Make Cheibriados Better

[Galefury]

Level 6 Haste could just have the % it increases actions and duration cut drastically, like half.

Because that worked so well last time?

[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.

Couldn't one view the "I can't move where I want to" conduct as a fun challenge?

I wasn't suggesting a conduct - I don't care about difficulty in this sense. I mean that it is jarring to instinctively start to move somewhere and then have to stop yourself.

[njvack]

Ah, that makes sense.

[Eji1700]

One thing that's always kept me away from chei as a lousy player is he's SO piety hungry. You've got so many invokes that require piety and i'm of course still at the "horde everything in case you need it later" point so I tend to have trouble with him. I'd personally like to see at least one single target option(since everything else is semi AOE) that maybe is better for when you have one immediate threat.

[ddubois]

I feel Bend Time is kind of ridiculous. "I'll slow the monster down, but its still faster than you, oh, and it only works on monsters directly adjacent to you, not the centaur kicking your ass. /trollface". It should actually do something. At the very least the slow should scale with your piety so the affected monsters are guaranteed to be slower than you. I'd also have it affect a larger radius. In fact, I would have the monsters farther away from you slowed more than the guys next to you, since if you are Chei, you are probably OK with the smashing the people next to you.

Or maybe it could be the single-target option Eji1700 suggested. Then I could zap that centaur and run away (or, at least, mosey away faster than he can mosey after me).

[crate]

Bend time is very good. It slows the monster ... meaning all its actions are slowed down. It is functionally equivalent to hasting yourself, except that you obviously cannot further slow the monster. It is for fighting hard things, not for fleeing (if you want to flee with chei you need translocations).

[twelwe]

I think that cheibriados should become less of a slow god and more of a time oriented god. One ability I would like to see is a high-cost invocation that returns every monster back to the conditions they were in five turns ago. They would regain the health, mana, and position they occupied five turns prior to invoking. Another ability would exclusively target you, returning you to the health, mana, and position you occupied five turns ago. Perhaps the cost of the invocation would be a function of the amount of mana/health recovered, ala pain mirror, but debuffing you with sickness and nausea. Such an event would not be pleasant to the body.

To me, chei should either be slow oriented or time oriented, not both. I think some elements of chei could be broken off and put into lugonu from that little I know of the god (having been recommended to play it in IRC after being abyssed on d:1 of an orb run; converting, departing, winning) or an entire new time god.

[galehar]

Bend time is very good. It slows the monster ... meaning all its actions are slowed down. It is functionally equivalent to hasting yourself, except that you obviously cannot further slow the monster. It is for fighting hard things, not for fleeing (if you want to flee with chei you need translocations).

Hmm. How about we add another similar but stronger invocations to make up for haste instead of just allowing haste? Like time slowing. It's functionally equivalent to haste, but fits Chei's theme. Also, it would be nice if we could somehow differentiate it a bit more from haste, but I'm not sure how.

[pratamawirya]

A DD-style damage shaving invocation would be a simple yet elegant solution (name it "Time Armor" or something).

[pubby]

If it's time armour then it should delay damage done to you over a longer period of time.

Instead of taking 80 damage now you take 4 damage for 20 turns. Or perhaps make the damage done be an exponential decay so high regeneration doesn't make you invincible. Or each attack could damage over time in parallel - two attacks of 80 damage would do 8 damage for 20 turns instead of 4 for 40.

[pratamawirya]

If it's time armour then it should delay damage done to you over a longer period of time.

Instead of taking 80 damage now you take 4 damage for 20 turns. Or perhaps make the damage done be an exponential decay so high regeneration doesn't make you invincible. Or each attack could damage over time in parallel - two attacks of 80 damage would do 8 damage for 20 turns instead of 4 for 40.

Interesting.

[dd]

How about an ability to punch your enemies to next week?

[TwilightPhoenix]

Just learn Statue Form for that one.


