Angband Philosophy II: Magic

[Estie]

Yeah, but you don't get into fights when outclassed while diving, you pick off the stuff that won't kill you. If something is awake and can kill you you don't fight, even if you can win, because you can also dies. A diver who doesn't reach 1-hit safety will die during the final grind, or will be woefully unprepared for the final fight. Or just get killed by Morgoth.

This is simply untrue. The concept exists (tome2 sorceror), its proven, and fun enough that people played it. Wether something like that shall exist in vanilla is an open question, but what you say here isnt a reason not to do it.

[Philip]

Yeah, but you don't get into fights when outclassed while diving, you pick off the stuff that won't kill you. If something is awake and can kill you you don't fight, even if you can win, because you can also dies. A diver who doesn't reach 1-hit safety will die during the final grind, or will be woefully unprepared for the final fight. Or just get killed by Morgoth.

[Estie]

Any proposition which involves being weak enough to die instantly is pointless. No-one will play if they have a certain chance of dying every turn, since that means they will probably die pretty soon. If a Mage could be killed by even a tenth or twentieth of what he saw, he wouldn't have any safe places to hide.

This is very very wrong. Diving is exactly what you describe: you have a chance to die every turn, way more than just 1/10th of monsters can instakill you and there is no safe place to hide. Yet people play that way (and some love it).
The ToME2 sorceror dies from a sneeze of any monster at depths, but his utility spells are so powerfull as to allow him to get by.

The diver suffers high risk high reward scenario for a while, at the end of which he either dies or gets out of 1-hit land. The proposition can thus be rephrased: a high mage is like a diver who can never reach 1-hit safety; he has to kill Morgoth at risk of death if he lets him get LoS.

[Philip]

There really aren't that many groups I have envisioned, actually. You still get a third of all of the spells, and two of the categories are more or less the same except with a thematic difference. To play what used to be mage, you really can just choose categories 1 and 6 and play almost exactly the same as you used to. Or you can do something new and interesting.

I think the discussion of melee damage and combat in general belongs in its own thread, honestly. I would just like to note that this would probably hurt warriors a lot less than mages, and possibly make priests entirely unviable. Priests make do by bashing until they need to heal, and if they need to heal every other turn or so (with moderate AC), they will no longer be able to use melee.

Any proposition which involves being weak enough to die instantly is pointless. No-one will play if they have a certain chance of dying every turn, since that means they will probably die pretty soon. If a Mage could be killed by even a tenth or twentieth of what he saw, he wouldn't have any safe places to hide.

[Estie]

High mage: damage at the cost of utility feels weird for a mage (and warrior too for that matter, but we are used to it). I think I would prefer an aproach like ToME2 sorceror, who gets damage + utility at the cost of survivability (hp).

The wizard with maxed con and level can survive any 1 attack, but that need not necessarily be fulfilled. It is possible (and exciting) to fight things that can 1-hit you by avoiding LoS, utilizing hockeystick or other (possibly new, possibly restricted to high mage) around-the-corner abilities.
The same style of play could be used for the archer; low defense to the point of having to fight in 1-hit situations, high offense and means to fight out of LoS.

Spell groups: If there are going to be many small ones of those, it might be better to give access to 2-3 instead of 1-2; more possibilities that way.

I still would love physical damage to be the primary threat, to the point where you just cant melee something like a troll without sufficient armor (say, a plate mail).
Red dragon, no fire resistance ? You die. Troll, no plate mail ? You should also die (if you melee).

Anyway, all of this might well be far from the realities of the changes that happen. I would love to hear some thoughts by the people who actually program all this

[Philip]

The way I imagine magic, ideally, is a certain number of realms, with their specific specialties, and weaknesses. The number of realms can be expanded, though no realm should be too similar to any others, with mages getting two full-strength, or one as very strong, and half-casters getting one, probably watered down a bit.

Spells, to remove book-clutter, would be found in the dungeon, and you would only see spells you can learn. You would then inscribe them into a book, because I would like to introduce limited spell slots and preserve limited inventory slots as issues for characters to deal with.

1) Arcane, most similar to what mages now get out of Raal and Kelek, with lessresistable reasonably high damage with side-effects occurring. On the other hand, most other things would have to be handled with items. Arcane would have more single target spells. I imagine stuff like Chaos Strike, some form of shard damage, like maybe a Rocket (yes debo), something Roar, Rift, Plasma spike.

