Sangband 1.0.2 Beta

[camlost]

Any thoughts/comments on the balance (or more probable, lack thereof) of shapechanging and/or its forms?

[NotMorgoth]

I haven't fully explored them yet, and have had much more experience with the nature lore forms than the necromantic, and with non-spellcasters... but first impressions are:

The nature lore forms are better than the necromantic ones; this is compounded by the fact that most races that are good at shapeshifting are better at nature lore than necromancy, so tend towards that side anyway.

Cheetah and serpent forms seem to be the most powerful, and come at relatively low levels; the +6 speed of the cheetah for a melee fighter outweighs most of the benefits of the other forms unless you already have very high speed from some other source, and the serpent's poison resistance is possibly the next most useful benefit of shapechanging - but then it is quite difficult to judge the relative value of the various forms' combat bonuses compared to 'visible' bonuses like speed and resistances.


Dragon form doesn't seem useful enough to justify being so high level - you can only use the breathing ability if you also have infusion to find essences. (Maybe allow characters in dragon form to find essences even without infusion?)

But bear in mind that the above impressions were gained when shapechanges were permanent as soon as you could use them - the cheetah especially would probably be much more balanced if you had to be careful about when to use it rather than walking around with permanent +6 speed as soon as you hit the required skill level.

[Bostock]

I have not yet once "managed" to get a shapechange to have any duration shorter than permanent. If this is not still a bug - I noticed your thinking aloud in one post - then permanence may need some making-harder.

Cheetah form seems better than Hound form to me. Yes, it respects the order in DB5. But Cheetah form seemed better than Hound form to me in DB5 too. :-) OTOH I use 32x32 (nerfs telepathy for me) and play sloppily (ditto), so take me with a grain of salt.

Saying that, I should be quick to note that Bat form seems just fine to me, once again same as it has traditionally. You *can* have some fun with unpenalized missile use, mind you. Holy Troll-bat boulders! But missiles are pretty weak after the opening IMO, so this is only a problem if missiles later get beefed.

I am a little unimpressed with Maia form, though maybe I'd see it differently with a mere double-shapechanger, or if I were less of a resistances junkie... OR if the advertised growth-with-skill effect were a little more pronounced. Not so much the height of the values as their breadth... it seemed the bonuses were limited to just certain of the stats, which took away some of the Cool Factor for me.

I find Mouse a bit lackluster compared to Bat and Bear. There seems to be a theme of requiring NL or BD to get the *really* cool stuff... maybe Mouse and Bear could be switched? Or maybe mouse could be higher-level as a part of the spacing-out-the-shapechanges changes, and get buffed a bit to compensate?

The balance of being-shapechanged vs. not-being-shapechanged seems as good as it always for the old shapechanges - I find myself running a changed form about 80% of the time and unchanged about 20%, which seems balanced considering the opportunity cost of gaining shapechanging ability. Maybe one exception though - it has always seemed a little weird to me balance-wise that shapechanging gives your armor free 100% acidproofing and disenchantproofing. (Not that I have ever hesitated to abuse the hell out of this when convenient.) I can see the realism angle, but... realism and roguelikes...

Frankly, most of the well-balancedness of morphs vs. normal comes from the Devices hit. If Devices (_Speed above all) ever gets the vicious nerf-stick beating it deserves, a second look here may be needed.

One last note. I think there's still room for mixing in some more cool disadvantages for forms. (Somehow my well of cool yet balanced advantages is dry. Besides, players suggesting toys for themselves just looks bad.)
* Aggravation. Successfully tempting players into taking on aggravation is always a good thing. ;-) Maia perhaps? (Aggravating Maia is a ToME2ism.)
* Substandard speed. Crawl's awesomesauce but painfully slow Nagas are really fun and tempting even as a whole race... shouldn't be too hard to cook into a tempting shapechange.
* Incompetence at range.
* Shatter (of-Earthquakes) attack.
* Blood hunger! (Obvious coolness here for Vampires.)

Of course none of these can be too large, as this often leads the to chain of events "give X a big disability - give X munchkininess as compensation - players find workaround - X is munchkiny".