For time slow, to make it more different from haste, it could also do things like extend the duration of any effects within the area of effects, good or bad, except for the player since I imagine he wouldn't be slowed. Clouds can last longer but also inflict less damage during the duration. I don't know if Crawl could handle it, but maybe all projectiles could take time to reach their target too, similar to Orb of Destruction. Also, slower enemy regeneration.

[Stormfox]

maybe all projectiles could take time to reach their target too, similar to Orb of Destruction.

So Chei should grant Bullet Time?

[pratamawirya]

Bend Time is kinda weird.

Oka is a battle god. You follow Oka so you can be really powerful in combat. Basically, Oka buff your combat ability.

Chei is a god of moving slowly. You follow Chei so you can move slowly while also being more powerful.

Chei slowing your enemies (instead of you) is kind of like Oka buffing your enemies. A bit weird.

[galehar]

I've been thinking about the time slowing invocation. Here is an idea:

The time is slowed relatively to your movement delay. If it's 20, then everything is twice slower, meaning you now move at the same speed as a normal monster speed. But you act twice as fast. You end up at a similar level of someone using finesse (normal movement, fast actions), but contrary to finesse, it affects all actions. If you have lower piety and lower movement delay, then the speed increase is reduced too, so you always end up at your base movement delay. Don't ask me about the specifics of Na, Sp and Ce, I'm not sure yet.
Where it gets interesting is the piety cost. It drains piety when it's active and you deactivate it when you want. If you keep it up for a long time, the effect will get progressively worse as your piety and your base movement delay drop. It could be available at a relatively low piety rank since the effect scale with piety.
I think someone coded such a system for time step, maybe we can salvage the code.

[Galefury]

That sounds wicked awesome!

Also, chei = new best Zig god with this, permanent oldhaste. Or will it reduce piety gain, because most stuff is no longer faster than you? That would probably be good.

[XuaXua]

That sounds wicked awesome!

Chei is so slow, it's still 1992 for him.

[jejorda2]

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).

What if a combination of dex and str increased movement speed, and Chei piety decreases movement speeds and increases stats in a way that just balances out? The god-granted INT would let you choose whether to allocate the other stats to get movement speed or spellcasting. Set it up such that a DEWz starts out at current Naga movement speed unless she gains some dex and str, and a DGFi who never chooses to raise INT gets current spriggan speed at L27. Use the square root of the product of dex and str in the formula so movement speed benefits from keeping dex and str balanced, but defenses can benefit from raising one higher.

The early game would get a lot harder unless rats and goblins are made half speed. And there probably isn't enough room between Naga speed and Spriggan speed for stat choices to become meaningful. Speeds slower and faster than that would probably be broken.

[cerebovssquire]

What if a combination of dex and str increased movement speed, and Chei piety decreases movement speeds and increases stats in a way that just balances out?

Then Slouch would be the worst thing ever.

[Bloax]

It would certainly make Chei better if he followed his own advice. "Take it easy!"

That is, he shouldn't insta-penance you the moment you speed up somehow.
No, what he should is that he'd proclaim his dissatisfaction of your speedy ways ("Cheibriados does not approve of your speedy ways."), give you a piety hit depending on how long ago you broke his premise.

So that if you kept on doing it three times in a row, he'd be quite annoyed at you.
Perhaps even bring "Tension" to the game, where if you use a potion of berserk in a dangerous situation, he'd say ("Cheibriados does not like your speedy ways, but understands your need for them.") and give a smaller piety hit.

How speeding up with him should work is a good question, but making him the "Pretty cool guy that doesn't afraid of anything (even broken premises)" God would certainly make him better.


And boy, you guys have some interesting stuff cooking in this thread! (Time-oriented stuff would be interesting, to say the least.)

Edit: WHAT the HELL is he smoking? I just speeded an orc warlord up to make Slouch more effective, and guess what;

What transgression, scumbag? I'M not the one that got speeded up!

