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In http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=4358 Timo brings up the idea of a staff which adds to mana. It is not new; ToME 2 (and probably the older variants its based upon) already have it. But it is interesting to see it brought up in connection with vanilla.
Now the state of old vanilla can be summarized like this:
-Warriors have good melee offense and bad utility devices.
-Rangers and rogues have decent melee offense and good utility spells.
-Mages have bad melee offense, excellent utility spells and decent spell offense at early levels.
The question had been asked time and again: why dont mages use their spells for offense against Morgoth rather than melee ? to which the common answer was to point at Gandalf and his Glamdring.
I think a better answer would have been to point at the game mechanics and content. As it was and is, a warrior has a gazillion ways to improve his offense: from finding a better weapon (and theres more than one way for a weapon to be better than the other), to increasing his str, his dex, to levelling up to find armours and jewelry which add to his damage output, be it in form of to hit, to damage, both, extra attacks, brands, slays or whatnot. This makes for a complicated puzzle when playing a warrior.
Compared to that a mages options are rather limited: to increase his spell offense, he can a) level up, b) increase his intelligence or c) find one of a few dungeon spellbooks to gain access to better spells.
Given this state of things, I can understand very well why the devs of the time wanted mages to use melee: if there had been a high enough damage spell, a mage only needed to fulfill a) b) and c) to win, allowing him to breeze through the game. The warriors challenge was considered harder and better, so mages were required to also complete it before being able to kill M.
Recently mages spell damage has been boosted, to the point where it is actually possible to kill M with spells. It is still inferior to using melee and somewhat of a challenge option, but its there.
If a mage is to use spells for offense throughout the game I think it is neccessary to flesh out the "way of the spell" to a similar extent as the "way of the weapon". Adding staves that add to mana would be a start, but what is needed is at least this:
- a magic affix on items which adds to mana, probably to be found on jewelry and weapons
- a magic affix which adds to "spellpower" (spellpower being a pval that increases damage of all offensive spells)
- a few new "caster" ego types which include the above flags and combine them with other mods wanted by spell-casters as well as generic mods like +con.
- a few "caster" artifacts (possibly modifications of existing ones) which also include the new affixes.
If these items existed in the game, it would be easy to provide a meaningful challenge to the pure caster and crippling their melee/ranged ability to the point of uselesness would seem reasonable.
Now to something completely different (boum!)....
...seeing that between warrior ad mage there are 2 classes, rogue and ranger, who basically are the same....
..and furthermore seeing that there is one whole line of unused offense - fully fleshed out, but rarely if ever utilized - namely the offensive devices like wand of magic missile, rod of lightning balls -
what about making the rogue class a device user for their offense ?
Rogues as tricksters could very well be pictured as device users. Like with mages, there is currently no meaningfull way to improve the damage of devices with found items. This could be solved by having abovementioned "caster" affixes affect device damage, at least or especially for rogues.
I am thinking of something like this:
At level 1, a warrior swings his weapon at the yeek, the mage casts magic missile from his first book, the rogue (z)aps his wand of magic missile at the yeek.
At level 30, the warrior swings his weapon at the giant. The mage casts fire ball at the giants. The rogue zaps his wand/rod of fireball at the giants.
At level 50, the warrior swings his weapon of doom at M. The mage casts manastorm at M. The rogue zaps one of his half dozen rods of annihilation at M.
There are problems, certainly. They can be solved, if wanted. Use or dismiss at your leisure. Cheers (its 5 o´clock somewhere)
Now the state of old vanilla can be summarized like this:
-Warriors have good melee offense and bad utility devices.
-Rangers and rogues have decent melee offense and good utility spells.
-Mages have bad melee offense, excellent utility spells and decent spell offense at early levels.
The question had been asked time and again: why dont mages use their spells for offense against Morgoth rather than melee ? to which the common answer was to point at Gandalf and his Glamdring.
I think a better answer would have been to point at the game mechanics and content. As it was and is, a warrior has a gazillion ways to improve his offense: from finding a better weapon (and theres more than one way for a weapon to be better than the other), to increasing his str, his dex, to levelling up to find armours and jewelry which add to his damage output, be it in form of to hit, to damage, both, extra attacks, brands, slays or whatnot. This makes for a complicated puzzle when playing a warrior.
Compared to that a mages options are rather limited: to increase his spell offense, he can a) level up, b) increase his intelligence or c) find one of a few dungeon spellbooks to gain access to better spells.
Given this state of things, I can understand very well why the devs of the time wanted mages to use melee: if there had been a high enough damage spell, a mage only needed to fulfill a) b) and c) to win, allowing him to breeze through the game. The warriors challenge was considered harder and better, so mages were required to also complete it before being able to kill M.
Recently mages spell damage has been boosted, to the point where it is actually possible to kill M with spells. It is still inferior to using melee and somewhat of a challenge option, but its there.
If a mage is to use spells for offense throughout the game I think it is neccessary to flesh out the "way of the spell" to a similar extent as the "way of the weapon". Adding staves that add to mana would be a start, but what is needed is at least this:
- a magic affix on items which adds to mana, probably to be found on jewelry and weapons
- a magic affix which adds to "spellpower" (spellpower being a pval that increases damage of all offensive spells)
- a few new "caster" ego types which include the above flags and combine them with other mods wanted by spell-casters as well as generic mods like +con.
- a few "caster" artifacts (possibly modifications of existing ones) which also include the new affixes.
If these items existed in the game, it would be easy to provide a meaningful challenge to the pure caster and crippling their melee/ranged ability to the point of uselesness would seem reasonable.
Now to something completely different (boum!)....
...seeing that between warrior ad mage there are 2 classes, rogue and ranger, who basically are the same....
..and furthermore seeing that there is one whole line of unused offense - fully fleshed out, but rarely if ever utilized - namely the offensive devices like wand of magic missile, rod of lightning balls -
what about making the rogue class a device user for their offense ?
Rogues as tricksters could very well be pictured as device users. Like with mages, there is currently no meaningfull way to improve the damage of devices with found items. This could be solved by having abovementioned "caster" affixes affect device damage, at least or especially for rogues.
I am thinking of something like this:
At level 1, a warrior swings his weapon at the yeek, the mage casts magic missile from his first book, the rogue (z)aps his wand of magic missile at the yeek.
At level 30, the warrior swings his weapon at the giant. The mage casts fire ball at the giants. The rogue zaps his wand/rod of fireball at the giants.
At level 50, the warrior swings his weapon of doom at M. The mage casts manastorm at M. The rogue zaps one of his half dozen rods of annihilation at M.
There are problems, certainly. They can be solved, if wanted. Use or dismiss at your leisure. Cheers (its 5 o´clock somewhere)
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