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Post by awall on Dec 18, 2007 22:08:45 GMT -5
There's a year-old thread about alternative spellbooks that I find fairly interesting. Taliesin came up with an Illusionist that looks like it'd be fun to play against, and I've been toying around with my own alternative spellbook using the same alternate gesture set (OHRB). I've gotten the list of spells looking nice, although I'm a bit stuck at assigning gestures... I'm not sure where to start.
I wouldn't want to downright add anything to the standard Warlocks spellbook. The spells as they are right now are in that perfectly tuned, precarious state of balance for which a single small change could have drastic consequences. However, occasionally I'm proven wrong (I much prefer Maladroit to Confusion, for example) so it's a useful thought exercise to go through this.
I still like the idea of Ice Lance and Flaming Sword. Setting the gestures to WSWS (Ice Lance) and SWSW (Flaming Sword) seems to work for them, although the latter may make Fear too powerful. It also allows for fun tricks out of invis (PPWSWS/xxWSFW).
Citanest, I like the idea of an alternative to Paralysis, but just adding a cutoff of 3 turns seems a bit inelegant (although it would be the easiest way to tweak as little as possible about the game, so I'm torn). How does this look as another alternative?
Aversion: FFF Enchantment - Mindspell If the subject of the spell is a Warlock, he may not submit gestures for either of his hands that the caster submitted this turn. For example, if I have FFF/xxP, then you cannot submit F or P on either hand next turn. If the subject of the spell is a Monster, it feels adverse to the concept of attacking this turn.
This is fairly weak, but the fact that it can be cast continuously should offset it a bit.
EDIT: I'm having second thoughts about Aversion... DSFFF/xxPSD seems awfully good, as it renders most conventional Disease defenses useless; you can't have DF or PD the turn of the clap. You could clap yourself for Dispel, but if you do and I hit you with Charm instead of Disease you're in a tight spot.
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taliesin
Ronin Warlock
Grand Master
Posts: 156
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Post by taliesin on Dec 19, 2007 6:54:09 GMT -5
Well, since this thread's taken this turn already...
Slarty and I spent a chunk of time recently looking for a couple of new spells, and this seriously, with a view to implementation.
I'll explain why: - The DSF/PWP opening has seriously compromised S/W as an all-purpose opening. - D/P against D/P has degenerated into the DPP/PSD loop being clearly advantaged over going invis off DPP when the lines are played thoroughly correctly (though I suspect many of the people who are playing the DPP/PSD loop are doing so because they think taking Invis second + ogre is advantageous, which is not the case). This makes the game into an ugly deadlock. - D/W is one way of breaking the deadlock, with the threatened exchange of Amnesia - however, it settles into a guessing game where the person who guesses right is very much in a stronger position. Given most good players dislike exposing themselves to that quantity of risk, D/W is still an imperfect solution. - Various openings incorporating paralysis do give reasonable responses to DPP/PSD, but paralysis is very ugly. It is and has always been a blight on the game. If the game gets forced into para early to fight DPP/PSD, it becomes poorer for us all.
So, we were looking for: - two new spells starting with F to replace Paralysis - at least one of these ought to give some opening response to DPP/PSD that doesn't lead to utter domination by one side or the other - hence, probably a disruption - these should not have effects that too hugely change strategy elsewhere (e.g. a spell that negates counters would force alterations in almost all defensive play, changing the game much more than a replacement disruption would) - these ought to be readily understandable to someone picking the game up for the first time - and they should have a mechanic which can actually be implemented (e.g. in a disruption where the opponent's gestures this turn are dependent on your gestures this turn, you get into an infinite loop if the disruption crosses over - so such disruptions can't be considered).
I'll leave it to Slarty to search through our shortlist and post any of the better ones. Towards the end most attention was being focused on finding something that sensibly coped with DPP/PSD in the opening.
FSD looked very good as the spell string for one of the spells, choices for the other varied more widely.
