Angband Philosophy II: Magic

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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%.

[Carnivean]

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?

While I don't agree with Tibarius' opinion at all, perhaps you should be thinking along the lines of what Nick said:

I'm currently looking at a scheme with

• 25-30 spells for casters (in maybe 5 books), less for half-casters
• Very few spells in common across realms
• Spells can improve with character advancement (so priests only get one healing spell, which improves)

Spells that are available, castable, but essentially useless when you really want them to help (say fighting a unique or OOD monster) are possibly the solution.

Essentially you have 4 variables at play. Availability (min level), fail rate, damage/utility, mana cost. Making availability a function of finding a source (however that plays out) instead of level dependent could allow a different style of play.

That said, the point of mages is for them to be weak, scared and mostly useless for the early part of the game. The trade off is the overpowered nature of the high level mage. Rather than making them easier to play in the earlier part of the game, I'd prefer for there to be more struggle at the beginning and more power at the top end.

[Derakon]

Let's see if i can use other words to say the same thing

Thanks for the further explanation. So basically you're arguing against the minimum level requirements to cast spells. I guess I don't see this as being as big of an issue, if only because typically even after you reach the minimum required level, you'll still be pretty bad at casting the spell (high failure rate and it takes too much of your mana pool) to want to use it regularly. It takes several levels after the point at which the spell is castable before it's really useful.

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?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I don't find playing mages fun, but others do.
I find playing warriors fun, but others don't.

There would be a real danger in making all classes equally fun to play, according to one person's (or even some people's) opinion. It might make all classes 'unfun' to some other people.

(Even as I'm typing this I am becoming aware that this is not the strongest argument I've ever posted.)

I agree that the classes should not be made "equally fun to play" -- whatever that is. I find warriors easiest, especially with a half-troll, but maybe that's because I like bashing things. Mages, and to a lesser extent priests, I find difficult judging by the number of my @ deaths in those classes. BUT - If I can get them to the end-game, mages and priests are easy to play and win. I guess what I'm saying, quite ineloquently, is that the classes seem pretty well "balanced" already.

[MattB]

I think to equal game mechanics for all classes serves the purpose to make all classes fun to play. I think the mage class could be much more fun to play than it is currently for myself, for example.

I don't find playing mages fun, but others do.
I find playing warriors fun, but others don't.

There would be a real danger in making all classes equally fun to play, according to one person's (or even some people's) opinion. It might make all classes 'unfun' to some other people.

(Even as I'm typing this I am becoming aware that this is not the strongest argument I've ever posted.)

[Tibarius]

I think to equal game mechanics for all classes serves the purpose to make all classes fun to play. I think the mage class could be much more fun to play than it is currently for myself, for example.

I agree that different classes should play differently.

[Timo Pietilä]

i think it would be a good idea to make the game mechanics as equal as possible for all the classes.

Why?

I mean, rules of the game should be clear and same for everybody, but different classes should play differently. That's the reason to have different classes in the game.

[Tibarius]

re: Derakon

Let's see if i can use other words to say the same thing

If a warrior finds a powerfull weapon or a ring of slaying/damage he can easily put it on and use it, even if the character does not reach the maximum damage output possible for the weapon because of lacking str/dex.

If a mage finds at low levels a high level dungeon book, the book is rather useless for the character. Either the spells have a minimum level requirement which prevents casting or the required mana / int prevents casting the spell effectively.

In my eyes these two styles differ in the way game mechanics. And i think it would be a good idea to make the game mechanics as equal as possible for all the classes.

[Derakon]

1. Mages Play differently from warrior types, in that way, that warrior types
have no limitation on stuff they find. I think it would be a good idea to
change game mechanics so that mages work in a similar way. You find
something, you should be able to use it.

I don't really understand this. Are you saying warriors can use everything they find? Ignoring the fact that of course every single spellbook is useless to them, they also are forced to bias their equipment towards killing things. Warriors, paladins, and rogues are unable to use "stat stick" weapons or launchers that are bad at melee combat; they also generally need to dedicate a ring slot to wearing a Ring of Damage, and possibly the other ring slot for rings of Strength/Dexterity/Damage. Characters that don't rely on being able to melee things have far more leeway in what gear they wear.

I'm not saying that warriors necessarily have a hard time of it, just that this point needs clarification.