Idea's for a revised set of prayer books

**PowerDiver** · April 19, 2010, 00:31

Originally posted by fyonn

d) Word of Destruction

Isn't this just a slightly bigger earthquake? seems slightly pointless

You just called the most powerful spell in the game "slightly pointless".

**Derakon** · April 19, 2010, 00:32

Branding missile weapons with slay evil or undead would be massively overpowered with the current missile weapon set. The only reason Cubragol isn't completely broken as it stands is that most monsters worth shooting resist fire, but most of the monsters you'd be fighting late in the game are evil and/or undead. Basically you'd be making the priest twice as effective with missile weapons as soon as they get the spell.

Word of Destruction is not just a more powerful earthquake. It also banishes all monsters in the radius and removes all non-artifact items. It's very useful, as it's basically the only foolproof escape spell.

For your suggested new spells:

Mass Fear, Paralyze: I've never really bothered with status effect spells, personally. They have the problem of either being reliable, and therefore overpowered, or else being unreliable, and therefore not worth spending mana and turns on.

Litany against Fear: I'd just call this Heroism, and toss in the HP/to-hit bonus that it gives as well. No need to have multiple names for the same effect. Likewise, "Unbendable Purpose" should just be called "Resist Confusion".

Unbearable yadda yadda: this sounds a bit frou-frou to me. A radius effect that frightens evil monsters or deals damage to them? Again, I don't consider status effect spells to be good ideas, and a spell that acts as free damage over time once cast seems a bit too much of a no-brainer to me: "Once I reach level 40, every turn a monster spends standing next to me they'll take 30 damage? Well, the damage is puny, but it's free, so I may as well just keep this going all the time." Remember, the vast majority of deep monsters are evil. Though actually, if this did cause fear, I'd probably find it to be useless. Much of the point of priests is that they can stand in melee thanks to their infinite healing; if they have to chase their monsters down all the time to actually hit them in melee, though, then they're much less effective.

**StJude** · April 19, 2010, 10:06

I fully agree that the bless/chant/prayer spells should actually go up in power with clvl as opposed to just longer spell duration. As your character becomes stronger, the effect of prayer becomes less proportionately. [+10] when your AC is 200 isn't all that useful. Maybe d(clvl/2) to hit and d(clvl) to AC would make it a worthy spell, and would align it with the damage of the dispel spells in the Ex&D book

**Pete Mack** · April 19, 2010, 16:43

Originally posted by StJude

I fully agree that the bless/chant/prayer spells should actually go up in power with clvl as opposed to just longer spell duration. As your character becomes stronger, the effect of prayer becomes less proportionately. [+10] when your AC is 200 isn't all that useful. Maybe d(clvl/2) to hit and d(clvl) to AC would make it a worthy spell, and would align it with the damage of the dispel spells in the Ex&D book

Because high-level priests are currently so weak and really need to have better native melee....

**Derakon** · April 19, 2010, 17:16

That's what I was thinking -- boosting existing priest spells, or replacing useless spells with useful spells, will make the priest stronger, and he's already one of the better classes. So as you look to improve his spellbooks, what are you planning to do to weaken him? Bring his melee down to the mage level? Make him useless at missile weapons? Reduce his hit die? Remove Orb of Draining?

Actually, I could get behind that latter.

**miyazaki** · April 19, 2010, 17:45

Originally posted by Derakon

That's what I was thinking -- boosting existing priest spells, or replacing useless spells with useful spells, will make the priest stronger, and he's already one of the better classes. So as you look to improve his spellbooks, what are you planning to do to weaken him? Bring his melee down to the mage level? Make him useless at missile weapons? Reduce his hit die? Remove Orb of Draining?

Actually, I could get behind that latter.

I think the penalties for wielding pointy weapons/bows/xbows should be much more substantial. Make the priest take a hit to the mana (like a mage and gloves). Also drop his max hits to 4, like a mage. Change "brand weapon" to "bless weapon".

**fyonn** · April 19, 2010, 18:06

Originally posted by PowerDiver

You just called the most powerful spell in the game "slightly pointless".

well, my winner was with a mage, not a priest. having rechecked the descriptions, I can see the difference.

