Ghoul thoughts and discussion

[SageAcrin]

When I started up this run a bit ago, I was of the opinion that Ghouls were a really strong niche race.

When I ended it, I was of the opinion that they are basically only good for a challenge, and are probably overall worse than Yeek. The reasons are quite subtle, to a degree.

Let's look at the downsides, first.

A: 80% Global Speed.

This is easy to think of as a loss of damage, or versatility. This isn't really that accurate.

What it mostly means is that enemies randomly get two actions, in practice. Well, not randomly, predictably, but it's hard to predict precisely-a temporary slow or enemies having small bits of global speed can throw off your guesses.

This means that, in practice, you need to be durable enough to take two hits from any given enemy-or crowd, potentially.

This means that you are, in a sense, half your normal durability. Any attacks that two-shot you normally can double up and one-shot you. Any attacks that take four hits still mean you have to have half your life left, or you die.

The impact is variable based on how competent your enemies are-enemies that can level multiple 2HKO shots of damage against you will kill you, and those generally are competent enemies. Whereas, generally speaking, your average snake won't be notable still-if anything, your inherent advantages, as a Ghoul, will mostly counteract a normal snake.

Of course, you can also counteract this with class choices-but this limits you to a subset of classes and builds, and constantly build skills to mitigate something that isn't a problem for other people, which creates a subtle drain on your class points(usually, there's few speed boosting Generics). Otherwise, you have to constantly put up with this problem.

B: Status issues. Largely stemming from the lack of infusions, and no way to counter them.

Generally speaking, lacking infusions isn't so bad. Shielding can sort of replace Healing, and you have...arguably better escapes. Wilds are the main issue.

These status issues are worse than they look. Let's look at the base. You resist a lot of status that generally aren't major(though they don't hurt; Resisting Cripple is nice.), disease(which is nice, but not huge, again), and Stun.

Now, that Stun resist is great. You won't hear me saying anything against that. But it doesn't stop you from getting stunned until mid-game or so, when you can reliably get enough stun gear to cover it. If you're lucky, you can cover Stun pretty early. However, if you aren't, this means that you're breaking even, for the most part, early on, against Stun.

That is, for every Stun you resist, the Stun you don't will be that much more dangerous, because you can do nothing to remove it. Generally speaking, lowering the odds of a danger in a Roguelike, in exchange for making that danger more dangerous, is a trade down-you only have one life/a few lives, but enemies have many, and have many chances to make that tradeoff work against you. So, until you can stack up more Stun resist and make those odds poorer or non-existant, this is still a net loss, in my experience.

Now, what this doesn't do is cover Confusion at all. Which is also quite dangerous.

And there's more subtle issues with less common status. Slow, for example, is much more dangerous for you than most races-Slowing you below 50%(which most Slows tend to cap at, leaving you at exactly 50%, so Ghouls tend to go lower more often due to their speed base) is a massive danger for a Ghoul. Getting hit three times in a row is rarely survivable, unless you are specifically specced to wall that type of damage.

And Ghouls have no damage walling abilities inherently at all. Just more HP.

The other big issue that comes up is Silence. Silence isn't common before you get Relentless Pursuit, thankfully, but if you are hit with it before that, it's essentially a death sentence for any magical Ghoul. It seals off your runes, you see, which means that your escapes and spells are all set on cooldown. You're essentially left with Retch, Ghoulish Leap and items. Considering that magical Ghouls are some of the better ones, this is a huge issue.

Skeletons get hit by this(Most of this, really), but they have Resilient Bones. This means that poor Mindsave Skeletons can still lift Silence with Relentless Pursuit fairly reliably, and if you get hit with Silence before that, you have a better chance to survive. They also have superior defensive talents in Reassemble and Bone Shield, for waiting out a Silence-or any status. Ghouls don't have nearly as much in this regard.

The changes to runes help some, but elemental runes don't show up until L25, and are still silenceable.

So, what are the upsides?

14 Life Modifier is very interesting. +2 on the other high life races.

From what I've seen(and recall in formula, though I can't seem to find right now. If someone would like to find this for me, that'd be great.), Life Modifier gradually goes from +1 to +2.25(IIRC) per level as the game progresses-I may be recalling this wrong, I was hoping to find the code to quote.

Regardless, this means that one Life Modifier point equates to around 100 HP.

Don't just take my word for it; Ghoul Example of Archmage, Dwarf example. Both seem fairly similar on Con and Life bonuses.

