confusion too deadly?

[teachu2die]

i've lost a few characters recently to confusion, in situations where the effect possibly should not have been so lethal. it seems to have gotten MUCH deadlier in the latest beta. in normal bands, you have healing potions that remove confusion. in previous tome4 betas, you had healing potions that were at least guaranteed to work, so you could often heal yourself until the confusion's duration was up.
now you have runes/infusions, which, in many ways are much more powerful than potions or scrolls were previously, they do NOT have a 100% success rate while confused.

it seems to me that confusion is now almost as deadly as stun was previously. is this a good thing? or is confusion too dangerous now? what could be done to minimize confusion's lethality without trivializing its effects?
brainstorming some possibilities:
A) have confusion resistance also reduce the duration of confusion.
B) increase the availability of confusion resistance (maybe via a ring or amulet that grants 50% or more resist)
C) infusions work while confused (but not runes)

one or more of these might help the situation...but there may well be a better solution. anyone have any ideas?

[edge2054]

I knew this thread was coming as soon as stun got nerfed.


Anyway I think infusion of the wild at least should be usable with 100% chance of success while confused so you can clear the confusion effect.

[Lailoken]

Ya, currently my best solution for confusion has been to never be close to dieing when there are confusers around. Not that that is easy. When I get confused I just keep trying to put up a shield until the effects wear off. With pumped con and health talents it seems to work ok so far. Of course I haven't been confused anywhere in the east yet...

[Dervis]

I knew this thread was coming as soon as stun got nerfed.


Anyway I think infusion of the wild at least should be usable with 100% chance of success while confused so you can clear the confusion effect.

I was going to start this thread myself a way back, but I thought at best we'd just go spiraling down into nerfing everything that might get players killed.

I'd probably find it better to just add confusion removal to free action infusions and make those work all the time.

[PowerWyrm]

It just sounds to me like a joke from old roguelike days where you had a spell of Remove Confusion which of course was never castable (or a scroll of remove blindness)...
Potions of free action used to remove confusion no? Then I'm also in favor of making free action infusions work while confused to remove the effect.

[Dervis]

What about the old potion of remove paralysis. That one was also a winner :p.

[Grey]

It seems sensible to me that infusions should be usable whilst confused, which would give one access to healing, curing and a few other handy effects.

[darkgod]

Before the change potions where also affected by confusion BTW

[teachu2die]

Before the change potions where also affected by confusion BTW

huh! i guess i must have been exceedingly lucky to have never failed to use a potion while confused (at least in a memorably dangerous situation).
as i said, maybe everything is fine as is. definitey don't want to go down the nerf-everything-that's-dangerous route. at the same time, two of my recent deaths were quite frustrating - these were situations my characters were fairly well prepared for (pack of snow giants and the minotaur, i even had 45% confusion resist with one of the characters) but once i got confused, there wasn't much i could have done to save myself. maybe im just belllyachin' tho

[yufra]

Confusion is one of those effects that already has a graduation. The "power" of confusion dictates what percentage chance you have at failing an action and losing a turn. The current implementation of confusion resistance is a binary check, though. When hit with confusion you check confusion resistance and you either are confused at full power or you are not.

I am not sure that changing this binary check to a power reduction (like damage resistance) is actually nerfing, though. What if confusion resistance of 50% did not shrug the confusion effect 50% of the time, but simply reduced the power of every confusion effect by 50%? The snow giant's confusion has a 70% chance of failing any action, so 50% resistance drops that down to 35%. Rather than nerfing confusion this change would make it something that a player deals with more frequently but to a lesser degree, emphasizing an average effect rather than the two extremes (no confusion and powerful confusion).

You could still shrug the effect with a high mental save (I think).