Angband Philosophy II: Magic

[Derakon]

Separating INT and WIS mana pools only seems meaningful if classes has access to spells that use both. Otherwise, that just an unused UI element, like showing Mana for a Warrior.

Right, which is why I suggested that classes should have spells that do both. For example, we could think of the WIS-based pool as providing "power" and the INT-based pool as providing "shape". An indiscriminate spell like Fireball then would take a relatively large amount of WIS mana and less INT mana, while something that needs more care, like say Haste Self, would have only a small amount of WIS and a larger amount of INT. You'd always need at least 1 of both to cast any spell.

[fizzix]

I've had a look over the spell lists, and they're IMHO not too bad.

which list are you looking at?

The following spells are ones I never cast with any class:

Confuse monster: costs too much, rarely works
Trap/Door Destruction: perhaps after traps get overhauled
Cure Poison: Overtime poison damage is a joke after level 3
Sleep Monster: see confuse monster
Wonder: Costs way too much, too risky
Polymorph Other: too risky
Slow Monster: Costs way too much, get it way too late
Mass Sleep: this spell is a joke, right?
Acid Ball: I can't ever remember choosing this ball spell over others, except as a way to cheaply ID artifacts by destroying all the others
Stair Creation: I just hate that this spell exists
Earthquake: completely useless
Bedlam: See mass sleep
Rend Soul: Costs too much
Chaos Strike: chance to polymorph makes this spell useless


Slow Poison: See cure poison
Scare Monster: see confuse monster
Cure Serious Wounds: Cure light wounds, and heal are the only healing spells ever worth casting.
Chant: If the improvements on Bless also improved the buffs they'd be worth it. Right now they only improve the duration, so they're pointless
Sanctuary: Sigh...
Neutralize Poison: See cure poison
Cure Critical Wounds: See CSW
Cure Mortal Wounds: See CSW
Turn Undead: perhaps if it damaged undead
Prayer: see chant
Holy Word: Costs too much for the useless side effects. Dispel Evil is better.
Alter Reality: This is just a more expensive way to cast teleport level. Except in ironman games where it clearly is "cheating"
Probing: Can't remember ever casting this spell, but perhaps I would if there were monsters I didn't know!
Cure Mortal Wounds: See CSW
Remembrance: Costs way too much, XP drain just isn't a big deal by the time you get this spell
Unbarring Ways: this is just trap/door destruction
Enchant Weapon: By the time you get this you don't have anything worth enchanting anymore
Enchant Armor: Same here
Elemental Brand: Same with enchant weapon
Annihilation: Too costly.

Additionally, I'll never cast anything except for a buff/heal/utility spell with a rogue, ranger or paladin.

[Derakon]

While I mostly agree with your list, fizzix, I do have some comments.

Wonder: Costs way too much, too risky

This is readily fixable by making it cheap. You use Wands of Wonder sometimes in the early game, right? Being able to cast Wonder for, say, 2 mana might be worthwhile.

Slow Monster: Costs way too much, get it way too late
Mass Sleep: this spell is a joke, right?

More generally, status ailment spells are a problem, as I've pointed out in the past. They're currently either too good or useless. This is fixable, but requires overhauling them.

Acid Ball: I can't ever remember choosing this ball spell over others, except as a way to cheaply ID artifacts by destroying all the others

Depends on how early you get Raal's, but yeah, it's not great.

Stair Creation: I just hate that this spell exists

Not useless if you want to dive fast or if you want to safely leave the level and can't for whatever reason use Teleport Level.

Earthquake: completely useless

I've used it to partition a vault and avoid getting into an encounter with an enemy I couldn't fight and couldn't teleport away. That is one hell of a niche use, but I liked that I'd found a use for it.

Rend Soul: Costs too much

IIRC, it's your highest DPS against non-evil targets for a brief window. Still pretty niche, mind. But by the time you can cast it, mana costs are not a huge barrier to spell use as you should have a stock of Restore Mana potions.

Holy Word: Costs too much for the useless side effects. Dispel Evil is better.

Doesn't this also provide a bigger heal than Healing's 300HP?

