Changing Leaping

[Serephina]

1) Make leaping available to all characters contingent on the weight of their carried (or worn) inventory, and have the skill dramatically increase this number. Makes sense intuitively although there might be some fiddly exploits.

I like this idea a lot; it fits in with the Sil design ethos, and has precedent with throwing mastery and stealth and the like.

Incidentally, offtopic: It'd be nice of Throwing Mastery 'lead into' something, as in was a prereq for momentum or something. I love the skill but it's a shocking waste of xp since you still have to go back and buy your way up the Melee Skills tech tree a different way.

[lesslucid]

Two thoughts:

1) Make leaping available to all characters contingent on the weight of their carried (or worn) inventory, and have the skill dramatically increase this number. Makes sense intuitively although there might be some fiddly exploits.

2) Add something else to leaping to make it more attractive. A chance to "leap aside" when triggering traps? A "backward leap" to counter the "opportunist" ability in some enemies? A "leap attack" could work like the rapier attack in Brogue, without the damage bonus. Whatever it is, it probably oughtn't to be big enough to overshadow the main purpose of leaping wrt chasms, but enough to make a difference in some situations.

[half]

More generally on chasm then on leaping I noticed on my last game that at over 20 will + channeling a staff of freedom will close off double thick chasms.

If you are good enough with staffs (or song), it can be quite fun to find a large chasm and watch it slowly close up from the edges.

[wobbly]

More generally on chasm then on leaping I noticed on my last game that at over 20 will + channeling a staff of freedom will close off double thick chasms.

[skadefryd]

Dodge could give you a +X bonus, as could having a running start or being fast (so Sprinting would help, in an indirect way), with some kind of penalty for heavy equipment or a very long chasm.

[TJS]

I'd like every one can leap with an ability check dexterity based (with malus weight-related, like stealth). Dodge give you a +X bonus to this ability check.
About chasms, I like them a lot, but sometime i'd like to have the possibility to "try" an hazardous leap :P

Probably too late for this discussion, but came to basically say this idea (before I saw it was already mentioned) which is the simplest and most elegant solution to me.

Each leap becomes a risk/reward decision rather than a simple binary can/can't ability which if you haven't got pretty much removes chasms from gameplay.

Tacking it onto an unrelated ability seems clunky too.

[wobbly]

We could also have Tevildo leap into your lap and start purring while you're resting.

Sounds purrfect to me. Sorry was trying to resist.

About the chasm treasure rooms. While I don't mind the idea I don't like the look of them. Very inorganic looking. Clearly laid out around the mechanism.

[taptap]

just have them jump into chasms.

they are already doing that - if you help a little.

[absolutego]

well if you want to do something along those lines it would be much simpler (and trigger *much* more often) to just have them jump into chasms.

i think they're fine as is though.

[debo]

I quite like the idea of orc thieves having leaping, though I think some people will hate me for suggesting it.
Perhaps easterling spies also make sense.

Edit: Double hilarity if the thief steals your leaping boots first.

We could also have Tevildo leap into your lap and start purring while you're resting.

[half]

For now, at least, there are no monsters with Leaping as it seems like it would require some serious changes to the pathfinding code.

[wobbly]

I like chasms in general. I love the special rooms that require leap, and would actually like to see more of them. Do any of the mobs have the leaping skill? If so, it would make more thematic sense that they hide their treasure behind chasms. It would be sick if they used chasms against you too to escape or fire arrows from safety.

I quite like the idea of orc thieves having leaping, though I think some people will hate me for suggesting it.
Perhaps easterling spies also make sense.

Edit: Double hilarity if the thief steals your leaping boots first.

[kzer_za]

I like the idea of making it an alternate prereq to Sprint.

[debo]

You can leap over pits. I don't know about the rest.

[phaethon]

I'd love for Leaping to be a counter to falling through false floors, but I suppose that would seem overpowered to most others.

Hmm... I'm pretty sure I've lept over traps before. You just have to be walking toward them before they trigger. Lately I've kept perception high enough (for loremaster too) that I usually just see traps.

I just saw this thread and wanted to add my 2 cents. I think Wobbly mentioned that having a chasm cut you off from the 2nd forge is a game killer for that character, and I agree. I love playing smiths. Smiths have to commit to their build at the first forge. Missing the second forge means you probably die before you can get to the third, and it's such a stretch to get all the skills you need for smithing, buying two skills for leaping also means you don't have enough experience to craft what you need to survive. Removing the prereq would help, or making it so that chasms appear after the 2nd forge (or that they don't cut off the 2nd forge) would help (but also weaken the importance of leap).

I like chasms in general. I love the special rooms that require leap, and would actually like to see more of them. Do any of the mobs have the leaping skill? If so, it would make more thematic sense that they hide their treasure behind chasms. It would be sick if they used chasms against you too to escape or fire arrows from safety.

Making boots of leaping more common and/or making them appear earlier would also be cool. My inventory gets pretty full and/or heavy, so there is some trade-off between keeping a pair of leaping boots just in case and having room for other stuff.

Taking away the prereq for Leaping and making it an alternate prereq for Sprinting would be my vote. That would make it more accessible for Smiths that need it in the early game, and anyone getting sprinting without flanking would probably consider leaping over dodging to try it out. I think it would push the adoption a lot closer to 1 in 3.