feature discussion - halve mage damage mana

[PowerDiver]

I know that some day mage spells will be overhauled, but until then I suggest a band-aid.

The main problem is that mages cannot kill any strong monsters with spells. Consider a CL 40 mage with max int and MB6. He has about 300+ mana, and can do about 8 points of damage per mana. If the opp has more than 3000 hp, even if the mage casts no other spells but damage, he simply cannot kill it. The important foes all have over 3000 hp. OTOH, a suitable stack of branded ammo even hitting only half the time can kill anything susceptible to the brand. So mages play as archers.

I don't know much about mages, playing them only rarely, so I don't want to suggest tweaking one thing versus another. I suppose the relative strengths of the various spells, and the time to kill things using spells, has been balanced by people with better understanding than I have. But it is clear to me that mages need to be able to do more total damage.

I wouldn't muck with magic missile or lightning beam, but I think it would help to cut the mana cost of every other attack spell in half. Nothing changes relatively except that in a long fight the mage can do twice as much total damage, and might actually be able to kill tough uniques and wyrms using magic.

I'm not suggesting this as a long term solution, but the current situation is broken and I think this would be a substantial improvement.

OTOH, I don't play mages much. Do any mage players think this would make mages overpowered?

[TJS]

I'd like to see mages have to choose their targets and spells carefully to deal out high damage. So there could be spells that target particular monsters, for example a beam that does large damage to monsters sensitive to light and another one that effects dragons.

(As an aside I think light spells/devices should do % damage to monsters rather than an absolute value. I laugh when I see a monster with thousands of HP which is sensitive to light.)

I'd also like to see spells which cover different areas, like a surround damage spell which affects the 8 squares around the player and a surround teleport other.

I think an addition of a few higher power damage magic devices would be good for mages as well.

Someone mentioned a while ago that mages could get extra magic missiles as they go up levels and I thought that would be a good idea. Of course that would still be a low damage spell, so not much good for the higher HP monsters.

By the way I've just had a look at the mana storm spell in the spoilers. Isn't that high enough damage, or is the point that the book arrives too late on in the game?

PS I'm completely rubbish at mages so I don't really understand how to play them anyway.

[fizzix]

I know that some day mage spells will be overhauled, but until then I suggest a band-aid.

The main problem is that mages cannot kill any strong monsters with spells. Consider a CL 40 mage with max int and MB6. He has about 300+ mana, and can do about 8 points of damage per mana. If the opp has more than 3000 hp, even if the mage casts no other spells but damage, he simply cannot kill it. The important foes all have over 3000 hp. OTOH, a suitable stack of branded ammo even hitting only half the time can kill anything susceptible to the brand. So mages play as archers.

I don't know much about mages, playing them only rarely, so I don't want to suggest tweaking one thing versus another. I suppose the relative strengths of the various spells, and the time to kill things using spells, has been balanced by people with better understanding than I have. But it is clear to me that mages need to be able to do more total damage.

I wouldn't muck with magic missile or lightning beam, but I think it would help to cut the mana cost of every other attack spell in half. Nothing changes relatively except that in a long fight the mage can do twice as much total damage, and might actually be able to kill tough uniques and wyrms using magic.

I'm not suggesting this as a long term solution, but the current situation is broken and I think this would be a substantial improvement.

OTOH, I don't play mages much. Do any mage players think this would make mages overpowered?

The DJA character I played (war mage, on the ladder) cut a lot of the mana costs for the elemental bolt spells. These were my primary mode of damage until the endgame. The top uniques required branded ammo though (there was no branding spell, so it was just stuff I found). I could have taken them out with manastorms had I found a staff of the magi or something to replenish mana. But my damage output wasn't enough. Halving casting costs might be a good idea, and it's trivially easy to try out.

However, if I was to make one major change to mages and casting costs (and I think this is already in the pipeline) I would set a minimum SP/level that is independent of INT.