The latest suggestion I made, which looked to have reasonable opening lines against DPx/PSD as FSD/WWS, was:
Feeblemind FSD The affected player is constrained to pick from the gestures he used on the previous turn. (this may be revised to allow claps and stabs if this is felt a useful or interesting balancing step) Monsters (do not attack | attack the target they attacked the previous round) - elementals are unaffected.
FS/WW with Feeblemind hasn't been fully explored for DS/PS openings, so it's premature to consider it a balanced spell.
However, have at it - come up with disruptions first and foremost (we'll tell you if we looked at them and they didn't hack it in the DPP/PSD opening scenario, we went through about 17 different new spell ideas) - but other kinds of spells are good too. Starting with F and being 3 or 4 gestures long are the main constraints on the spell string, so obviously we're not looking for spells with six gestures' worth of effect.
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Post by Citanest on Dec 19, 2007 7:27:44 GMT -5
Various openings incorporating paralysis do give reasonable responses to DPP/PSD, but paralysis is very ugly. It is and has always been a blight on the game. If the game gets forced into para early to fight DPP/PSD, it becomes poorer for us all. Citanest, I like the idea of an alternative to Paralysis, but just adding a cutoff of 3 turns seems a bit inelegant (although it would be the easiest way to tweak as little as possible about the game, so I'm torn). I think that pretty much, to a man, all the best players very much dislike Paralysis, considering it a moment of Bartle-madness. The spell in itself is OK, the main problem is that no matter how good you are there are only a very limited number of ways one can coerce an opponent into stopping it. This has made it a refuge for the unimaginative. Awall is right that a 3 turn cut off is inelegant, but so is FFFFF in the first place. 3 turns wasn't an arbitrary figure - it theoretically allows continuous Para by swapping hands (FFFxx/xxxFF). Also it seems to intuitively make sense if you imagine the spell being 'charged up', and gradually running out of energy - a 12321 pattern. So how about this; Mind Capacitor:The caster charges up his mental strength to exert a prolonged dominance over his opponent. Same as paralysis but 3 turn limit, can swap hands to reset. Out of interest, how hard would this be to implement?
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Post by Slartucker on Dec 19, 2007 8:39:38 GMT -5
For the record, I think paralysis is unbalanced and there is a better alternative out there somewhere, but I also think "blight on the game" is a little strong. Paralysis is not the end of the world, and while I don't like it, I don't have any particular repulsion to it either, at least not in ParaFC.
An arbitrary 3 turn limit is inelegant mainly because it breaks Warlocks rules, something we should try not to do. The only thing even remotely similar is the 1 use limit on WDDc, and that's not quite the same. Obviously it could be implemented, but I doubt RB would be interested.
I'll look for our short list.
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loyus
Ronin Warlock
Posts: 20
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Post by loyus on Dec 19, 2007 14:04:32 GMT -5
While not very powerful on the paper, the Divination/Precognition spell would be a very strong defensive one since it's an enchantement you have to cast on yourself, maybe it's a good answer to make new valid openers.
Now that I've tought about it as an opener, I figured out potential gestures for it :
SWW
- Because it's an enchantement, it has to be 3 gestures. A 2 gestures enchantement would be overpowered, and would be used everytime to cancels ennemy enchantements.
- It's the defensive brother of the existing SWD. So if your opponent threatens with amnesia/maladroitness when opening, you know you can play either SWD or SWW and you're not gambling, just making a choice of playstyle.
- It leaves you with a counter-spell behind, making it an extremely powerful defensive spell. Maybe even too powerful ?
I also find the Feeblemind spell a good idea, it's a very offensive charm and there're not much to play beyond F...
