Changing Leaping

[BlueFish]

Probably the safest way of going about the change is to merge Leaping and Dodging and change nothing else. This will cause nearly everybody to experiment with the ability, and the gameplay effects will become more apparent to the community.

It's a shame edit file changes aren't more common; it would have been nice to see more players change their games s.t. leaping was reasonable to take (removing prereq or whatever). But I know that breaks the ladder, so people are reluctant to do it. But nobody needs to wait for a next minor revision to check out a Leaping without a prereq. Personally I changed mine to be a prereq of sprinting, which is a slightly weaker version of combining it with dodging. I took Leaping every game and was never impressed with it, though clearly that is build dependent.

I'd love for Leaping to be a counter to falling through false floors, but I suppose that would seem overpowered to most others. The effect of Leaping away from the falling floor could be combined with a "more dangerous creatures" effect for the rest of the level, as the level below was alerted by the noise.

[Infinitum]

Using a Horn of Force on an adjacent wall. Newton's third hells yeah.

[Tarrant]

Use Horn of Blasting pointed at your own square (or one behind you, perhaps) to rocket jump?

[Patashu]

The answer is obviously ghost rockets that drain Voice instead of HP.

The rocket is you shouting REALLY LOUDLY

[Narvius]

The answer is obviously ghost rockets that drain Voice instead of HP.

[Scatha]

If you added rocket launchers to sil, you could just remove leaping and let us rocket jump. I think that would solve the problem entirely.

This has certain advantages, but there are balance issues. In particular, it's favourable to characters with high Constitution. Since Con may already be the best stat, I'm reluctant to give it any boosts.

[locus]

My preferred option is #2, merge it with another skill (Dodging seems like the obvious choice). I will never be happy to take an ability that doesn't help me in combat and doesn't do anything at all unless a somewhat rare dungeon feature appears and even then it's a situational effect. Leaping isn't worth the XP on its own.

You could make it a prereq to something worth taking, but Dodging already is that.

[wobbly]

Well I've taken leaping on my current archer. It's not so bad as an archer-smith where I can save pts by putting it on my boots. I suspect it's going to be annoying latter on if I find artifact boots & have to swap-in & out. Already found a minor use for it, I can seperate Uldor from his pack. Not a huge deal, considering I could probably have just belted them anyways.

[Philip]

I like the idea of the leap attack, though I don't think it should necessarily be that much stronger than a normal attack. Instead, it could allow you to avoid using a turn to move next to a monster. It might not be strong enough, but it's still better than standard Leaping, and standard Leaping isn't exactly hopeless. Maybe it could stack with Charge and Knockback or something?

[Isilme]

As implemented currently, I like chasms as they add to the atmosphere aesthetically. Also they add some degree of danger as creatures might spawn from chasms.

Functionally, they add another potential escape route albeit with quite some risk involved, landing in some unknown area while taking fall damage can result in some pretty "fun" situations. Would you escape from the enemies? Or would you be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire? I like the tension generated by such situations when they do occur.

Generally I like the hazardous, annoying aspect of chasms. The dungeons of Morgoth are not meant to be a welcoming place, and chasms should rightfully add to the aspect. I particularly like the maps where chasms separate you from being able to get to the archers easily but they are guarding some nice treasure. Very nice balance of risk and reward.

Chasms also add to the offensive gameplay of characters that utilize ranged combat, as somewhere to fall back to to take potshots at pursuing enemies. Of course this applies to the enemies as well. However they don't really present any offensive opportunities for melee characters other than knocking back enemies into chasms or scaring enemies into chasms. Though it is great fun when it works.


That said, I would greatly prefer leaping to have NO prerequisites, as it is only marginally useful when chasms appear on the map, and doesn't really add to gameplay otherwise outside of those situations. I think that is my main gripe with leaping, as compared to skills like mind over body and curse breaking. They are meant to be useful, life saving even in certain situations, but I need to spare the exp to take dodging as well as level evasion if I had not done so already. Most times I won't have the exp on hand to take leaping when I really want to. That greatly diminishes the utility of the skill when its already only so marginally useful to begin with.

Another way would be to to implement leaping with some synergy to other skills to encourage more folks to take it.

For example, if you took dodging and leaping, it gives additional +1-3 bonus to dodge whilst leaping in midair. Or something like if you had momentum and landed an attack after leaping, it would increase the strength bonus from momentum to something like 1 point per 0.4-0.25 pounds for that attack.

Honestly, I would love for leap to be able to used anytime, or when near an enemy, instead of only being prompted to leap when moving towards a chasm or traps, in some sort of "leap attack" fashion. Though I'm not sure how others will feel about this or how it might be implemented. In general, I think that it would greatly increase the utility of leaping if there is any way you can incorporate leaping as more of an offensive tool, like the way dodging with flanking works currently.

[Raajaton]

If you added rocket launchers to sil, you could just remove leaping and let us rocket jump. I think that would solve the problem entirely.

#1 way to have fun on the Angband forums ... do a search for debo rockets.

[Infinitum]

Not really a fan of the 1-tile chasms in general (albeit the preset room ones are neat), and as such not thrilled by leaping either. If you do keep it I think it would work better as a skill check modified by Dexterity and equipment weight - it'd give archers another reason to pack light armour and would add some tension in leaping chasms as an scape mechanism.

[debo]

If you added rocket launchers to sil, you could just remove leaping and let us rocket jump. I think that would solve the problem entirely.

[Derakon]

Maybe add a "leap attack" ability that goes with Charging for added attack strength?

[half]

Regarding leaping, I've never really bothered. It's a 1500 pt ability to me as I can't justify taking it over sprinting. I might try it out and get back to you. Seems you'd need a bow of radiance or listen on an archer to milk it properly.

Good point about the 1500 experience. I generally think of Sprinting, Loremaster, Whirlwind Attack, and Leaping as abilities that take two ability slots as the pre-req is either not that good in most situations or gets overshadowed. So I thought that characters who were taking Dodging anyway (sprinters or flankers) would be the main target audience for Leaping. However, such characters are typically getting in deep on evasion abilities, so while Leaping is only one extra ability for them, it is a particularly expensive one.

I agree that archers are in the best position to take advantage of Leaping, perhaps followed by stealth characters (for running away). However it would definitely be a problem if only archers wanted Leaping -- I'm aiming for it being more versatile and desirable than that.