[will_asher]

I wouldn't muck with magic missile or lightning beam, but I think it would help to cut the mana cost of every other attack spell in half. Nothing changes relatively except that in a long fight the mage can do twice as much total damage, and might actually be able to kill tough uniques and wyrms using magic.

This is very similar to what I did with the war mage in DaJAngband. War mages get 1.5x the normal mana for their INT and the mana cost for combat spells is the same or slightly less than a mage. (Their non-combat spells cost about 1.5x the mana or more.)
As for how well it works, you can ask fizzix. (..who posted 1 second before I did)

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9604

[tummychow]

Well even though the mana use would go down, the length of the battle would still be very long. However, what would you say to a mana restore spell? If it succeeds you gain more mana then you spent, but the fail rate is rather high.

[fizzix]

I'd like to see mages have to choose their targets and spells carefully to deal out high damage. So there could be spells that target particular monsters, for example a beam that does large damage to monsters sensitive to light and another one that effects dragons.

This doesn't do much for 'careful' choosing of spells, since it's "oh a dragon, I use the dragon spell." Unless I'm not understanding.

[Marble Dice]

In short, I agree the mage arsenal needs an overhaul. I also agree this would be a simple band-aid that could go a long way towards addressing the problem, and would be easy to implement.

May I re-direct your attention to some pretty graphs in: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=2391

I will prepare an alternate set of graphs to display the effect of reducing the mana cost on various attack spells.

[will_asher]

However, what would you say to a mana restore spell? If it succeeds you gain more mana then you spent, but the fail rate is rather high.

The first spell in the last necromancer book in DaJAngband is Draw Mana. It's mana cost is 1 and it's fail rate is low. It allows you to convert HP into mana. It has two versions of the spell which you chose from whenever you cast it. The weaker version gives 1 mana for each 1 HP drained (+1 mana to pay the cost of the spell), but it stops and does nothing if you don't have enough HP. The stronger version gives slightly more than twice as much mana per HP, but it may kill you if you don't have enough HP.

[TJS]

This doesn't do much for 'careful' choosing of spells, since it's "oh a dragon, I use the dragon spell." Unless I'm not understanding.

Well if the various spells are spread around different spellbooks then you'd have to decide whether to chuck spellbook 5 with the dragon spell after you've found a magic device that hurts dragons or some bolts of slay dragon.

But yeah I see what you're getting at, so maybe some spells could have some drawbacks, such as being very powerful, but aggravating monsters nearby (as in equipment that aggravates and not haste monsters).

[PowerDiver]

By the way I've just had a look at the mana storm spell in the spoilers. Isn't that high enough damage, or is the point that the book arrives too late on in the game?

Please keep in mind. that my suggestion is a band-aid until spells are redone. Please discuss redoing the spells in a different thread. The question I am asking is whether it is a good idea to apply this particular band-aid in the interim.

As to your point quoted above
(1) MB9 comes too late
(2) Even manastorm doesn't do enough.

Call manastorm 11 dam/mana counting failure rate, and consider the maximum case of a CL50 mage with 400 mana. Total damage is 4400. You cannot even kill Saruman with that, and he's only DL60. My mages also occasionally like to cast other spells, and CL40 is a lot more reasonable at DL60 than CL50, and MB9 is typically not available at DL60, so the practical total is much lower. I'm not sure you can kill him even with 1/2 cost on the mana, but I thought proposing 1/3 cost was going too far.

And the worst uniques get tougher than Saruman as you descend.

[fizzix]

Call manastorm 11 dam/mana counting failure rate, and consider the maximum case of a CL50 mage with 400 mana. Total damage is 4400. You cannot even kill Saruman with that, and he's only DL60. My mages also occasionally like to cast other spells, and CL40 is a lot more reasonable at DL60 than CL50, and MB9 is typically not available at DL60, so the practical total is much lower. I'm not sure you can kill him even with 1/2 cost on the mana, but I thought proposing 1/3 cost was going too far.

And the worst uniques get tougher than Saruman as you descend.

