Make Cheibriados Better

[The Mantis]

Cheibriados is currently an inferior god.

Benefits:
* Half a ring of sustenance.
* Effects of poison and sickness halved.
* (Piety/10,15) bonus to each stat.
* The ability to slow enemies at the cost of piety, the ability to vanish at the cost of piety, the ability to damage foes faster than you at the cost of piety and the ability to vanish much longer at the cost of piety.

Detriments:
* Your move delay is more than doubled.
* You cannot worship another god (all deities).
* You are forbidden to use effects that increase your action speed.
* You are forbidden the use of Haste and Swiftness.

Major proposals that add content should have a flavor rationale. That way they are not simply numbers. If you are proposing a drastic change, please give it a firm flavor.

[pratamawirya]

Chei could also make your character really tough. Like, giving your character DD-style damage shaving, trample immunity, etc.

[The Mantis]

Trample immunity sounds nice. Damage shaving is extremely powerful. I wonder why no one noticed that boots of running are the most sought-after item in the game.

[pratamawirya]

Damage shaving is extremely powerful.

Well, I think that is to make up for not having any access to Haste, which is a borderline broken spell.

[cerebovssquire]

Trample immunity also sounds nearly absolutely irrelevant. It's like the slowed metabolism in that sense.

(all of which are annoying)

Yes, and none of which are dangerous. This isn't a buff to Chei's gameplay value, it makes him reduce tedium.

[pratamawirya]

Trample immunity also sounds nearly absolutely irrelevant. It's like the slowed metabolism in that sense.

Why? If you move so slowly, you might as well be a real tank.

[cerebovssquire]

Trample immunity also sounds nearly absolutely irrelevant. It's like the slowed metabolism in that sense.

Why? If you move so slowly, you might as well be a real tank.

Yes, I don't think it makes no sense flavour-wise ('irrelevant to Cheibriados'), I was just pointing out that if you want to buff Cheibriados, you want something a little more substantial. Reducing the stupidly high piety cost of Slouch would be a step in the right direction.

[The Mantis]

I wonder if people see the idea of many small bonuses equalling a strong single benefit... hmm... perhaps not...

[cerebovssquire]

I wonder if people see that cluttering a god up with lots of small stuff is far worse than adding one good ability or bonus, from a design point of view... hmm... perhaps not...

single

lol

[The Mantis]

Clutter is subjective. Playing something like a Merfolk of Zin involves carefully husbanding multiple minor resources - the ability to swim, the ability to evade poison and sickness, what have you. It's enjoyable. Having a god of many minor tricks that add up is actually a nice idea. So I do support pratamawirya's trample immunity concept.

Even so, I put forward an idea that focused precisely on what you mentioned. Golly gosh, no need to resort to mimicry!

[KoboldLord]

It probably won't do the job of improving Chei all by itself, but maybe Haste needs another round of nerfs. Maybe it needs to join Revivification, Enter the Abyss, etc. on the list of abilities that cause permanent reduction in your stats or hit points. Haste would not be the default response of every character to every threat if it caused a deterioration-style effect on your stats as long as it lasted, and each point of stat damage had a 10% chance or so to be a permanent reduction instead of just damage. If spell power was figured into the rate of deterioration, it could even justify training charms or evocations more, since a high-charms character could use it more often without being permanently crippled.

[The Mantis]

It makes you glow and is Level 6? =S

Also, can we stay on topic?

[njvack]

It probably won't do the job of improving Chei all by itself, but maybe Haste needs another round of nerfs. Maybe it needs to join Revivification, Enter the Abyss, etc. on the list of abilities that cause permanent reduction in your stats or hit points.

I'd put Controlled Blink in that elite group as well.

[The Mantis]

Also makes you glow, Level 7.

