Re: [Crawl-ref-discuss] tavern digest

[Adam B. <kil...@an...>]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 01:25:47PM +0200, David Ploog wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Sep 2012, Raphael Langella wrote:
> > Contrary to popular belief, there are a few geniunly good ideas in the
> > tavern sometimes. I'll list the ones I find worth implementing or at least
> > discussing.

Then you must have dug _really_ deep.

> > Contaminated chunks<https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5568>
> > Make them only edible by carnivorous and remove nausea.
> 
> This has seen only support and no resistance yet. Would be a quick change, 
> I think.

Uhm, we have been there (a milder version, even) and quickly had to
withdraw.  Let's at least learn from our mistakes.  And if the tavern has
only support for this idea, then I'm afraid this reinforces my dislike for
that place.

> > Submerged enemies <https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5539>
> > The thread has no content besides "remove it". I'm not sure if it would
> > really be an improvement since aquatic melee monsters would be even more
> > boring and non-threatening. I have no good idea on how to address the
> > problem, but there certainly is one.
> 
> Not quite! I agree that using submerging as fleeing+ only amplifies the 
> problems of fleeing (which got lately reduced anyway).

Fleeing has just been removed for any practical purposes (from everything
except dragons, fire crap and acid blob),

> However, submerging 
> could have great offensive value. My suggestion, in a nutshell:
> * submerged monsters are not there (sight, sInv, antenna, storm damage
>    will all not detect/damage them -- one could make an exception for Ash)

Ie, basically status quo.

> * at a certain range, submerged monsters unsubmerge and behave as usual
> * they never re-submerge again.
 
That'd make them sitting ducks.  Current submerging works well -- you can't
fight them at range unless they can fight back, why would we change that?

> Really, this shouldn't be about "submerging" in water at all. It's more a 
> stealth/assassin type of monster property (could be used in air as well), 
> which happens to fit well with sea-borne monsters.

The assassin idea could be tried, there are already two proposals, waiting
for some free time.  I don't really see much similarity to water monsters,
though.

> > Book iding <https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5558>
> > It's a bit annoying to have to pick up a book to id it. Maybe they should
> > auto-id when stepped over?
> 
> That might work, yes. I am against book id from afar.

Id when stepping on them could work, yeah.  It'd hurt Trog a bit, but that
"more piety for burning unknown books" is pretty meaningless: either you
prepare for dumping Trog (pumping INT, skipping the negligible piety for
burning books) or are a faithful troglodyte and have no reason to ever look
at books' contents.

> > It was talk in an older thread which I don't feel like digging up, but
> > memorisation failure doesn't serve any purpose. We should change it so have
> > a low success rate just increase the memorisation time.
> 
> I agree. Longer memorisation time is sort of flavour; wouldn't even be 
> necessary.

This has been long agreed upon on IRC, stopped only by details and lack of
time.  Failures give new players some feedback that it's a bad idea to
memorise the spell right now, and also matter for the three hard books.

I'd:
* change the prompt based on casting chances
* drop failures for any books save the big three

> My attempt to improve it even more prompty met resistance

Multiple prompts are bad, a single one would be enough.

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