Mind vs Body vs Spirit

[rvdpluijm]

As I followed the actual play reports, it occurred to me that both Mike and Victor mentioned that Mind is the obvious choice to go for when absorbing souls, since it's by far the most useful skill, with Body a meager second and spirit quite weak. It might be that I misunderstood the conversation, but if that's the case, isn't this a bad thing for Kerkerkruip (since all obvious choices are a bad thing for Kerkerkruip)?

[mciul]

That was what I was trying to say.

[VictorGijsbers]

I personally don't have the feeling that mind is better than the other two -- but I might be wrong. We want to balance the three faculties in such a way that which is best to increase depends on the powers you'll get and the items/rooms you've found, but not on their intrinsic goodness. (By the way, don't count out the fact that your critical chance is equal to the lowest of the three scores, so that balancing them against each other might actually be the best tactic in many situations.)

Now, I'd say that the three basic effects -- remaining concentrated, the random body bonus, and higher initiative -- are about as powerful. If you disagree, let's discuss!

I do agree with Mike that there are not enough body/spirit-based items and rooms. This makes mind tempting, because you'll often have at least one mind-based thing around.

I also agree that spirit's contribution to initiative could be more transparent. One idea I have is this: spirit sometimes just gives you a free turn, in which case you get an explicit message about that ("Your spiritual attunement allows you to act again.") Or we could radically chance the bonus that spirit gives you, and turn it from an initiative bonus into some kind of religion-based bonus. What do you think?

[mciul]

I expected a religion-based bonus at first, but I think if the initiative bonus were clearer, that would be better.

I've been looking at the initiative code, and I like the way it works, but I can see how it would be difficult to make it clear. I think an explicit message would be good, if you can think of a way to do it.

[ektemple]

I agree that spirit should apply to initiative rather than religion (or to both, potentially). Since the religion system is optional, tying spirit only to religion would make the faculty less central to the core game.

I like the idea of spirit sometimes giving you a "critical" that would grant you an extra turn. Should be pretty rare, of course. Another idea might be to allow a good spirit score to give an edge to the player against an opponent with higher concentration--potentially solving the Isra + Fell problem that came up recently as well...

In terms of making some of these things more transparent, maybe the "detailed stats" in windowed Kerkerkruip could include things like the critical chance and the bonus derived from faculties?

[mciul]

Speaking of Isra and Fell, I noticed that the malignant chanter does this too - gets to maximum concentration and then waits for 4 or 5 turns in a row while nobody else gets a move.

[VictorGijsbers]

It's a combination of high concentration and waiting that triggered this. But I fixed it today, see my commit to ATTACK. (At least I believe I've fixed it!)

[mciul]

I had no idea concentration made such a big difference to initiative. That really changes strategy - doing things like reading scrolls, throwing grenades, adjusting clothing - they should be done when you have higher concentration if possible!

What if examining a person (or even looking) gave you a hint about initiative?

>l
[room description]

The mindslug is about to do something. 

>x slug
[mindslug description]
The mindslug is prepared for another action. It is probably going to act next.

>x mouser

[Mouser description]
Mouser is recovering from his last action.

>x Fafhrd
[Fafhrd description]
Fafhrd is getting ready for his next move.

It could get wordy in room descriptions, but I think it would at least be helpful when examining people (as would displaying their faculty scores).

Thinking about Kerkerkruip 10... if we create a new timing system that distinguishes between "every player turn" and "whenever time elapses," initiative might change a lot (#208). These descriptions might then be more like "the mindslug will probably act next in 3 seconds."