not so good but nonetheless I'd recommend to not add Count Cards as an ability. The most basic idea of a Tarot-style gambling god is incertainty. We have allowed players to meddle a bit with fortune (deck powers, types, Triple Draw, Stack Five), but there should be some incertainty left. For example, it means that you should use cards (when drawing randomly) early -- they're not reliable emergency measures like e.g. spells.

As players keep saying that Peek Two and Mark Four are useless, I would suggest to just scrap them. The more important part is elaborate ground work: going through decks and cards, nerfing and buffing what's to be nerfed and buffed. Good ideas for new cards would be welcome at any time, I guess. (Bonus points if they're in some ways different from spell effects.) As you can see from Tomb, cards have more leeway than spells (the spell was clearly broken, nerfed twice, then removed, the card seems to fare better).

[crate]

I think Peek at Two is fine. Mark Four is actually worse than worthless though because it prevents you from stacking the deck you use it on, so you're worse off than if you hadn't used it at all.

[TwilightPhoenix]

I generally use Peek Two to identify Legendary decks as, unlike non-Nemelexians, I'm going to be getting too many decks to use all my ID Scrolls on. I lose a card as a price, but it's worth it. If it's Wonders or Escape, I'll usually triple draw it twice and then stack it.

If the Shuffle card is that much of a problem, it should just be removed or made temporary (and, if you ask me, it is that much of a problem). It's a potentially interesting effect but it's more often than not game-ruining. Potentially more ruining than tossing all of your good gear into lava.

Or outright changed.

Possibly shuffling your spell list, deleting some spells and replacing them with other spells that take up as many spell levels as was just deleted (so, say, you lose Magic Dart and Throw Flame, you could get Poison Weapon) could be quite interesting. It'd be dangerous, yet potentially useful, but also fixable without having to hope for another Shuffle card. And maybe some players might actually take the risk. Do you take a gamble at getting that awesome spell you want but haven't found yet?

Mutation shuffling could be another option. Bad for bad, good for good, or randomly. But we already do have the Helix card.

There's also skill po... wait no, that sounds like a bad idea. Moving on.

Shuffle consumables around? Move charges off some wands to others, turn some potions into others, etc. Could be scummy though, such as carrying 15 potions of brilliance and 1 potion of cure mutation.

Or shuffle all your decks?

[Kate]

I don't see any problems with Shuffle, really. I've shuffled away from intelligence in the late game a couple of times and still won. And you can even switch to Jiyva to cure it now.

I'll probably go ahead and remove Mark Four soon, yeah. Not sure about Peek at Two - it's certainly significantly less useful than Draw One/Triple Draw/Stack Five, but sometimes it's worth using to safely identify decks, I think.

Tomb sort of was a problem even as a card but that can hopefully be addressed: http://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commit ... 93ba56a8fa

And good card ideas are definitely welcome, yeah - there's definitely room for some pretty crazy and fun effects (see legendary Orb card for a recently added example!).

[nicolae]

And good card ideas are definitely welcome, yeah - there's definitely room for some pretty crazy and fun effects (see legendary Orb card for a recently added example!).

What kind of things do the devs look for in a card suggestion?

[TwilightPhoenix]

Problem with Jiyva is that Jiyva can be killed and isn't always easily accessible as it sometimes only has an altar at the bottom of Slime and he'll gank your other stats hard, which is not ideal for some types of builds, such as heavy armor casters and he probably won't be of any help if you've already hit xl 27. Not to mention if you're undead, he'll rot you like crazy. Plus then you have to deal with your current god's wrath. Unless you're a demigod, in which you have no divine solutions available to you.

Shuffle isn't too terribly horrible on a Nemelex follower since you'll eventually get more Decks of Wonders. But on anyone else, if you get it, you can get outright screwed over and never see another Shuffle card again. Getting shuffled out of Int isn't horribly painful since it's easily to make up for the spell success rates and hunger costs with some more XP investment. Getting shuffled out of strength on a heavy armored character or dex on a very evasive character is far more painful and losing 10 or more EV (assuming you had high dex) or your ability to wear your plate/dragon armor/CPM/whatever can be defensively crippling. Sure, the game is still winnable, but it's winnable in the same way as suddenly losing access to your great spells or your great equipment.

