Class/magic feature branch

[Nick]

One of the planned areas of work for 4.2 is player classes, races and magic, and I have made a start on a feature branch for classes.

The basic ideas have been explored in this thread, with my views best expressed by the starting post and this example of a possible set of mage spells. I have done mostly preparatory work so far, to enable classes to be constructed using books from multiple magic realms, and to make the entirety of class definition happen in the data files. The one gameplay change so far is to redo shops a bit, so the temple has been replaced by a bookseller who sells all the town books and nothing else. Next up is to add new magic realms and classes to use them.

So, there are builds of this for Windows and macOS, and you can get source code as a zip file or by looking at the branch on Github. As I say, there's not a lot to see now except for the shop changes, but if anyone wants to look at it, think about classes, play to check it doesn't crash etc I'd be interested in feedback.

[Gwarl]

Please reconsider status effects and how they fit in the spell lists.

(Also, hooray new shops! Can we get a mushroom vendor?

[debo]

Real talk: will there be a magic rocket spell?

[Sky]

generally speaking, i would like to see spells which do more crowd control / situational spells, rather than "more of this, less of that". Such as Invisibility, Darkness, spells which affect monster's perception, temporary ESP, charm, resistances/immunities, debuffs that work, that kind of stuff.

[Nick]

There is now a page with the builds from this branch, more recent at the top.

The latest builds have a new mage class to try out (after all the other classes on the birth screen), with only 5 books. Note that for now all the old classes are still there, and beware that there are two sets of red books, with the two mage classes only able to read their own.

[Tibarius]

books vs scrolls

I like the direction the game develops currently into very much. Your ideas sound pretty coherent to me Nick Holy<->Necromancy and Nature<->Arcane.

From a game perspective the most drawback from my point of view is: you only have 5 finds, that realy matter as pure spellcaster class. Books #5 to #9. It would add much more fun and diversity if the spellcaster classes would be boosted in spells by finding scrolls / runes / other items which hold one spell each and can be learned and inscribed into spell-books.

So the town would sell empty spell books and a very few set of starting spells.
That way each caster would be / have a unique set of spells in the end.

[Tibarius]

new mage class

I will give a try and test the new mage class some times.
First book detections has no combat spell anymore. So the mage should start as hand-to-hand fighter until he can buy the first attack spell book (400 gold).

Correct?

[Tibarius]

urgs

Nick, the new mage class is horrible to start with and surely no fun. So what is the point of play testing it?

The new book #1 has no attack spell anymore. So if i turn usefull gear off i can buy book #2 just to see that magic missile is lvl 8!!! I tried several times now ... starting money is not enough to get a decent weapon. Hand to hand combat is horrible as mage and if want to use a bow i play ranger and not mage.

[debo]

Nick, the new mage class is horrible to start with and surely no fun. So what is the point of play testing it?

The new book #1 has no attack spell anymore. So if i turn usefull gear off i can buy book #2 just to see that magic missile is lvl 8!!! I tried several times now ... starting money is not enough to get a decent weapon. Hand to hand combat is horrible as mage and if want to use a bow i play ranger and not mage.

That town book 2 looks a lot like a zangband Armageddon spellbook

[Derakon]

Nick, the new mage class is horrible to start with and surely no fun. So what is the point of play testing it?

The new book #1 has no attack spell anymore. So if i turn usefull gear off i can buy book #2 just to see that magic missile is lvl 8!!! I tried several times now ... starting money is not enough to get a decent weapon. Hand to hand combat is horrible as mage and if want to use a bow i play ranger and not mage.

Buy a Wand of Magic Missile and some flasks of oil, maybe? I doubt that those alone would be enough to get you to level 8 though, not unless you were exceedingly careful in what you fought. They'd get you enough levels to be able to survive fighting weaker enemies...not that I particularly relish the idea of grinding for levels in order to get access to a basic attack.

[Sky]

go Half troll and grind some blue worm masses

[Nick]

Nick, the new mage class is horrible to start with and surely no fun. So what is the point of play testing it?

The new book #1 has no attack spell anymore. So if i turn usefull gear off i can buy book #2 just to see that magic missile is lvl 8!!! I tried several times now ... starting money is not enough to get a decent weapon. Hand to hand combat is horrible as mage and if want to use a bow i play ranger and not mage.

The first book has no attack spells, but it has really good detection and escape spells. So you need to play to that strength. Early game for these mages will involve a lot of sneaking around, running away and sniping selected targets.

I have a CL10 character now (second attempt - first died to a mouse). I started by buying a wand of Magic Missile and headed down. Taking stairs whenever I found them, I was able to kill anything I came across, including Fang. By the time I was running out of charges (helped by finding -StinkingCloud) I had learned Recharging. My biggest problem was actually getting enough money for the second book, and for ?Recall.

This class will certainly need balancing, but it is playable, and I thought fun - in particular I enjoyed the sense of danger in the early game.

[Estie]

Havent played test game yet - a few thoughts:

Necromancy is difficult: common tropes are undead summons, life leech, dot as opposed to direct damage spells, debuffs (disease, poison). ToME2 has the weird temporary melee weapons (which I never use and which are pretty pointless, imo). I dont recall many of the Zang schools - but it seems to me that Zang magic would be closest to what is planned ? More schools, each with few, but relevant spells, less overlap.

Nature magic can be many things, some already existing spells fit, others can be devised. Miruvor (sp?), the elven drink the company used to survive the Caradhras desaster, comes to mind. Gameplay wise, that could be a speed potion or potion of life or some other fitting drink that already exists.

More generally, what I would like is a bit of variance in the spells from game to game - similar to the ToME2 thaumaturgist. With spellcasters in vanilla, you always know exactly which spells you get when and what they do; the only difference from game to game is when you find your books, and recently the game has been trimmed towards finding the relevant book before the spells inside are useable - which is great, you dont want to play a spellcaster without spells.

For example, the heal300 spell could have a fixed, but randomly rolled value each game, from 200 to 400 or so; enough to make a difference when the roll is extreme, not enough to break the classes relying on it.
Some offensive spells are invariably going to be better than others, but if a relatively bad spell gets a good roll, it might still be used in some games, making playing that spellcaster a different experience from last time.

I am a little doubtful about the Zangification of magic, if that it is. While there is a lot of overlap in the 2 current schools, it is mostly stuff that everyone casts one way or another - if warrior, by device. So removing, say, magic map from the green books would do nothing to distinguish a class - it would just mean that priests now carry staves with the spell effect instead.

Is the plan to introduce many completely new spells ? How different will they be, on a scale from 1 to tome2 ?

[Sky]

i died about 20 times, but eventually made it to CL10, and now have many offensive spells .. i see the mana values have been adjusted.
but, i looked into the other 3 books, and essentially it's the same stuff that a regular mage has.

[Huqhox]

It needs a bit of tweaking but it is quite fun as Nick says (although playing as a half troll tank does take the sting out of the early game)

What would be useful would be an early 'invisibility' type spell or just handy stealth buff so you could sneak about more. All the early detection is a big help. Once the offensive spells arrive with book 2 it is certainly a lot more fun.

Presumably the idea is to end up with offensive spells that deal a lot more damage/mana than the existing set (MM aside) by the end game?