Word of Destruction ideas

[Derakon]

Just brainstorming some ideas for how we could make Word of Destruction less abusable and/or more flavorful.

1) Have it take you down to 1HP when used. Don't use it when you're bleeding or poisoned! Otherwise, this does mean that if you're using it to e.g. burn off Morgoth's summons after teleporting him, you'll have to use up some healing items to recover before Morgy gets back.

2) Make it collapse the dungeon if used twice on the same dungeon level (i.e. without using stairs/WoR/Alter Reality). This would deal damage (assuming we don't already knock you down to 1HP per the first suggestion), toss you down a dungeon level, stun you, etc. You could make also let this happen randomly every time Destruction is used, but I'm not such a big fan of unpredictable results. Alternately, an X% chance of Destruction rendering the dungeon "unstable", which has a special message and informs you that the next use will collapse it. Unstable dungeons could also be subject to earthquakes or other environmental effects.

3) Of course, make vaults immune to it. The only problem with this is that some of the lesser vaults have fairly open floor plans, are made entirely of granite, and don't really look like they should be immune to anything. My suggestion here would be a flag you could specify in the vault definition that indicates if its tiles are icky or not; icky tiles would be immune to destruction and cannot be teleported to. I don't know if that would interfere with anything else though.

Any other ideas?

[Shockbolt]

I guess a certain percentage chance you'd drop down to the level below would also be something to add?

[ghengiz]

I guess a certain percentage chance you'd drop down to the level below would also be something to add?

Realistically, guess so.
Gameplay-like...don't know, it could be (ab)used to skip sauron and go directly to Morgoth.

[buzzkill]

Realistically, guess so.
Gameplay-like...don't know, it could be (ab)used to skip sauron and go directly to Morgoth.

Obviously there would be a safeguard, or just have Sauron drop down as well, maybe give him a 'heal other' spell to keep things interesting .

[nppangband]

Realistically, guess so.
Gameplay-like...don't know, it could be (ab)used to skip sauron and go directly to Morgoth.

The game has safeguards that prevent trap doors and down staircases on level 99 until Sauron is killed, and casting "teleport level" on level 99 will always send you to leve 98 until Sauron is killed. In NPP, O, ans a couple other variants, where there are staircases that take you down two levels ("shafts"), but those are prevented on level 98 and 99 until you kill Sauron and Morgoth, respectively. It is just a line or two of extra code to make sure things like this don't happen.

[ghengiz]

Obviously there would be a safeguard, or just have Sauron drop down as well, maybe give him a 'heal other' spell to keep things interesting .

LOL! yep, very interesting

The game has safeguards that prevent trap doors and down staircases on level 99 until Sauron is killed, and casting "teleport level" on level 99 will always send you to leve 98 until Sauron is killed. In NPP, O, ans a couple other variants, where there are staircases that take you down two levels ("shafts"), but those are prevented on level 98 and 99 until you kill Sauron and Morgoth, respectively. It is just a line or two of extra code to make sure things like this don't happen.

so it's very easy to prevent abuse...good.

[Derakon]

I guess a certain percentage chance you'd drop down to the level below would also be something to add?

That'd be part of the "dungeon collapses" effect, yeah. You've rendered the dungeon so unstable by blasting it with powerful magical energies that the entire place collapses around you.

[fizzix]

A while ago I played with a *Destruction* mod that did not automatically delete monsters but allowed them to make a saving throw. If they successfully saved they were either pushed out to just beyond the destruction zone, or teleported to another region of the level. It made it less abusable as a way to remove tough monsters from the level, but it was still a very powerful escape.

I really don't like the "put at 1 hp" mechanism that always seems to crop up in rpgs. Dropping the player to another level isn't a bad idea though.

[Estie]

Errm, if all those suggestions apply to WoD, who in their right mind would ever use it ?

What is it good for ? Not an escape, since it puts you at 1hp/stuns you etc; not a way to kill monsters because it destroys the items and doesnt give xp; as it was, I used it as last escape if the situation was beyond hope otherwise (prefering all other escapes that dont change layout), or very early in the (extremly rare) case that I had a scroll and a GV with no means to otherwise handle it, or very late when I was about ready to fight M but happened on some vault without anything inside looking promising (like rod of healing), to check for artifacts, or in the last fight to get rid of mass summons after having ported M away. On average, Id guess I might have used it 2 or 3 times per playthrough and dont see any reason for it to change.

[buzzkill]

What about a low % chance that it nearly clears the destructed area (radius-1), leaving only very sparse rubble. That would make it less desirable.

[takkaria]

2) Make it collapse the dungeon if used twice on the same dungeon level (i.e. without using stairs/WoR/Alter Reality). This would deal damage (assuming we don't already knock you down to 1HP per the first suggestion), toss you down a dungeon level, stun you, etc. You could make also let this happen randomly every time Destruction is used, but I'm not such a big fan of unpredictable results. Alternately, an X% chance of Destruction rendering the dungeon "unstable", which has a special message and informs you that the next use will collapse it. Unstable dungeons could also be subject to earthquakes or other environmental effects.

