curse scrolls

[Nick]

If curses are going to be made more varied, Curse Weapon/Armour can be revamped in line with that.

If not, why not?

[Derakon]

I agree with Gabe. Curse Weapon in particular can effectively "kill" a character if they find it at the wrong time -- any character young enough to not have a valid alternative to melee effectively cannot kill anything.

Curse scrolls should either render an item sticky or blast it into uselessness; doing both is excessive. Or they should do something else entirely. But at least the either/or leaves the player with an interesting scenario: having to stick with a weapon until you find *Remove Curse* while it becomes increasingly obsolete, or having to find a new weapon to replace your blasted one.

[CunningGabe]

I don't think this solves the main problem. That there is a workaround for curse scrolls and the workaround is tedious. It's an improvement for sure, but still not ideal.

I think the main problem isn't this, exactly, but that there is a tedious workaround and that in the current implementation, reading a scroll of curse weapon is really bad. If the scroll of curse weapon is sufficiently non-hosing, then I'd wager most people won't care enough to bother taking off their equipment before reading an un-ID'd scroll.

I guess what it comes down to is that I support ID-by-use, but I also like that you have to be a little careful with it. We've toned down several bad items in order to make ID-by-use acceptable; I don't see the problem with just doing the same with the curse weapon/armor scrolls.

[Magnate]

I don't think this solves the main problem. That there is a workaround for curse scrolls and the workaround is tedious. It's an improvement for sure, but still not ideal.

You're quite right - I wasn't disagreeing with your ideas, merely agreeing with Gabe's ;-)

[fizzix]

Great minds think alike. I suggested this during your last sojourn and got shot to pieces - but that was before the advent of v4 so it might be possible to try it now. I still think it would work much better than sticky curses. We could also, with a little work, make adding and removing affixes temporary for lighter curses and permanent only for the worst ones.

I don't think this solves the main problem. That there is a workaround for curse scrolls and the workaround is tedious. It's an improvement for sure, but still not ideal.

[fizzix]

You used phase door as an example and I think that it illustrates my point well. A failed phase door is bad enough (assuming used as a low level escape). Tacking on 5 turns of blindness could easily lead to death, or at the very least another turn wasted curing the blindness (if potions can carry similar hidden curses, then the problem is compounded).

Yes, this is a sticking point and it is a problem. It also possibly leads to some things that do not make intuitive sense. This part being that the ?phase does work, and so does the ?mass banishment, but it comes at a price. I guess you might argue that the player has the ability to scan the scroll and say, yup that's a phase door, but there's an invisible triggered curse as well.

The way I've imagined this working in the little bit of brainstorming I've done is that you would have an edit file with a list of curse effects. Each effect would have the class of items that it applies to (tval) and a level (or level range). It could also have an allocation probability if that's deemed important. Cursed items would be restricted to curses that are their level or below, or maybe gaussian centered about their level. So something like ?phase would only be able to take the very weakest curses. Perhaps even blindness is too strong of an effect.

Here are some low level options for phase and the like.

Darkens room
Teleports player
Deals 1d5 + 5 damage (explosion)
Light poison
Light cut
Wake up monsters

Here are some mid-level curses:

Drain random stat
Timed blindness or confusion
teleport level
earthquake
Deal 5d5 damage (explosion)
Target random direction
Summon single monster
Trap creation
Polymorph target

Here are some high level curses:

Perm reduce stat
Disenchant/ de-affix item
Summon multiple monsters
Destroy the item (useful for non-scrolls)
Destruction
Heal target monster

[Magnate]

Rather than having cursed scrolls or having wands etc randomly backfire, I'd just like to see some item egos for non-equipment. Some of them could be bad (like the ones Derakon mentions above), but this would also open us up to concentrated potions, fast-charging rods, and similar improvements.

These are great ideas, though I fear that most of them will need some infrastructure to work. But there's plenty of room for new flags like fast-charging, or %chance-to-use-without-using-a-charge etc. Double-strength potions are a great idea for the new effects framework (you could implement them without it, but you'd need a lot of if (of_has(o_ptr->flags, OF_DOUBLE)) all over the place).

As far as the curse weapon / curse armor scrolls go, I think it would be more interesting to have them randomly either (a) remove a random positive affix, or (b) add a random negative affix, and take away the stickiness entirely. We could then add some new negative affixes to use as curses; for example, an "anti-slay" that reduces damage to a particular type of enemy.

Great minds think alike. I suggested this during your last sojourn and got shot to pieces - but that was before the advent of v4 so it might be possible to try it now. I still think it would work much better than sticky curses. We could also, with a little work, make adding and removing affixes temporary for lighter curses and permanent only for the worst ones.

[CunningGabe]

Rather than having cursed scrolls or having wands etc randomly backfire, I'd just like to see some item egos for non-equipment. Some of them could be bad (like the ones Derakon mentions above), but this would also open us up to concentrated potions, fast-charging rods, and similar improvements.