Originally posted by Derakon

Word of Destruction is not just a more powerful earthquake. It also banishes all monsters in the radius and removes all non-artifact items. It's very useful, as it's basically the only foolproof escape spell.

banish's, ie teleports away or destroys? and I guess uniques would not get destroyed?

Originally posted by Derakon

Mass Fear, Paralyze: I've never really bothered with status effect spells, personally. They have the problem of either being reliable, and therefore overpowered, or else being unreliable, and therefore not worth spending mana and turns on.

well, I guess it depends on what level of creature it's reliable against? I would hope it would be reliable against relatively weak creatures, soso on fairly equivalent ones and iffy on more powerful ones. how to gauge that is a fine line is the question I guess.

Originally posted by Derakon

Litany against Fear: I'd just call this Heroism, and toss in the HP/to-hit bonus that it gives as well. No need to have multiple names for the same effect. Likewise, "Unbendable Purpose" should just be called "Resist Confusion".

re the names, I was thinking along the lines of "chant", "sanctuary", "prayer" and "word of destruction" as more descriptive rather than utilitarian names. but it matters not.

I did wonder about adding these effects to chant and prayer though. ie chant being bless with heroism, prayer being chant with res conf as well but I wondered if that was too much.

Originally posted by Derakon

Unbearable yadda yadda: this sounds a bit frou-frou to me.

okay, I was just kinda brainstorming. It feels like WoG could do with something a bit more than is currently in it.

Originally posted by Derakon

That's what I was thinking -- boosting existing priest spells, or replacing useless spells with useful spells, will make the priest stronger, and he's already one of the better classes. So as you look to improve his spellbooks, what are you planning to do to weaken him? Bring his melee down to the mage level? Make him useless at missile weapons? Reduce his hit die? Remove Orb of Draining?

well, I did suggest making priests uncomfortable with with pointy missiles. then perhaps introduce blessed missiles? slings of course would not be a problem.

as for pulling OoD... now sure if it's required. it's a great mid to low level damage spell, but past a certain level, missile attacks can way out-damage it. it's useful to have it as "free" ammo though.

that said, as a priest I do over use OoD a lot. I'm not sure I'd want to get rid of it completely, but perhaps back it up with something else as well.

dave

**Derakon** · April 19, 2010, 18:43

Word of Destruction banishes monsters, like with the Banish and Mass Banish spells, except that it works on uniques and doesn't cost any hitpoints (though it will blind you if you don't resist blindness). In other words, the monsters are gone, removed from the level. This is why you always teleport Morgoth away before using a Destruction effect; otherwise you have to start the fight over from scratch.

Thinking about it, I like the idea of removing Orb of Draining more and more. It's not a very priestly spell, is it? There's only two aimed damage spells in the entire priest lexicon: Orb of Draining and Annihilation. OoD is really very powerful, especially against evil, and completely changes the priest's gameplay as soon as it's obtained. Removing it would be a significant nerf, and yet would make the priest play more like (I think) a priest should play: by buffing himself and getting into melee, with healing spells to back him up. You can balance the removal with the improved spells being discussed here.

**miyazaki** · April 19, 2010, 18:43

Originally posted by fyonn

d) Probing

I almost never use this spell as the creatures I want to use it on are dangerous enough that time in their line of sight I don't want to spend 40 mana on checking their HP. I'd like to be able to combine this with "Detect Evil", "Detect Monsters" or "Detection" and be able to do the probing across the dungeon. Also, does it only reveal HP as that's all I've ever seemed to get from it. does it fill anything else into monster memory? I'd like to see it fill out average HP for that class of monster and give a little more info like what attacks it can do and for what damage.

It almost completely fills in the monster memory, including average HP (ie "life rating"), resists and susceptibilities. Personally, I really like the spell and usually my characters carry around a rod of probing. It is excellent for deciding which ammo to use on ringwraiths, for example. Once you develop a decent monster memory, it becomes unnecessary for sure. (And many people on this forum advocate reading the monster memory from the files. Since there are several mechanisms in-game to discover this knowledge, I consider using moster spoilers as cheating.)

I would like probing to take on bigger role in the gameplay, and the most obvious way to do that is with randomly generated uniques/monsters. I just don't see that happening.