There is something pretty epic about the idea of aftershocks - if you're going to cause a quake, you better be prepared to work with the after-effects.

[Derakon]

Errm, if all those suggestions apply to WoD, who in their right mind would ever use it ?

What is it good for ? Not an escape, since it puts you at 1hp/stuns you etc; not a way to kill monsters because it destroys the items and doesnt give xp; as it was, I used it as last escape if the situation was beyond hope otherwise (prefering all other escapes that dont change layout), or very early in the (extremly rare) case that I had a scroll and a GV with no means to otherwise handle it, or very late when I was about ready to fight M but happened on some vault without anything inside looking promising (like rod of healing), to check for artifacts, or in the last fight to get rid of mass summons after having ported M away. On average, Id guess I might have used it 2 or 3 times per playthrough and dont see any reason for it to change.

I don't want to take away WoD's use as a last-ditch escape. It should definitely work in that respect, which is why I don't generally like the "random chance to be useless" effects. What IMO should change is its utility as a general "I don't feel like dealing with this" ability. Some semi-common uses for it that I think are excessive:

* Teleporting Morgoth away and destructing his summons.
* Getting rid of graveyards.
* Nuking the half of a vault that has the nasty stuff in it (or luring all the nasty stuff out of a vault and then destructing them while leaving the vault intact)

Personally, I generally use Destruction about 10 times per game, I'd guess. Half of those are in the final fight. Being able to destruct away Morgoth's summons is entirely too convenient. But at the same time, I don't so much like monsters being able to resist Destruction, which is the generally-suggested fix for Destruction vs. summons.

Right now I'm definitely liking the unstable-dungeon solution. The first time you use WoD, it works, just like it does now. But it renders the dungeon unstable, so you get periodic earthquakes; if you use WoD again on the same level, then it will collapse. If you're unable to go deeper in the dungeon, this just regenerates the current dungeon level; otherwise it tosses you down one level. Note that that still works as an escape; it's just not an escape that lets you stick around on the same dungeon level.

[buzzkill]

Personally, I generally use Destruction about 10 times per game, I'd guess. Half of those are in the final fight. Being able to destruct away Morgoth's summons is entirely too convenient. But at the same time, I don't so much like monsters being able to resist Destruction, which is the generally-suggested fix for Destruction vs. summons.

Right now I'm definitely liking the unstable-dungeon solution. The first time you use WoD, it works, just like it does now. But it renders the dungeon unstable, so you get periodic earthquakes; if you use WoD again on the same level, then it will collapse. If you're unable to go deeper in the dungeon, this just regenerates the current dungeon level; otherwise it tosses you down one level. Note that that still works as an escape; it's just not an escape that lets you stick around on the same dungeon level.

So destruction should work, it just should be less abused/abusable, right? It seems that we had this discussion a while back, only it centered on banishment/mass banishment. I thought that one of the best solutions for that was to increase the cost for each subsequent use. In the case of banishment, this would result in an ever increasing loss of HP.

You're suggesting something similar here, but confining the accumulated penalty to a single dungeon level. I feel this is where you're dropping the ball. To truly make it less abusable, decrease it's reliability (as a solid escape) with each subsequent use throughout the game. Something like, "It's effect is so devastating that it threatens the stability of the entire dungeon". The exact nature of nerfing is up for debate but I think the most obvious would be to gradually shrink the area of effect, though cave-ins and other random effects could be thrown in too.

[Derakon]

You're suggesting something similar here, but confining the accumulated penalty to a single dungeon level. I feel this is where you're dropping the ball. To truly make it less abusable, decrease it's reliability (as a solid escape) with each subsequent use throughout the game.

I much prefer to keep consequences as local and pertinent as possible. The game forgets almost everything the player has done when they change dungeon levels -- the only things that stick are attributes of the player, and what unique monsters and objects cannot be generated again. Having something that permanently affects the dungeon regardless of where you are in it sticks in my craw a bit.

The main goal is to make players think before using Destruction, without making it be something that your practically never want to use. Under my proposed model, if you use Destruction so you don't have to deal with a graveyard, then you won't be able to use it later on that level to get out of a fight gone bad, at least not without sacrificing the rest of the level (at which point you might as well just use Teleport Level). You've just chopped off one of your safety ropes.

[Estie]

It doesnt matter if WoD is an escape or not; it doesnt matter if it can be "abused" or not; it doesnt even matter if its effect is epic or not, because that gets lost in repetition. What matters is if it leads to good gameplay.

Of all the uses for WoD mentioned in this thread, the one I like best is the case where you lure monsters out of a vault to destruct them and get at the treasures in the vault. That is about the most exciting thing I remember having done with them. It takes planning, many things can go wrong, it is an action that requires many different types of steps. It is good gameplay.

Compare that to the other uses, or to standing at the vault entrance and pressing the tele other macro.

How exactly to change the game to have players do more of this and less of that is a different question, but I stop here because I wonder if theres agreement on the premise.