[cerebovssquire]

Putting Haste in the same category as Revivication and Enter the Abyss sounds like a mistake to me. The last two share the property of "emergency buttons", whereas Haste is a buff. And since Crawl currently doesn't really reward single fights that much, teleporting away from a dangerous enemy or running away sounds better than using Haste in most situations. Borg and Enter the Abyss, however, are usually best in the situations they are made for - "dangerous enemy/enemies that will kill you next turn".
So I think that a temporary malus is a good idea, however, permanent damage discourages usage too much. Glow definitely isn't enough though - just look at any good player's use of Haste.

Idea: there is a rather low chance of Haste berserking you that decreases with spellpower.

grats cerebovssquire you are probably in badforum now

[The Mantis]

Idea: there is a chance of Haste berserking you that decreases with spellpower.

Level 2 Enchantment miscast is berserking you, so good job on being so foresighted.

[pratamawirya]

Or, make Haste reduce your Acc, Ev, spell success, etc.

(Yeah, this is OT.)

[crate]

I think the best way to improve chei is to make str actually a good stat. The int/dex boosts are already quite powerful, and I think chei as-is is fun and even maybe a good choice for some characters. I am not sure how str should be improved though (but having 1/3 of chei's most obvious benefit be almost entirely useless is pretty bad).

edit: as an aside I think haste would really be better off if it simply weren't a spell at all

[The Mantis]

Strength and to a lesser extent Dexterity are known to be bad.

Edit: Haste is a nice spell.

[pratamawirya]

What's keeping us from making STR affect melee attack power significantly? It's like that in many other games. (Yeah I know comparing Crawl to any other game doesn't make the most convincing argument.)

[The Mantis]

Sounds good. Triple its power.

[cerebovssquire]

Idea: there is a chance of Haste berserking you that decreases with spellpower.

Level 2 Enchantment miscast is berserking you, so good job on being so foresighted.

Uh, yeah I know? And people* frequently cast Haste when it is likely to give you a level 2 miscast? I'm talking of a higher chance here, and one that decreases with spellpower and not with spell success/spell level. And also as I wrote in my post I am aware that it is not a very good solution, I would just welcome something along these lines more that permanent stat damage.

*people making good decisions

[The Mantis]

Harmless humour. Spellpower usually relates to spell success, anyway.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Chei's abilities are actually pretty darn strong as is, especially if you're an unarmed character and especially if you're a Transmuter. A DrTm of Chei has monstrous damage output in Dragon, Statue, and Blade Hands forms while also being rather resilient and any dedicated caster will have an easier time getting stuff like Controlled Blink and whatever Storm online and hungerless. Plus Step from Time is usually one of the strongest escape abilities available. It's like Enter the Abyss, except without the permanent cost, being forced into the Abyss, and having the chance that the enemy doesn't wander off (at which time you can just use it again before they can react). Chei's abilities really don't need a buff, and making strength and dexterity more useful no doubt would be enough of one (and help a lot of other things too).

Now Chei's penalties on the other hand, that's what holds him back. That would be where you'd want to take a look because that's what drives most people away from him. Either making his penalties less harsh or nerfing what you can't use with him (such as Haste) would make him more appealing.

[Eji1700]

I think Cheibriados should just allow haste. The conduct is crippling without being interesting. This would come along with allowing quick blades and weapons of speed, of course - currently Chei consistently cares about movement speed but only sometimes cares about action speed, which is pretty weird, so surely getting rid of that is a good thing anyway. Maybe he'd have to suppress the movement speed part of haste, but since he currently suppresses the haste part of berserk, it's still a strict gain in consistency.

Wand of hasting probably shouldn't be the best item in the game but that's unrelated.

I'd really rather not see this for a long list of reasons, but most importantly i felt like the whole point of chei was "gee, i'd rather not spam haste this run".

Also agree with crate. STR needs to be an important stat not just for chei, but for demigods as well.

[shiweera]

Now Chei's penalties on the other hand, that's what holds him back. That would be where you'd want to take a look because that's what drives most people away from him. Either making his penalties less harsh or nerfing what you can't use with him (such as Haste) would make him more appealing.

