ahhhh… is this for serious? I don’t love that.
I think (based on the commit message) that the main points were
- to be not spoilery (attacks of opportunity were ad hoc and surprising) and
- to decrease the difference, when trying to run away, between being one square from a monster versus two.
But yes this was a surprise to me too.
It seems like it also make mobs much more dangerous since they can close the distance quicker. At least with AoO you only had a problem with one monster.
Commit Text
Not to be confused with the similar-sounding apparel beloved of
certain players, ‘hot pursuit’ is a new mechanic to encourage fun
lines of play.A Brief History
When in a very nasty spot (low on HP and next to a tough foe), players
have historically been able to ‘pillar-dance’, wasting time (both the
game’s and theirs) to get time to heal. This is both unfun to do and
narratively unsatisfying. When in a tight spot, players should pull out a
cool trick (a spell, god ability or consumable), fight, and/or die!We first tried to fix this by adding ‘random energy’, which unfortunately
fixed nothing. Then we tried ‘attacks of opportunity’, letting monsters
attack when the player moved away. These worked somewhat, but had several
disadvantages, including:
- They were very complex. The list of special cases for which monsters
could attack the player and when was very long, and it was hard for
players to track.- They were very binary. If a monster was next to the player, danger was
vastly higher than if they were 2 tiles away. If a monster was as fast
as the player, danger was vastly higher than if they were just a bit
slower.- They had odd and unintuitive interactions with polearms (which didn’t
launch reaching attacks of opportunity).- They were frustrating. Players felt profoundly unhappy when they were
killed by attacks of opportunity - it felt like the game becoming more
hostile.So, let’s try something a bit gentler
Hot Pursuit
When the player moves away from a monster, if that monster then moves
toward the player, they have a one in ten chance of putting on a ‘burst
of speed’, moving ~25% faster (move delay 0.8) for the next ~20ish turns.
This speed bonus affects the move that triggered it, so players walking
away from an adjacent yak have a 2% chance of getting a surprise bap
from them.The intent is to again discourage ‘pillar-dancing’ and other fiddly
stalling tactics (e.g. running across the entire level to get to stairs)
in a ‘softer’, fuzzier way, without the hard binaries of attacks of
opportunity.Wu Jian martial manuevers and Serpent’s Lash again give immunity to
this effect.Let’s try it out!
This sounded brutal until I realized AoOs are gone. I don’t play trunk normally, but I might try it out as this is hard to get a feel for from text alone. Seems neat, but very curious how it actually plays out in-game.
Tried it out over lunch and first impression is quite positive. It’s clear what’s going on in-game and escape seems more interesting than it did before. I never minded AoO, but not having them feels very freeing.
Well it’s been reverted, anyway. In its place they’ve brought back AoO and random energy (but with some tweaks). I wonder where this will end up.