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Post by awall on Dec 19, 2007 22:34:31 GMT -5
I dunno about Feeblemind, it seems like a strictly weaker version of Amnesia. I realize that Amnesia is quite strong and also that talk of "strength" in disruptions is a bit misleading (as "weaker" disruptions are better defensively), but one of the things I like about the existing set of Disruptions is that they all have slightly different effects. Here, there's nothing that FSD prevents that DPP wouldn't also prevent. Also, PP seem to be more useful exit gestures than SD.
On the other hand, it seems like this would make Disease far more powerful than it is now (assuming it became DSFSDc). If the FSD lands, your opponent had better hope he had P/D or F/D on his hands the turn before, or else the Disease has a strong chance at being fatal.
That said, Taliesin and Slartucker understand the game far better than I do (and have spent much more time thinking about this than I) so I'd take their opinion over my own. If they claim it's balanced (at least so far) I'm inclined to agree.
The alternate spellbook I'd been working on included a spell that I think might also work as a paralysis replacement. Here is the original version of it:
Palsy 4 gestures Enchantment - Mindspell On the next turn, the caster chooses a gesture. Any of the victim's hands that attempt to perform this gesture wind up performing a null gesture instead. Monsters can't move to attack.
This very much feels like a 4-gesture spell, the least of reasons why being that it's harmless if cast at yourself. However, consider this modification:
Palsy FFF Enchantment - Mindspell On the next turn, look at the gesture submitted by the hand that cast Palsy. Any of the victim's hands that attempt to perform this gesture perform a null gesture instead. Monsters can't move to attack.
As an example of this, let's say I hit you with FFF on my left hand. On my next turn, I submit LH:P. Any of your hands that attempt to perform P do a null gesture instead.
Some considerations about this spell:
- Like Paralysis, this spell can be cast continuously, but all this does is keeps the victim from submitting F. - This fails the Taliesin test of implementability, as we can get into an infinite loop if two players hit each other with this disruption. However, if you don't think about it too hard there's a common sense solution: Either both players submit different gestures on their palsied hands, in which case everything works normally; or they submit the same gesture, in which case that gesture gets replaced by null for both players. - Use a similar logic to determine what happens if you hit yourself with this disruption: whichever hand cast Palsy last turn will always submit a null gesture. This means that this spell is very dangerous to use defensively. - This spell's interaction with Charm Person also deserves mention, although it's fairly intuitive as well. If my FFF and your PSDF cross over and you charm my FFF hand, then that becomes the nullified gesture for you. In the common case where you charm it to null, my palsy has no effect on you. This makes Palsy weak against PSDF, but it does require you to charm my FFF hand. - Disease becomes fairly weak, as it replaces C with -. On the other hand, if I predict that you're going to gesture PD or DF to prevent Disease, I can punish you by dummying the Disease into FFFD or FFFF. - Vs. DP/PS: If Amnesia and Palsy cross over on turn 3, the DPP player won't be able to cast PSDF on turn 4. He can go for an Ogre instead, but if the FFF player has PSD on his other hand, that won't work either. This will probably lead to DPPSD/PSDPS vs. FFFFF/PSDDP with a few options from here. However, I haven't really thought this through very much so I could be completely mistaken. FFF/WWP also might be viable, but it doesn't look great.
This isn't without its share of problems, but I think it's interesting.
