Ego Dragon Scale Mails

[Magnate]

Thank you - that's a hugely helpful compilation. I think of Ferocity shouldn't have -CON for the same reason Derakon gave for Knowledge: -CON makes people not use things. I could see it having -WIS (i.e. -save), and -INT even, so that it treats all casters equally.

I think I agree with Eddie that immunity is too much on an ego - though if it were very rare and only ever appeared on the higher DSMs (law/chaos/balance/power), it might be tolerable. Now I've got my head around fizzix's excellent stats code I can run stats to check for balance issues before putting any of this into the nightlies.

[Djabanete]

I've collected all of the egos hypothesized so far into this post, and also a couple of the parallel ideas that have come up. Hopefully this will help people assemble a set of the most balanced egos.

of Resistance
of Permanence
(Dwarven)
of Stealth
of Speed
of Defense (extra AC, one sustain)
of Farsight (infravision, see invis, resist blind)
of Immunity (base 4 DSMs: elemental immunity)
of Soulkeeping
of Bodykeeping
of Infravision/Darkvision (small or large +infra)
of Razors (-CON, combat bonuses)
of Sustenance (in between Permanance and Soulkeeping/Bodykeeping)
of Ferocity (combat bonuses)
of Regeneration
of Elvenkind
of Elemental Warding (on a basic-4 DSM, fully protects your gear from that element while not providing immunity. Toned down version of Immunity. PD's idea but he didn't give it a name.)
(Blessed) (powers?)
of the Magi (powers?)
of Slow Descent
of Beauty
of Aman
of Strength (+STR -DEX)
of Knowledge (+INT/WIS -STR)
of Hardiness (+CON -INT/WIS)
of Protection (one or two protections, activation gives temp resist)
of Feathers (weightless, feather falling, +stealth)


Timo's alternate idea:
Instead of egos, have each DSM have a power level Baby/Young/Mature/Ancient/Wyrm, with "increasing powers" (AC? breath weapon?) and immunities at the Wyrm level.

Base 5 idea:
Make base 5 DSMs' activation give temp resist as well as breath weapon.

EDIT: My personal take on all this. To me the "base 5" idea is a no-brainer because those DSMs need all the help they can get relative to the more powerful ones. To me the most appealing ego types, using the aesthetic guideline that egos shouldn't add resistances, are:
(Dwarven)
of Sustenance
of Immunity
of Ferocity/Razors (combat, -Con if needed)
of Knowledge (+INT, WIS; -STR)
of Feathers (weightless, feather falling, +stealth)
(Blessed)
of the Magi

[Magnate]

Even permanent double-resist would be excellent protection. Both elemental rings and elemental dragon armors could offer that.

That's more complex than a new flag. The game explicitly defines "double resistance" as RES_FOO + TMD_OPP_FOO. There is currently no mechanic to make the latter permanent (and I think things would get ugly if there were).

But you have given me another idea (which could be implemented independently of any ego): why not just make the activations of the base four (or five) DSMs give TMD_OPP_FOO as well as the breath? After all, this is what the ring activations do (with a ball rather than a breath, but it's essentially the same thing).

[Timo Pietilä]

I like this one. Needs a new object flag (PROT_FIRE or something), but easy to do with the new spell tables.

Even permanent double-resist would be excellent protection. Both elemental rings and elemental dragon armors could offer that.

[Derakon]

I dig the concept of protecting your gear. I don't know if it's enough to make DSM worth using when you'd normally find it, but it's good extra flavor.

Some more thoughts on possible egos:

of Strength (+STR, -DEX)
of Knowledge (+INT/WIS, -STR)
of Hardiness (+CON, -INT/WIS)

of Protection (one or two random protections, activation grants appropriate temporary resist)
of Feathers (weightless, featherfall, minor +stealth)

The "of Knowledge" one reduces STR instead of CON because the ego should be good, just with a cost. If it reduced CON then I don't think anyone would want to use it.

[Magnate]

Magnate asked for more input on DSMs in another thread, so here are some half-baked ideas.

I think immunity is too much for an ego, but what about granting the full protection from elemental destruction of an immunity? For example, a global IGNORE_FIRE for red DSM. Your books would be 100% safe wearing red DSM. Perhaps this should be intrinsic to the base item rather than an ego. Then ordinary red DSM is interesting irrespective of the activation.

I like this one. Needs a new object flag (PROT_FIRE or something), but easy to do with the new spell tables.

I'd prefer that none of the DSM egos grant resists. The resists should be the distinctions between DSMs. Protections are another matter. The good egos could be dwarven, blessed, and magi.

As mentioned upthread, it seems as if most DSMs are egos, so IMO we need some filler egos. Perhaps slow descent, beauty, infravision and/or stealth to dilute the likelihood of the better egos.

Yep, that's possible. I was thinking of changing ego generation so that not all tvals have the same chance of becoming egos. Then we could tone down DSM egos a lot without changing other items. But I could see DSM of Infravision being quite useful - especially if it had PROT_ something.

I'm fine with ego DSMs not granting resists - that means no Elvenkind, Resistance, basic four or Aman IIRC. [Fails to contain OCD and goes to ego_item.txt ...]And no Permanence, of course.

