merging mage and priest books

[Daniel Fishman]

I can't say I like the sound of this.

Books are pretty easy to ignore. Sure it's annoying to see a useless book drop instead of something nice, but since when is Angband concerned about annoying players?

This is my feeling too - it's not as if books need IDing to know whether they're worth picking up or not, even.

[PaulBlay]

It's nice to see all this reasoned debate going on. I think there are probably enough thoughts in the air for people to have a feel as to whether they are going to be 'for' or 'against' this one so I would like to encourage everybody who has posted in this thread to vote on

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F029 +1 "Merge mage and priest books"

IMO mage and priest books should be merged, so that would be a side effect. I understand that this is radical and has never been discussed, but at least in V it is clear to me that it would improve the game.
V3 from PowerDiver(Originator)
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(I'll transfer all valid votes made to the voting thread)

[buzzkill]

This is my feeling too - it's not as if books need IDing to know whether they're worth picking up or not, even.

... and even the most primitive squelch system can deal with this.

[PowerDiver]

It's nice to see all this reasoned debate going on. I think there are probably enough thoughts in the air for people to have a feel as to whether they are going to be 'for' or 'against' this one so I would like to encourage everybody who has posted in this thread to vote on

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F029 +1 "Merge mage and priest books"

You are crazy. It is my proposal, and *I* don't have enough information to vote on it! Not only that, it is not specific enough. When someone comes up with an approximation to which spells will be in which combined books, then it will be worth a vote. I am sure that I would not be in favor of every method of merging.

[Elsairon]

I think changing a couple of the deep/rare books to artifacts would solve this for those books. (assuming Artifacts are not considered TMJ.)

[Nick]

You are crazy. It is my proposal, and *I* don't have enough information to vote on it! Not only that, it is not specific enough. When someone comes up with an approximation to which spells will be in which combined books, then it will be worth a vote. I am sure that I would not be in favor of every method of merging.

It seems to me to be entirely in the tradition of modern democracy

[PowerDiver]

I think changing a couple of the deep/rare books to artifacts would solve this for those books. (assuming Artifacts are not considered TMJ.)

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that at least I would not encounter another dungeon spell book every 1K game turns in the depths. BUT -- Do you really want to have artifacts that you know are unusable to more than half the classes? If artifacts are supposed to be truly special, that seems like a bad idea to me.

As a different approach to TMJ, perhaps you should be able to rip spellbooks apart to get a set of scrolls. That might be unbalancing, but at least then surplus spellbooks could be useful to everybody. You would need to change pricing if you did that, by a lot, and 300 point heal would have to be in a dungeon-only book.

[Magnate]

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that at least I would not encounter another dungeon spell book every 1K game turns in the depths. BUT -- Do you really want to have artifacts that you know are unusable to more than half the classes? If artifacts are supposed to be truly special, that seems like a bad idea to me.

Nah. Artifacts are unique, but nobody claimed they are all useful to everybody. Even if you found them all at precisely optimal depths during your game, there are too many for them all to be useful (four low level sets of gauntlets, for example). Given that you find very few and at wildly suboptimal depths, it's a fantasy to try and make them all useful to everyone. All you can do is nudge the likelihood a bit. IMO the disappointment of finding another unusable artifact is more than outweighed by the benefit of only finding junk dungeon spellbooks once. But the real problem with this suggestion is that casters might have to spend much longer scumming for their critical book.

As a different approach to TMJ, perhaps you should be able to rip spellbooks apart to get a set of scrolls. That might be unbalancing, but at least then surplus spellbooks could be useful to everybody. You would need to change pricing if you did that, by a lot, and 300 point heal would have to be in a dungeon-only book.

I like this idea. In an emergency, a mana-less caster could rip apart one of his *own* books to get an escape scroll ...

[Mondkalb]

...
As a different approach to TMJ, perhaps you should be able to rip spellbooks apart to get a set of scrolls. That might be unbalancing, but at least then surplus spellbooks could be useful to everybody. You would need to change pricing if you did that, by a lot, and 300 point heal would have to be in a dungeon-only book.

This is an appealing idea, making even the opposite spellbooks useful or for the warrior spellbooks helpful in the first place..

[Jungle_Boy]

I think before this gets attempted that someone should go through the priest spell set and clean that up. There does not need to be 6 different bless spells that just have different durations and some spells are duplicated. I would like to see more differences between the schools rather than merging them but I agree that it is annoying to find a deep prayer book when you are desparate for a deep mage book. Perhaps you can keep the first 4 books separate but merge the dungeon books?

[TJS]

How's about having it so anyone can use any books, but have a penalty for using the wrong type?

So mages could pray using priest books (using the wisdom stat too), but the spell has a greater chance of failing, uses more mana and is only available to higher level characters. It would make the books a bit more useful and give non priests/paladins more reason to collect potions of wisdom.

Also I've always thought it would be good to let warriors use spell/prayer books too, but they only get very limited mana and have much less chance of casting a spell correctly.

[PowerDiver]

I think before this gets attempted that someone should go through the priest spell set and clean that up.

This, by which I mean merging, is a step in that direction IMO. I'd guess someone once thought there were not enough priest spells, and so padded them [bless etc] and split some [dTraps + dStairs]. When things are shrunk to fit, it will be even more obvious.

I guess I should have been more specific about how I see things merging. I envision a "detect monsters" spell, which for mages detects visible, and for priests detects evil. Same name, slightly different effect based upon class, and the difference noted in the help area. Phase and portal could be combined into "teleport short" with the radius mentioned in the help area. Etc.

I also think some mage spells should be priest spells, but that is a different discussion.

[PaulBlay]

Priests are getting their spells from their gods anyway so why do they have books in the first place?

[Mondkalb]

Priests are getting their spells from their gods anyway so why do they have books in the first place?

For equity - just to fill up space in the inventory.

[buzzkill]

How's about having it so anyone can use any books, but have a penalty for using the wrong type?

So mages could pray using priest books (using the wisdom stat too), but the spell has a greater chance of failing, uses more mana and is only available to higher level characters. It would make the books a bit more useful and give non priests/paladins more reason to collect potions of wisdom.

I'm not advocating this, but I like the concept, at least I like it better than that of tearing out pages to 'create' scrolls. It could limited to only one casting per spellbook, and then, succeed or fail, the book is destroyed, and even success may produce unpredictable (likely negative) side effects. So, in effect, finding an out of class spellbook gives the player a chance to cast one spell from it. The way I figure, it's (slightly) better than nothing. Not un-balancing and not worth buying the books to use in such a manner.