At least he's nice enough to forget about it after I ported out of there (taking on a hasted warlord without my stat boost? nothxtelewandbai) And killed a single orc.
But still, I thought you were the one that shouldn't be speeded up. Turns out we're in forbidden item territory. (Which shouldn't do anything but warn you that using this on yourself is a no-go.)

As a reminder:

[dd]

Make high Attributes more useful. Give them more applications

Str: high Str could allow you to wield certain two-hand weapons with one hand (polearms and such excluded)? Each weapon would have a set treshold of str you need to wield it with one hand, even if it's a nominally two-hand weapon. There would of course be a hit/damage penalty, but it could be mitigated with even higher Str.

Dex: high dex could allow you to do things like escape constriction more easily. It could also give you a chance to perform special attacks occasionally, maybe each attack would have a chance of being faster, or more likely to hit, or both.

Int: hm, this is tough. Maybe it could give you a chance of auto-id:ing items? You know, you're so smart you can sometimes figure out what a wand or scroll does even without using it.

[Bloax]

Strength could directly increase your AC.

Perhaps making "Strength" be a mix of "Strength" and a missing "Constitution" stat would work?

So that, and that Strength should increase your health by a bit. Because something that's as strong as a mountain can be wimpy as a newt, right guys? Guys? Hello? Someone?

[dpeg]

Bloax: that proposal is not so revolutionary, and in fact, someone proposed something like this (that's not meant as an accusation).

My take on it was this: Str gives you a certain HP boost, Dex gives half of it, and Int none. That might even allow to dispense with Fighting (which is odder than Spellcasting as a "general skill"). But there wasn't really much support, perhaps you have more luck.

[dpeg]

minmay: Yes, that's one of the good counters. I'd say that only basic stats should count, but having to argue like this weakens the whole approach a lot.

[njvack]

I just speeded an orc warlord up to make Slouch more effective, and guess what;

What transgression, scumbag? I'M not the one that got speeded up!
...
As a reminder:

Yeah, Chei's screen doesn't make the "don't haste others" conduct at all (it might be implicit in the "unnaturally fast items" conduct, but that sounds more like Boots of Running and speed weapons). Probably should be explicit; I've filed a bug report on this.

[Bloax]

I don't like tying HP to stats because stats fluctuate a lot and max HP probably shouldn't. Just think of what a pain it would be to play a Jiyva character.

That's the price you pay for being with the mutagen lord.

And if anything, it shouldn't be a direct modifier of MaxHealth, but rather an addition to it.
So that going from xx/120 to xx/100 due to massive strength loss (Thanks Xom?) wouldn't sink your health from 90/120 to 70/100, but just keep it at 90/100.

Of course you'd still lose overflow health. (Or perhaps make it degenerate? Hm?) - But it's the same with MP boosters.
This is secretly just a hidden Troll buff due to their stupendous strength, totally.

[Eji1700]

Personal thoughts-
Stats-
When i started playing the first thing I did was "hmm...i need more HP, so I guess i'll put stats in STR.......ok that did nothing" Finding out i needed to train fighting of all things was kinda odd. I'd be all for tying HP to STR in some way and then tweaking Jiyva,demigods, whatever later if needed.

Chei-
I really really really dislike any of the ideas that allow for faster movement with chei. I realize what a challenge it is to handle this game without some form of speed, but I think that's what makes chei's design so interesting, and moving away from that just feels sad. What are the biggest threats to better players as chei? For me it's a lone, fast, ranged unit(centaurs usually). I don't want to blow slouch piety on it, but if i must i must, and i'll probably be dead by the time I get close to it, and we all know there's no running away. So should Chei maybe get a tloc spell rather than just forcing you to learn them?

[crate]

Chei has a tloc spell, it is called temporal distortion.

[Eji1700]

Chei has a tloc spell, it is called temporal distortion.

Everytime i've used that i've gotten terrible results. Guess i'm just doing it wrong though.

