Chaos -> Confusion effect preventer?

[Timo Pietilä]

...
Of note, the only critters with confusion breath are the bronze dragons/dragonfly (up through the GW), Ethereal Dragon, and the aether critters...which have everything. But the big point is, they don't breathe every round, except for an aether hound pack where, given that there's multiple hounds, it's relatively likely that at least 1 of them will use a confusion attack. The melee confusions are threatened every round.

There are also spells that confuse. Like water bolt and mind blast. Maybe others too.

I don't see why chaos _shouldn't_ give immunity to confusion effect. Confusion is one of the side-effects of chaos, so obviously it gives immunity to confusion from it. Chaos itself OTOH is very rare attack form. There just is not anything that "touch to chaos". Probably because that just doesn't make sense as a sentence.

IMO if element has some side-effect gaining resistance to that element gives you immunity against *all* sources of that side-effect including other sources than that particular element. (with possible exception of light and dark. Or not).

Otherwise confusion should not protect against water bolt or mind blast or chaos confusion, or Sound against impact or plasma stunning.

It just isn't logical this way. Confusion gives resistance to confusion effect against all sources but chaos does not give any protection against it at all except from chaos itself. And chaos is supposed to be major element. Currently it is hardly even luxury. Almost as useless as Nether.

As people has been telling here confusion is quite common and dangerous, so having two logical sources against that effect should speed up the game somewhat.

It would also make me think twice should I use this elvenkind with confusion resistance or this with chaos. Currently it is no contest. Confusion wins every time (unless I already have confusion resist, then luxury resist have some tiny value).

[miyazaki]

There are also spells that confuse. Like water bolt and mind blast. Maybe others too.

I don't see why chaos _shouldn't_ give immunity to confusion effect. Confusion is one of the side-effects of chaos, so obviously it gives immunity to confusion from it. Chaos itself OTOH is very rare attack form. There just is not anything that "touch to chaos". Probably because that just doesn't make sense as a sentence.

IMO if element has some side-effect gaining resistance to that element gives you immunity against *all* sources of that side-effect including other sources than that particular element. (with possible exception of light and dark. Or not).

Otherwise confusion should not protect against water bolt or mind blast or chaos confusion, or Sound against impact or plasma stunning.

It just isn't logical this way. Confusion gives resistance to confusion effect against all sources but chaos does not give any protection against it at all except from chaos itself. And chaos is supposed to be major element. Currently it is hardly even luxury. Almost as useless as Nether.

It doesn't make sense. You would be cutting down the resists by a lot. rDark would provide rBlind and rBlind provides rDark and rLight? So rDark would provide rLight. rNether would become indistinguishable from Hold Life.

Is this really broken? I feel like it works fine right now.

As people has been telling here confusion is quite common and dangerous, so having two logical sources against that effect should speed up the game somewhat.

What speed the game up? So you can dive to dlvl95 faster and scum for consumables? My current game, I dove to dlvl80 without SI, rConf and any speed. The game needs to be made harder in the middle, not easier.

[Timo Pietilä]

As people has been telling here confusion is quite common and dangerous, so having two logical sources against that effect should speed up the game somewhat.

Quoting myself.

I have a more radical suggestion: As confusion breath is the only damaging confusion attack that confusion resistance actually gives damage reduction, how about we remove that source of damage entirely, and move confusion resistance from resistances to abilities. Same with blindness, which IMO also isn't "resistance" but ability. There are no blindness damage sources where blindness protects against that damage. Move those from damage reduction resistances to side-effect immunity.

Change those few monsters that use confusion breath to have chaos breaths instead. Chaos resistance should still give immunity to confusion effect since it is one of the side-effects it has, just like Sound resistance gives immunity to stunning from all distance-attacks.

For items this is easy: just change RES_CONF to mean that ability.

This also means that blessed, *slay evil*, Magi helmets etc. weapons and armors with random ability have more interesting choices: do I use this that gives me ESP or this with confusion or perhaps this with blindness. Call that confusion immunity "clear mind" like the mushroom.

[PowerDiver]

Change those few monsters that use confusion breath to have chaos breaths instead. Chaos resistance should still give immunity to confusion effect since it is one of the side-effects it has, just like Sound resistance gives immunity to stunning from all distance-attacks.

You aren't suggesting that rDark should give immunity to blindness spell attacks, are you?


blindness is to light & dark

as

confusion is to water & chaos

as

stunning is to sound & plasma

as

hold life is to nether & [melee] exp drain

Take the stunning resist out of rSound and make it an ability in its own right, and everything can be made consistent. I guess you might want some other name to keep mystic stunning attacks not resisted by whatever you call the ability.

[Timo Pietilä]

It doesn't make sense. You would be cutting down the resists by a lot. rDark would provide rBlind and rBlind provides rDark and rLight? So rDark would provide rLight. rNether would become indistinguishable from Hold Life.

rBlind should be ability, not resistance. In fact it _is_ ability, but it just is counted as resistance. Dark and Light are damage sources that blind. Resistance to blindness does not protect from damage, and there are no blindness damage sources (just like rConfusion does not protect against confusion melee damage).

