Remove saving grace

This feature was no longer fulfilling its intended purpose: the
issue is that when players are aware of it, instead of creating
interesting stories, it becomes a resource the player can rely on.

Alternative mitigation for some "unfair" early-game deaths has been
added (such as the warning shot for early-game attack wands and the
ability of iron shoes to protect against certain early traps), and
the warning shot in particular can create interesting gameplay
moments and stories of its own, especially when saving grace is
*not* present (discovering that a monster has a wand of fire and
can oneshot you is an interesting emergency situation, but less
scary if you know that its first attempt to oneshot you will fail).

The feature was also proving quite hard to code correctly, because
there are numerous cases that it "obviously" shouldn't affect
(most notably beheading due to Vorpal Blade, but also things like
purple worm digestion) which would need to be special-cased, and
because there are grey areas like wand zap bounces (which might or
might not be an intentional attempt by the player to hit themself
with the bounce) and damage from traps. Removing it saves the need
to work out, for every new damage source, whether and when saving
grace should interact with it.

Breaks save compatibility.
This commit is contained in:
Alex Smith
2026-05-02 10:25:39 +01:00
parent b8c1a5dae9
commit ec7781b996
10 changed files with 1 additions and 97 deletions
-8
View File
@@ -2219,9 +2219,6 @@ uncursed genocide while hallucinating deliberately mis-reports hero's role as
target but was also inappropriately showing it to livelog/#chronicle
livelog/#chronicle for bribing a demon lord reported random monster and
currency if hero was hallucinating
livelog/#chronicle for saving-grace: if saving-grace prevents hero's death,
report it [at present, it uses the livelog classification for breaking
a conduct]
naming a type of item, unnaming it (with name of <space>), naming it again
(new name or re-use of old one), then unnaming it again would issue
impossible: "named object not in disco"
@@ -2904,11 +2901,6 @@ pyrolisk eggs explode when broken
pauper-option to start the character with no possessions
wand of secret door detection, spell of detect unseen, and wizard mode ^E now
flash the cursor at each location where detection finds something
saving-grace: once per game if receiving a killing blow from full or nearly
full HP, survive with 1 HP
enlightenment/attribute disclosure for saving-grace: include a line for have
or haven't been saved (game in progress) or did or didn't get saved
(game over) via saving-grace
'selectsaved' lists "name-role-race-gend-algn" instead of just "name" in the
menu of save files available to be restored
'selectsaved' prefixes "name-role-race-gend-algn" with "- " for normal play,