[pratamawirya]

Temporal Distortion is one of your best friends against ranged monsters.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Centaur comes into view, usually only takes one Temporal Distortion to get them into face smashing range. Sometimes two or three, but usually one. You can also use it to get monsters adjacent to you away from you so you can use stairs without bringing friends.

[tasonir]

So I've been busy lately and haven't been too active on the forums or playing crawl, but wow, a 2 page thread about chei and I haven't even posted once! Sorry if this is somewhat of an unorganized post!

I (obviously) feel that chei is fairly good so far, so I'd do gradual improvements. I think working on the stat system overall would be the best way. Make str have roughly double the impact on damage it does now, so it's worth having +15 str. Reduce or remove the deminishing returns on dexterity - it halves at 24, and halves again at 34. I don't think anyone who isn't worshipping chei is going to ever hit 34, so that's basically just a pure chei nerf. Over 24 is fairly uncommon for non-chei anyways, although possible.

And then haste needs a slight nerf - my suggestion is fairly simple, it's currently +50% speed; ie action * 2/3. I'd just change it to actions * 3/4, 25% buff to speed. That's fairly minor, instead of .66 speed, you're at .75. It can stay at level 6, with the current glow, and be fairly good. It's a level 6 spell, it should be useful. No need for drastic changes or untested systems, imho. Simple tweaks, should be fine. Of course if you want to make new, interesting content, I'm all for it, but I think the current systems could be balanced.

Of the more out there suggestions, I like the idea of taking damage later in time - taking 80 damage now vs 4 damage for 20 turns. I pretty much always run regeneration on a chei worshipper; there's no ban on necromany, and with +15 int, it's easy to cast even in medium armor. Being able to regen the damage off over a long period of time would make chei very interesting, although perhaps a bit too powerful. You'd have a hard time dying quickly, which is how I usually die

Increasing the radius of bend time to 2 would be nice as most monsters you'll end up killing in 3-4 turns. Having to spend a turn first to apply the slow tends to cancel out the benefit. Assume you just moved into melee range and you're both able to act at the same time:

You and the monster act at time 0: you bend time, they swing. at time 10 aut (aka, 1 turn) the monster swings again, and you do your first hit. You swing again at 17 aut, and 24 aut, the monster gets a third hit at 25 aut, and then you hit the third time at 31, and fourth at 38 (the monster's next attack would be 40).

You could just attack four times, kill the monster at 28 aut, and it would have swung twice, with its third attack being at 30 aut. Now of course it's worth casting when you will have to fight a monster for much longer than 4 turns, but when you're wielding a powerful 2h weapon, or using unarmed with forms, most monsters are going to die pretty fast. I don't really use bend time very much, with 3 chei wins. Being able to apply it before you are in trouble would give you a nice lead on combat, as they'd take a step at the already slowed rate, and you could start attacking immediately.

[Galefury]

Time armor would work much better as an invocation than a passive IMO. Delay duration (damage over 10 turns, damage over 20 turns) and percentage of damage delayed (no need to fix this at 100%) could depend on invocations or piety.

[Kate]

I don't know about time armour necessarily but I'm all in favour of trying to come up with interesting new abilities and/or passives along those lines - there ought to be a lot of room for cool stuff with the theme (ToME's Paradox Mages have some really fun ideas, for example, even if not all of it works out in practice). And they would also give room to reduce or remove the boring and completely flavourless stat boosts (similar to the addition of Temporal Distortion alongside the removal of free resistances).

[pratamawirya]

I really really really dislike any of the ideas that allow for faster movement with chei. I realize what a challenge it is to handle this game without some form of speed, but I think that's what makes chei's design so interesting, and moving away from that just feels sad.

Yeah, I feel this too. Chei shouldn't allow for faster movement. AND I also dislike any idea about slowing down enemies. It's Chei followers who should be slow, not their opponents. (Okay we already have Bend Time, but let's not add any similar invocations.)

[dpeg]

You'd have a hard time dying quickly, which is how I usually die.

If you're dying quickly, you haven't understood Cheibriados at all.

