New variant thoughts

[Zane314]

I was driving home from work yesterday thinking about Teleport Other, and it led to the following train of thought:

The reason Teleport spells are needed is because there are situations that the player can be killed if they take any other action. Teleport Other is specifically the "I want to stay where I am because I'm not sure anywhere else is safe, but I want to keep this level layout" spell. But this allows for abuse for "Well, I want to stay where I am because the vault's here.", which is slightly poor.

There are two scenarios that Teleport Other gets used in:
1) There's a monster that could kill the hero, and the hero doesn't think elsewhere on the level is safe.
2) There's a monster that the hero could kill, if it wasn't also with other monsters.

I was brainstorming ways to solve both these problems without allowing vault depopulation, and I started tossing around the idea of a Stasis spell. It would put a unresistable timer on a creature that makes it so their turns enable no actions, but they are also immune to all damage or status changes for the duration. This would let you reposition, heal up, take out escorts, or whatnot, but would not let you walk through them (if they're blocking a door), and you can't quite ignore them because they could wake up any time.

Which made me start thinking that it'd technically be an interesting low-level spell to self-stasis, as well, for things like waiting out hallucinations or poison counters without having them apply... but at the downside of letting monsters close gaps around you or breed/summon/heal.

And then it occurred to me that you could implement the Weeping Angels with this - make them invincible and immobile if you can see them, and "moves incredibly quickly, casts spells which cause darkness and blindness, touch to lower experience" when you can't. Which of course made me start thinking about what other space creatures and stats could apply, like having a Jedi with a Force Push power that pushes monsters back a few spaces if the tile is open, etc.

So... I probably don't actually have the time to make a full scale variant. But I might fiddle around a bit and see what I can come up with, and I figured I'd post here to say hi.

[MattB]

Anything that introduces Weeping Angels is fine by me!

[debo]

Clearly you two need to play sil

[Nick]

Having a space-themed variant would be fun. As far as the specifics go, O/FA have a stasis spell, and also force pushes things around. This latter one is certainly in my list of things I might bring into V.

[Estie]

I dont know when it became fashionable to call getting at the treasure without killing the guardian abusive. I resent that attitude very much. Given that the game stems from Rogue and has the class of same name available for play, one should think that using tricks was to be at least expected if not prefered.

The issue with Vanilla isnt teleport other´s ability to cheat the guardian, its the lack of more ways to do so. I dont know what pushing things around is about as I havent played those variants, but it sounds interesting.

[half]

Clearly you two need to play sil

Specifically there is a type of weeping angel in it called a Grotesque. They only move when you can't see them, so they can only attack if you are blind or don't have enough light (something that is more common in Sil). They are well worth playing around with to see if you like the feel. The main problems with them in Sil are that they are a bit too likely to trap you in a room and make you slowly starve to death (which is very frustrating for the player if it happens) and the conditions for them to actually be able to attack you are a bit too rare. They are still incredibly creepy though, which was the main point.

For what its worth I took the inspiration from Dr Who and from a monster with similar rules in Crawl.

[Zane314]

Specifically there is a type of weeping angel in it called a Grotesque. They only move when you can't see them, so they can only attack if you are blind or don't have enough light (something that is more common in Sil). They are well worth playing around with to see if you like the feel. The main problems with them in Sil are that they are a bit too likely to trap you in a room and make you slowly starve to death (which is very frustrating for the player if it happens) and the conditions for them to actually be able to attack you are a bit too rare. They are still incredibly creepy though, which was the main point.

For what its worth I took the inspiration from Dr Who and from a monster with similar rules in Crawl.

Well, that got me to go download Sil where other comments haven't, so well done there.

Will start it up after my current Vanilla run is finished.

[Zane314]

I dont know when it became fashionable to call getting at the treasure without killing the guardian abusive. I resent that attitude very much. Given that the game stems from Rogue and has the class of same name available for play, one should think that using tricks was to be at least expected if not prefered.

The issue with Vanilla isnt teleport other´s ability to cheat the guardian, its the lack of more ways to do so. I dont know what pushing things around is about as I havent played those variants, but it sounds interesting.

I dislike teleport other because in many cases it's riskless (once it's 0% fail). I want ways to sneak past monsters that are interesting and require tactical decisions and intelligence - rearranging terrain, stunning, delaying, burying in weak summons... things that buy time instead of one shot "Well that's gone, no need to worry about it again". I would adore if there were many of these options available so people could pick the best ones, I just want there to not always be exactly one best option.

[MattB]

Specifically there is a type of weeping angel in it called a Grotesque. They only move when you can't see them, so they can only attack if you are blind or don't have enough light (something that is more common in Sil). They are well worth playing around with to see if you like the feel. The main problems with them in Sil are that they are a bit too likely to trap you in a room and make you slowly starve to death (which is very frustrating for the player if it happens) and the conditions for them to actually be able to attack you are a bit too rare. They are still incredibly creepy though, which was the main point.

For what its worth I took the inspiration from Dr Who and from a monster with similar rules in Crawl.

They sound cool. Yes please for V, Mr McC!