"You have nothing to identify."

[Magnate]

This happened to me yesterday:

You have nothing to identify.
The hill orc hits you.

... and I thought, hey, wait a minute, surely I shouldn't waste a turn if there isn't anything to ID. It seems to me the same as "There's a wall in the way!" and "You are too afraid to attack the foo!", neither of which wastes a turn. But "You have nothing to identify" (and also "you have nothing to enchant") do.

I've looked at the code, and it's non-trivial to change this, so I thought I'd see what everybody else thought before embarking on it.

On a related note, cancelling out of item selection should also not take a turn, but as far as I can tell, it does. I've never had hard proof of this though, so I may have failed to understand the code. IMO neither aborting the ID at item selection nor having nothing to ID should cost you a turn.

[Nolendil]

I didn't know that it used one turn and I share your point of view.
That's not a big deal if you can't fix it as I only use Id when I'm safe.

[will_asher]

It seems to me that it would be easy to make it not take a turn, just change the part in do_cmd_read_scroll() so that "take a turn" comes after the reading of the scroll, like this:

	/* Read the scroll */
	used_up = use_object(o_ptr, &ident);

	/* Take a turn */
	if (used_up) p_ptr->energy_use = 100;

Did I miss something?

[Zikke]

I agree that not IDing something shouldn't take a turn. It doesn't even consume the charge on the staff or whatever.

[Magnate]

Did I miss something?

Yeah - spells, staves, rods, artifact activation.

I think it needs some surgery on get_item.

[Marble Dice]

So the other day I was unnecessarily reading Identify scrolls while standing adjacent to a horde of hostile orcs.

Fixed that for you. If that's not good game testing, I don't know what is.

I concur, this would be a good change.

[PowerDiver]

This happened to me yesterday:

You have nothing to identify.
The hill orc hits you.

... and I thought, hey, wait a minute, surely I shouldn't waste a turn if there isn't anything to ID. It seems to me the same as "There's a wall in the way!" and "You are too afraid to attack the foo!", neither of which wastes a turn. But "You have nothing to identify" (and also "you have nothing to enchant") do.

I've looked at the code, and it's non-trivial to change this, so I thought I'd see what everybody else thought before embarking on it.

On a related note, cancelling out of item selection should also not take a turn, but as far as I can tell, it does. I've never had hard proof of this though, so I may have failed to understand the code. IMO neither aborting the ID at item selection nor having nothing to ID should cost you a turn.

The interpretation is that you take a turn reading the scroll, and then there is nothing for the magic to act upon. Like zapping a rod of drain life at an adjacent wall. Just be glad the scroll doesn't disintegrate the way they usually do when you read them!

Consider the case when you read an unaware scroll of banishment and quit out without selecting a monster. You gain awareness. Surely that should cost a turn.

It used to be that a failed attack due to fear cost you a turn. I requested a change, but did not know that made it into dev yet.

Canceling item selection does not take a turn, and I don't remember that it ever did.

[PowerDiver]

I've looked at the code, and it's non-trivial to change this, so I thought I'd see what everybody else thought before embarking on it.

If you want to make this impossible, the right approach is to modify the selection hook so that when you press 'r', the code checks your surroundings for something to be identified [should be a preexisting function for that], and if there is nothing to identify the scroll of identify is not considered a valid selection.

It might only be a few lines of code, or it might be messy, I don't know. It might also be confusing to people who wonder why they cannot figure out how to read their identify scroll.

[PowerDiver]

Canceling item selection does not take a turn, and I don't remember that it ever did.

I now think I misunderstood you. Pressing 'r' and then canceling does not cost a turn. If you 'r' on a scroll of identify, and then cancel before selecting the item to id, that does cost a turn.

[Donald Jonker]

The interpretation is that you take a turn reading the scroll, and then there is nothing for the magic to act upon. Like zapping a rod of drain life at an adjacent wall. Just be glad the scroll doesn't disintegrate the way they usually do when you read them!

This seems inconsistent. Either the magic is consumed or it isn't. You read the scroll or you don't. Another interpretation of events would be that your player checks your inventory for unID'd items prior to actually reading the scroll. Then the non-use of a turn would make sense.

Consider the case when you read an unaware scroll of banishment and quit out without selecting a monster. You gain awareness. Surely that should cost a turn.

You could make a special case of awareness-gaining taking a turn. But there doesn't seem to be any good reason why gaining awareness on ?phase should consume a scroll and gaining it on ?ID shouldn't. I don't know that there is a consistent, expedient way of handling it. Maybe force the player to choose an inventory item to ID/monster to banish in order to gain awareness. In the latter case it would be dangerous/wasteful, however.

[camlost]

Consider the case when you read an unaware scroll of banishment and quit out without selecting a monster. You gain awareness. Surely that should cost a turn.

Yeah, if you read an unidentified scroll, it should always costs a turn, but if there's nothing to act on (and you can know this), there's no reason to cost a turn.

Of course, it's not unreasonable to argue that canceling out of a unidentified scroll might use up the scroll *and* a turn.

[Pete Mack]

Donald -- your proposal will also mean that identifying some objects will take 0 turns:

> read an unided scroll.
> scroll announces itself as Identify (or banishment, etc.)
> don't actually use the scroll.
0 time, but scroll is now ided. Cool!

Edit: Oops, Eddie beat me too it.

[Magnate]

I now think I misunderstood you. Pressing 'r' and then canceling does not cost a turn. If you 'r' on a scroll of identify, and then cancel before selecting the item to id, that does cost a turn.

Does it? Ok then - at least that's consistent with having nothing to ID. IMO neither should cost a turn (like walking into a wall or trying to melee while afraid), but I can live with it.

[Donald Jonker]

Donald -- your proposal will also mean that identifying some objects will take 0 turns:

I suggested forcing a target-choice on appropriate scrolls in order to gain awareness in order to eliminate that inconsistency (it would also mean gaining awareness would always cost the scroll in question, regardless of type). You would probably have to allow enchant weapon/armor to choose any object in order for things not to become totally transparent, however. Make awareness-gaining take 1 turn in all cases. But this might not be all that attractive an option in the case of (mass) banishment, especially in ironman games, where ID is rare.