Angband Philosophy II: Magic

[Nick]

So basically, without minimum levels, you'd have a spellbook full of 50%-failure-rate spells that cost way more than you can afford. Is that really a significant improvement over having a spellbook full of spells the game won't let you cast?

If we were going down this road, I think I'd be in favour of fail rate getting higher than 50%.

[Tibarius]

re: mages

If that is common agreement, that mages should be weak in the beginning and overpowered in the end then mages should do much much more damage in the endgame. 360 damage from mana ball are around 1/2 the damage a real top-equipped melee character will do.

Anyway ... i would disagree that this is a desireable state. Why make mages play this way? Why not warriors?

But back to mages ... i would welcome it if minimum level requirements are abolished. As i said earlier the number of spells you can learn is already level dependant and thus caps the usability of dungeon books which are found early in game.

But i do not like Nick's idea of fail rates above 50% either. High failrates are frustrating for the Player and there is already additionally the mana cap limitation. Let's say you find mana ball lucky with level 1, the spell would have no minimum level requirement. Still it would cost you 14 (16?) mana per cast which would already limit you to 1 maybe 2 or 3 casts during early play. A fail rate between 30 and 50% would already be a heavy drawback on it.

[Tibarius]

discussing things

Anyway ... i think it would be a good solution to

1. Define the goals, like how should a class feel to Play.
2. Only if 1. is clear, define what powers etc. the class should get.

In the discussion mostly step 1 is ignored, that leads in the end to a state which cannot be compared to a desired state to make sure the things are
as they should be.

[Carnivean]

Anyway ... i would disagree that this is a desireable state. Why make mages play this way? Why not warriors?

Fundamentally it is hard to learn magic, but easy to pick up a sword and injure someone with it. In flavour terms, it is meant to be difficult to learn and master more powerful spells due to the amount of magic that you are controlling and manipulating.

As for desirability, having different learning curves allows different styles of play and different challenges. People that have played a HT warrior, wandered into the dungeons and beaten everything down to 500' without even thinking about it will find that starting a mage requires a completely different way of thinking about the game.

[Carnivean]

Anyway ... i think it would be a good solution to

1. Define the goals, like how should a class feel to Play.
2. Only if 1. is clear, define what powers etc. the class should get.

In the discussion mostly step 1 is ignored, that leads in the end to a state which cannot be compared to a desired state to make sure the things are
as they should be.

1 has already been defined through fantasy literature, role playing games and computer games since Tolkien popularised/created the genre, and moreso through hundreds of generations of real life.

Warriors are big, strong and not overly intellectual. They're given weapons and shown how to hit people with them.
Priests draw on the power of their god to smite their enemy and generally forsake violence.
Paladins are holy warriors trained to fight those not of the faith, or the demons of the faith.
Rangers are hunters, trained in the use of weapons, usually bows, but not trained as warriors.
Thiefs are sneaky, quiet and prefer not to engage in frontal combat.
Mages are weak, brainy and spend years reading books to gain basic powers and decades to get knowledgable and powerful.

These tropes are well defined.

[Derakon]

If that is common agreement, that mages should be weak in the beginning and overpowered in the end then mages should do much much more damage in the endgame. 360 damage from mana ball are around 1/2 the damage a real top-equipped melee character will do.

Keep in mind that warriors a) miss, and b) have to stand in melee range and eat those gigantic attacks from endgame enemies. Mages have their spell failure rates, but those tend to be significantly better than warriors' accuracy (let alone the accuracy of other classes). Also, I'd generally expect a warrior to be doing on the order of 500 to maybe 600 damage/round if all blows hit; getting over that requires a lot of luck or scumming for gear.

Really the outlier, damage-wise, is the ranger, who can just put out ridiculous amounts of damage, from range, with the only cost being a bit of inventory clutter. Everyone else is decently balanced.

[Estie]

Balance in the sense that everyone does the same damage is boring. The point is that melee and ranger have variance. You can get lucky or unlucky or keep grinding, but with the mage, you always do the same damage no matter what.

