Ego Dragon Scale Mails

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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]

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.

[Derakon]

If Ferocity/Razors gives -INT/WIS instead of -CON, then I suspect it will be a no-brainer for warriors and less magically-inclined hybrids. I guess it depends on how much of a combat boost we're talking about here.

[Starhawk]

Is there any plan to raise the base AC on dragon scale mail?

I'm playing warriors this month, and find that when I survive into the midgame, I'm skipping DSM in favor of armor that offers 35-45 points of base defense. Generally by the time I start finding DSM, it is already worse than whatever Augmented Chain Mail or Partial Plate I've scrounged up.

The exception of course is a strong ego DSM, or something that fills an egregious resistance hole.

That said, I like the idea of DSM giving some sort of extended elemental resistance (even on activation like the branding rings). Some sort of strong defensive ability is needed to keep DSM relevant.

[Magnate]

Is there any plan to raise the base AC on dragon scale mail?

I'm playing warriors this month, and find that when I survive into the midgame, I'm skipping DSM in favor of armor that offers 35-45 points of base defense. Generally by the time I start finding DSM, it is already worse than whatever Augmented Chain Mail or Partial Plate I've scrounged up.

The exception of course is a strong ego DSM, or something that fills an egregious resistance hole.

That said, I like the idea of DSM giving some sort of extended elemental resistance (even on activation like the branding rings). Some sort of strong defensive ability is needed to keep DSM relevant.

It's very interesting that you rate the AC so highly. I'd be interested to hear if other people feel the same way. When I extended the AC range I wanted to make DSM *less* of a no-brainer compared with non-DSM armours of the same type (i.e. non-ego or same ego). So heavy armours got more AC than the weaker DSMs, but those had a resist and a breath weapon.

If you are ignoring weak DSMs in favour of heavy armour with more AC, this has at least been partially successful.

The AC range on DSMs has been stretched carefully from 12 (equivalent of studded leather) to 60 (equivalent of mithril plate). If the weaker ones need a boost, I'd go with the temporary resistance added to the activation, rather than reduce the AC range.

[Starhawk]

Aha. I haven't been successful enough at the game to see the top end of that armor range on DSM, then. In most cases, when I'm deep enough to start seeing DSM, I'm wearing armor that roughly doubles the DSM's base AC, rendering it pretty much worthless unless it has a great ego or covers a resist hole. So, yeah, I agree that adding a double-resist activation would make lower DSMs more attractive.

And I may be misguided in valuing the base armor so highly; I'm not familiar with the code or combat algorithms. It just seems easier to wade through a troll pit if I'm loaded up with lots of AC.