Cooldowns for spells?

[PowerWyrm]

While implementing the new Priest for PWMAngband, I had the idea of adding a "Revive" spell which will act like a temporary buff that will prevent death once if death occurs while the buff is active. But since that's a very powerful ability, I decided to make it last 20+d20 turns while adding a cooldown of 200 turns to have it 10-20% uptime.

Would it also work in V? I was thinking of this for very powerful stuff like healing or teleport other.

[fph]

If you have three tele-other wands, two rods, and the spell, do they all share the same cooldown?

[Pete Mack]

Powerwyrm-
V had this once, long ago. It only lastes D10 turns, and was called Globe of Invulnerability. It was just too powerful and was removed.

[Derakon]

That depends on how "prevents death" works. Globe meant you just flat-out didn't take damage (or in some versions, prevented 95% of damage). If this Revive spell means you survive the killing blow but at 0HP, you need to make sure you don't take another hit before getting healed. That limits your options in terms of taking melee damage, or fighting multiple enemies / at a speed disadvantage.

It's also worth bearing in mind that a d10 duration lasts for up to 30+ player turns at endgame speeds.

[Nick]

I've never been a fan of cooldowns, although I have trouble pinpointing exactly why. Maybe it's because mana is in effect an aggregation of cooldowns for all spells, and adding individual cooldowns as well seems like you're having to pay twice.

[Chud]

I've never been a fan of cooldowns, although I have trouble pinpointing exactly why. Maybe it's because mana is in effect an aggregation of cooldowns for all spells, and adding individual cooldowns as well seems like you're having to pay twice.

I'm pretty much with Nick on this one. Cooldowns feel more reasonable in a real-time (-ish) game like, say, Mass Effect, but don't really feel like they make sense in a turn-based game like Angband. I see them creating a hit-and-run, wait, hit-and-run-again play style which seems like it would just become tedious.

[wobbly]

They work ok in Tome 4. I'm not a big fan of them either but they do work out ok.

[Derakon]

Isn't literally every ability and item in ToME 4 cooldown-based? If you build the game around it then it probably works fine; the question is how well it works in a game that otherwise doesn't really consider them.

PowerWyrm: what do you think of giving each character, say, 3 "effective" uses of the spell throughout their lives? That is, they can only use the spell if it hasn't saved their lives 3 times before. Casting it and then not needing it doesn't count against this limit.

[bio_hazard]

You could limit by level instead of by life. One use per level ok, but more than one and there's a good and increasing chance you fall through the floor onto the next level (or alter reality if you're on 99/100) because your magics are too powerful and made the dungeon unstable or some such. I'm not entirely sure of the exact problem we are trying to solve, but at least that might make it less likely people would use the spell for repeated kamikaze runs into vaults since they'd be likely to lose the loot on the 2nd or 3rd casting.

For the revive spell in particular, this sounds more like an innate ability than a spell to me.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

While implementing the new Priest for PWMAngband, I had the idea of adding a "Revive" spell which will act like a temporary buff that will prevent death once if death occurs while the buff is active. But since that's a very powerful ability, I decided to make it last 20+d20 turns while adding a cooldown of 200 turns to have it 10-20% uptime.

Would it also work in V? I was thinking of this for very powerful stuff like healing or teleport other.

I had a visceral reaction of abhorrence to this idea. For me, one of the most distinguishing features, if not THE most distinguishing feature, of any great rougelike is that there are no second chances, no "extra" lives. You die, you start over from the beginning. No if's, and's, or but's. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Making @ immune from death for any period of time is tantamount to giving extra lives. You might as well be playing Pac-man.

[Estie]

I had a visceral reaction of abhorrence to this idea. For me, one of the most distinguishing features, if not THE most distinguishing feature, of any great rougelike is that there are no second chances, no "extra" lives. You die, you start over from the beginning. No if's, and's, or but's. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Making @ immune from death for any period of time is tantamount to giving extra lives. You might as well be playing Pac-man.

ToME 2 has various ways to avoid death: the blood of life, a rare unique potion that 1/20 or fewer @s find, a % chance of getting ressurected if @ worships the right god and meets some other requirements and a necromancy based ability that makes you a weak ghost when you die, but if you do the right things afterwards you get back to your original form.

While I generally agree wanting a clearcut death and fresh start, I never felt that ToME2 broke the perma-death principle (unlike, say, Darkest Dungeon).
If I found the blood of life, I usually forgot about it and only was reminded in case of "death", and the other avoid-death abilities I might pick up if opportunity arrises or not, preferring some other alternative. They are not desirable enough to dominate character building.

Now an ability as described by PowerWyrm would probably disturb me, too, because it would have to be used in anticipation of great danger and thus keep me thinking about it.

[PowerWyrm]

I see. For PWMAngband it makes sense because it's not turn based but real time and multiplayer (you play on a distant server), and MAngband based variants already have the "ghost" feature meaning you don't lose your character when you die, but turn into a ghost that can be resurrected. Since Priests already have the Resurrection spell, I felt that it would be nice to also have Revive. I guess it's not the same in V.