As far as the curse weapon / curse armor scrolls go, I think it would be more interesting to have them randomly either (a) remove a random positive affix, or (b) add a random negative affix, and take away the stickiness entirely. We could then add some new negative affixes to use as curses; for example, an "anti-slay" that reduces damage to a particular type of enemy.

[ghengiz]

I like the idea of damaging items affecting their likelihood of working properly. I don't know how well it'd interact with stacks, but it's a neat idea and it makes intuitive sense. Burnt scrolls are hard to read; bent wands can't channel energy properly; charred staves leak magic. Sadly I don't see a way to apply this to potions, since the damage is being done to the container, not the liquid therein.

What about the potion changes its effect?
The new effect could be a new (random) one, or the same but less powerful...say, a CCW becomes a CSW.


Warning: a bit of chemistry ahead!


Flavour-wise, this can be explained with a change of the equilibrium constant of the potion, due to extreme temperatures, or extraneous components:
the cap could be damaged, and therefore it lets air pass, or part of it mixes with the potions (I'm thinking of very small wood shards)...

Who knows what's in the potions, and what their equilibrium is sensible to?

Moreover, a damaged container may leak, and one can imagine that two or more different potions mix in the inventory, giving, with a very small chance, an explosive effect or another random effect...but this is probably too much hassle to code

[Derakon]

I like the idea of damaging items affecting their likelihood of working properly. I don't know how well it'd interact with stacks, but it's a neat idea and it makes intuitive sense. Burnt scrolls are hard to read; bent wands can't channel energy properly; charred staves leak magic. Sadly I don't see a way to apply this to potions, since the damage is being done to the container, not the liquid therein.

[buzzkill]

... but this interacts badly with elemental destruction of scrolls and potions.

I hadn't thought of that, but the same solution could apply. A single scroll will never be destroyed (in a protective case). Items in larger stacks, more likely to be destroyed.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

If you wanted to reduce scroll stack sizes, I think the best way would be just to reduce maximum stack sizes.

I agree with buzzkill. I wouldn't like to be surprised with a malfunctioning, identified Phase Door scrolls either.

But I would like to know beforehand that a scroll or wand is cursed, and then risk using it anyway if I really needed to.

Maybe items could sometimes become "damaged" when hit with elemental destruction? Using those items would be chancy and dangerous. (If there's no room for a new pile of scrolls in the inventory when they get damaged, drop the damaged scrolls on the ground.)

[AnonymousHero]

Non-critical scroll like phase door or detect foo, that are often carried in large stacks, will have relatively high fail/cursed rates when carried in large stacks. Therefore it's in the players best interest not to carry twenty scrolls that are critical to survival (teleport level). It might better to carry just one if you want to be sure, or maybe just two or three if you're feeling lucky.

... but this interacts badly with elemental destruction of scrolls and potions.

[buzzkill]

So, a crazy idea I had would be to remove the curse scrolls as they currently exist, and then give a small chance for every scroll to be cursed. A cursed scroll, when read, does the appropriate effect, but also invokes a curse. The curse can scale with the level of the scroll. So reading a cursed ?phase will have a small effect, like causing 5 turn blindness, but reading a cursed ?mass banishment could have a large effect, like junking your nice artifact sword. This also means that timed effect curses or small damage curses will have a place, since some scrolls will be read in tricky situations.

I don't know if I like this. Identified scrolls are currently a no-fail single use magic device. The only no-fail magic device for many classes (well potions too I guess). That no-fail bit is important in a games where a character can go form fully healthy to fully dead in a single turn.

You used phase door as an example and I think that it illustrates my point well. A failed phase door is bad enough (assuming used as a low level escape). Tacking on 5 turns of blindness could easily lead to death, or at the very least another turn wasted curing the blindness (if potions can carry similar hidden curses, then the problem is compounded).

My point is, if already ID'd scrolls are going to be occasionally cursed, then there should be a way to detect such a cursed scroll ahead of time, else you're just screwing the player (rock falls on head, you die), but allowing them to be discovered ahead of time defeats the whole purpose.

Here's my half-baked solution. Forget about that last paragraph. Lesser stack sizes (in inventory) are less likely to be cursed, because carrying large stacks of like items somehow causes corruption. A single scroll will never be cursed, but a stack of two might have a 1% chance of being cursed, of three 2%, of four 3%, and so on. Maybe cap it at 25%.

Non-critical scroll like phase door or detect foo, that are often carried in large stacks, will have relatively high fail/cursed rates when carried in large stacks. Therefore it's in the players best interest not to carry twenty scrolls that are critical to survival (teleport level). It might better to carry just one if you want to be sure, or maybe just two or three if you're feeling lucky.

EDIT: DAJ also does some unusual things with cursed items (or maybe they're mimics) which are interesting. It's been a while since I've played DAJ. Maybe Will will chime in and explain what happens.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Backfiring spells or devices might be perfect for effects that don't have any penalty for failing, for example Identify, Detect Traps, or Satisfy Hunger. At the moment you can just keep trying until you succeed.

BTW, in the dev version of Fay, when you fail to use a device, and then fail Magic Device check again, you lose one charge. This makes Device skill relevant even with Staff of Perception.