What does this mean? Well, as you can see, the lower example has 1100 HP, and the higher has 1300. Around a 15% life difference. On a fairly favorable comparison. A higher life rating would mean less relative difference.

Considering that enemies get five actions to your four on base speed, in order to remotely break even on this, you'd need to at least average a 25% life gain to break even. And as mentioned before, in practice you'd often need doubled durability to really make up for it.

Of course, if you can cover the speed weakness, that's free life. But then again, if you saw an equip that -20% Global Speed for +200 Life, would you think it was a good equip? Probably not. And if you saw an equip that granted +20 for -20% Global, you'd think the coder that made it had gone mad. Yet, this is basically the tradeoff for a Ghoul at L10 or so.

Retch is certainly a good skill...but when compared to Gift of the Highborn-not necessarily that amazing of a skill-is it actually better? If you're staying in the same spot, it sure heals a lot more and it does damage to enemies, but if you're not staying in the same spot, it's much less effective.

Ghoulish Leap is a good mobility skill by any measure, but consider that it is blown out of the water by many other teleport skills due to its high CD-Many of the other skills that are comparable(Phase Door, Dimension Step, Dream Walk, Telekinetic Leap, surprisingly even Reckless Charge) have better to much better CDs of 8-15.

And Ghoul is a fairly large waste(Few people level Skeleton or Ghoul). Gnaw is sorta neat for Reavers, but very niche right now.

So, you have a skillset that's, say, as good as a Dwarf's if you're being very generous. And some life modifier. And that's what you get for your downsides, outside of a lategame Stun resistance that is nice, but ultimately not a huge lategame deal-other status tend to take the spotlight, later, for my money. Still, the Stun resistance is basically the best point.

And now, consider how favorable this comparison has been to Ghoul. Looking at, say, a Ghoul Berserker vs a normal Berserker leads to a sub-10% life gain, no way to cure that speed issue except for equipment, only Unflinching Resolve to deal with status natively(which anyone can get through an escort), etc., and the potential of Ghoul as a challenge race is clear.

The basic question I have is simple, then.

Should they be a challenge race?

I think this actually isn't entirely a meaningful question. Even if they were buffed fairly majorly, they would be a sort of challenge race, as long as they kept their intrinsic downsides. Since those downsides are quite unique, I'm not interested in lifting them.

But should they be a huge challenge race? Should they get their own achievements for clearing with them?

Or should they be improved?

In the latter case, I have the following ideas;

Ghoul race(Base statistic buffs): +20% Armor Hardiness, +1 Life Modifier.

This gives Ghouls a base statistical bonus that is nearly impossible to reproduce. Their life gain becomes closer to the theoretical 25% tradeoff on low life classes-a nice bonus, but not the major part.

The bigger thing is that it allows them a unique advantage in reducing per swing damage from enemies. Ghoul non-fighters are that much harder to kill in melee at all times, and playing around their advantage-often with skills that aren't used by mages much, and equips, like heavier armor and Stone Skin, etc.-would allow you to capitalize on this advantage.

Ghoul(Skill): Grant either +4 "flat_rate_armor", or +6% of your armor as flat_rate_armor, per level. This is armor effects against magic, essentially.

This would allow heavy armor Ghouls both some mitigation for not being able to pick up Antimagic-a notable downside Ghouls have that I haven't mentioned-and would allow all Ghouls some mitigation for attrition type skills. They would still be very vulnerable to the burst damage I mentioned-this is no security against some of the biggest flaws of Ghoul, at all-but it would help against crowds of lower damage enemies.

Both versions have advantages; The former's less specific, the latter's more heavy armor oriented and has more payoff in the later game than the former.

I'm aware that this would make Skeleton's Skeleton skill look off, however. I've had several thoughts for buffing Skeleton(the skill); Granting 4% Cold/Darkness resistance per level(Or just 6% Darkness/Cold, or 6% Darkness.) would grant symmetry, while granting +20% Blind Resistance per level would be less symmetrical, but would fix a weird issue with Skeletons where they lack a specific resistance enemy Skeletons have. In either case, this would be harmless; Skeleton(the skill) is the least used Generic skill on a race that is built around its Generic skills, and a buff would not notably impact Skeleton as a race.

Ghoulish Leap: Add -2.4 CD per level, cap at 5 CD(so enemy Ghouls don't spend 99% of their time Leaping).

