On less used spells

[bebo]

I was wondering how many actually use spells like

- polymorph
- wonder
- sleep monster
- confuse monster

except in very limited circumstances (like a low lvl char being followed by a horde of low level mosters in a corridor) i seem to never find any uses for them; any tips & tricks i haven't figured out yet?

i see how the "mass" spells could be more useful, the question being though if they have the same (very low) success rates of their earlier level counterparts;

as a side note i'd like to suggest pureley as a food for thought exercise the possibility of substituting one of these spells with a new one:

- same effect as rod of probing, possibly more powerful (ie gives more info)
- affects only ONE targeted monster
- multiple uses give additional info (up to a limit of course)
- relatively high level, mana cost and failure rate

it could be a new interesting type of spell;

probably though it might be way too unbalancing and powerful.

thoughts?

[Mondkalb]

I use wands of sleep/slow/confuse quite often as a low level char against orcs and such, if I get swarmed by them.
Can't remember that I actually have used one of the spells.

[tigpup]

An early find of wand of wonder can be useful to take out Smeagol and other low uniques before a good weapon is found.

Never used any of those spells.

-Neil

[Big Al]

I was wondering how many actually use spells like

- polymorph
- wonder
- sleep monster
- confuse monster

except in very limited circumstances (like a low lvl char being followed by a horde of low level mosters in a corridor) i seem to never find any uses for them; any tips & tricks i haven't figured out yet?

i see how the "mass" spells could be more useful, the question being though if they have the same (very low) success rates of their earlier level counterparts;

I've found them useful only at lower levels, but not of so little use that taking them out would be a good idea. I think I'd use them a lot more if uniques weren't immune to confusion, etc. Those are the monsters that would be most useful to use them against and it isn't allowed.

as a side note i'd like to suggest pureley as a food for thought exercise the possibility of substituting one of these spells with a new one:

- same effect as rod of probing, possibly more powerful (ie gives more info)
- affects only ONE targeted monster
- multiple uses give additional info (up to a limit of course)
- relatively high level, mana cost and failure rate

it could be a new interesting type of spell;

probably though it might be way too unbalancing and powerful.

thoughts?

Priests already have a probing spell in Godly Insights. I think (but might be wrong) that probing (spell and rod) has been changed in the lasted dev version to reveal all info, including spells, breaths, attacks, etc. Probing has never really seemed to useful to me.

[bebo]

wonder could probably be tweaked to have a lot less possible effects, ranging from very bad to very good, with the current base idea that as char level rises the worst effects become less and less likely;

thus it would become useful throuout the whole game, increasing in power proportionally with the increase in character level (would have to increase also the eventual damage of some spells based on char lvl, but i think this is already done);

at the moment the main problem with it is that it has too many different effects, and often most of them aren't that useful in a given situation.

any thoughts? reducing the possible effects to, i don't know, 10, with the following scheme could result in more usage of the spell:

1 very bad - for ex. haste all visible monster
2 bad - for ex. heal monster and aggravate monsters
4 average
2 good
1 very good - for ex. teleport other

[Zikke]

I use polymorph at low levels when I come across a jelly or colossus or slow golem that I don't want to (or can't) kill without wasting a lot of ammo or time.

Otherwise, I don't use any of these spells.

[camlost]

Yes, in variants

I've used all of these spells ... in Sangband (well, not so much with sleep).

Confusing is amazing, polymorph is for dealing with obnoxious monster (jellies), wonder is *amazing* (and scales very well with level), sleep I don't use too much, but I could see it being useful to a roguish character.

All you have to do with confuse is make sure it scales appropriately with level. Polymorph's usefulness is limited in scope, but it still needs a decent chance of success. Wonder needs to improve with level as well (both fewer unpleasant side-effects as they are deadly and better damage/effects).

[bebo]

simply making them scale with level and thus giving them higher success rates is actually a pretty good idea, simple and elegant, and probably easy to implement, though hard to balance correctly - there is the risk of them becoming overpowered i think. I mantain my position on wonder though - too many possible effects

[RogerN]

I'm also a big fan of these spells in Sangband. The spells are cheaper (in terms of mana cost) and they work more often.

It's extremely rare that I use spells for confuse/sleep in Vanilla. The cost is too high, and confusion in particular never seems to work against anything worth confusing.