Hold Life does not protect you against nether damage, only XP drain. rNether giving Hold Life makes perfect sense to me, because it prevents XP drain from nether completely. IMO Hold Life as ability could be completely removed, and rNether and rChaos should be only sources for that. Then rNether and rChaos would actually have some value. Maybe also blindness should be removed too, and give that to light/dark resistances.

Is this really broken? I feel like it works fine right now.

I think it is broken. In several ways, but mostly because chaos is now luxury resist without any real importance. That's like Too Much Junk -problem, but for resistances and/or abilities.

What speed the game up? So you can dive to dlvl95 faster and scum for consumables? My current game, I dove to dlvl80 without SI, rConf and any speed.

How many of those dives you win? Consumables are a problem. There are now too little consumable drops and floor generation is too small. I think item floor generation should be increased, and dev-people seem to agree with that.

The game needs to be made harder in the middle, not easier.

Getting one side-effect immunity from source that is pretty rare hardly makes game much easier. It could speed up the boring part of the game which is between endgame and stat-gain.

Making game harder is a bit difficult once your char has fully developed detection and avoiding abilities, which is the case of "mid-game" chars. You can't do it by introducing more monsters or more dangerous monsters because you can always avoid that dangerous monster until you are ready to fight it, and item feature rarity increase just encourages scumming if you make it necessity at some point. Most "make game harder" suggestions just add frustration and boredom. Only real way to prevent that in vanilla is to make game faster at that point, so that you are playing deeper with less resources than you would othewise play.

[Timo Pietilä]

You aren't suggesting that rDark should give immunity to blindness spell attacks, are you?


blindness is to light & dark

as

confusion is to water & chaos

as

stunning is to sound & plasma

as

hold life is to nether & [melee] exp drain

Take the stunning resist out of rSound and make it an ability in its own right, and everything can be made consistent. I guess you might want some other name to keep mystic stunning attacks not resisted by whatever you call the ability.

I could live with that. In fact that is way more "consistent" than what I proposed.

Remove rConfusion and replace it with "clear mind" ability. Resistances protect against side-effects _only_ for their own type of attack. Make stunning separate from Sound (which makes sense, because impact, plasma, gravity and sound are all quite different damage sources). Blindness is separate to rDark/Light. All of those should be abilities.

How does that work without artifacts? Lets look:

FA and SI are very common, so you need blindness, confusion and ESP:

Blindness: Helmet of seeing, Night and Day, Serenity, Random sources.
ESP: Telepathy helmet, ESP amulet, Random sources.
Confusion: Serenity, Amulet of Magi, Random sources.

It could work. BronzeDSM removed and rConfusion removed from PDSM.

[miyazaki]

I think it is broken. In several ways, but mostly because chaos is now luxury resist without any real importance. That's like Too Much Junk -problem, but for resistances and/or abilities.

I think it would be great to see chaos play a bigger role in the game by making it a bigger threat. It has those weird, seldom-seen effects of hallucination and amnesia.

How many of those dives you win? Consumables are a problem. There are now too little consumable drops and floor generation is too small. I think item floor generation should be increased, and dev-people seem to agree with that.

100% agree.

Getting one side-effect immunity from source that is pretty rare hardly makes game much easier. It could speed up the boring part of the game which is between endgame and stat-gain

Making game harder is a bit difficult once your char has fully developed detection and avoiding abilities, which is the case of "mid-game" chars. You can't do it by introducing more monsters or more dangerous monsters because you can always avoid that dangerous monster until you are ready to fight it, and item feature rarity increase just encourages scumming if you make it necessity at some point. Most "make game harder" suggestions just add frustration and boredom. Only real way to prevent that in vanilla is to make game faster at that point, so that you are playing deeper with less resources than you would otherwise play.

I agree with most of this, but I see your original suggestion as a way to make it easier to play deeper with more resources. I like that rconf is rare and you need it sooner than you can find it (generally). I know the devs want to nerf the detection abilities, and once that is done, maybe it will become necessary to decrease the rarity of rconf.

Basically, I feel that if you speed up the mid-game by making it easier, you will make the end-game more boring and tedious. It's stealing from Peter to pay Paul. Consumable issue aside, I believe the game should be getting harder, not easier.

[PowerDiver]

as

hold life is to nether & [melee] exp drain

I just realized this isn't fully consistent. Everything else sets a status timer that counts down. EXP drain is something else entirely. I'm not sure that it matters, but it screws up my idea that there should simply be a table listing side effects per high attack and table-driven code changing the appropriate counter.

[Derakon]

We could replace the existing experience drain mechanic with a temporary level drain one -- getting hit drops you down X levels (probably a percentage of your total levels) for Y turns, and Restore Life Levels restores you to the level you're supposed to have. Basically this would work to make your level and your amount of experience not have anything to do with each other for awhile.

I actually like this idea, since experience drain is currently largely an annoyance at worst, which in turn means that hold life is largely a pleasant bonus at best. I'm going to post it as its own thread.

[Nick]

I just realized this isn't fully consistent. Everything else sets a status timer that counts down.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - maybe hobgoblins should get a status effect?