[NotMorgoth]

I thought bat form gave a big reduction to deadliness with missiles? I haven't tried it recently, but definitely remember trying to play a necromancer/archer, flying around in bat form shooting 30+ arrows at a pink naga and doing little or no damage - maybe it's different for throwing boulders which are not affected by deadliness in the same way (AFAIK.)

But anyway, my experience with bat form was that it was mostly useful for escaping, and high Int necromancers could also use it productively with devices. I've also thought it could be good for burglars but never actually given it a try.

[Bostock]

I don't have recent experience with launchers and batform so I'll take you at your word. I do have recent experience with Throwing and batform and can really give bat-boulders my recommendation - on the condition that you have the strength for it. I actually kind of badmouthed it above - as a first shot, at least, it's still useful into the late midgame.

[camlost]

Sangband 1.0.2 Beta 3

Shapechange duration should be fixed, this time for real.

Project Home
Windows download
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[camlost]

I find Mouse a bit lackluster compared to Bat and Bear. There seems to be a theme of requiring NL or BD to get the *really* cool stuff... maybe Mouse and Bear could be switched? Or maybe mouse could be higher-level as a part of the spacing-out-the-shapechanges changes, and get buffed a bit to compensate?

Mouse is Nature, Bear is pure shapechanger.

The forms aren't set in stone. They can be moved around, level changed, or changed in power. Mouse is a utility form; +10 stealth and aggravation cancellation are pretty awesome if you want/need them.

* Aggravation. Successfully tempting players into taking on aggravation is always a good thing. ;-) Maia perhaps? (Aggravating Maia is a ToME2ism.)

Werewolves get aggravation with resist fear, and some impressive physical stats.

* Substandard speed. Crawl's awesomesauce but painfully slow Nagas are really fun and tempting even as a whole race... shouldn't be too hard to cook into a tempting shapechange.

Any suggestions for Nagas? Remembering that it has to remain reasonable once speed is available.

[NotMorgoth]

Nagas in Crawl only have slow movement; I'm pretty sure they attack and do everything else at normal speed.

Other than that, they're not altogether dissimilar to the current serpent form; good stealth, poison resistance, toughness etc, though they also have the ability to spit poison at range and see invisible.

Edit: I''ve been wondering if it would also be feasible to have shapechanges based on the wizardry and piety realms as well as necromancy and nature lore - I know these realms are not currently associated with any kind of shapechanging spells, but there could be potential.

Possible ideas:

Wizardry:
Dragon (moved from pure shapechanging,)
Various elemental forms (resistance, branded unarmed attacks, but vulnerability to opposite element,)
Golem/Statue (slow but very tough/hard hitting, resistant to most forms of damage)

Piety: not quite as easy to think of forms but...
Dove - flying, fast, good awareness, maybe avoids the usual device/mana penalties.
Angel - blessed unarmed attacks, flying, rLight
Archangel - like angel but also gets slay demon/undead brand, some kind of holy smite/breathe light ability

[Bostock]

Mice: I know where Mouse and Bear are; my suggestion was to flip them around -- *if* you agree that Mouse is weak (which you don't anyway) and *if* there is an intention to make NL and BD forms cooler than pure forms. Which there may not be.

My reckless play may be distorting my perception here again.

Didn't know werewolves aggravated. Hearing that, it feels like this drawback is being used in exactly the right place, cool.

Re: Piety forms - Angel/Archangel is a bit same-y; how about Dove - *Maia* - either Angel or Archangel?

And to fill in the gap this would create for normal shapechanging, I propose...

LI - ON - *FORM!* LI - ON - *FORM!* LI - ON - *FORM!*

I always found Lion the funnest shapechange. Funnest is a word, because I say so. I was bummed for it to not make the Druid/Shapechange lists.

One last thing. I've said it before but I'll say it again: I'm really unimpressed by Druids' whole diddling-with-the-weather thing, and I've always found it tragic that they have a whole *book* wasted on it... but I always held my tongue because they were the ones with the coolest shapechanges. That's still true , but by a smaller margin. How about a second look at weather? Not necessarily getting rid of it; making it cooler would also be cool.

Of course, I may be alone on this! At least that would give me more empathy for Magnate's haggling woes.

