Ego Dragon Scale Mails

[PowerWyrm]

While looking at the new 3.2 features from the changelog, I stumbled across something I found really intriguing: ego Dragon Scale Mails.

What do people think of this new feature? The more I look at what was changed in ego_item.txt, the more I think this greatly unbalances the game. Even more now that DSMs have been made more common. Let's see what egos have been added:

- of Resistance: overpowered (Balance Dragon Scale Mail of Resistance? sounds like an endgame artifact to me...)

- of Permanence: this one makes me speechless... not only it's even more overpowered that the "of Resistance" counterpart, but the ego was meant to be applies only to Robes (which have low AC and low base depth)

- (Dwarven): +2 STR, CON, infra, free action on a DSM... why not... the ego is already applied to heavy armor only, so it could make a fine DSM ego type, but with a higher rarity probably (and another name maybe...)

- of Stealth: this sounds really strange... I just simply can't figure how the skin of a dragon can provide stealth... but of course fantasy games are not meant to be realistic

- of Speed: using the template for boots (!!!), one could get a Balance Dragon Scale Mail of Speed (+10)... I simply don't understand...

I've been thinking a bit, and came with some ideas:

- of Defense: gives extra AC and one sustain (low rarity)
- of Farsight: gives +infra, see invisible and resist blindness (high rarity)
- of Immunity (base 4 DSMs): provides immunity to its element instead of resistance (high rarity)

Not too powerful, but should make someone think twice before discarding some DSMs for other egos or artifacts...

[Derakon]

My main issue with DSM is that the egos are consistently more common than basic DSM are. Out of a sample size of a dozen or so DSMs, my current character has only found 2 that were not egos.

As for the quality of a given DSM, do remember that Chaos, Law, Balance, and Power DSM are far more rare than the other flavors, so it's hard to make a decision on the power level of a given ego based on the hypothetical Balance DSM of Permanence. That said, any DSM of Permanence, or of Speed with a modifier over 5, is probably overpowered. Dwarven DSM isn't that much better than ordinary dwarven armor (especially as DSM has lower base AC than most heavy armor; basically you get the activation in exchange for lower AC), Stealth is only useful if you find it very early indeed given its competition, and Resistance is nothing particularly special unless you find it on a high DSM, which again isn't very likely.

I wouldn't mind having all DSM egos be unique to the DSM subtype, though. Currently it grabs a few armor ego-types and a few boot ego-types, which seems a bit weird. How about DSM of Soulkeeping and DSM of Bodykeeping (sustain INT/WIS/CHA, sustain STR/DEX/CON), DSM of Darkvision (+30 infravision), Razor DSM (-5 CON, (+10,+10) combat bonuses)?

[PowerDiver]

I think the new DSM egos are crazy. FWIW I put the following post-processing into my own dev work to remove any DSM ego that is not also on heavy armor.

        for (i = 1; i < z_info->e_max; i++) {
                ego_item_type *e_ptr = &e_info[i];

                if (STYLE_RESTORE_BALANCE) {
                        size_t j;
                        bool found_hard = FALSE;
                        int dsm_idx = -1;

                        for (j = 0; j < EGO_TVALS_MAX; j++) {
                                if (e_ptr->tval[j] == TV_DRAG_ARMOR) dsm_idx = j;
                                if (e_ptr->tval[j] == TV_HARD_ARMOR) found_hard = TRUE;
                        }
                        if ((dsm_idx >= 0) && !found_hard) {
                                e_ptr->tval[dsm_idx] = 0;
                        }
                }
        }

[emulord]

- of Defense: gives extra AC and one sustain (low rarity)
- of Farsight: gives +infra, see invisible and resist blindness (high rarity)
- of Immunity (base 4 DSMs): provides immunity to its element instead of resistance (high rarity)

This is all we need. Anything else is silly. If DSMs are underpowered, why not tone down/deepen the regular egos? The game is currently too easy anyway.

[Derakon]

The problem that DSM egos set out to fix is that nobody was using any DSMs except for Balance and Power as the others weren't remotely competitive. In very, very rare circumstances you'd use Chaos or Green as an emergency resistance patch, but otherwise the armors hit that sweet spot of "cool but utterly useless". Thus the egos to make them competitive. Unfortunately they overshot.

DSM of immunity I could see being used occasionally. DSM that just gives extra AC is not going to be used. Your "Farsight" ego might raaaarely be used by a particularly unlucky character.

[will_asher]

I like your mixed-blessing Razor DSM idea.

[fizzix]

My thoughts:

replace permanence with sustenance (or bodykeeping/soulkeeping)
change speed bonus to +1 to +5 as you get with elvenkind boots.

In my game with the crazy borked-randart armor I also found a PDSM of speed...

[PowerDiver]

DSMs are just armors with the ego built in. I.e. red DSM is just of "resist fire" with an activation boost. You might as well say mithril plate of resist fire is junk and ask how to fix it. It can't be fixed. By the time you find it, you probably do not want it.

DSMs tend to be junk, because the general rule is that if you find something at its native depth it is 99% likely to be junk, but that goes for everything. If you want to find it when it is useful, get it early when it passes an out-of-depth check.

[PowerWyrm]

I've proposed the "of Farsight" ego because actually no DSM provides resistance to blindness. And no base item either. To have blind resistance nowadays, you need to rely on random resists or artifacts. Or play a dwarf... silyl overpowered dorfs...

[Timo Pietilä]

I've proposed the "of Farsight" ego because actually no DSM provides resistance to blindness. And no base item either. To have blind resistance nowadays, you need to rely on random resists or artifacts. Or play a dwarf... silyl overpowered dorfs...

Or use helmets of seeing or Night and Day or amulets of magi? IIRC blindness, fear and confusion were moved from resistances to abilities, so you can have them from magi, blessed, *slay evil* etc.

[TJS]

Yes they are clearly overpowered, but I must admit they do make the game a lot more fun.

One of the best ones I found was a balance DSM of permanence with poison as the random resist.

I never bothered with them before the change so from that point of view it is a big improvement.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Derakon]

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