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taliesin
Ronin Warlock
Grand Master
Posts: 156
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Post by taliesin on Dec 20, 2007 8:28:55 GMT -5
I dunno about Feeblemind, it seems like a strictly weaker version of Amnesia. This is fair comment. Amnesia is very strong though - it's the only disruption that leaves you with only one possible submission on the subsequent turn. And this leads us into our present opening difficulties. Let's explain how it came to be; we were looking for an effect with the spell string FSD which would give options against DPP/PSD. Other spell strings are not necessarily out of the picture, but most lead far too readily into or out of other spells. FW anything cranks summoning up to crazy strength. FD strengthens WPFD and DFFD - definitely imbalancing. FPS makes Permanency and Summon Troll too powerful, FPF repeats (threatening the same problem as para had originally), FPW shares a string with DFPW, FPP is possible but shield-heavy, FPD strengthens PDWP - not in itself a bad thing but with possible implications for Disease and Poison and Permanency. FS is more reasonable, and FF with a non-F termination is plausible, though this last can be delayed like a WWS by simply continuing to enter F and threatening with it each turn. DPP PSD
FSDD PSDDFor any given FSD opening, the FSD/PSD crossover against DPP is going to look like this. And there's going to be nothing that you can do to the DPP player that approaches the breakage of having double Ds on both hands without making FSD grotesquely overpowered. DPS PSD
FSD WWSSo we get to here. It's necessary that F/W blocks the Amnesia as DPPSFW PSDPPS
FSDDPP WWPPWWgives D/P a clear ogre's advantage. However, that means D/P can dummy cheerfully. So: DPS PSD
FSD WWSin terms of gestures, we need to block F on both hands, and D on the left. We also want to block W as DPPW PSDW
FSD WWSrapidly compromises F/W's position. Feeblemind is, so far, one of the best ways found of doing this. If you can come up with an alternative effect or opening that is strong against DPP, I'd be interested to hear from you. I realize that Amnesia is quite strong and also that talk of "strength" in disruptions is a bit misleading (as "weaker" disruptions are better defensively), but one of the things I like about the existing set of Disruptions is that they all have slightly different effects. Here, there's nothing that FSD prevents that DPP wouldn't also prevent. Also, PP seem to be more useful exit gestures than SD. This is true, but leads us back to the essential trouble that DPP is advantaged over every other disruption in an even face-off, and in our attempts to come up with a new one to battle against it I've found myself recreating it. I am not sure that PP does make for more useful exit gestures than SD - PP cannot stop an Amnesia from SD, and said Amnesia can lead to a second and advantageous Invis, though the advantage of this is of course curtailed when it is a DW Invis. On the other hand, it seems like this would make Disease far more powerful than it is now (assuming it became DSFSDc). If the FSD lands, your opponent had better hope he had P/D or F/D on his hands the turn before, or else the Disease has a strong chance at being fatal. Without Paralysis as an enforcer, some fairly high-percentage routes to busting Disease open up. Disease may be a little more dangerous than before, but given it's currently a fairly rare cast among higher-level players, this is potentially not a bad thing. Another possibility would be, I suppose, weakening Amnesia somehow (replacing it with Feeblemind?) as well as replacing Paralysis. The alternate spellbook I'd been working on included a spell that I think might also work as a paralysis replacement. Here is the original version of it: Palsy 4 gestures Enchantment - Mindspell On the next turn, the caster chooses a gesture. Any of the victim's hands that attempt to perform this gesture wind up performing a null gesture instead. Monsters can't move to attack. This very much feels like a 4-gesture spell, the least of reasons why being that it's harmless if cast at yourself. However, consider this modification: Palsy FFF Enchantment - Mindspell On the next turn, look at the gesture submitted by the hand that cast Palsy. Any of the victim's hands that attempt to perform this gesture perform a null gesture instead. Monsters can't move to attack. As an example of this, let's say I hit you with FFF on my left hand. On my next turn, I submit LH:P. Any of your hands that attempt to perform P do a null gesture instead. Some considerations about this spell: - Like Paralysis, this spell can be cast continuously, but all this does is keeps the victim from submitting F. - This fails the Taliesin test of implementability, as we can get into an infinite loop if two players hit each other with this disruption. However, if you don't think about it too hard there's a