[Magnate]

Of course, I may be alone on this! At least that would give me more empathy for Magnate's haggling woes.

You're not alone - I share *exactly* the sentiment that a whole book is currently wasted on weather. At the moment weather affects certain damage spells, and that's cool but not important enough - my druids do less than 25% of their damage with spells. If the weather somehow affected non-magical combat for druids (enhancing either attack or defence), then it would suddenly become important to learn and use the weather spells ...

I haven't tried the new beta yet, but I'm interested in the shapechanging stuff.

[NotMorgoth]

You're not alone - I share *exactly* the sentiment that a whole book is currently wasted on weather.

I also largely agree with this; in addition, I'd say there is relatively poor synergy between the druid's spells. Not only is the weather control largely irrelevant to druids who mainly want to use shapeshifting and melee, but if you did want to play a caster-druid who did most damage with spells (which may be feasible in the late game once you have book 6 and enough mana,) then the shapechanging book is mostly useless because of the mana penalty.

I'd suggest reducing weather-magic to just 3 spells: Change weather randomly (at low level,) Hold Weather, and change weather controllably - ie condense most of the Weather Mastery book into one spell with a menu that asks you what aspect of the weather you want to change when you cast it.)

To make weather relevant to shapechangers, how about some kind of elemental melee branding spell with a damage bonus that is affected by the weather? Alternatively, maybe rework some of the shape changes so that different forms are affected by different things (for example, bears like it cold, lions like it warm.) This could help differentiate druidic shapechangers from those who use the shapechange skill.

I also think it is a bit of a shame that so many of the druid's spells essentially duplicate the effects of common wands; as well as not being that interesting, this also makes druidic magic weak against multi-resistant monsters, at least until fairly late when you can cast Thunderclap or Cyclone. I think it could beinteresting to make more druidic battle magic do various things like Ignite Blaze and Chain Lightning; perhaps one idea would be to introduce spells that create persistent elemental clouds around the caster rather than the standard ball effect (like ancient dragons have.)

Finally - I agree Angel and Archangel would be too similar; how about for piety based forms: Dove -- Angel -- Phoenix. (I'm not quite sure what would be the abilities of the phoenix except general awesomeness.)

Maybe Maia should stay in general shapeshifting but be much higher level and more powerful - Maia are meant to be almost god-like beings after all.

[Bostock]

The real Phoenix has some pretty nastysauce high speed, and Druids and Necros each currently have a "speed form"; this could be the "speed form" for Priests.

A Phoenix could have dragon-mail-like fire and light breaths. I'd expect they would ignore lava and water.

I generally find attacks with timeouts in the dozens of turns, like dragon-mail breath, pretty weak, but with some lowballing on the timeout and with two breaths to alternate between, breaths as a benefit could have enough cool I think. (Not that breaths aren't impressive when you get them... but ultimately you already have a pretty strong *sustainable* attack by that point or you'd be dead already, so anything unreliable like this needs to be kind of cool to feel worth the bother IMO.)

Maybe they could have awesomeness as a third breath attack. Heck, maybe The Phoenix could have it too. It could hardly be made more deadly than it already is. And it might lessen the pain of Phoenix deaths if your log ended in:

The Phoenix breathes awesomeness!
You die.

[Bostock]

Werewolves get aggravation with resist fear, and some impressive physical stats.

Aggro is not showing up for me on the character sheet or the left column when I am in Werewolf form (1.0.2.b3).

Any suggestions for Nagas? Remembering that it has to remain reasonable once speed is available.

Is it feasible to scale speed reduction with speed increase, so that (just as an example) 0 becomes -5 but +10 becomes +2?

[NotMorgoth]

The Phoenix breathes awesomeness!
You die.

This just very nearly happened to me; actually it was light, but for some reason I had the idea Maia form had rLight - ouch...

[Bostock]

There's a -- non-new -- disparity between shapechanging's 't'ake off restrictions and 'd'rop restrictions that's always bothered me, since it seems to be more of an inconvenience than actual difficulty. It's for launchers and ammo. You can 't'ake them out of your equipment and then 'd'rop them while shapechanged, but you can't 'd'rop them directly.

Perhaps it's a code structure thing though.