On topic: I like the idea of delayed damage income a lot. Not sure about active/passive. It could work like Yredelemnul's Injury Mirror, i.e. you turn it on at a nominal piety fee and it gets costly when actual damage is delayed.

MarvinPA: My main point with the stat boost was to tell players that slow=good. I guess everybody got that, so replacements are welcome. I am not so sure about "completely flavourless", it does show that going slow makes your stronger and smarter Also, Cheibriados was supposed to an all-around god, and the stat boosts enable some of that. Mechanically, as far as god benefits go, they're generic though, no questions about that.

[Galefury]

I like the stat boosts quite a bit actually. It just sucks that strength is not very useful. It's nice that the stat boost just scales up with the slowness, and that it is passive. I would rather see bend time replaced. Time armor or galehar's idea of literally slowing time for everyone but the player until you end up at normal speed compared to them both would make fine time-themed replacements for it.

[danr]

I just want to add that in all my games I have only ever gotten Haste castable at reasonable cost once or maybe twice. And if I have a wand of hasting, I tend not to use it that much.

Maybe that's part of the reason I don't win that much.

But that does point to a problem - if a single buff is essentially integral to good / safe play, that pushes a large proportion of games in one particular direction.

If haste has become so integral to game balance, as someone pointed out above, then that means there's an overall game balance issue that can't be solved by nerfing haste, but instead by providing other tactics that are also viable but not stackable with haste.

That analysis holds unless the opinion of the devs is that the appropriate level of challenge for the game is one in which Haste is always a scarce resource. In that case, nerfing Haste is the answer.

But, and I know I'm in the minority on this, I really don't feel this game needs to be any tougher. I'm going to try to start using Haste more, and so I hope it's not nerfed.

[Bloax]

On a related topic of nasties, here's something I didn't enjoy:

I don't know about wielding/unwielding, but I'll just say he spent an entire turn in total on that.
He drops something, that's another turn.
Then he picks something up, that's another turn.

So in total, he does something that would've taken three turns for you, in a single one. I don't think that's exactly fair.

[nago]

The post is totally offtopic, but: if I remember correctly It's a precise design choice, to let monster pick better gear (because orc knights and warlords aren't strong enough ) while don't let players abuse this behavior - it would be too easy to throw plate armor around and killing total defendless enemies.

[tasonir]

back on the issue of bend time - I think an interesting way to buff it would be to make the casting of it instant, like temporal distortion is. Would make it worth using for shorter fights.

[nago]

This would make it surely useful even against a enemy right next you - but it would also made totally spammable and abusable (if we don't consider the relative low piety cost): a hydra right next to me? Better to spam aa until it get slowed! And so on...
Anyway, a cooldown between successive invocation should resolve quickly this issue, if a instant-ability is liked by devs: "you hear Chei snorting heavily, and nothing happens!"

[Bloax]

It shouldn't be instant, but it could be faster. That'd make it less risky to use.

And to top it all off, yeah - it could use a range buff. Personally, I'd like if it had a range of 5 tiles, but the effect got weaker as it goes further.
Perhaps starting to fade after the second tile, by 25% per tile. (Thus something three tiles away would be slowed by 37.5%, four tiles - 28.125%, five 20.09%)

Oh, and "Offtopic" is my second name.

[tasonir]

You'd have a hard time dying quickly, which is how I usually die.

If you're dying quickly, you haven't understood Cheibrados at all.

What I meant was that I die mostly from taking huge single hits...chei doesn't gaurd from max rolls so iam not. Sure what you meant by that... I think I understand chei very well, she is my favorite god

Also instant bend time might make it too easy tospam until it succeeds, true. Maybe just higher range then.

[Deimos]

PS: You're getting teased.

[The Mantis]

I coded a patch some time ago that tweaked the piety costs of various skills, before Temporal Distortion was added, and moved them around. Bend Time cost 0 Piety and exhausted you, Step From Time cost less MP and Piety, and Slouch was a bit weaker and cheaper.