Alter wormhole

[yufra]

I have been playing with the wormhole talent a bit on a temporal warden and find it a bit weird that you can enter the first wormhole but it takes two turns to return (move off the other wormhole, step back onto it). If we used findFreeGrid to move us off of the other end we could end up appearing a few tiles away from the exit if the other end is surrounded, which also feels a bit odd. So what if instead of having wormhole act as a trap which instantly triggers and move the actor that moves onto it we have the actor(s) switch places when the wormhole's turn comes around? The wormhole already has an act function in order to count down its duration. This removes the need to use the findFreeGrid completely and could make for interesting oscillating strategies (turn 1 at point A, turn 2 at point B, turn 3 at point A...). This avoids the zero-energy movement that the original wormholes-as-stairs concept had, and still should allow the use of wormhole both aggressively (teleport enemy away) and defensively (teleport self away). One "issue" would be the wormhole's speed, since a fast actor could theoretically move onto the tile and out again before the wormhole's turn comes around (think snakes, midge, bees, etc). I don't think that is a serious problem though, and might even make sense thematically as the actor moves too quickly for the wormhole to assert itself. Thoughts?

[edge2054]

It's an interesting idea and I'll give it some thought.

I'm running 4/5 Wormhole on my Warden and have found it very useful as is. I also like to drop it underneath me and put the exit a few steps up a hallway and then step back. Basically creating a path for the monsters to approach but never quite reach me

Which may be overpowered...

But what if you drop the wormhole at your feet and then it moves you before you get to go again? I guess we could prevent that but it might also be useful (and also might turn it into a one turn escape method which I'm not sure I like).

[yufra]

I'm running 4/5 Wormhole on my Warden and have found it very useful as is. I also like to drop it underneath me and put the exit a few steps up a hallway and then step back. Basically creating a path for the monsters to approach but never quite reach me

Hehe, that does sound fun.

But what if you drop the wormhole at your feet and then it moves you before you get to go again? I guess we could prevent that but it might also be useful (and also might turn it into a one turn escape method which I'm not sure I like).

It is true, my suggestion would allow wormhole to be used as a one turn escape. If you don't like that you could force a minimum range of 1 to drop the wormhole. Is there a particular reason you don't like that idea, though? It is true Chronomancers already have Backtrace as an escape talent, not to mention the other time altering escapes, but this is wormhole has a duration to it and thus isn't quite as effective an escape talent as say PD/TP/PT since a beasty can follow you in. An interesting point there is that the "more intelligent" movement AIs like A* will fail to recognize that the wormhole is the most direct route to you, though. Hmm...

[edge2054]

Mostly that it's a targeted Phase Door at level 4 that doesn't respect LOS. The fact that it takes two turns to pull off makes me feel that that's okay balance wise.

[yufra]

Oh, and the other difference between this wormhole and a controlled PD is that the teleportation is not instantaneous. I would have to actually test it to see how the delay varies, but I think the initial one could be a turn.