suggestion: hallucinating players should be able to properly recognize telepathically linked allies (and sacrifice monsters)

[MattWeiner]

Pretty much as described in the title. Since telepathy from a potion or charm currently overrides hallucination (to the extent of keeping the proper monster character although not its statuses), it seems like it would make sense that telepathic links to particular monsters should override hallucination for them and for them only. So if you were telepathically linked to a monkey ally, you would know that that monkey was your ally even when hallucinating. This might also be extended to other telepathic links to single monsters like monsters marked for sacrifice and entranced monsters.

[zenzombie]

Hey, thanks for the suggestion! It’s a cool idea and definitely makes sense thematically, but I’m leaning against it. Hallucination is a tricky status effect, and the uncertainty it brings is intentional. If it were too easy to work around, it might lose that element of challenge, especially for ally builds and the sacrifice altar puzzle. The tension of deciding whether to quaff that unknown potion would be reduced.

Also, hallucination is already kind of niche—there’s no real offensive or defensive use for it—so I’m hesitant to weaken it further.

We could think of the hallucination potion as containing an extremely powerful magical concoction that affects the brain in ways we don’t fully understand, overriding even telepathy. The effect can be fully countered with a life potion, though, which seems like a fair way to handle the situation.

[tmewett]

Hmm, it's just there's an inconsistency between telepathy caused by potion and the telepathic link caused by ally relationship. But if you think it would weaken it too much then we can leave it

[zenzombie]

I don't feel strongly, but I think it would weaken hallucination considerably when you have an ally. Establishing the telepathic link is fairly easy and because it's permanent (unlike a telepathy potion), it would likewise permanently reduce the risk to use-id hallucination, knowing that it won't effect your allies.

[MattWeiner]

My take on it is that I don't think it would affect the use-ID game that much. I see the risks of hallucination as being more "You don't know whether you're about to attack an acid blob, a rat, or an ogre" more than not knowing where your allies are (especially since hallucination won't allow you to attack your allies). Also the risk of use-IDing potions for an ally build is far more from confusion than from hallucination IMO, since under hallucination your allies will still protect you but with confusion they can wipe each other out. For similar reasons I'm more likely to try un-IDed potions on levels that are mostly clear, where hallucination is mostly just annoying.

Hallucination's niche status is another issue... IMO there's an issue where hallucination is mostly just annoying with a few cases where it can really mess with you, and the game has addressed this by making the potion last a very long time which makes it annoying longer. I kind of like the gBrogue approach of combining hallucination and discord, which makes hallucination potions powerful to throw, and also means you can't just let your allies fight toads (and would also bring back the risk of drinking an unIDed hallucination potion with an ally build). Though a cloud of discord gas is probably too powerful.

[tmewett]

I agree with Matt that hallucination's impact on enemy ID seems more significant than disambiguating allies from enemies. I also personally don't care all that much about preserving this aspect of hallucination's risk anyway, it's always been an unpopular potion.

So I'd support us trying this, if someone cared enough to implement it

[zenzombie]

Fair enough. I'm supportive as well.