repartitioning spells mage vs priest

[Nick]

Nice rant

I think overly pigeonholing "priests get divinations, mages get attacks" is a seriously bad idea. To be honest, I think this whole discussion is probably on a completely wrong basis. It started with an implicit "I view wizard magic to be like *this*, and priest magic to be like *this*". This is an *extremely* dangerous approach, because virtually *every* thematic breakdown can be supported...and attacked as wrong. If you stay very general in your themes, you're typically safer...but don't push these to extremes.

Thing is, there has to be a compromise between "accurate representation" and playability. It could be argued that priests wouldn't kill anything, but that would put a bit of a dampener on their viability. So you have an idea of what a priest could plausibly do, and an idea (like your list) of the options available, and you try to match them up. There's also a bit of window-dressing involved - for example, the same spell can be called "Holy Prayer" for priests and "Black Blessing" for Necromancers, and everyone's happy.

In short, you shouldn't over-pigeonhole, but under-pigeonholing is bad too.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

To begin with, I think that "detect traps" should be removed in all its forms. Traps are pointless when everyone always detects them. But that's a different discussion. I consider illumination to be a detection spell, so at least I touched on that.

GAH!!! Can't let this pass by.
The point is, we *don't* always detect them. We forget. With no DetTraps at all, we're going to be nailed with more confusion, more stat drain, more equipment damage. We'll lose *vaults* because we forgot where the traps were in that particular arrangement...and hit a trapdoor.

BAD idea, IMO.

I think overly pigeonholing "priests get divinations, mages get attacks" is a seriously bad idea. To be honest, I think this whole discussion is probably on a completely wrong basis. It started with an implicit "I view wizard magic to be like *this*, and priest magic to be like *this*". This is an *extremely* dangerous approach, because virtually *every* thematic breakdown can be supported...and attacked as wrong. If you stay very general in your themes, you're typically safer...but don't push these to extremes.

For example: a very common clerical theme is healing. Does that mean arcanists can't heal themselves in *any* way, shape, or form? No; there are examples where arcanists have some access to healing magic. And, PD touted 'earth magic' as 'divine'...why? It's equally valid to assert it's another classical Hermetic element, and therefore just as much arcane.

Also, BTW: for the divine/arcane breakdown, Tolkien is irrelevant. Use 1st or 2nd Edition D&D as the breakdown. The spell names are *often* lifted straight from D&D. And don't even *try* to wring coherence or thematic consistency out of D&D; it never had it, it probably never *will* have it. (I had hopes for 4th Ed, but they were crushed completely.)

And actually, it's probably a darn good thing *anyway*. It's bloody damn easy to sacrifice game play onto the Hobgoblin Altar...as in, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of the little mind. It's a *game*. It's supposed to be *fun*. Don't go and do all kinda things that end up being not-fun...as PD noted, being forced to carry around a whole buncha rods for Detects is way more likely to just be Not-Fun.

A much better breakdown is to start by identifying the types of magic that are important:

--Deal damage
--Heal damage
--Impose conditions on opponents
--Remove conditions from @ (cure poison, remove fear)
--Buff @ (Heroism, Speed, temp resists)
--De-buff opponents
--Movement/escape magic
--Detection magic
--Strategic magic (Rock to Mud, Create Door, Destruction, etc.)

And note that things can be combined. Ice Storm is a spell that deals damage and imposes a condition (dazed). Perhaps mages have one particular set of conditions they tend to impose, while priests have another. Or perhaps priest spells never do both at once. There are other variants: priests are MUCH better at mob removal than mages right now (Dispel Evil and Dispel Undead being LOS, OoD growing to a size-3 ball) for much of the game...but are *awful* against tougher single targets, especially if those targets aren't evil. Mages are hosed by most any critter which has halfway decent hit points, and can resist fire and cold...so there's more ways to distinguish spells.

There's a great deal of room here for differentiation on *this* basis...after you get that done, you can play around with special effects. There is no notion of "earth magic". For combat magic, it'd be an attack resisted by Shards...which isn't in V for the PCs, to my knowledge. There's no temporary Shards resistance. There's strategic magic, Rock to Mud...but one has to seriously consider the implications of messing with this, because *all* characters face the same strategic questions.

[PowerDiver]

I like the idea of redefining spellbooks. I don't have any strong feelings about Eddie's delineations, but I noticed he didn't really touch the detection spells. If anything, I think these spells need the biggest overhaul.

To begin with, I think that "detect traps" should be removed in all its forms. Traps are pointless when everyone always detects them. But that's a different discussion. I consider illumination to be a detection spell, so at least I touched on that.

I don't believe in the common definitions of life or evil, so my views on those detections would be pointless.

Most importantly, gameplay becomes less strategic and more rote hacking as you reduce detections. I think moving in that direction would make the game less interesting. I suppose if you assume the players have to detect, and by removing spells you force them to carry more rods, there might be interesting slot tradeoffs, but I fear instead you would just encourage less interesting gameplay.

[Pete Mack]

Offensive magic is supposed to be the whole point of mages. If you want to fight with something mundane and just use magic for detection and evasion you may as well play a rogue or ranger.

Actually, the whole point of mages is terrible survivability balanced by bad fighting skills, with the bonus of really nifty guaranteed escapes.

Or so I assume from my experience of playing mage.

[Atarlost]

Offensive magic is supposed to be the whole point of mages. If you want to fight with something mundane and just use magic for detection and evasion you may as well play a rogue or ranger.

[Derakon]

Randomizing spellbooks strikes me as dangerous because it means that a lot of bread-and-butter spells are no longer guaranteed. Mages expect to be able to cast Magic Missile right off the bat; they'd be rather screwed otherwise. A Priest without Sense Invisible is going to be moderately unhappy.