Annihilation: Too costly.

And always deals less damage than the wand. It only barely out-damages Orb of Draining, and costs substantially more.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I mostly agree as well, with some exceptions:

Trap/Door Destruction: perhaps after traps get overhauled

I sometimes use this to safely open chests without getting "pricked" and, now that Nick has fixed the "look" command so that known traps previously identified can now be specifically distinquished, to clear traps for which @ is not resistant, e.g, reduce dexterity dart.

Cure Poison: Overtime poison damage is a joke after level 3

I still find this useful in the earlier stages until I'm sufficiently along in stat gain and h.p. room.

Stair Creation: I just hate that this spell exists

Still useful to me for diving quickly, and if not playing forced descent, to scum DL 98 and DL 99 for end-game equipment.

Prayer: see chant

This as well as Bless and Chant I still use, especially for race combinations or stats that make 2-Hit pathetic for awhile.

Remembrance: Costs way too much, XP drain just isn't a big deal by the time you get this spell

Sometimes, but just for the convenience of not carrying !Restore Life.

Additionally, I'll never cast anything except for a buff/heal/utility spell with a rogue, ranger or paladin.

I'll still use Magic Missile and Orb of Destruction, but other than that, pretty much true.

[Nomad]

Stair Creation: I just hate that this spell exists

Not useless if you want to dive fast or if you want to safely leave the level and can't for whatever reason use Teleport Level.

Still useful to me for diving quickly, and if not playing forced descent, to scum DL 98 and DL 99 for end-game equipment.

I assumed this was a philosophical objection to the spell's scummy/cheat-ish nature rather than a suggestion that it's useless. (Sort of like I have a philosophical objection to the existence of Satisfy Hunger scrolls/spells and refuse to use them because if you're going to have a hunger mechanic you shouldn't just immediately render the whole existence of food irrelevant, dammit.)

As to the rest of fizzix's list, I think the only one of those spells I personally get any use out of is Cure Poison, and as it is that's a bit too costly/late-learned to be relevant to anyone except maybe mages. (Playing as a rogue, by the time I've got 9 SP to spare, I've also got enough HP to wait out poison. If it was a book one spell costing 3 SP or so, I'd find it way more useful.)

Maybe we should have a poll thread for spell-usage by class and find out which spells people actually use when they're playing a given class of character, which ones they don't but might if they were cheaper/learned earlier, and which ones are just universally agreed to be useless. It might be feasible to pare the spellbooks down from 9 per realm to something like 6 without actually losing much of note.

[AnonymousHero]

I 2nd people looking at this system. Also consider that a poscheng mage/priest selects 2 realms. At 11 realms this creates 11x10=110 unique mage options, all from 1 class. Without considering race. With only 4 realms, 4x3 still creates 12 options to play with.

Regarding Entro[0]/Poscheng: Another IMO interesting aspect of a few of the classes is that they can learn spells from books, but don't have to carry those books around in the dungeon. In particular, the Samurai (and I believe Ninja?[1]) learn techniques from special books that they find, but they once learned they don't need to carry the books around. Of course they're more limited in how many "spells" they can cast (as compared to magely types) before running out of SP, but I found this is a very interesting twist on spell casting. (And quite thematically good for classes like Samurai/Ninja. Perhaps there could be an idea lurking here for an Antimagic Warrior-type class...)

[0] If not sure, but I think the Samurai class originated in Entroband. No, wait, that would have been the Japanese Hengband, wouldn't it?

[1] pls no rage! It's been ages since I played one. However, Golem Samurai is among my favorite race/class combinations. I'm not sure why, exactly, I think I just find the idea of a Golem Samurai incredbly cool, especially if you imagine the Golem as a golem from the Discworld universe.

[Nick]

which list are you looking at?

Well, I was kind of comparing to my own expectations, which were fairly low...

I suspect you are also coming from the point of view of someone who plays optimally - I certainly use Cure Poison for a while, for example, because I will let myself get too poisoned and then realise it's going to kill me. I have to disagree with Chaos Strike, too - that's the spell of choice against high level uniques.