2) Natural, mostly just *element* bolt/ball type stuff, choice of spells would affect damage more than side-effects. Natural spells would run in beams and balls, cloudkill style. Perhaps even cumulative damage, the way NPP does it for stinking cloud. Still rather weak for utility, like above. Spells would include stinking cloud, * bolt/ball, meteor swarm, some stuff lifted from the Druid classes in NPP and O/FA.

3) Holy, which would have weak, alignment-based damage, but solid healing, and maybe okay buffs or something. Would need to get okay at melee, or use spells to chip away at monsters. Orb of Draining, Healing, perhaps some form of SP regen, stat recovery, XP recovery.

At this point, it gets tougher. I have some ideas, but I suspect I have one too many classes. One of these should be split among the others, but I don't know which. Necromancer strikes me as something that should be present, but I have no idea how to implement it practically.

4) Artificer, which would excel at using and improving items. Would have perfect reliable recharging, some way of making other magic items more effective, as well as equipment (enchantment, except good). Would have to manage inventory carefully and choose a damage-dealing method. Typical spells would be Recharge, a good version of Enchant thing, dunno, we'd have to invent a lot of stuff.

5) A Buffer. Spells are independent of inventory/equipment, have a certain duration, and would make the caster more powerful while active. Maybe half-caster level melee and ranged combat, with defenses being top-tier in all categories. Would be weak once those run out, and wouldn't ever be too great at dealing damage anyway. Typical spells are Resistance, Shield, Haste self, Heroism, Bless, maybe even a weaker form of Globe of Invulnerability.

6) Modifier, who knows what is happening, and is capable of getting where they want to be. Would have perfect detection, excellent teleportation of self and monsters, even stuff like Banish, Destruct and Door/Stair creation.

You can't rework spells without a full class rework, or at least a plan.

Current classes

a) Warrior, would get affected the least. Power needs to be scaled appropriately, which is probably doable.

b) Mage, the Mage/Priest distinction makes no sense in Tolkien, so I would remove it. Magic is part of the world, accessible to gods and to mortals, and those in-between, though mostly the gods. In any case, either simplify Int/Wis into Will, or keep them separate with different effects, but casters should all use the same stat scheme. A mage would be built by choosing a damage category and one of the second group of categories.

c) Priest, see above, a priest would be built by picking holy and buff magic.

d) Rogue, would remain similar, except they get to choose between categories 4 and 6, essentially. Rogue spells are shit now, so this would be quite a boost, but hopefully not one that couldn't be compensated.

e) Paladin, would get to choose between 3 and 5, otherwise would remain the same. Gets a bit weaker, potentially, but can be tweaked as necessary.

f) Ranger. In Tolkien, Rangers are confusing. They are adept archers, swordsmen, and apparently have some rather advanced survival skills. I'm not even sure they should use magic, but maybe something more like techniques. Techniques would be weak, but only have time cost. Spamming would be useless. So, forage for remedies, build camp, track monsters, that kind of stuff. I imagine these as incredibly versatile, but ultimately, not too specialized. Damage output might suffer, but defenses will be more solid.

New classes

a) Archer. Ranger simply cannot be the only class capable of ranged combat. It is on its own, and with my modifications, a far too complex class. So, Archers would have the advantage that they would have powerful archery and less need for armor, but would need to rely on items for mobility, detection, and general utility.

b) High mage. These guys can only use one category, but man, can they use it well. Cheap spells, increased effects, anything you could want. Probably going to only ever be applied to one of the primary 3, but would be hilarious applied to the others.

c) Thief, has no magic, but abnormally high stealth, better melee than rogue, around the same as ranger, and its own version of techniques, with stuff like detect objects, and perhaps some form of assassination.

This leaves us with 2 base damage classes, no frills, two technique classes, one with stealth, one with more all-around function, 2 half-casters, one with stealth, one with melee, and two spellcasting classes. A total of 8 classes, with a fairly simple division, and diverse play options. Half the classes would use spells, half would not.

Considering this requires an entirely new class system, and also a rework of stats, this would have to be one of the later changes to be made.