At least for me one of the reasons to keep playing after many wins and years is the hope to find some exotic, powerfull item combo. The mage can find Keleks or not, and thats about it. If that was all the possible difference for other characters, I´d have stopped decades ago.

[Timo Pietilä]

Really the outlier, damage-wise, is the ranger, who can just put out ridiculous amounts of damage, from range, with the only cost being a bit of inventory clutter. Everyone else is decently balanced.

Not that ridiculous anymore since multipliers add instead of multiply. But I agree that rangers should not have ammo-boosting spells. Those make every stack of arrows at least x3 + bow multiplier * arrow damage bonus against most monsters.

Seeker arrows of slay evil +15 to dam with Belthronding:

(4d4 +15 +22) * (2 + 3) * 4 = 940 assuming all those four shots hit, so still high.

hmmm... idea: how about making those multipliers work like 1d<multiplier>.

That way you might get huge shots, but also might get low damage.

IMO accuracy should play a lot bigger role in damage done with ranged attacks than it does now. Maybe lower overall raw damage from multipliers (maybe halving them), but add accuracy and shooting skill bonus to damage like device skill wand/rod bonus.

[EDIT] make those rings of accuracy actually useful.

[Tibarius]

re: Estie

I agree to your statement that mages basically have to find Keleks's Grimoire of Power and then it is done in the high levels. But wouldn't you agree that this is rather dull and could be done in a different way making it
more enjoyable for the Player?

[Estie]

I agree to your statement that mages basically have to find Keleks's Grimoire of Power and then it is done in the high levels. But wouldn't you agree that this is rather dull and could be done in a different way making it
more enjoyable for the Player?

Not too long ago the mage spellcasting was so weak that it couldnt compete with his melee in the lategame. So mages were basically warriors with less damage and hitpoints and more utility. This got changed (mainly by reducing the mana cost of offensive spells), so now mages can actually damage with spells, but there is no infrastructure around spell damage in the game the way there is for melee or ranged damage - rings of damage, attacks per round, strength affecting it, gloves of slaying - all that stuff.

It is possible to add such an infrastructure for spells (as has been done to some extent in some variants; ToME2 for example has 2 new mods, a mana percent increasing one and a multiplier for spells that increases damage and other variables like radius for detection spells). The "price" of doing such is to create a branch of new items that only some classes find useful, like amulets of wisdom are now.

[Tibarius]

re: Estie

I disagree, that this requires new infrastructure - there are already INT and WIS boosting items. Link spellpower / prayerpower / mana regeneration rate to those two attributes and everything is fine basically.

[Estie]

Well, a gnome mage maxes out his intelligence when int rings start appearing. Maybe around dlvl 30 ? Imagine a fighter having Deathwreaker, Fingolfin, damage rings and enough str/dex for max blows at that time, only needing speed items and con potions for the remainder of the game.

You can delay this by, say, increasing native depth of int rings or something, but with only one variable, there isnt much interesting to decide when choosing your equipment setup.

[MattB]

I could definitely see a place for a Ring of Magical Damage (+n), where n is created at, say, 4d6. This would apply to all spells, activations, rods and wands.

This would be of some use, at least, to all classes if found early enough. And would also potentially stop wands of magic missile becoming redundant very early on. Wands of stinking cloud would be quite powerful too.

Of course, the problem is that this change, like most proposed changes, would make the game slightly easier (even if, in some cases, it is only easier in terms of utility - this still counts in my book) and thus would need to be balanced by a change that makes things harder.

[Timo Pietilä]

but there is no infrastructure around spell damage in the game the way there is for melee or ranged damage - rings of damage, attacks per round, strength affecting it, gloves of slaying - all that stuff.

Mage/priest -only "melee-weapons" and or trinkets that just boosts mana/spell damage?

Like the idea.

I would also see some variability in spell casting duration, like MM vs multi-shot bow, or some heavy-duty boost requiring multiple uninterrupted rounds to complete. For example Alter Reality 10+ turns.

[Tibarius]

re: mage powers

I like the ideas of Timo and Matt - additionally if you find spells one by one and not a complete book this would realy things make interesting for mages because you could not rely on fixed spells at a certain time.