Scroll of Brand Armour?

Back Room Game Design Discussion
1

One of my favorite things in the game is rolling scrolls of brand weapon. Why is there no scroll that picks from a pool of available egos for armour? Being able to more consistently get things like hurling or flying would be pretty fun.

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2

I think historically the reason was that some egos (notably speed) were much better than others. But now that speed is gone yes I’d say this makes sense.

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3

Should you be able to brand dragon scales and/or crystal plate then?

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Crystal plate at least I’d say yes; after all, the game lets you brand giant spiked clubs.

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https://github.com/crawl/crawl/wiki/Won’t-Do-(2024)#brand-armour-scrolls

Brand Armour scrolls

  • We don’t really have that many armour brands that actually do anything beyond fill a gap in one’s defences, so using it to reroll body armour brands to cover whatever one’s missing after earlygame is mostly just tedium for a flat player strength boost. It’d also defeat the purpose of the ponderous ego rarely appearing with extra high enchantment.
    • (Most armour brands are very boring in the first place, compared to weapon brands or jewellery choices; bringing them to more common attention would only exacerbate this.)
  • If it could brand aux slots, it’d be much closer to free benefits than the choice of branding a weapon and having to stick with a given brand; many 3-rune games are won with unbranded aux slots as is. If it couldn’t, it would be a noticeable piece of confusion between it and scrolls of enchant armour working on all types of armour.

(though there are a small selection of more interesting armour brands added since this was written)

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6

Okay I agree that one shouldn’t be able to rebrand from ponderous; that would be too strong.

7

Hey, this may certainly not make it into the game, but you inspired me to create a portal to do just that. If you are comfortable reading C code enough to ensure for yourself that it is safe to run, you can check out the branch at: GitHub - robbiemu/crawl at forge.

the resonance forge portal can be forced to spawn in wiz mode:

  • drop to dlua repl (&, ctl-T) and enter crawl.mpr(resonance_forge_configure_portal())
  • place the portal: (&, L) and enter resonance_forge_portal_entry

its functional, and rather fun, but be ware, it is dangerous. In fact, it is varied, complex and fun I’d say, too.

It may spawn, but need not I think, anywhere from D:5-15.

I think it is worth noting that you dont know me so you should really be comfortable looking at the c files (the lua is properly sandboxed in the game so you dont need to read that part , I would think, to ensure the safety, just the C – that allows you to avoid reading too much spoiler)

Happy holidays!

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8

I’ve actually been thinking about this myself recently. Ignoring for just a moment what is actually good or strong, I find some egos really interesting and would love ways of experiencing more of them. Things like rampaging, reflection, hurling, harm, shadows, and pretty much everything found on orbs are things that notably change my behavior in the game. Anything that makes me approach situations differently are great, and sometimes I’ll get to Zot having found one or none of these.

I agree that the current roster of armor brands isn’t big enough to be worth this scroll existing (thanks for the “won’t do” reference @rypofalem), but perhaps that speaks to the need for some more interesting egos for armor? Branch has some of the spell school enhancing egos showing up on aux armor, like earth on boots and air on capes.

And the idea that some egos are stronger than others is perhaps just something that gets smoothed out in the odds of getting each ego. If archmagi is stronger than a single pip of cold resistance, make it less likely. (though for the pure fun of it I’d prefer if none of the resistances showed up from this scroll, since the behavior changing ones are more interesting to engage with)

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9

Okay, so thinking about this overnight I’m increasingly intrigued by the idea of having many more armor egos. I made it it’s own post so as to not hijack this one, but it’s here if anyone is curious to take a look. I will likely pursue making some of these if there is interest.

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