This puts Ghoulish Leap more on the same lines as those mentioned mobility skills. It's really good for that, of course...but it makes sense. -2.4 caps at 8(Raw talent) or 7(Modified talent), normally. The cap of 5CD would only apply to if it used modified talent(after a catpoint or equip bonus), or if an enemy had it(which is the main reason for that).

Obviously, you could just use a 2CD reduction for 10CD at L5, too. That'd probably be good enough.

Retch: Grant a (Talent Level*5)% chance to remove any non-other negative status on undead, and remove any non-other positive status on non-undead, every turn that someone is in the Retch radius.

This suddenly grants you a more unique advantage than just regeneration replacement+damage. Enemies with buffs lose them while in Retch's radius, and you have a kind of Unflinching Resolve effect built into the race. It won't fix their status problems, but it means it isn't instant death for those that haven't found a fix.

It also means enemy Ghouls are worth mentioning now. Sort of.

Gnaw: Have a 50-50 chance to either Stun or Confuse the target for (3+TL, cap at 10) turns on hit, in addition to its current effects. Change the damage to (0.4, 1.4) WeaponTalent.

This reproduces the old effect it had of having debilitating status, albiet more randomly(this feels fitting of a gnaw, to randomly stun or confuse the target), and makes it capable of doing a normal weapon strike worth of damage at high levels. It becomes a very versatile enemy disabler that makes multiple status checks.

Now, do I think these changes will make Ghoul a good race? Actually, probably not. I think they'll still be low end, but they'll be a lot more interesting, and a very large amount less frustrating. It'll feel more like you screwed up, when you die, and not that Ghoul simply had no way to live in a situation. You'll still round a corner and die sometimes, though. It's still a Ghoul. And I think that is an intrinsic trait of Ghoul that will never go entirely away.

And I'm okay with that. I like them that way.

So yeah, this is my thoughts on Ghoul right now. They should either be accepted as a challenge race, and get a nice achievement for a clear with one, or buffed to be still kinda challenging anyways, but more interesting. I'm curious as to which people want, and if they have any suggestions along the latter lines as well.

[jotwebe]

That's some pretty good analysis there. I agree with pretty much everything, and if that isn't the ultimate mark of quality, what is?

Ghoul race(Base statistic buffs): +20% Armor Hardiness, +1 Life Modifier.

Ghoul(Skill): Grant either +4 "flat_rate_armor", or +6% of your armor as flat_rate_armor, per level. This is armor effects against magic, essentially.

Hmmm. The second suggestion seems to be an unneccessary variation on the whole armour system, which is complex enough as it is. So people get their heads around the whole Hardiness thing, and then there's this thing that ignores it entirely? I do like the first part though. More stuff could stand to modifiy Armour Hardiness.

Ghoulish Leap: Add -2.4 CD per level, cap at 5 CD(so enemy Ghouls don't spend 99% of their time Leaping).
Obviously, you could just use a 2CD reduction for 10CD at L5, too. That'd probably be good enough.

Part of what makes Ghoulish Leap great is that Ghouls really need it. And then there's it's resource-free. So I wouldn't do too much there.

Retch: Grant a (Talent Level*5)% chance to remove any non-other negative status on undead, and remove any non-other positive status on non-undead, every turn that someone is in the Retch radius.

This is pretty interesting, especially for any class with undead pets. And/or cloning abilities. I like it.

Gnaw: Have a 50-50 chance to either Stun or Confuse the target for (3+TL, cap at 10) turns on hit, in addition to its current effects. Change the damage to (0.4, 1.4) WeaponTalent./quote]
Not sure if I like the random thing. Would have to experience it action, I guess.

What about doing something more extreme? A ghoul should feel tanky but, but since the global speed makes you take difficult to predict damage spikes, actually aren't. Now I know it's a big difference, but how about replacing the global speed penalty with a movement penalty? The rest of the package would have to be nerfed a bit, but I think having movement be a relatively expensive action would give the race a unique feel. Say:

• 25% movement penalty (you'd need +33% bonus to bring your speed to normal)
• same exp penalty
• stats same as now
• remove base immunities, each TL in Ghoul talent gives 20% poison, 20% cut, 10% stun, 10% fear (max 100/100/50/50 compared to current 80/100/50/50)
• reduce ghoulish leap range by 1

[SageAcrin]

It's true that it would be easier to balance Ghoul out with lesser downsides and upsides.

On the other hand, having a more extreme set of upsides and downsides makes them more of a distinctive way to play. And I think that's really neat in a race. Only Ghoul and Yeek really do this right now.

