Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1249
Joined: Sunday, 18th September 2011, 02:11
Re: Improving Xom!!!
Xom is generally OK. Even after the tension change, though, his gifting is perhaps too generous:
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/giant ... 210412.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/giant ... 030304.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/giant ... 212201.txt
This...doesn't really seem like intended behaviour. Xom shouldn't be the god of scumming D:1 forever, as fun as that is.
That's not a very pressing problem, though, since it really only affects two combos (VpCK and MuCK), and one of them is by far the worst in the game. So, while a change to that would probably be good, it's not strictly necessary. Keeping it in doesn't really unbalance anything.
More serious problems, though, are these:
1) abyssing
2) instakills
3) summon 1
Most (or all) of these are caused by severe miscast effects. None of them should exist (note that they're generally fairly rare, but rarity is no excuse for brokenness). While Xom sometimes hindering you is part of his appeal, he should not ever kill you with effectively no chance to avoid it.
Here is an example of a xom instakill:
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/giant ... 184041.txt
An example of a 1:
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/giant ... 205208.txt
The simplest way to fix both of these would be to remove the chance for level 3 miscasts (which I -think- both were) at low experience levels (or ever, for that matter; having durably summoned fiends wandering around the dungeon is not fun).
Abyssing is more of an edge case, since it doesn't technically kill you instantly. However, it is unreasonable. Most low-level characters have almost no chance to survive the abyss. The three characters I linked to at the beginning of this post were incredibly well-equipped, and they all were able to work through it fairly well (one of them even survived it once, only to be sent back a couple thousand turns later). They are the exceptions to the rule. Even with these exceptions, though, Xom's high-tension effects kick in almost constantly in the abyss, and all three of them eventually fell to Xom confusion.
This is a more typical example:
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/giant ... 015352.txt
Sending a character to the abyss is, as I said, not quite a guaranteed death sentence, but close enough that it shouldn't happen. It would even be potentially ok if it was the regular abyss, but the abyss is far nastier with Xom messing with you every few turns. Almost no characters (especially of xom) could reasonably be expected to survive the abyss before ~xl10, and it remains a significant threat afterwards. This is fine in most instances, but your god should not be one of those nasty game-ending effects.
tl;dr: Xom should not put you in instances where you will die with almost no chance to respond. Any effect that does that should not exist.