Sure, Shuffle isn't so bad if it happens early since you still have plenty of time to correct your stats and adjust where you're spending XP without having to change to Jiyva, Ash, or Nemelex. And in some cases it can be beneficial (Troll Wizards, to use them as example again). But the farther you're in, the more XP you've spent on your current build and the less avenues you'll have available to you to correct it.

Not to mention, the Shuffle card has a bigger, permanent impact on a character than pretty much anything else short of death or winning. Mutations can be cured, rotting can be healed, gods can be mollified, new consumables can be found, corroded equipment can be enchanted back up, but correcting stat shuffling can only be directly fixed with either another shuffle that you'd need to get lucky with (you need luck to get Wonders, more luck to draw Shuffle, and more luck for it to do what you want it to do) or a god who's not easily accessible and not really a viable solution for four species.

While I like the concept of shuffling, it's consequences are a little too far reaching for it's duration (aka until you fix it or die) and it really is only beneficial in a very narrow set of circumstances.

[crate]

I see no problem with the shuffle card. If you draw blind from a deck while not worshipping Nemelex and get shuffle you deserve it (ID the deck at least!); if you get it under Nemelex it's fixable and you have Nemelex to make up for bad stats (and personally I just turn off Wonders immediately when I adopt Nemelex, he's very strong without it anyway).

Also Jiyva doesn't gift mutations to undead followers.

[KoboldLord]

Ideally it should not be desirable to 'turn off' a deck type with Nemelex. You should be able to expect to get reasonably acceptable results from all the gifts she gives without requiring the perusal of spoilers. Summoning and Destruction are conceptually both good in this respect, in that they both consistently do a thing the player wants done, but with random quirks to be cautious of. Wonders is the worst, because you can either get massive strategic benefits or painful irreversible damage, with no obvious way to mitigate the risks except to eliminate them with identify scrolls. This probably means Wonders needs to be gutted, good and bad, because if it should be undesirable to turn of a deck type it follows that it should also be undesirable to turn off all deck types but one.

Perhaps the offending Wonders cards should be moved to floor-only decks. There, at least they don't screw up Nemelex play for unspoiled players. Not all floor trash can possibly be beneficial or usable, after all, so increased risk here is more palatable.

[XuaXua]

I think if Shuffle weren't a flat swap of stats, but movement of a percentage of stats... or if Ornate Shuffle didn't equal Legendary Shuffle...

[nicolae]

New Nemelex ability, to replace Mark Four, just got committed.

New Nemelex ability: Deal Four.

You draw four cards from the top of the deck and play them immediately (in sequence, but taking a single turn). To balance this:
* It doesn't work on marked decks.
* The MP, piety, and hunger costs are quite high.
* The rest of the deck is destroyed.
* If there weren't enough cards, you "get to" deal a card from the deck of punishments (just one, not the number of cards you lacked).

This probably needs more tweaking. In particular, the MP cost is high (to limit spamming the ability in combat), but it may be so high as to cause a problem for non-casters of certain races.

[mumra]

New Nemelex ability, to replace Mark Four, just got committed.

New Nemelex ability: Deal Four.

You draw four cards from the top of the deck and play them immediately (in sequence, but taking a single turn). To balance this:
* It doesn't work on marked decks.
* The MP, piety, and hunger costs are quite high.
* The rest of the deck is destroyed.
* If there weren't enough cards, you "get to" deal a card from the deck of punishments (just one, not the number of cards you lacked).

This probably needs more tweaking. In particular, the MP cost is high (to limit spamming the ability in combat), but it may be so high as to cause a problem for non-casters of certain races.

Wow, that's kind of spooky, I was thinking of exactly this idea, just couldn't think how to balance it

[XuaXua]

Since this (1) destroys a deck (2) chances a penalty from punishments (3) and costs lots of piety according to the ability, IMHO the piety gain from those cards should outweigh those or this isn't worth it except for use in non-legendary Summons and maybe base decks of escape.

