Un-boring centaur?

[yrmvgh]

centaur unreasons[1/1]: You'll die more from boredom than from actual danger.

My thoughts after chatting with some folks on Akrasic / CAO about centaur:

• Reduce apts for bows and xbows by 1, or increase slings and thrown by 1. It's fine for them to be excellent with bows, but if bows are the only option, the game is less interesting.
• Someone said "passive archery". All the time? That's not interesting, but how about something that tweaks your playstyle, like: "+1 slaying each turn you do not move, up to a cap of floor(XL / 5)". Now you'll want to gallop to a safe shooting spot, then unload.
• Increase UC by 1. This seems to contradict what I said earlier, but strengthening their existing melee niche provides options for weapon-swapping, or for quirky non-ranged centaur - it's not at risk of becoming the one true way to play centaur.
• Increase charms by 1 or 2, to 0 or +1. Maybe increase ice to 0 as well? It's fine that they suck at magic, but give them a flavor, a leaning!

If you put it all together, what I'm basically saying is we should further make centaurs the "fast attacks" race, by encouraging fast ranged weapons (and not xbows), UC, and combining that with a bit of Slaying from the racial-aiming-bonus-when-not-moving or the Charms school.

[jeremygurr]

I think the ammo solution we're working on will make them way better. Running out of ammo or having to be very conservative with it isn't fun. And the stamina system takes care of most of the kiting issues, so penalizing them for running around isn't necessary.

It might be good to take their ranged apts to +2 for all, so they could be ranged attack masters like minotaurs are masters of melee weapons, and the player feels like there are more options.

I'm not sure about the UC thing though. There are already several decent species for that, and flavor wise it doesn't seem to fit very well.

I'm not against boosting their charms, at least to 0, since they should be great AMs.

[jeremygurr]

Their defenses should be improved slightly too. In vanilla they are expected to use their movement speed for a defense, but that doesn't really work here. Even if they were always in escape mode, the movement penalty would get them.

Dodging and stealth don't make much sense for them, but I think I will take their armour at least up to -1.

[yrmvgh]

UC is just the one melee apt they're currently decent with. It could be switched to longswords or something, but UC's (otherwise crappy) offhand punch goes well with slaying.

not against boosting their charms they should be great AMs.

AMs use hexes, but I agree with you in spirit - something just sounds right about Centaur Skald! Hexing things and setting people on fire doesn't sound quiiiite like the noble centaur from fantasy literature, though it's a fine character option in game. Let's also make CeSk a thing!

[yrmvgh]

To clarify, I'm not suggesting we merely buff centaur for power level concerns, I'm suggesting giving them a bit more of a "thing" aside from bows. There's not a lot to "build around" like there is with many other races. So the idea was bows attack fast but don't hit very hard (slings and thowing also are pretty quick) || hooves and UC both contribute a weak-hitting bonus attack ===> slaying synergy! (whether from the stand-still racial, charms, brands, or any other source of bonus damage).

[yrmvgh]

Armour apt is probably a good idea too, since skilling armour is something you have to do in order to multiply barding + body armour, in order to make up for Deformed.

[jeremygurr]

Oh I didn't know AM depended on hexes. Shows how little I play them. Okay, I think centaurs should also be good at hexes then. They should make the best ranged attackers period.

And I think it's fair that centaurs receive a little bit of buffing, because they were heavily nerfed with the movement changes.

I'm having trouble picturing a centaur doing well with melee combat. They would probably be okay at it, and shouldn't have terrible apts or anything, but probably not particularly good at any close combat either. Their UC is already 0, which seems about right.

[Sandman25DCSS]

Have you tried Ce in CA? I suspect they can no longer kite everything for too long and will have to fight normally. If it is not the case, then we can give/increase penalties for fighting in escape mode to force player spend a turn on switching to other mode.

[Sandman25DCSS]

Ce is not boring. I tried CeHu on challenging, died to first Wyvern on D5. Escape mode didn't allow to escape it which I didn't expect. Kiting Ogre was still possible.

[jeremygurr]

any adjustments needed? I don't like the ogre kiting of course. I think higher movement penalty would take care of that. I think we lowered it while escape and power mode were the same thing, so it messed with power mode repositioning in battle. Maybe we can increase it now. I don't expect (or even necessarily want) to eliminate all possible kiting. But I definitely want to eliminate the ability of a player to kite 80% of monsters (which is probably the case here).

I will go ahead and take the movement penalty to 1.5. We can see if that's enough to eliminate centaur kiting at least. I guess I should test spriggan too.

[jeremygurr]

Oh to avoid the 1.5 movement penalty when first starting escape mode, the first movement penalty will be skipped. So switching to escape mode gives you an immediate 0.9 or whatever in any direction you start in.