[fizzix]

I'm not a fan of adding classes to V. I think the current class break-up is fine, but they need better distinction. I think the best changes to V occur when things are adjusted from what they currently are, rather than when whole new concepts are added.

I like the idea of redefining spellbooks. I don't have any strong feelings about Eddie's delineations, but I noticed he didn't really touch the detection spells. If anything, I think these spells need the biggest overhaul.

Also, I'll bring up the suggestion from a while ago about randomized spellbooks, in the spirit of requesting radical changes. If you randomize spellbooks, you can also put probabilities of certain classes getting certain spells. Maybe the mage gets stinking cloud in only 35% of games and priests get it in 80%.

[miyazaki]

Personally, the idea of priests having poison attack spells seems really weird. I don't have a problem with one class knowing how to use an element offensively and another knowing how to use it defensively. They both have knowledge of the element, which they've chosen to apply in different ways.

Call it pestilence. It may not be strickly Tolkein-esque but there is a fairly strong connection between holy men and illness/poison.

Priests are full on contradictions anyway: You can smash the brains out of an enemy with a maul but can't use a sword?!?

[Derakon]

Personally, the idea of priests having poison attack spells seems really weird. I don't have a problem with one class knowing how to use an element offensively and another knowing how to use it defensively. They both have knowledge of the element, which they've chosen to apply in different ways.

[PowerDiver]

Hang on, there are people saying OoD is too offensive a spell for priests and you're suggesting giving them stinking cloud? What are mages and rangers supposed to use for crowd control in the early game?

Anything you like. Mini-manastorm doing 6 or mini-fireball doing 12 points in the center would be fine. How about snowstorm? Whatever.

OTOH, I wouldn't oppose nothing at all. Let them carry wands of stinking cloud or learn to evade. I've been playing dwarf mages a lot recently, and the low int means somewhat limited spell selection early, so I don't even bother to learn stinking cloud until well after I have teleport self. I manage just fine without it.

[fyonn]

Hang on, there are people saying OoD is too offensive a spell for priests and you're suggesting giving them stinking cloud? What are mages and rangers supposed to use for crowd control in the early game?

well, I'm not suggesting that priests lose OoD, but some are suggesting that poison should be more for priests than mages. if so, then the poison attacks should be considered to be moved at least. Not saying we should, just that it should be considered.

dave

[Atarlost]

Hang on, there are people saying OoD is too offensive a spell for priests and you're suggesting giving them stinking cloud? What are mages and rangers supposed to use for crowd control in the early game?

[fyonn]

I think that all use of something should go together. So if you know fire, you know fire offense [say fireballs] and fire defense [say resist fire]. If you agree priests should get the neutralize poison spell, which IMO is clearcut, then I think they should get all poison magic.

We are not talking about putting venom [mushroom or potion or whatever] on arrows as you can do in S. That is entirely physical, and has nothing to do with magely or priestly magic.

It is also a nice way to separate the realms. Why should mages get *all* of the resistances? The basic 4 are tied together by having pack destruction effects. Poison has no destruction effect, and is the only one that does continuing damage. It splits nicely IMO.

BTW -- I think that ball spells should affect the caster. If you want to cast fireballs about, you should cast fire immunity on yourself first. Offense and defense should be intertwined. Just IMO, perhaps for some future variant, but this kind of thinking clearly influences what I think is reasonable above.

I agree with several points here. priests getting stinking cloud (and cloudkill?) seems sensible, and actually, perhaps the priests "elemental brand" could become "poison brand"?

I also agree that ball spells cast at point blank range should cause damage if appropriate. so a fireball would cause damage, thirded if the player has resistance and none if immune. Not sure if this should apply to OoD as well though. I think we assume the priest is not evil so it shouldn't be the max amount, perhaps a smaller amount?

dave

[fyonn]

Warriors with spells wouldn't be warriors. However, you could conceivably give warriors some spell-like abilities. Awhile back I wrote up some ideas geared towards ToME, some of which could be adapted to Vanilla. Basically these would be combat techniques that require some HP to use and have a cooldown timer so you can't spam them. They'd let you do things like knock enemies back, throw them, attack multiple foes simultaneously, inflict slow/stun with a single powerful attack, etc. The problem being solved (that warriors don't have nearly as many options in a fight as mages do) isn't nearly so pronounced in Vanilla as it is in ToME, though, largely because Vanilla winners have a much smaller kill count than ToME winners do.

I would imagine that if such "fighting techniques" were to be made available, then they should be available to everyone, just that warriors would be really good, rangers not bad, rogues alright and mages and priests terrible.

such techniques could be implemented a bit like "casting a fighting spell" from book z or something. It might also be a way to implement the oft suggested rogue's backstab ability too?

so most of the techniques could be available to the warrior (perhaps not backstab, just for rogues), most to the ranger and paladin (also accomplished warriors, but not as good). rogue would get many but not some of the advanced ones and mages and priests would get the basic ones.

but do we have enough useful techniques to consider such a path?

dave

[Nick]

The main reason I think this is because I can't think of any better additional realms and classes than O's Druid, Necro and Assassin - and if I want to play those, I'll play O or FA.

Promises, promises

I agree with this - a big part of the reason I based FA on O was because the classes were so good. I don't think adding new classes to V would make it an O-clone, though - the two big differences of combat system and 4GAI would remain. In fact, you could probably add 4GAI to V as well (as in NPP 0.4.x) and it still wouldn't feel much like O. And I also don't think adding new classes would detract from V at all - after all, Kobolds as a race were added without breaking it. But certainly a rethink first would not hurt.