There's stuff from variants to consider stealing as well. Ironband has an excellent stat system, much of which could be lifted more or less directly. The branches that are probably easiest to steal from are the NPP branch and the O branch. and there are plenty of ideas to be lifted from the more exotic variants such as Z, even though they'd need to be reworked to fit properly.

Short version: Remove mage/priest distinction in name/stats, put spells into groups, allow mages to choose two groups, half-casters to choose one, rework class system for consistency, steal stuff from variants. Big changes.

[Jungle_Boy]

I played in the most recent competition quite extensively to get a feel for possible other magic systems. Some things I liked.

Being able to choose your magic realm
Some classes get more than one realm
Several realms to choose from
Different specialties between realms
Lots of different magic using classes to choose from
Being able to learn a spell multiple times to increase efficacy
Only four books per realm

There were several other things I really enjoyed about PosChengband but those relate specifically to the magic system.

My only complaint was that there were too many spell choices when playing the sorcerer and too much overlap between some of the realms.

My suggestion for Vanilla would be to split the all spells up into 4-5 realms.

Offense
Defense
Utility
Healing
Status/Summoning? (This would require significant changes to make it worthwhile)

Pure casters would get to choose two realms and hybrids would get to choose one. Spell failure rates and minimum level could be used to differentiate the spells across the classes and there would be little to no overlap between realms. It would be possible to learn spells multiple times to increase spell power, perhaps three levels, and there would only be 3-4 books per realm.

[Estie]

Here is a crude, but simple change that approximates what I want:

To all physical attacks (melee and ranged), add a constant damage. Make this constant 2,5 x monsterlevel. This constant (and only it) is subject to reduction by AC; each point of AC reduces it by one, to a minimum of 0.
For the mage, make every point of base AC reduce the manapool by 1 (remove glove restriction for simplicitys sake). So a mage donning a soft leather armor [8, +5] would have their pool reduced by 8. Also, consider multiplying all of the mages spell damage by 2.

Some examples:

Snaga is level 6 and hits for 1d8. So he would hit for 1d8 + (6 x 2,5) = 1d8 + 15 now. A naked character takes full damage, one wearing soft leather armor [8, +5] would take 1d8 + (15-13) = 1d8 + 2.

Morgoth is level 100, so you add 250 to each of his attacks. With 250 or higher AC, the fight is exactly the same as before. With less, you take more damage in melee.

Uruk is level 16 and has a ranged attack that does 10 damage; it would now do 10 + 40, with the 40 getting reduced by AC.

A cave troll is level 33 and hits for 3d5/3d5/1d8/1d8. Each of these attacks would have 82 damage added.


This rule is not good enough for a global combat revamp, for various reasons. But I would like to playtest a modified game with a warrior and a mage and see how it goes.

[MattB]

I want warrior to have AC as a matter of course and be able to enter a room filled with a bunch of physical damage enemies; whereas a mage should be reluctant to do the same and rather rely on mobility to avoid such a scenario.

Vanilla already has this.

[MattB]

The Drolem Problem™

Sounds like a novel by John Grisham.

Probably made into a film featuring Julia Roberts.

But probably not as the drolem.

[Timo Pietilä]

I propose to include melee combat into the 1-shot range; as for now, its only breath weapons which threaten it.

Melee is already kind of single-shot area, just not by pure raw damage (unless you manage to get crushed by earthquake twice). Paralyzing and confusing attacks can get you if you don't have protections, and grand master mystic KO is a bit surprise to first time "stunning, what's that?" newbies.

[Derakon]

Okay, I understand your point now. Thanks for the clarification.

And yeah, I know about the Drolem Problem™. I'm not thrilled about it existing, but it ties into a lot of systemic "problems" with Angband like the ready availability of escapes, excessively high monster power that precludes fighting more than one enemy at a time, general tedium of actually fighting through 100 levels of dungeon instead of skipping to the end, etc. etc. etc. Hence why I said that fixing it requires a massive overhaul of just about everything.

[Estie]

1_shot: the drolem is going to get you, unless you have poison resist. Getting poison resistance is hard, grind at low depth before descending. You dont want to and prefer to risk it ? Ok. Your choice.