common sense solution: Either both players submit different gestures on their palsied hands, in which case everything works normally; or they submit the same gesture, in which case that gesture gets replaced by null for both players. - Use a similar logic to determine what happens if you hit yourself with this disruption: whichever hand cast Palsy last turn will always submit a null gesture. This means that this spell is very dangerous to use defensively. - This spell's interaction with Charm Person also deserves mention, although it's fairly intuitive as well. If my FFF and your PSDF cross over and you charm my FFF hand, then that becomes the nullified gesture for you. In the common case where you charm it to null, my palsy has no effect on you. This makes Palsy weak against PSDF, but it does require you to charm my FFF hand. - Disease becomes fairly weak, as it replaces C with -. On the other hand, if I predict that you're going to gesture PD or DF to prevent Disease, I can punish you by dummying the Disease into FFFD or FFFF. - Vs. DP/PS: If Amnesia and Palsy cross over on turn 3, the DPP player won't be able to cast PSDF on turn 4. He can go for an Ogre instead, but if the FFF player has PSD on his other hand, that won't work either. This will probably lead to DPPSD/PSDPS vs. FFFFF/PSDDP with a few options from here. However, I haven't really thought this through very much so I could be completely mistaken. FFF/WWP also might be viable, but it doesn't look great. This isn't without its share of problems, but I think it's interesting. The implementability is a big one. You can't process one set of gestures until you've processed the other set of gestures - in effect, you're forcing multiple passes over the gestures before you've got gestures to derive spells from. I can't see RB going for this; it's inelegant and extra work. The "loop" issue I mentioned before is not impossible to overcome if you rewrite the new-turn spell handler, but it's not something RB is going to wish to do. Note also that the actual result of both players having the same gesture: submitted:
Player A: FFFP WWWS
Player B: FFFP WWWSafter pass 1, handling disruptions on player A, it goes to look at player B's submission, and changes A's hand accordingly: submitted:
Player A: FFF- WWWS
Player B: FFFP WWWSbut when it comes to handling disruptions on player B, A has - for the disallowed gesture and B gets away free. You'd need a special piece of code that verified both had the same gesture and set both to be affected by palsy P before handling the gesture munging... in short, it's doable but horribly ugly and almost certainly going to be shot down by the implementer. And yes, Disease is weakened considerably by this. It's worth pointing out also that all by itself it can have the effect of a double charm - if you do catch your opponent submitting F, then if next turn you can guess the gesture on his other hand you can blank that too. (Or you can use it simply to forbid W). It does have a bit more of a shot against DPP/PSD, but this is going to highlight a bit of a flaw with it. In the example you gave: DPPS PSDP
FFFF PSDDat this point, D/P doesn't know when he submits his gestures what they'll be. He may get away scot free, he may get mauled. If he continues as you suggest: DPPS- PSDPS
FFFFD PSDDPwhoops! and his position's horrid. It makes it very difficult to plot a "safe" course through against Palsy, because you're always vulnerable to guesswork. You can't afford ever to use F when Palsied because of the double charm effect, any other natural continuation of your spellflow leaves you open to being nulled, and the chief consolation is that if it misfires, then you pay no price whatsoever. It's the Confusion problem again: extreme unpredictability ranging from having a useless gesture to being unaffected, only this spell focuses on the extreme ranges and depends on guesswork rather than a wholly random element.
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Post by Rycchus on Dec 20, 2007 10:17:41 GMT -5
I like the Palsy idea. I think it's cute. And it seems like a lot of the objections you're raising, Tal, could be avoided by modifying it slightly - if you go back to awall's first suggestion, you don't need to worry about the infinite loop (although it does make the spell substantially stronger, perhaps too strong even for four gestures?), and the continuation effect (one hand double charm effect) could easily be avoided by not making the spell a repeatable string.
Say it was FPFD or FFDD or FSDD or something... I'm ill today so apologies for not having the head power to analyse it, but I don't see why you couldn't make that work. It would be like charm, but you couldn't guarantee you would pull it off, and to compensate it would be slightly less disruptable (FFDD is amnesia-proof on all but the second turn, which just delays the spell for one turn more).
Edit: Added FSDD, as I think that's not bad either.