[KoboldLord]

What, playing four legendary summons in one turn isn't enough power for you? Or spamming four separate high-powered damage spells in one turn? Escape, Dungeons, and Wonders are finesse decks, so you probably shouldn't use the raw power option with them.

[galehar]

I don't think you gain any piety from the cards used in a draw four. This ability will probably only be used with destruction and summoning. And it's probably overpowered. And even more problematic, I think it's buggy. 4 card effects simultaneously is quite hazardous. I've suggested on c-r-d to make it a delayed action using 3 or 4 aut per card to let the monsters and dungeon react between each draw. And balance the ability a bit.

[mumra]

I don't think you gain any piety from the cards used in a draw four. This ability will probably only be used with destruction and summoning. And it's probably overpowered. And even more problematic, I think it's buggy. 4 card effects simultaneously is quite hazardous. I've suggested on c-r-d to make it a delayed action using 3 or 4 aut per card to let the monsters and dungeon react between each draw. And balance the ability a bit.

One problematic effect would be orbs of destruction - if they spawn on top of each other they'll all backfire and instakill you.

[One-Eyed Jack]

I think I misunderstand. The way you phrase your proposal makes it sound like it would be strictly worse than using Draw One four times.

Deal four would be 75% faster.

[XuaXua]

What, playing four legendary summons in one turn isn't enough power for you? Or spamming four separate high-powered damage spells in one turn? Escape, Dungeons, and Wonders are finesse decks, so you probably shouldn't use the raw power option with them.

summon summon crusade crusade yay

Also, see the Summons Cap thread where one of the points that limits summon is available space.

AFAIK, Draw One ability gives piety; and it doesn't cost piety to use.

The other abilities cost piety to use because they are explicitly helpful in the future use of cards (marking, stacking). Draw One doesn't because it's just exactly what Nemelex wants : drawing.

[XuaXua]

Just noticed something with Nemelex.

Nemelex isn't Invocations; I understand that, but Nemelex requires MP expenditure.

Started a Troll Monk of Nemelex. I have 1 MP. For a while. Can't even call Draw One because Spellcasting is at 0. So I have to train Spellcasting in order to use Nemelex because Nemelex doesn't use Invocations for the MP raise.

Not that I mind; I'd love to eventually cast spells and expected to train Spellcasting, but now I'm training both Spellcasting and Evocations, which is strange.

My suggestion would be, under Nemelex, to have Evocations skill work 100% like Invocations Skill; if you leave Nemelex, you take the MP hit if your Spellcasting isn't high enough to compensate. Alternately, keep MP from Invocations and MP from Spellcasting separate.

[BlackSheep]

Gods don't "use" Spellcasting or Invocations for MP. Whichever is higher is used to calculate your MP regardless of which god you worship. If you're complaining that training Invocations for MP is otherwise useless under Nemelex, that sounds like a complaint that Nemelex isn't strong enough. Which he his. If you were planning on training Spellcasting anyway, I don't see what the problem is.

[mattlistener]

I like the Deal Four ability described above. There are a variety of ways a player could use it -- as well as emergencies in which it would be much better to Deal Four a deck than blind-draw it. It also creates an incentive for the mark-happy player to leave one or more decks unmarked so they can be blown up with Deal Four when needed.

The guidance at http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... elex_guide is so strongly against using decks of destruction I've never used them on a character I was trying to win with. If the self-harming features of it were manageable though I could see relying on them on a melee-heavy build for ranged support, or maybe transmuter without the mana pool to spam damage spells.

[mumra]

The guidance at http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... elex_guide is so strongly against using decks of destruction I've never used them on a character I was trying to win with. If the self-harming features of it were manageable though I could see relying on them on a melee-heavy build for ranged support, or maybe transmuter without the mana pool to spam damage spells.

My vote is that the entire BadWiki should just be deleted and replaced with a redirect to the Knowledge Bots page. It's the cause of far more misinformation that it is help.

[crate]

Decks of destruction at power 0 are actually far less self-harmful than any other deck at power 0 (the worst you can do is poison yourself, unless you draw flame and fireball yourself but that one is avoidable). Only at power 2 is there really much chance of you seriously hurting yourself, and then only one card (pain card torment) will do so unless you target poorly.