Personally I think that you need both a decrease in SP and an increase in damage. Specifically, for some of the spells in MB4, MB6 and MB9. (and while you're at it, you might as well make the same changes for annihilation, that spell costs too much and does nowhere near enough damage)

Let's look more closely at two spells, meteor swarm and mana storm. These represent the two top damage spells for a mage at different points in the game.

Meteor Swarm: (assume clevel 35, it'll get about 50 more points at clevel 40)
Damage: 141
Cost: 25

Mana Storm: (assume clevel 50)
Damage: 400
Cost: 30

At clevel 35 there's no way you have nearly enough mana to take out anything with meteor swarm. Furthermore, chances are you have arrows that output around 80-90 damage easily with similar fail rates. There is little reason to cast this supposedly powerful spell. This spell is useless currently. By the time you are strong enough to kill anything with it, you have better means of dealing more damage. Just cutting the cost isn't going to help. You also need to up the damage a little.

Mana storm has a similar problem, but not nearly as bad. With a weapon of extra shots and branded arrows you're likely to be doing 500 damage a turn and can save your mana for banishment or the WoD escape. You *can* kill uniques with mana storm, but you're going to need to rmana at least once for most of them, even a mid-level unique like Saruman. Cutting cost here is probably enough. Though if you really wanted to, changing it to 300 + clevel*3 seems reasonable (and more symmetric!) to me.

Other spells have similar problems but I think we should start the discussion with these two and then adjust the others to fall in line.

[Nick]

I know this thread is about the short term fix, but I think it's worth mentioning that both NPP and FA (and I guess DaJ too, although I haven't looked at the details) have done major revamps of mages recently. It would be worth looking at these for ideas if V is going to do a major readjustment.

[Marble Dice]

Running with PowerDiver's suggestion, I started with 50% mana costs and applied a little judgement. Below are the changes I would suggest for this band-aid. It would be easy to tweak the fail rates and damage as well, but save that for the overhaul. Changing efficiency doesn't affect mage damage per turn at all, it only allows mages to use their offensive magic longer, and thus take down higher hp targets without resorting to archery. See the graphs for what the efficiency-by-level looks like before and after.

Spell           Mana cost

Stinking Cloud   3 ->  2
Frost Bolt       6 ->  3
Fire Bolt        7 ->  3
Acid Bolt        9 ->  4
Frost Ball      12 ->  6
Fire Ball       18 ->  9

Shockwave       10 ->  5
Explosion       20 -> 10
Cloudkill        9 ->  5
Acid Ball       15 ->  7
Ice Storm       22 -> 11
Meteor Swarm    25 -> 14
Rift            30 -> 20

Rend Soul       30 -> 15
Chaos Strike    35 -> 15
Mana Storm      30 -> 16

[takkaria]

Running with PowerDiver's suggestion, I started with 50% mana costs and applied a little judgement. Below are the changes I would suggest for this band-aid. It would be easy to tweak the fail rates and damage as well, but save that for the overhaul. Changing efficiency doesn't affect mage damage per turn at all, it only allows mages to use their offensive magic longer, and thus take down higher hp targets without resorting to archery. See the graphs for what the efficiency-by-level looks like before and after.

Spell           Mana cost

Stinking Cloud   3 ->  2
Frost Bolt       6 ->  3
Fire Bolt        7 ->  3
Acid Bolt        9 ->  4
Frost Ball      12 ->  6
Fire Ball       18 ->  9

Shockwave       10 ->  5
Explosion       20 -> 10
Cloudkill        9 ->  5
Acid Ball       15 ->  7
Ice Storm       22 -> 11
Meteor Swarm    25 -> 14
Rift            30 -> 20

Rend Soul       30 -> 15
Chaos Strike    35 -> 15
Mana Storm      30 -> 16

I would be happy with this kind of change.

[buzzkill]

I would be happy with this kind of change.

In that case, post band-aid, shouldn't mages be further penalized for using archery .