My vision: The orc is gonna get you in melee, unless you have AC. Getting AC is easy for warrior, just buy a leather armor and stuff in the shop; its hard for mage, you can wear heavy armor but you dont want to because its penalizing your offense (in more ways than the current -mana). Again, the choice is yours, face orcs and hope for a bar chain mail to drop or descent with only a leather armor and face trolls who kill you in melee unless you have bar chain mail.

In this game, the only real threat is the 1-shot. While I dont like it on principle, same as you, I dont see how to keep a challenge without this threat hovering over the character.

I propose to include melee combat into the 1-shot range; as for now, its only breath weapons which threaten it. You can protect against 1-shot breath by means of resist; I want to be able to protect against melee 1-shot by means of AC. Furthermore, I want warrior to have AC as a matter of course and be able to enter a room filled with a bunch of physical damage enemies; whereas a mage should be reluctant to do the same and rather rely on mobility to avoid such a scenario.

As for the balance between warrior and mage, I am not worried at all. In ToME2, I found the sorceror easy to the point of ridiculous, "op", but other people didnt; their play style had them favour high hit point classes. I think its fine to just modify and see what happens, and if somehow the majority of people find one way (melee and defense vs ranged + avoid melee) vastly superior, then its time to think about adjustments.

[Derakon]

What ?
Monsters who can 1-shot you from off srreen without warning have been in the game since ever; but if if they can do so in _melee_ range, it needs to be warned against ?

Seriously, reconsider your stance.

I'm not a fan of one-shot ranged deaths either, note. They're kind of difficult to disentangle from everything else, but they're not a great design concept. Hence why I said that any deaths the player experiences really ought to be the culmination of several turns of things going wrong in obvious ways.

Anyway, my point is that it should be possible to protect against melee insta gibb by gettig AC, which makes AC valuable unlike in the current game. _OR_ use phase door and hope (with some reliability) to not land next to monster.

AC is valuable. It's just not obviously valuable. The difference between 100 and 200 AC would be quite noticeable if you spent the time to compare them, but nobody's going to do that, and it's hard to calculate the difference by hand. It's very easy to calculate how valuable, say, fire resistance is -- take the monster's HP, divide by 3: that's the damage without resistance. Divide by 3 again: that's the damage with resistance. Very binary, simple, relatively easy to optimize for. How valuable is increasing your AC by 10? By 50?

We had discussions awhile back about making most armor slots give no AC value (and basically just being items you could attach abilities to), with the goal being of making AC more "chunky" and thus easier to quantify. Still worth considering IMO.

In the long run, mage needs to be able to survive 1 round of melee. Barely. That lays out the amount of AC protection, does it not ?

The thing I wanted to see clarified was how this proposed change affected the relative balance of the difference classes. If melee is made more lethal and ranged is made less lethal, then classes that can avoid melee get a significant effective power boost.

[Estie]

How is this not a complete power upgrade for mages? They never get into melee (so needn't dedicate anything much to armor anyway) and monster ranged attacks are nerfed? Contrarily, how is this not a complete nerf for warriors and other characters that must engage in melee? They must dedicate far more of their equipment/consumables to defenses without gaining much of anything in return.

I mean, a hypothetical system which overhauls everything could of course make melee (even more) dangerous and nerf ranged attacks, but we need to be careful when we propose one-off changes to the existing system that we aren't just tilting the balance in favor of certain classes and to the detriment of others.

In any event, monsters capable of one-shotting the player, by any means, must be loudly signposted somehow. In general, though, if we're overhauling everything then I would tend to favor making one-shot deaths far more rare in general, to the extent that you have to be making an effort to get in over your head. Ideally the game should be lost over the course of several turns (and should be visibly lost as such, i.e. the player is taking more damage than they can mitigate) rather than all at once.

What ?
Monsters who can 1-shot you from off screen without warning have been in the game since ever; but if if they can do so in _melee_ range, it needs to be warned against ?

Seriously, reconsider your stance.

Anyway, my point is that it should be possible to protect against melee insta gibb by gettig AC, which makes AC valuable unlike in the current game. _OR_ use phase door and hope (with some reliability) to not land next to monster.

In the long run, mage needs to be able to survive 1 round of melee. Barely. That lays out the amount of AC protection, does it not ?

Edit: typo