Chei's main penalties are:
- Slow movement speed.
- Inavailability of haste.
Everything else is negligible.

Slow movement speed is the more crippling of these, since it means you cannot run away [1]. Now luckily, Chei offers 'bend time', which slows monsters and - if below 70 piety - means you can run from slowed normal speed monsters. If you have more than 70 piety, this is no longer possible. To make 'bend time' more powerful than ability 'X', I suggest:
1) Reduce Chei's movement delay, such that you have at most 1.5 delay with piety < ****. At this point slouch becomes available, so you have another panic button. (Which I was told, is quite useful).
2) Make bend time work on monsters in a 2-tile radius, instead of only adjacent ones. This makes it possible to slow monsters without risking a hit, and makes polearm carrying stuff a little bit less scary.

Note that I did never get very far with Chei, so this is necessarily focused on early game. I suspect, that's where Chei is most problematic, though. (Well, run into a troll ... lack of escape options ... die)

[1] I compiled a list of chei early game escape options here: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... pe_methods. It's not too well written yet, but feel free to comment/add things/improve it, and it might make its way to a chei strategy article.

[cerebovssquire]

Slow movement is sort of bad, but like you say yourself in your article (not read it but I assume it describes what you say it does) there are ways to largely compensate that.

Haste, however, is a 50% power boost to any character for zero investment (consumables) or little investment (10-12 charms for many light-armoured chars). Cheibriados, in other words, forbids you making your character 50% better, which is something any other character desires to do (some have problems - off the top of my head, only MuBe comes to mind). So to even be as good as an atheist char(!) Cheibriados would have to make your character 50% stronger otherwise. This is a rather high claim to make, but I don't have numbers here so in dubito pro reo. However, one could also pick another god who not only makes you a lot stronger than an atheist char (unlike Chei), but who also gives much better powers than Chei even if he didn't prevent Haste.
In other words, if we say "Chei makes you 50% stronger" to argue in favour of Haste not being worth it, which I don't agree with, we have to also say "Kikubaaqudgha makes you even stronger", "Makhleb makes you even stronger", "Elyvilon makes you even stronger", etc. etc. for most of the pantheon because their powers are simply better. Chei is left with a bunch of powers that sort of compensate for his weaknesses, many other gods don't give you any weaknesses and also have much better powers in addition to that.

So yeah, wrong, sorry. This is probably because of

I did never get very far with Chei

because not many characters early on have Haste available in an often-usable way, such as many potions, a wand, or simply the spell itself.

EDIT: read the article, it had the important items but contained two or three bits of misinformation. I improved it. Also, OpMo of Chei isn't exactly a good combo, though constriction does benefit from him. See above. I wouldn't make a character guide for OpMo featuring Cheibriados.

[galehar]

I think Cheibriados should just allow haste. The conduct is crippling without being interesting.

Maybe, but what does that make Chei? The god of walking slowly? If the conduct is move slowly, but act as fast as you want, it makes the theme really weak. On the other hand, if haste is so desirable for most chars, maybe it needs further nerfing. And the wand too. And this isn't offtopic. If Chei's biggest drawback is the lack of hasting, then buffing Chei can be achieved by nerfing (or removing) haste.

How about bumping it to L7? And increasing the amount of glow? If it sometimes put you in yellow glow all by itself, and even have a low chance of giving you a bad mut, then it won't be used as often. And maybe also make the amount of glow inversely proportional to spell power;

[dpeg]

galehar is spot on. Cheibriados is not to blame for a broken mechanic. Haste would be fine if it was used judiciously, for example, because it had a drawback. Increasing level and glow seem good to me, although in the end, perhaps Haste is one of those effects that's better off as consumable-only (and I am not sure if the wand is consumable enough in this regard).