There's also the question of casting for fun - polymorph and earthquakes in the town, etc.

One of the issues, too, is that the game has changed around a lot of these spells. Trap/Door Destruction, for example, was more useful when there were still jammed doors. And I balance changes have probably affected the Priest spells badly.

All that said, I'm inclined to think that mages and priests could probably do with 5-6 books, and half-casters 2 or 3.

[Derakon]

All that said, I'm inclined to think that mages and priests could probably do with 5-6 books, and half-casters 2 or 3.

Are warriors going to get "stacked" multi-purpose consumables to compensate for the inevitable decrease in inventory size required to maintain balance?

[AnonymousHero]

Well, I was kind of comparing to my own expectations, which were fairly low...

(snipped)

I can certainly appreciate using spells for flavor, but IME there are quite a few spells that I will literally only cast once for the experience. (Many of which are on fizzix's list, but the point isn't really what fizzix likes or not ). That's bad.

Basically almost all of the first four mage books become useless except perhaps 5-9(?) of the spells... when you gain the dungeon-only books. There may be gameplay value in a sort of "step-up" when you gain dungeon books, but if that's the case you should be able to dump the earlier books; unfortunately the actually useful spells from book 1-4 are spread out over all the books. For priests, the first (IIRC) book becomes completely useless at a certain level and you can actually dump it. For priests there are also several spells that are strictly superior to lower-level priest spells. That's just annoying.

Anyway... really looking forward to some of the experimentation on this! I could probably use inspiration for T2, if I get around to actually adressing the (many) gameplay problems in that!

[Nomad]

Are warriors going to get "stacked" multi-purpose consumables to compensate for the inevitable decrease in inventory size required to maintain balance?

I know you're joking, but it has long been a minor bugbear of mine that five out of six classes in the game get "Find Traps, Doors & Stairs" as a combined spell in their starter book, yet warriors have to carry two separate rods, one for Trap Location and one for Door/Stair Location.

[AnonymousHero]

Are warriors going to get "stacked" multi-purpose consumables to compensate for the inevitable decrease in inventory size required to maintain balance?

There might be some solutions, I think. Perhaps just have spellboks take up more inventory slots? Alright, that's not quite a serious suggestion, but if spellbooks in general were indestructible from elemental damage and could not be stolen, then they could weigh considerably more (thus significantly affecting inventory until late game). Not that this is necessarily an ideal solution, but I think the inventory issue could be solved.

(Maybe some "warrior-esque" rods should just be combined? Caster types usually don't actually need them that much, so it might not affect their balance too much, so... why not?)

[Cold_Heart]

It would be nice if sleep scrolls/staves/spells were guaranteed to work unless specific no_sleep flag is present on monster, and lasted until the monster is awakened by failed stealth roll or some kind of other thing (shriek/damage/whatever). This way sleep things would be super useful for rogues and stealth would actually have a meaning.

They could be made rare/mana-expensive etc but I see this can be potentially good.

[Nick]

Are warriors going to get "stacked" multi-purpose consumables to compensate for the inevitable decrease in inventory size required to maintain balance?

That would be most inelegant

I think the infallible sleep idea has promise for monster status - the problem with all those spells is getting the balance right, but currently it's ridiculously tilted in favour of the monsters.

[Nomad]

I think the infallible sleep idea has promise for monster status - the problem with all those spells is getting the balance right, but currently it's ridiculously tilted in favour of the monsters.

Maybe you could make all status effects infallible, but with a very short minimum duration? So providing you don't fail to cast the spell/zap the wand, any non-immune monster is guaranteed to be confused or scared, but there's a chance it could recover the very next turn. Or possibly the duration could be linked to character level (for spells) or device skill, so that later in the game you're guaranteed a more lasting effect.

[Derakon]

That would be most inelegant

I think the infallible sleep idea has promise for monster status - the problem with all those spells is getting the balance right, but currently it's ridiculously tilted in favour of the monsters.

Ahem. My proposal stands: make status effect spells be guaranteed to work (except against monsters where they never work), but scale their effects so that they aren't overwhelmingly powerful.