repartitioning spells mage vs priest

[Atarlost]

A bit like

the Quarterstaff of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olorin"]Olorin[/URL]  (2d9) (+10,+13)
+4 intelligence, wisdom, charisma.
Slays evil creatures, orcs, trolls.
*Slays* demons.
Branded with flames.
Provides resistance to fire, nether.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Sustains your life force.  Grants the ability to see invisible things.

then?

dave

There are no staves in Tolkien's writings as the game uses the term. The only stick Gandalf carried was his staff, represented in game by the quarterstaff of Olorin.

Yes, I said that.

[Magnate]

This will be kind of long, but I hope relevant. Executive summary: I think a fundamental rethink is a good idea (even if it doesn't result in a lot of change), and I suggest adding classes to V.
...
I also think that there would be a lot of good and very little bad in including new classes. NPP has introduced Druids, and that (together with a modification to Rangers) might be a good first step for V. Obviously I like the FA classes, but there are other models available (DaJ, Z, ToME for example).

I've thought about this for a long time, and the only real drawback is that V then looks a lot like O or FA (or NPP, depending on the route taken). I think the original classes are quite a lot of what makes V what it is. I'm not particularly conservative, but I'd rather see how well a complete reworking of mage and priest spell realms went before introducing any new ones. I think all five V caster classes could do with rebalanced spell lists, and that would be a pretty radical change.

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.

[fyonn]

In Angband terms a wizard's staff is a quarterstaff with an int and/or wis bonus, not a staff, wand, or rod.

A bit like

the Quarterstaff of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olorin"]Olorin[/URL]  (2d9) (+10,+13)
+4 intelligence, wisdom, charisma.
Slays evil creatures, orcs, trolls.
*Slays* demons.
Branded with flames.
Provides resistance to fire, nether.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Sustains your life force.  Grants the ability to see invisible things.

then?

dave

[Derakon]

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.

[TJS]

Off topic, but I'd like to see warriors with a couple of spells that they can use as well.

[buzzkill]

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.

Priests could 'cause wounds' instead of using poison. The effect would be similar and it wouldn't be (so widely) resistible.

IMO, the priests spell arsenal should be largely effective ONLY against evil creatures and that priests should have to rely on conventional combat, magic items, and evasion to deal with the rest.

Off topic, but I don't think that I'd object to anti-evil items being slightly more powerful in the hands of a priest.

[Atarlost]

In context of the game "staves" is just the plural form of "staff". So I think Gandalf's staff does count.

I know about pluralization. Staff in Angband, though, means something very specific that Gandalf's staff is not.

Gandalf's staff is not an activateable device with a fixed effect and a finite number of charges, or even an activateable device with a fixed effect and an unlimited number of uses. It's a wieldable item, presumably a weapon though I'm not sure if he ever struck anyone with it, that enhances or focuses his ability to do magic. He uses it for multiple effects and also does magic without using it directly. In Angband terms a wizard's staff is a quarterstaff with an int and/or wis bonus, not a staff, wand, or rod.

[PowerDiver]

don't see why poison magic would be a priestly thing.

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.

[will_asher]

I like Nick's suggestions. As far as Powerdiver's suggestions in the original post, I agree with most of it, but I don't see why poison magic would be a priestly thing. If we use Nick's suggestions, of course, that's moot because poison magic would obviously move to the necromancy realm.
(I also disagree with PD's views about stone to mud, but that's really a different issue)

[d_m]

There are no staves in Tolkien's writings as the game uses the term. The only stick Gandalf carried was his staff, represented in game by the quarterstaff of Olorin.

In context of the game "staves" is just the plural form of "staff". So I think Gandalf's staff does count.

For what it's worth, I think that UnAndrew's approach of unifying the staff item and the quarterstaff weapon is a good idea.

[Hariolor]

FWIW - gandalf's mastery of light and fire was largely because of his possession of Narya and/or his innate "nature".

I very much agree a big step in "fixing" the spellbooks and rebalancing classes would be to more clearly delineate what it "means" to belong to a class. I like a lot of what PowerDiver and Nick are saying in this regard. And this being V we're talking about, it seems like it's always good to think radical - as the actual change implemented will likely be tiny in comparison to the proposals, even for paradigm-shifting changes.

Here's my proposal for how to change V less while clarifying existing classes' magic abilities (yes, I'm piggybacking, just another perspective for the mix)

Mage - pure magic user/poor combat
domains: base elements, light/dark, plasma, mana, chaos, escapes, direct (non-elemental) damage

Rogue - average magic user/average combat
domains: light/dark, poison, detection, speed, fear, sleep, confusion, paralysis, escapes

Ranger - poor magic user/strong combat
domains: poison, base elements, light/dark, detection, weak healing, weak combat buffs

Warrior - terrible magic user/pure combat

Paladin - poor prayers/strong combat
domains: light/dark, rNether, rChaos, fear, healing, detection, combat buffs

(Druid could fit here - average prayers/average combat)
(domains: poison, base elements, light/dark, water, gravity, sound, shards, fear, sleep, confusion, detection)

Priest - pure prayers/terrible combat
domains: light/dark, rNether, rChaos, fear, healing, detection, combat buffs, direct damage (vs evil), escapes

---

The idea would be that there are two sets of books, holy and arcane. Each class gets a subset out of the books, with at least one useful spell for each class in each book (naturally there will be some overlap).

As classes move further from the fighter, their spells increase in range, duration, radius, etc more quickly, and scale more noticeably with CL to allow the best casters to take on the best enemies with magic alone.

I also think mixing in some higher-order resists (with the druid and mage getting several) could help to make some of the currently less-useful artifacts more appealing, as for those classes filling all resists would be more achievable without mix-and-matching artifacts as frequently.

I think it would also be interesting to make detection spells function like ESP rather than as snapshots. This would layer nicely with the proposed change to ESP to make it scalable.

[Atarlost]

There are no staves in Tolkien's writings as the game uses the term. The only stick Gandalf carried was his staff, represented in game by the quarterstaff of Olorin.

He also, after all, used it to light fires.

[Tatami]

Dworkin and I thought Gandalf called light from staves. Maybe give mages magical devices with minor but useful activations and or spell casting benefits.

[PowerDiver]

As far as holy light dealing damage I'm totally with you, but I feel like tons of wizards from fiction (e.g. Gandalf) can create a magical glow to see and read by.

Things like crystal balls and scrying seem more like something a wizard would do and less like something a priest would do.

Those fictional wizard glows are typically centered on the wizard. Perhaps a new spell to increase light radius by 1 when in effect?

Let me turn the second statement upside-down. Wizards need a device activation, perhaps a Palantir, to view what the divinely inspired see directly in their holy visions.

Whatever solution is desired, I am sure we can find an argument to justify it.

[Antoine]

I don't know how much point there is in trying to do this stuff before the missile rebalancing...?