They just...don't really have any upsides to compensate for the downsides. Yeeks have leveling rate that mitigates their HP to a degree and provides a unique advantage overall, and a set of undeniably good skills.

Ghouls just mostly have advantages and skills that ram straight into their downsides and fail to mitigate them. It feels like they need some more notable sidegrade types of advantage instead.

[Amphouse]

Agree with almost everything here, Sage, although I'm not a fan of the random aspect of gnaw and I'd like you to explain exactly what the flat_rate_armor is before I judge it. Does anything else in-game use it, currently?

Personally I'd like to see gnaw's damage boosted and have it insta-kill enemies with low(< 20%) health like swallow does, and have a ghoul appear when that happens. It's meant to be a talent that turns people into zombies and this reflects that better I think. I'd also really, really like to see cyst burst spread ghoul rot, would make ghoul reavers a lot more fun.

On an unrelated note, I saw you get a first-time achievement in chat the other day(Lv. 50 nightmare I believe) and was gonna ask you about it but got no response. Do you play with chat off? It would be nice to chat with someone who has such an in-depth knowledge of the game like you do.

[SageAcrin]

Agree with almost everything here, Sage, although I'm not a fan of the random aspect of gnaw and I'd like you to explain exactly what the flat_rate_armor is before I judge it. Does anything else in-game use it, currently?

Oh, yeah, flat_rate_armor is a Stone Warden thing.

That is how they turn their armor into spell damage reduction with Stone Fortress/Resilience of the Dwarves. It's basically spell armor that has 100% hardiness backing it up.

So, flat_rate_armor of four points would take four points off(Before critical hit multipliers) of every spell and non-physical damage effect. So it would make DoTs and damage over time status heavily impacted, and magical crits, but for the most part it wouldn't have an incredibly large effect. (Stone Warden, meanwhile, can short term buff this to upwards of 100, which is a huge amount of damage reduction, because they can convert their entire armor value into it.)

The random aspect of Gnaw is certainly not required-I thought it would make it interesting, as it would deal a unreliable but debilitating status, along with a second, less debilitating but reliable status. Just making it Stun or Confusion-or even having it try to apply both at TL5, and be random up until that-were also ideas I was thinking of.

On an unrelated note, I saw you get a first-time achievement in chat the other day(Lv. 50 nightmare I believe) and was gonna ask you about it but got no response. Do you play with chat off? It would be nice to chat with someone who has such an in-depth knowledge of the game like you do.

Aha, you saw the High Peak run for that Ghoul.

Yeah, I keep chat off...more or less. I considered turning it on late in the Nightmare run, because surely popping up with achievements like that would provoke comment, but I decided that I needed my concentration on that run above any others.

I may give turning chat on a spin some time soon, though. For now, I need a short break from ToME, since that last run was very intense.

The more or less part is that I leave achievement reports and deaths on. The former's always nice to see for me, and the latter is vaguely comforting somehow. (I can't really explain this.)

Edit:

Oh, one last point I've thought of.

Ghouls could really use a better lite for the initial dungeon. (Skeletons too, for that matter.)

The two radius lite means that they tend to have this bad habit of getting doubleturned as they take a step and either getting hit with two ranged attacks and dying, or coming up on a skeleton, who moves and hits them with Stunning Blow.

This killed an awful lot of Ghouls and was largely just RNG. I could have used Arcane Eye in my specific case, enough to avoid it, but it would have taken so much time extra that it was rather ridiculously boring.

Skeletons don't need it as much, but it wouldn't hurt.

(A suggestion Edge, I believe? made was to give undeads an infravision radius rather than starting them with a lite at all. Which isn't a bad idea.)

[HousePet]

I think Resilient Bones should be moved to Ghoul.
Skeletons currently get an excellent damage shield, status duration reduction, a healing ability and an extra life.
With the upgraded runes, Skeletons can cover curing of mental and physical via runes, and since they already have a shield and a heal, they aren't short on inscription slots.

Not sure where we could put the status duration reduction on Ghoul, but I do have idea for a passive boost for Gnaw.
Every time you make a kill you get a small heal. (cos you gnawed on the corpse)

[supermini]

Replacing the global speed penalty with a move speed penalty would make ghouls much more viable. You'd still have issues with status, but it would extend the pool of classes that work reasonably well with ghouls considerably. Off the top of my head: cursed, doomed, marauders, berserkers all have stun (and other status) resistance, so they would work quite well.