**miyazaki** · April 19, 2010, 18:46

Originally posted by Derakon

Thinking about it, I like the idea of removing Orb of Draining more and more. It's not a very priestly spell, is it? There's only two aimed damage spells in the entire priest lexicon: Orb of Draining and Annihilation. OoD is really very powerful, especially against evil, and completely changes the priest's gameplay as soon as it's obtained. Removing it would be a significant nerf, and yet would make the priest play more like (I think) a priest should play: by buffing himself and getting into melee, with healing spells to back him up. You can balance the removal with the improved spells being discussed here.

Two ways to nerf the spell without removing it: (1) Changing it to a bolt instead of a ball or (2) Make it affect evil monsters only.

**fyonn** · April 19, 2010, 21:00

Originally posted by Derakon

Word of Destruction banishes monsters, like with the Banish and Mass Banish spells, except that it works on uniques and doesn't cost any hitpoints (though it will blind you if you don't resist blindness). In other words, the monsters are gone, removed from the level. This is why you always teleport Morgoth away before using a Destruction effect; otherwise you have to start the fight over from scratch.

hmm.. so the monsters are effectively "teleport level"'d away? the spell description is:

Code:

Destroys everything in a 15-square radius circle around you.
All monsters, objects, and terrain features in the area of
effect are destroyed, except stairs, permanent walls and
artifacts.

destroy implies to me that the monster is killed and would not appear again. does one get the XP? I assume then that uniques are just removed and free to return?

Originally posted by Derakon

Thinking about it, I like the idea of removing Orb of Draining more and more.

eerk. I know my current priest would seriously miss it

are you suggesting removing OoD instead of touching their abilities to use bows/xbows, or as well as?

dave

**Derakon** · April 19, 2010, 22:02

You don't get any experience for using Word of Destruction. It's more than powerful enough as it is. Monsters are banished, not killed, so they can come back, though obviously this is only relevant for unique monsters. The main factors that make this spell so powerful are that it works on uniques (unlike the Banish spells), it is unresistable, it has a huge area of effect, and it completely ruins line-of-sight for anything that was outside said area of effect. It'd be somewhat interesting to see how useful the spell would be if it simply removed all walls in the area of effect, instead of creating random terrain...but at the moment I'm not convinced this spell needs balancing.

I'm suggesting removing Orb of Draining as an initial stab at balancing a priest with better other spells. And yes, I know it sounds drastic. But having a scaling blessing spell and Heroism will make priests significantly better at melee, so I think all in all it'd be a wash.

**PowerDiver** · April 19, 2010, 22:42

Originally posted by Derakon

I'm suggesting removing Orb of Draining as an initial stab at balancing a priest with better other spells. And yes, I know it sounds drastic. But having a scaling blessing spell and Heroism will make priests significantly better at melee, so I think all in all it'd be a wash.

In your recent posts [not quoted here], you seem to be complaining that priests aren't paladins. I know you have more in mind, and are much more nuanced, but that's how what you are writing comes across to me.

It appears to me that the priest class was designed to be inept at melee before stat gain. Improved bless doesn't help much when you only get 1 blow. Priests are supposed to be a counterpoint to mages, hard to survive in the early game and relying upon ranged attacks, but with a different spell set. OoD is the quintessential priest spell. If you remove that, you remove the history of the class.

Perhaps you should invent another class. We have 3 mage-based classes and only 2 priest-based, so maybe that is a void waiting to be filled.

**will_asher** · April 19, 2010, 22:43

Originally posted by fyonn

Unbearable Lightness of Being

A prayer which creates a field around the player (diameter 2 or 3) in which evil creatures should have to pass a roll not to be scared, and if not scared, should take damage while in the field. Unlike the others, I appreciate that this might involve a bit more programming that the others, but might also be a good candidate for WoG?

DaJAngband has a priest spell called Daylight which widens your light radius significantly and does radius damage to undead and light-vulnerable creatures.
A spell like this should (and I'm not sure if it has the right stats in DJA yet) have high enough mana cost and fail% to be not worth casting constantly. And I agree that having it scare monsters is counter-productive to how a priest works.

Idea's for a revised set of prayer books

Idea's for a revised set of prayer books

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