Else: It should be obvious that Cheibriados can be arbitrarily strong on numbers alone. For example, doubling slouch damage. We may not want that, but it's clear that the speed handicap (and I agree that Chei's flavour-wise about slow anything) can be compensated even with the current abilities. What's more important in my opinion is the question whether the god is fun. No universal answer, of course, but I've seen enough enthusiastic game reports featuring Cheibriados that I am not worried.

What I originally had in mind was that players would not necessarily choose extremely slow speed when cruising the dungeon under Chei. But having good middle ground seems really hard to get right. Similar issues crop up with middling mails, or non-extreme Vampire blood levels.

[shiweera]

So to even be as good as an atheist char(!) Cheibriados would have to make your character 50% stronger otherwise. This is a rather high claim to make, but I don't have numbers here so in dubito pro reo.

I actually tested it once in wizard mode. While you still loose on spells and movement, an UC char with maximal stat bonus was about in between haste and finesse for the purpose of eff. damage/aut (regardless of form used or monster fought against).

However, one could also pick another god who not only makes you a lot stronger than an atheist char (unlike Chei), but who also gives much better powers than Chei even if he didn't prevent Haste.

Why do gods have to be balanced against each other? Isn't it sufficient if a god gives a net benefit over not choosing a god, and is interesting?
For quite a long time after you start worshipping chei, he is a net hindrance at the moment. My attempt was to change that. Currently your best bet if you run into an awake ogre/troll/giant, and you cannot handle it (be it by own force or consumables), is to leave Chei.

EDIT: read the article, it had the important items but contained two or three bits of misinformation. I improved it. Also, OpMo of Chei isn't exactly a good combo, though constriction does benefit from him. See above. I wouldn't make a character guide for OpMo featuring Cheibriados.

Thanks! I certainly won't make a guide for the combo, it's terrible.

Else: It should be obvious that Cheibriados can be arbitrarily strong on numbers alone. For example, doubling slouch damage. We may not want that, but it's clear that the speed handicap (and I agree that Chei's flavour-wise about slow anything) can be compensated even with the current abilities. What's more important in my opinion is the question whether the god is fun. No universal answer, of course, but I've seen enough enthusiastic game reports featuring Cheibriados that I am not worried.

The effect of slouch seems a little boring to me. Maybe add some chance to slow the monster, instead of just damaging it? (This is not a pure buff, because the next slouch will deal less damage).

[Jeremiah]

Idea for haste nerf:

Split the haste effect into 3 separate spells, all of which are level 6 and cause the same amount of glow as Haste does now:

Acceleration (movement haste) - gives the movement speed bonus of Haste, and also speeds up 'general' actions like eating, butchering and swapping equipment.

Swift Striking (combat haste) - gives the combat speed effects of haste (both missile and melee). Like a weaker version of Finesse.

Eloquence (magical haste) - speeds up magical actions like spellcasting, invocations, using rods, wands and decks, and reading scrolls.

While it would be possible to learn all 3, that would both be a very expensive use of spell slots, and would also very quickly cause dangerous levels of glow if you used more than one at once.

Not quite sure where wands and potions of speed would fit in; maybe the wand should only give the Acceleration effect, and the potion should remain as the only source of "true" haste. The monster version of the spell could probably remain as it is now.

Is that a good idea or the sort of thing that gets me into badforum?

[bobross419]

But...it's already pretty much like that. He doesn't object to you training your weapon skills. And I'm not convinced "slow" is a stronger theme than "slow walking."

Turtles (Chei's power animal) are known for moving slow, but they can strike quickly if the need arises.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JharT0XcAxM @ 1:50 ish

[pratamawirya]

But... is "able to use Haste to increase attack speed but not movement speed" enough to make Chei better?

[Tiber]

The problem with Chei is ponderousness can easily get you killed, but the only survival tool he gives you only comes at 5 stars, requires heavy investment in invocations, and is expensive to use. I'd like to see an offensive step from time ability that temporarily banishes a single monster but returns it several turns later, resisted by HD.

[njvack]

But... is "able to use Haste to increase attack speed but not movement speed" enough to make Chei better?