I'm not sure if it would even require a great nerf elsewhere...I suppose you could always increase the xp penalty. I don't see them overtaking dwarves and thaloren even with that buff. You still can't use infusions and infusions are superior to runes in my opinion.

[jotwebe]

Replacing the global speed penalty with a move speed penalty would make ghouls much more viable. You'd still have issues with status, but it would extend the pool of classes that work reasonably well with ghouls considerably. Off the top of my head: cursed, doomed, marauders, berserkers all have stun (and other status) resistance, so they would work quite well.

Having a broader selection of viable classes is one thing I'm hoping for. The paradox classes could also overcome it with Celerity, in a less annoying manner than with global speed.

I'm not sure if it would even require a great nerf elsewhere...I suppose you could always increase the xp penalty. I don't see them overtaking dwarves and thaloren even with that buff. You still can't use infusions and infusions are superior to runes in my opinion.

Personally I'd rather not see the xp penalty increase, to help differentiate Ghouls from Skeletons. I agree being restricted to runes is still a malus, but I've been coming across some pretty low cooldown fire and frost runes lately, so physical and mental effect removal is not much more of a problem than with infusions anymore.

[darkgod]

buffed

[SageAcrin]

I think the funny thing is, the Ghoul(skill) change there doesn't really keep them from getting double-tapped. It's a unique advantage, and powerful, but one Ghouls are uniquely ill suited for. If it went to 12% per level/40% cap, it'd be a lot more helpful for that.

Having said that, if that suggestion doesn't go through, I'm not terribly bothered. As I was saying, I'm more for the buff to give them interesting upsides to better match the strong downsides, and that's a good go at it. Less about the buff and more about making them more interesting.

[BoomFrog]

The most interesting result for ghoul would be that they are designed such that it is possible to play around the speed penalty instead of mitigating it with speedbuffs. The biggest issue is the round 1 turn loss.

My understanding is that a unbuffed ghoul will act normally 3/4 moves, but after their 4th action they lose their 5th action, then the cycle restarts. What if the wait action (and resting) put you at the top of your cycle, so you were guaranteed 4 normal actions when going down stairs or opening a door.

Maybe autoexplore could also wait after each step if you have an unusual speed so ghouls would explore at about half speed but that's fine. It would also insure characters with a speed bonus would always get a double action at the start of any fight. These things are already possible to do manually with a clock watching add-on, it would be nice to automate it.

[Kaja Rainbow]

I've been doing a run with the Wight addon race. Reason why I'm talking about it here is that I feels like it provides an interesting point of comparison to Ghouls, and because it has one of the proposed buffs (infravision).

13 base HP, base 4 infravision, poison and blind immunity, fairly minor resistances otherwise, 25% exp rate. Also, a drain aura that's fairly ineffectual as a heal but at least has a chance to put a random talent on a brief cooldown. They also get a confusion on a 30 cooldown. I haven't tried it on Nightmare, but even with the considerably worse built-in heal and slightly lower base HP, my Wight Paradox Mage was doing considerably better than my Ghoul Paradox Mage. I feel like I can attribute a lot of that to the lack of a speed penalty.

Also, the infravision makes a surprising amount of difference. It makes the Windertide Phail an even better item for the race. If undead got infravision (which does make sense thematically), let's say 4, the Windertide Phail would give them infravision range of 10. In fact, even after getting the Eldritch Pearl, I didn't use it--I felt like the Windertide Phail was still a better item due to providing additional infravision on top of my inherent infravision, not to mention precious mental status removal. I feel like I can also attribute a lot of my Wight Paradox Mage's performance to the infravision stacking.

One possibility would be making their infravision non-stacking, much like Heightened Senses, which would allow it to go higher than 4. That's if you feel being able to get 10 infravision with an early-game item, not to mention making said item nearly mandatory, is problematic. Mind, it'd still be a very good item for undead even without the infravision stacking, thanks to being one of the more reliable methods for undead of removing silence.

[Kaja Rainbow]

I just took a quick look at the new Ghoul changes on SVN. Interesting stuff. The base Ghoul Talent now, in addition to Strength and Constitution, at level 5 makes it so you never take more than 50% of your maximum life from a single attack (in other words, you just can't be one shot unless you were low on life already). Ghoulish Leap now gets a cooldown reduction with talent levels, up to 12 turns at level 5. Level 5 Retch has a 28% chance of stripping a physical effect from those standing in it--negative from undead, positive from non-undead.