I also think there should be a couple of DSM-only egos. Some of the ideas earlier in this thread are very good.

Having (re)discovered this thread, I've added it to ticket #1369.

[PowerDiver]

Magnate asked for more input on DSMs in another thread, so here are some half-baked ideas.

I think immunity is too much for an ego, but what about granting the full protection from elemental destruction of an immunity? For example, a global IGNORE_FIRE for red DSM. Your books would be 100% safe wearing red DSM. Perhaps this should be intrinsic to the base item rather than an ego. Then ordinary red DSM is interesting irrespective of the activation.

I'd prefer that none of the DSM egos grant resists. The resists should be the distinctions between DSMs. Protections are another matter. The good egos could be dwarven, blessed, and magi.

As mentioned upthread, it seems as if most DSMs are egos, so IMO we need some filler egos. Perhaps slow descent, beauty, infravision and/or stealth to dilute the likelihood of the better egos.

[Tregonsee]

When you kill a dragon, there is a chance that there is usable hide, which is an item. You then have to take the hide back to town (black market?) and they will turn it into DSM for a fee. The fee could be in gold or in items.

The bigger the dragon is, the greater chance there is of a usable hide and/or greater powers (as above)

[Timo Pietilä]

My recommendation:
* of speed, m_bonus(5)
* of immunity -- to dilute the excess of good the other 3 DSMs
* Dwarven
* Elvenkind -- this is very rare, so it's not unbalancing despite being so powerful.

One thing to add DSM desirability is up the activation. Make it really powerful and recharge rate useful.

Maybe DSM:s could have baby, young, mature, ancient and great wyrm variants with increasing powers each. GW being only one with possibility to immunity.

Don't make them egos at all. Just basic items with increasing powers.

[Pete Mack]

Immunity (immune to a base element instead of resistance)
Farsight (SI, unlimited infravision)
Ferocity (combat bonuses)
Speed (in the 2-5 range)
Regeneration

These seem like a reasonably balanced collection of ego types.

* Farsight and Regeneration are almost useless when compared to any other decent object in the armor slot.
* Ferocity is unbalancing in a well-established way. (Already too many slots give combat bonuses.)
* Immunity on elemental dragon armor is a swap item comparable to Whip of Gothmog.

THat leaves speed, which already exists, although overpowered. (If there is going to be dragon armor of speed, I agree that m_bonus(5) is the right range.)


My preference is to stick with Elvenkind and Dwarven ego DSM. These are both competitive with existing artifacts, but are not inherently unbalancing.
(Sure, BaDSM Elvenkind +rPois is fantastic armor, but it's not significantly more common than the extremely rare PDSM.) Dwarven DSM is directly comparable to many common artifacts.

(Whether to keep any particular ego DSMs is not such an important matter; the problem is that there are already too many good ones available.)


My recommendation:
* of speed, m_bonus(5)
* of immunity -- to dilute the excess of good the other 3 DSMs
* Dwarven
* Elvenkind -- this is very rare, so it's not unbalancing despite being so powerful.

[Mondkalb]

1 or 2 points of speed usually are not that important considering end game gear.

I have found a DSM with +1 speed the other day but didn't use it.

I like the new ego DSMs in general but still they come too late. I have usually better artifact armor when they show up.
Maybe they would be more interesting if artifact armors were slightly rarer.

[Derakon]

Would a DSM of Speed +2 be competitive? +5 I could see being too much, but 1-3?

[Timo Pietilä]

Immunity (immune to a base element instead of resistance)
Farsight (SI, unlimited infravision)
Ferocity (combat bonuses)
Speed (in the 2-5 range)
Regeneration

These seem like a reasonably balanced collection of ego types.

Remove speed. Speed is already too easy to find, is really powerful and speed in bodyarmor is rarity (Thalkettoth only?), which means no competition.

[Djabanete]

Immunity (immune to a base element instead of resistance)
Farsight (SI, unlimited infravision)
Ferocity (combat bonuses)
Speed (in the 2-5 range)
Regeneration

These seem like a reasonably balanced collection of ego types.

[buzzkill]

I feel they are now either overpowered (with the right ego), or still junk (if not), just as they were before (if found early/if found too late). But now you get yet another late game boost instead of a rare early mid game boost. I almost always switch from good artifact armor to better ego-DSM armor at some point.

If the problem was that they were useless when found, why not just allow them to be found earlier while *greatly* increasing the rarity. You might not find one every game, or maybe even every 10th game. Since they were pretty much useless no one will miss them, and if found *rarely* and also early, they might just be cool again.

It's not like we had a shortage of great armors before. Ego-DSM's are over saturating the already crowded end-game/artifact armor pool. So what's next, boost artifacts so that they are no longer inferior to ego-DSM's. Maybe ego-artifacts.

Too often things are made more useful by making them more powerful, in the process making more things less powerful by comparison. I'd say more often than not this happens because it's the easy fix, not necessarily the proper fix. I'm not trying to dog-pile on the maintainers, these are just my observations. I know they have a lot on their plate, and with everything happening at once it's not all going to be perfect.