Finesse is awfully good...

[Blade]

Also, this would be the single largest increase in difficulty the game has ever had.

This point hasn't gotten nearly enough attention. Nerfing haste is not a simple, fast solution to all that ails Crawl. The effect has been so integral to the game for so long that any changes to it should be done very carefully.

[TwilightPhoenix]

I'm sure you could rip out Haste (maybe leave the potions) and force everyone to quit cold turkey in trunk and see how it goes. I'm very much more than willing to bet the three-rune game won't change a whole lot (only my 15-rune winner ever bothered to learn haste). It's trunk, you don't have to be careful about it since it's not release. If it goes badly (not in the "OMG THE DEVS SUCK!" badly like with MD removal), then doing the more complicated and difficult "careful removal" could be done instead.

Also, if you're not able to escape or kill that Ogre or Troll as a Chei follower without quitting Chei... you're doing it wrong. Monsters in melee range often step away when you use Temporal Distortion, so you can move away, distort, move away, distort, and repeat until safe if all else fails (and you should have consumables, so it shouldn't). Or you could just quaff speed and suffer the piety hit/temporary penance rather than ditching the god and dealing with his wrath at a low level.

[Mankeli]

Don't get rid of the wand while leaving potions. I don't want the conservation-stashing minigame go any further.

Also, if you increase the stat boni then it makes Chei (even more) a god of transmutations since some forms' unarmed actually benefits from stats (strenght to be exact). I'm not saying it is necessarily a bad thing.

[crate]

Chei is actually not very good for transmuters as-is, particularly since moving around is really good for melee combat.

[Mankeli]

Chei is not very good for anyone. With a blade hand user I found the Chei int boost nice enough to compensate the spellcasting penalty from blade hands. And the other stat boosts boosted damage. And for conjurers there is Vehumet (or Sif). On more general note, what kind of a character do you (and others) think Chei sucks the least then? Earth users who have not-so-easy time getting spell enchancers?

[mikee]

Cheibriados becomes less fun the more experienced you are at the game because you realize more the benefits you get from changing where you are. Such players may make these subtle movements unconsciously and with a 'natural' flow to them, but with chei they have to restrain themselves and move 'unnaturally'. I wish I could make some good diagrams to demonstrate this.

[njvack]

Cheibriados becomes less fun the more experienced you are at the game because you realize more the benefits you get from changing where you are.

Couldn't one view the "I can't move where I want to" conduct as a fun challenge? This seems a little like saying Oka is less fun once you realize the benefits of summon spam...

[rebthor]

Cheibriados becomes less fun the more experienced you are at the game because you realize more the benefits you get from changing where you are. Such players may make these subtle movements unconsciously and with a 'natural' flow to them, but with chei they have to restrain themselves and move 'unnaturally'. I wish I could make some good diagrams to demonstrate this.

I agree 100% with this. When I started playing a lot, I thought Chei was the bees knees. Incredible stat boosts. Damage to everything in LOS? A panic button that will save your life 95% of the time (if you raise your invoc enough to use it!)? What's not to love.

Then I proceeded to splat character after character, barely ever clearing lair because you know what's scarier than a hydra at cLvl 10? A hydra you can't escape from if things go south.

[XuaXua]

Here is how you fix Chei:

Make high Attributes more useful. Give them more applications (they enhance certain skill usage by a degree, they play a greater factor over skills in other areas).

[The Mantis]

Cheibriados becomes less fun the more experienced you are at the game because you realize more the benefits you get from changing where you are.

Couldn't one view the "I can't move where I want to" conduct as a fun challenge? This seems a little like saying Oka is less fun once you realize the benefits of summon spam...

Moving has more applications than Summonings.

[Dustbin]

Level 6 Haste could just have the % it increases actions and duration cut drastically, like half.
And if that's too much add an "Improved Haste" (current haste) at level 8 or 9 and make it two magic schools.