A first look at coglin Gizmos

The common Gizmo traits look generally fine. I like that rCorr and rPois have been put together as a package. I feel like rElec is weaker than the others, but that can wash out easily enough.

  • Regen + RegenMP looks fun
  • Rampage + Acrobat looks very fun
  • Gadgeteer (30% faster evocable recharge rate and 30% chance not to consume a wand charge on firing) looks very fun
  • Repel Missiles + Clarity looks a bit weird. I mean sure it is protection against specific attacks, but how should I understand the flavour? It’s also not reasonably possible to lean into this with the character. What are you gonna do, sack your Will?
  • ManaRev is potentially interesting, especially if you can get spirit shield, but I suspect ManaRegen++ isn’t nearly enough for it to feel good. I’d probably feel like it’s good on some characters if it increases mana by 2 every turn whilst fully revved up. For comparison: there’s an item in bcrawl that grants +1 mp / turn and its only downside is ‘spells cost +2 mp’ and that’s good but not game-breaking, and if I have high regen I like to spend a lot of time running away or casting spells, both of which would un-revv the coglin.
  • AutoDazzle will be very cool for ranged coglin, but I suspect it would lead to better game design if it also triggers for attacks that hit your AC. Randomly generated racial features that are only relevant to some playstyles have a tendency to feel either too strong or too weak.
  • ParryRev sounds trash, and I’m not sure I’d ever experiment with it

As some further suggestions for the devs:

I’d consider adding some options that empower spell-casting and throwing, two things coglins currently have no reason to do. Though you might either have to make them very strong, or nudge some of the throwing&magic aptitudes up for it to feel not-bad.

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