Angband Philosophy II: Magic

[Derakon]

Imagine an orc 1-hitting a low level character in melee unless same character has a certain amount of AC. You are wearing a robe +0 and nothing else, you die; you wear armor giving ~20 AC, you lose 1/2 health.

The gamplay could revolve around warriors trying to get enough armor to survive, and mages avoiding melee with their superior utility. Surely having a ?phase land you near a deadly melee monster isnt as bad as getting breathed at offscreen for instant death ?

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.

[Estie]

3) Gravity bolt/breath enables a mage to keep many monsters out of melee range

This is the second and, as I see it , more profound aspect than giving mages more tools to play with:

The defensive properties, unlike melee damage, do not allow for much variance. I think changing this would be a good idea: noobs who dont understand still buy basic armor with their first money even though the effect is little; why not change it to the state where you DIE in melee unless you have sufficient protection ?

Breath weapons that kill you off screen abound, and thats needed to keep the difficulty up; why not have melee be more dangerous than ranged combat ?

Imagine an orc 1-hitting a low level character in melee unless same character has a certain amount of AC. You are wearing a robe +0 and nothing else, you die; you wear armor giving ~20 AC, you lose 1/2 health.

The gamplay could revolve around warriors trying to get enough armor to survive, and mages avoiding melee with their superior utility. Surely having a ?phase land you near a deadly melee monster isnt as bad as getting breathed at offscreen for instant death ?

I think that allowing defense to matter beyond a simple shopping list of "need to cover for endfight" would be a good idea. Offense is currently the only variable, you can kill M in 20 or 50 turns depending on gear, as long as you have to survive a couple of his actions its fine. So require a certain amount of defense to survive, but more is better. He has melee and ranged attacks. Require a certain amount of AC to survive 1 round of melee, and a certain amount of resistance to survive his ranged spells. Have the required AC/resists in the available loot, but have them compete with the offensive mods that reduce the duration of the fight.

[Thraalbee]

Things I like for High mage in the current poscheng compo:
1) Any Wizardstaff will reduce mana consumption so this becomes preferred weapon for mage
2) Eat Magic (regain mana from rods/staves) eliminates boring tele+wait and is well balanced against !Mana which is much better especially later in the game
3) Gravity bolt/breath enables a mage to keep many monsters out of melee range
4) Reflection (chance to deflect bolts) protects some monsters as well as player with certain items/artifacts

The key events however were finding book 3 and then book 4. Maybe it would be more fun if more granular and the order of spells received were more randomized?
What if instead the player would get new spells one-by-one through searching a new terrain type, bookshelf (mage), alternatively praying at new terrain type, altar (priest)?
The results from a search/prayer would be either "you find nothing of value/get no reaction" or "you find/receive a new spell."
New spells has to be transcribed into spellbooks carried in the inventory to become usable (spell limits apply as usual).
I am thinking we would still have four (poscheng) flavours of empty spellbooks but would allow some customization so that some spells could be transcribed into any of two or more book flavours whereas others would only fit in one specific flavour.
Shelves/altars could have one or more "uses" like forges in Sil with default 1 for most of them, but a grand altar or super shelf could allow more than one attempt.
The town would have a basic shelf/altar service with the minimum set of spells always available

The advantage is that you need to play with what you have. Today you only use the best spells of each book. Also it makes rising in power more granular.

[Tibarius]

re Carnivean

Yeah, +1 from me!

Maybe abolish spell books and store spells in a staff? And you can only cast those spells the currently wielded staff holds. Ideas first

[debo]

Y'all really should have played the most recent competition.

[Carnivean]

Whatever it is people imagine makes spellcasters more powerfull is not usually the same that makes swordfighters better.

Tropes around mages and increasing magical power usually involve "artifacts" such as crystal balls or amulets or charms, or more usually a staff. All the wizards in the LOTR movies had nice wooden staves, even the tiles in game show blue mages wielding staves.

Angband currently uses staves to store specific spells, which is also a trope, but less common that the staff as source, booster or anchor of the mage's power. I'd prefer to see the current staves turned into a different spell storage device, and mages given staves to hold in the melee slot. This would power their magic in various ways (focus for cast %, power for damage boost, etc) while preventing them from turning into melee guys at various points in the game. This would be Nick's arcane magic realm, where the player is a pure wizard. Other realms could work differently, with Nature being more buff related and melee attack oriented (thus fitting more to the Ranger class).

[Estie]

It is possible to use the existing infrastructure for melee damage and "simply" apply its benefits to spell damage in some way. For example, a ring of damage +8 also increases magic missile damage by +8 (yes it would be imbalanced if done exactly this way; ideas first, balance after they are decided).

This would change the price to pay from "a new set of useless items" to "unintuitive mechanics". Whatever it is people imagine makes spellcasters more powerfull is not usually the same that makes swordfighters better.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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 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?

[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.