Angband Philosophy II: Magic

[Nomad]

However, there's another point which I've come across after playing a bunch of roguelikes with lots of skills. It's going to be impossible to make all spells useful in every game. It's probably going to be impossible to make all spells useful at all. However, it is possible to make all spells useful for at least one game. You can do this by altering when players get access to spells. Right now, all players immediately have access to the first 4 books. That means to be useful, every spell must compete with all the other spells in those books. What if the subset of spells the player had access to changed with each game. Maybe some games your mage would learn acid bolt before frost bolt, simply because they find the acid bolt spell first.

Here's a thought - how about randomised spellbooks? So at the beginning of every new game, just as all the flavoured items are randomised, so is the assignment of spells to books. Mix up all the town-book spells and split them into four evenly-sized books containing a random assortment of low-level spells, and then do the same with the dungeon books. So maybe in one game, your random 'starter book' might contain:

Phase Door
Find Traps, Doors & Stairs
Cure Poison
Spear of Light
Satisfy Hunger
Haste Self

But then in another game you'd start out with a different set. Remove the guarantee that the magic shop and temple will always stock all four town books, tweak the price and native depth to reflect the fact books now contain a mix of spells of different levels, and then it will take correspondingly longer for the player to collect all four and have the full set of town-book spells available to them.

EDIT: Plus the inventory management puzzle would be interesting and different each game - maybe some games you luck out and find all your favourite spells are clustered in one or two books and you can happily squelch the remainder, but other games they're evenly distributed across all the books and you've got to either carry them all or decide which spells to do without this time around.

[MattB]

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.

To the best of my memory, here is a list of spells that I never even bothered learning, let alone casting once, during my latest competition win.
--- yes=learned (but not necessarily ever cast)
--- no=not learned
--- n/a=not available to ranger

Book 1: Magic for Beginners

a) Magic Missile - yes
b) Detect Monsters - yes
c) Phase Door - yes
d) Light Area - yes
e) Treasure/object Detection - n/a
f) Cure Light Wounds - yes
g) Find Hidden Traps/Doors - yes
h) Stinking Cloud - no

Book 2: Conjurings and Tricks

a) Confuse Monster - no
b) Lightning Bolt - yes
c) Trap/Door Destruction - no
d) Cure Poison - yes
e) Sleep Monster - no
f) Teleport Self - yes
g) Spear of Light - yes
h) Frost Bolt - no
i) Wonder - no

Book 3: Incantations and Illusions

a) Satisfy Hunger - yes
b) Lesser Recharging - no
c) Turn Stone to Mud - yes
d) Fire Bolt - no
e) Polymorph Other - no
f) Identify - yes
g) Reveal Monster - no
h) Acid Bolt - no
i) Slow Monster - no

Book 4: Sorcery and Evocations

a) Frost Ball - no
b) Teleport Other - yes
c) Haste Self - yes
d) Mass Sleep - no
e) Fire Ball - no
f) Detect treasure (or whatever it's called) - no

Book 5: Resistances of Scarabtarices

a) Resist Cold - yes
b) Resist Fire - yes
c) Resist Poison - yes
d) Resistance - yes
e) Shield - yes

Book 6: Raal's Tome of Destruction
(squelched without using)

a) Shock Wave - n/a
b) Explosion - n/a
c) Cloudkill - no
d) Acid Ball - no
e) Ice Storm - no
f) Meteor Swarm - no
g) Rift - no

Book 7: Mordenkainen's Escapes

a) Door Creation - yes
b) Stair Creation - yes
c) Teleport Level - no
d) Word of Recall - yes
e) Rune of Protection - no

Book 8: Tenser's Transformations

a) Heroism - yes
b) Berserker - yes
c) Enchant Armor - yes
d) Enchant Weapon - yes
e) Greater Recharging - no
f) Elemental Brand - yes

Book 9: Kelek's Grimoire of Power
(squelched without using)

a) Earthquake - no
b) Bedlam - no
c) Rend Soul - n/a
d) Banishment - n/a
e) Word of Destruction - no
f) Mass Banishment - n/a
g) Chaos Strike - n/a
h) Mana Storm - n/a

Please note, the list I used might be a little out of date.
But the fact remains that out of the 54 spells available to me, I didn't even bother learning 26, or very nearly half, of them.
Having said that, I'm not for the reduction in book numbers. So you want book 4 for TO and haste? It'll still cost you a slot. Only want *Destruction* from book 9? Is it worth a slot or not?

Finally, I know I was missing out on a bit of experience by not learning those spells, but it's really not very much, is it?

[fizzix]

I know I just dropped a list of spells earlier with no solutions or anything. I sort of ran out of time. Anyway, you can probably break the bad spells down into subcategories, such as.

1) Spells that are useless (the current state of status effect spells)
2) Spells that are inefficient (mana cost too high)
3) Spells that are outclassed by an earlier spell (healing spells, chant)

The useless spells can be fixed by making them more useful, the inefficient spells can be improved by reducing the cost, and the outclassed spells can be improved by making the later spells better, or the earlier spells worse (or at very least, dropping the mana cost).

However, there's another point which I've come across after playing a bunch of roguelikes with lots of skills. It's going to be impossible to make all spells useful in every game. It's probably going to be impossible to make all spells useful at all. However, it is possible to make all spells useful for at least one game. You can do this by altering when players get access to spells. Right now, all players immediately have access to the first 4 books. That means to be useful, every spell must compete with all the other spells in those books. What if the subset of spells the player had access to changed with each game. Maybe some games your mage would learn acid bolt before frost bolt, simply because they find the acid bolt spell first.

I think this goes back to the idea that Derakon proposed a long time ago that spells should be found in "spell scrolls" that could then be placed in the players spellbook. Maybe the player starts with a spellbook that can hold 8 spells of level 10 or less. and can buy more "advanced" books from the store, that can hold more advanced spells. Then the player can decide what spells to put in their spell book, and can even erase spells they no longer care for to replace with better spells.

This goes for arcane casters but you could also do the same with holy casters if you want a similar system. If you want a different system, you can remove holy books altogether from priests and paladins. Instead, you can have some game item that the priest can use to "worship" their god and in return the god may grant them a new spell, randomly chosen of course. They have access to all spells given to them by their god at any point in time.

Yes this makes inventory much easier for every spell caster class, but I don't think that should actually be a guiding principle.

What makes angband replayable is that the challenge is different each game and depends on what you find and when you find it. Right now warrior has the most variability between games simply because the spell list is forced and warriors are wholly reliant on the items they find. If we make casters also reliant on the items, I think it greatly improves gameplay.

[Jungle_Boy]

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.

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.

I use cure poison all the time as poison prevents you from running and I run literally everywhere.

Chaos strike is definitely great against uniques since they cannot be polymorphed.

I also use trap/door destruction when the traps are not nicely lined up for my rod of disarming.

I also use create stairs when trying to get deeper quickly.

There are definitely a lot of spells that I never cast after the first time though.

[AnonymousHero]

You can always nerf stealth. It's rather weird how big the gap is between having moderate stealth and having high stealth.

What can I say? I don't disagree. I think it would be fantastic if everything were up for grabs! (And, hopefully, it is.)

[Derakon]

But isn't rogue stealth already pretty high-powered? (That is, you don't actually need sleep.)

You can always nerf stealth. It's rather weird how big the gap is between having moderate stealth and having high stealth.

[AnonymousHero]

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.

But isn't rogue stealth already pretty high-powered? (That is, you don't actually need sleep.)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?)

[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]

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!

[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?