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Post by Rycchus on Dec 20, 2007 10:23:38 GMT -5
I also like Divination. I don't think SWW works well as a gesture set for it though.
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Post by awall on Dec 20, 2007 11:21:38 GMT -5
SWW is a particularly bad idea, I think. Toward the endgame, this gets ridiculously good. Let's say your opponent is at less than five health and you're not and you successfully pull off Divination (not hard, given how common endgame W's are and the fact that SW is a nice lead-in). On the next turn, does he counter himself? If not, then you go ahead and clap and win the game. If he does, you gesture SWWP/xxxW, which means that unless he has W on his other hand, you still win the game. Re:Palsy. Taliesin, you make a good point about the guesswork involved with Palsy, which I must say I'm not too fond of. If we reduce the guesswork, however, this spell becomes "Pick a gesture. The opponent can't do it next turn," which is both sort of weak and inelegant, plus suffers from other implementation problems (you'd need to introduce a step between when spells resolve and when people get to submit gestures for next turn for the player to specify the forbidden gesture. One workaround is to make the forbidden gesture whatever the caster gestured on his *other* hand. However, this takes an already weak disruption and makes it even weaker, specifically an ideal candidate for targeting at oneself. You could increase the power a bit by making it look at both hands (i.e. forbid F as well as whatever was on your other hand)... ...and we're left with Aversion. I guess y'all can see where that came from now. What did people think of that one? EDIT: I just realized that Aversion might, in rare cases, make F/C a useful set of gestures to enter. Amusing.
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Post by Rycchus on Dec 20, 2007 13:01:52 GMT -5
It's equally difficult to plot a safe course against Charm, which is why I think Palsy could be workable if it were four gestures.
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Post by BioLogIn on Dec 20, 2007 14:53:41 GMT -5
I'd like to offer a variation of aforementioned Palsy that is a) easy in implementation b) usable:
Mental Block Choose a gesture. Next turn if an opponent submits this gesture in either hand, he gestures '-' with that hand instead.
a) Implementation is easy. You submit "blocked" gesture together with your gestures on the turn next to the turn "Block" was cast. Just as you submit a hand for Para b) Lots of guesswork included. Suppose opponent hit by "Block" is working one spell in LH and one spell in RH this turn with two different gestures required. Now offensive player has to guess which hand to "block", and defensive - which spellflow to alter.
Note that spell is quite powerful because of it's _possible_ effect, but still can do nothing, so it is all up to players to outwit each other.
I think this spell should require 4 gestures to cast.
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Post by Rycchus on Dec 20, 2007 15:14:20 GMT -5
Apologies if I'm being dense, but what is the difference between this and what awall was suggesting in his non-adapted [first] version of Palsy?
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Post by BioLogIn on Dec 20, 2007 16:34:26 GMT -5
rycchus none (( I'm dumb, ain't I? (
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Post by awall on Dec 21, 2007 3:02:31 GMT -5
Rycchus: I feel that we sort of need a 3 gesture mindspell. If we went with a four gesture Palsy, this would make F as slow a gesture as P, but have far fewer useful spells. Plus, Disease would suck mightily.
I also have a concern about Feeblemind: If I gesture DSFS and you don't have a disruption handy, what should you gesture on your next turn? If you go with P/D or D/F to defend Disease and I continue to FSS, you're likely to eat a Fireball. If you gesture W to stop the fireball, unless you have DFP or PD on your other hand, Disease is going to be a big issue for you. Given that a simple 4 gesture setup makes you choose between risking 5 damage or risking death, I'm really not sure whether this is the best solution.
Another thing to keep in mind is FoD. Obviously paraFoD is detremental to the game and we want to tone it down, but without giving FoD at least some support, the spell becomes largely useless. About the only way to hit with it aside from para is if you can land SPFP/PWPF out of invis or out of Permanent Charm. One of the things I like about Aversion is that it leaves FFF/FoD viable, but not nearly as dominating as with Paralysis.
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