Re: [Crawl-ref-discuss] weapon brands: disruption, orc slaying

[Markus M. <ma...@in...>]

David Ploog wrote:
> Holy Wrath, Disruption
> ----------------------
> These two are rather similar (for the unspoiled me, at least). I assume 
> they got in because they needed one for each of Zin and TSO. With Zin 
> being changed, only one type suffices. I propose to use the 'Holy Wrath' 
> label, as it is much more clear (to me, anyway). Do you agree? If so, 
> which brand to be taken?

Definitely Holy Wrath. The only change I'd like to propose is that it 
should be equally strong against all "evil" monsters, rather than 
treating demons and undead slightly differently.


> Orc slaying
> -----------
> still sucks. I propose two things:
> * extend the slaying to monsters 'aking to orcs': ogres, trolls.

Ogres are OK, as might be goblins, hobgoblins and gnolls (and nothing 
else), but trolls aren't IMHO. Humans and elves have more in common with 
orcs than trolls! Just because they both are traditional fantasy baddies 
and they both appear in the Orcish Mines isn't nearly enough to call 
them "akin". I am aware that not having it work on trolls kinda 
diminishes the value of this proposal, to have it work against real 
threats and having it work longer, but I just find trolls too different 
and therefore too unintuitive. But then, my intuition has been different 
from everybody else's in the past.


> * have player and monster orcs receive a bonus upon using these.
>    Yes, it is a bad pun, but I am only doing it for an underwhelming
>    brand :)

This I find too silly and it doesn't really help the brand to be any 
less underwhelming IMHO.

I have to admit that I'm not sure whether the main problem of orc 
slaying is that it's boring or that it's of little to no use later on, 
but I'll also try to propose some other things:

* Taking a cue from Tolkien, weapons of orc slaying might be able to 
"detect creatures" of the type(s) they are slaying (only o, maybe also O 
and g, see above), either permanently or 'E' evokable. This might make 
them less boring, but doesn't help with them getting useless quickly.

* Have them affect transmigrations in their surroundings when wielded, 
turning creatures hit with Polymorph Other (spell or wand) into a 
variety of orc (at least with a high chance) if they don't resist and 
forcing shapeshifters to become orcs, when they try to shift shape (or 
maybe even when you hit them). Maybe it should also inhibit 
self-transmigrations. This might be a bit of a stretch flavour-wise, but 
I think it could make them rather powerful, even later on, hopefully not 
too much so.

* Make them "branch empathic". If they "sense" a huge number of a 
certain type of creature, they "attune" to it and become slaying for 
that type. Like orc slaying in Orc, elf slaying in Elf, serpent slaying 
in Snake, jelly slaying (yeah, right) in Slime and bee slaying in Hive. 
Branches that don't have a very strongly homogeneous population 
shouldn't affect it, instead, as a twist, it should become %s slaying 
(with %s being the player's species), justified by the player's nearby 
presence affecting it stronger than smaller groups of monsters of the 
same type at a larger distance. Of course this might make almost 
completely useless for some species most of the time, while possibly 
becoming a no-brainer in some branches.

* Make them into an "evil" brand that affects intelligent creatures 
(maybe called "of soul reaving" or something along those lines), but not 
others, and as a downside with a small chance of creating a hostile 
phantom or wraith upon each kill (representing a soul turning on you). 
Probably there are already enoug "evil" brands, though, and in the end, 
it doesn't have much in common with the current orc slaying, so it would 
  be like removing orc slaying and replacing it with a different brand 
that happens to also work on orcs.

Regards,
Markus