Make scrolls of random uselessness to scrolls of randomness

[ibanix]

Scrolls of random uselessness: After identifying them, they are essentially irrelevant to the game. They have no offensive or defensive use, add little flavor to the game, and will be ignored by players. The only use, which is very outside, is to hope for a Summon Butterflies effect when all else has failed - which I do not find a compelling reason to keep them.

I propose that these scrolls should instead be changed to 'scrolls of randomness'. The new scrolls would when read, duplicate any of the existing scroll effects, with equal frequency to how often the other scrolls appear.

This would add some use and flavor to these scrolls - hoping you get a teleport or blink effect when surrounded by monsters, but maybe you get immolation instead! and the monsters get fried, but you lose a bunch of your other scrolls. Or cast fog and manage to avoid that centaur's arrows long enough to slip away.

On the other hand, maybe you get Torment and the next hit from the Ogre ends your game. Or noise, and then four hydras descend upon you and tear you to pieces.

In any case, it seems far more fun and interesting to me than scrolls that I use once, then ignore the rest of the game.

Reading one of these scrolls would not ID the other scrolls, so getting a Noise effect would not ID other Noise scrolls. I would suggest that getting an item-target effect from a scroll (recharge, ID, enchant armour) would allow the player to know what the effect was so that it is not wasted; but if more randomness is desired, it could act as an unknown scroll and the player would have to guess.

Comments?

[ibanix]

That's a good point which I had not considered. Agreed.

[dpeg]

minmay: sounds good.

There's the not-so-new idea of a scroll of random usefulness. What about scrolls of random uselessness turning into random usefulness once you have Spellcasting 1?

Note that the existence of semi-pointless scrolls (random uselessness, noise, paper etc.) is not accidental. It affects the identification strategy.

[ibanix]

What would random usefulness be? Like minmay said, it would have to avoid the current useful scroll effects or people will do the same stash/inventory micromanagement to get the maximum use out of them.

I guess this would limit 'random useful' to: teleport, blink, fog, fear, holy word, and magic mapping. Anything else would be strategic or would have undesirable effects on the player. Even teleport could be considered not-useful if it drops you into a pile of monsters.

It's not a bad idea, but given that potions give all sorts of good & temporary effects, wouldn't a "potion of random help" be more appropriate?

[ibanix]

Note that the existence of semi-pointless scrolls (random uselessness, noise, paper etc.) is not accidental. It affects the identification strategy.

Didn't paper get removed?

Noise has both positive and negative uses; when you don't know it, monsters will be more likely to descend on you. When you *do* know it, you can fire one off, wait for them to approach, and then teleport away (to a now less monster-free area) or blink away and then use an area-of-effect spell on the group, etc.

Regarding the identification strategy, moving random uselessness => randomness, keeps the identification strategy the same, as far as I can tell: With either type, it is identified after you use it. There would be slightly more risk in blindly reading scrolls of randomness and getting, say, immolation. But savvy players are already dropping their scrolls before reading new ones.

[MrMisterMonkey]

Magic mapping is not a tactical effect.

[Grimm]

Immolation does not burn your other scrolls.

Also, random uselessness scrolls train Spellcasting to 1, for those characters that start without it. That they sometimes reassemble increases their value as Spellcasting trainers.

[ibanix]

Immolation does not burn your other scrolls.

Really? I could have sworn that happened. Seems logical.

Also, random uselessness scrolls train Spellcasting to 1, for those characters that start without it. That they sometimes reassemble increases their value as Spellcasting trainers.

This behavior could be kept for scrolls of randomness. If random uselessness trains spellcasting, randomness in general should!

[Grimm]

Immolation used to burn scrolls in older versions. Doesn't anymore.

[ibanix]

This is going off topic, but what was the rationale behind changing the immolation behavior? I think it makes sense - giant ball of fire on you should be able to burn some scrolls - and makes you more cautious about using it as a fireball-on-self replacement. Like if you have rF++, for example.

[dpeg]

ibanix: Because scroll-id used to look like this: drop all scrolls bar one, move a few steps, read scroll. Proceed. This is pretty cumbersome, so we opted to drop the thematic scroll burning. Gameplay beats flavour, after all.
One could say that the first (then unknown) scroll of immolation is read very carefully, so it doesn't burn scrolls, but subsequent readings will. Not sure it's worth the bother, though.

[Stormfox]

Noise has both positive and negative uses; when you don't know it, monsters will be more likely to descend on you. When you *do* know it, you can fire one off, wait for them to approach, and then teleport away (to a now less monster-free area) or blink away and then use an area-of-effect spell on the group, etc.

Don't forget the breaking of mesmeri{s|z}ation from mermaids or sirens. Bring on da noize, bring on da Shoalz!