Timed ailments

[fizzix]

One of the more noticeable recent gameplay changes has been the complete nerfing of amnesia. Now it is a timed effect, and it wears off (it seems) in about 10 turns, making it a completely pointless attack. Granted, this attack seemed to exist solely to annoy the player, but still I'd like it to be just a little more useful than it currently is. Namely, the length of time it takes for the memories to come back should be longer. Something on the order of 1k turns. Secondly, the player should still lose all knowledge of the level layout, when amnesiaed. Even just this second point would be sufficient to make it at least somewhat pointed.

After mulling this, I got thinking about other ailments that I think could be greatly assisted with making them timed effects. The overall effect of doing these would be to make the game easier, especially for ironman players. I realize this.

Anyway:

1. Stat draining: Recovery should be something on the order of 10k turns per point. (i.e. enough for one town inventory turn-over). If more than one stat is drained, you get one random stat back 10k turns after the first one was drained.

2. Nexus scrambling: Recovery on the order of 50-100k turns.

3. Exp draining: Recovery on the same scale as exp draining equipment.

All these would be very slow recoveries, and won't really affect anyone who's trying to go for turncount.

thoughts?

[Marble Dice]

Stat drain already has a reasonable system of recovery, but I do hate waiting for the town to restock the potion I need, especially if it's a critical stat. Balancing stat recovery just for cost (instead of availability), combining some stat recovery items, or adding a timed recovery component would all help address this issue.

Experience drain also has a reasonable system of recovery, but if you had a timed recovery system similar in power to exp drain equipment, the timed recovery might as well not even exist. Deep enemies give you many thousands of experience per kill, so minor drain disappears almost instantly. Major drain (multiple hits to big drainers and lack of hold life) is so massive it takes forever to get back without restore life levels - even if you're killing high xp reward enemies frequently.

I would prefer is exp drain didn't affect the experience you acquired, but just your level. So once you got drained, if you lost a level, you'd be at less than full power until you got restored, but when you did restore, you'd have the full benefit of all experience gained while drained. Currently it is both a reduction in power (if you lose a level), but also a reduction in growth (since part of all earned exp is diverted to recovering the drain). To compensate, maybe your "current exp" wouldn't increase while drained, only your "max exp." This way you wouldn't gain new levels while drained even if you hadn't lost a level from the drain, but once you did get restored it would be as if you never got drained in the first place. This would probably make exp drain even worse for ironman, so maybe the idea isn't complete.

Amnesia however had a somewhat major and unrecoverable effect, not unlike the nexus scramble. Losing all your strength, dexterity, or spell stat might as well just be an instant kill, at least that way you won't waste time playing a severely crippled character. Some people like that I guess, but if I had any interest in playing gimped characters, I'd pick one of the lower races. A somewhat longer duration timed effect here could work pretty well I think (still a terrible thing to happen but at least it's not game ending).

[Pete Mack]

I disagree completely. Amnesia used to be a silly annoyance that could be worked around by careful-and tedious-bookkeeping. Now it has genuine game-play effects by making spellcasting or scroll-reading impossible for a few turns.

[fizzix]

I disagree completely. Amnesia used to be a silly annoyance that could be worked around by careful-and tedious-bookkeeping. Now it has genuine game-play effects by making spellcasting or scroll-reading impossible for a few turns.

Ah, I guess I never really noticed this since it always seemed to wear off before I even realized what was going on. I think I've been amnesiaed three times since I started 3.1.x and 2 of those 3 were with a warrior. Ok, that makes more sense, and also explains Marble Dice's comment about crippling the character.

I was still under the impression that amnesia had the same effect as before, just for a very short time.

thanks for clearing that up.

[buzzkill]

I disagree completely. Amnesia used to be a silly annoyance that could be worked around by careful-and tedious-bookkeeping. Now it has genuine game-play effects by making spellcasting or scroll-reading impossible for a few turns.

I silly annoyance, maybe, but something I both feared and hated (when it happened)? Making spell-casting impossible for a few turns hardly seems like a punishment at all. Blindness and confusion, available from much lower level enemies, are worse (yeah, I know it's irresistible, but you do get a save, right). I guess the question I want to ask is, which do you fear more, 'old style' or the 'new style' amnesia?

[Marble Dice]

I disagree completely. Amnesia used to be a silly annoyance that could be worked around by careful-and tedious-bookkeeping.

True - I don't mean to say Nexus should be changed for the same reasons as amnesia, since amnesia was essentially just a screw-you to people who didn't have the game memorized. If you tried to complete a monster memory or if you actually used the in-game memory, then amnesia was a *huge* deal because it would completely destroy that and you couldn't get it back without putting in the work all over again. If you cared about the monster memory, then it was in the same class as things like nexus scramble, instant kills, etc, even though it had no real "gameplay" effect.