Class/magic feature branch

[Nick]

Didn't get as far as I would have liked, but the build page now has new builds for Windows and macOS with the updates to mages outlined in my last post in this thread, and a fix to the Tap Magical Energy with full mana crash. Source is here.

[Moving Pictures]

Le thought, le mage

Working a half-orc mage through the system. Haven't played a lot of mages, but here's my two cents/drachma/peso/copper pieces.

Playing style: the mage has become a tool-user Grab stuff, recharge. Rinse, lather, repeat. I plucked a wand of annihilation fairly early on, and recharged the ever-lovin' heck out of it, essentially turning a spell point into about 200 points of guaranteed, irresistible damage. Racked up a lot of dead uniques with that wand, until it went blooie. Until Dungeon book 4, was using wands of acid bolts, cold balls, etc., etc.

I think my playing style has evolved considerably in the last few months, but even being hyper-stupendous-cautious, I lost a whole bunch of mages in the first few levels (deep descent the culprit for a few; summoning another.) The only reason the current one made it to DL 50 (CL36) was due to a DL8 randart bow (x3), iCold, rAcid, pFear, +4 CON that turned it into a ranger - at least on low AC targets.

Liking the electric arc. Scales well, I thought, through early levels.. Nerfing stinking cloud was wise, as it did not scale well: became irrelevant too quickly.

Not grasping the use of disruption. Doesn't seem ... worth anything.

Mana bolt is now the go-to assault. I sense a shift from devices to spells as the mana points accrue, although without serious toys, there's not enough mana points to do serious whittling - yet.

The recharge spell - and its lack of blooie - leads to a completely different playing style than I've ever explored before, using a stack of wands/staves. Let's just say that liches aren't allowed to do the touchy-drainy, and I may have to really alter tactics when the balrogs show up more regularly.

[luneya]

Working a half-orc mage through the system. Haven't played a lot of mages, but here's my two cents/drachma/peso/copper pieces.

Playing style: the mage has become a tool-user Grab stuff, recharge. Rinse, lather, repeat. I plucked a wand of annihilation fairly early on, and recharged the ever-lovin' heck out of it, essentially turning a spell point into about 200 points of guaranteed, irresistible damage. Racked up a lot of dead uniques with that wand, until it went blooie. Until Dungeon book 4, was using wands of acid bolts, cold balls, etc., etc.

Annihilation is an endgame wand; it's traditionally one of the weapons of choice for mages vs Morgoth. If you managed to pull one early and recharge it many times without explosion, of course you shredded everything. That's not an indication that anything is OP, but merely that you got a really lucky OOD find.

[Sphara]

Annihilation is an endgame wand; it's traditionally one of the weapons of choice for mages vs Morgoth. If you managed to pull one early and recharge it many times without explosion, of course you shredded everything. That's not an indication that anything is OP, but merely that you got a really lucky OOD find.

Just having finished a high-elf mage I can certainly back up Moving Pictures here. I didn't find Annihilation until very late game.
Wands I found did the killing job a lot better than spells I had in first three books. What I assumed being a 3rd book all-around killer spell, Mana bolt, was a huge disappointment damage-wise. Compared to it, wand of fireballs, destroyed everything that wasn't resistant lot faster.

I barely needed Restore Mana in anything else than recovering from late Banishment fails. In the very late I did use some Mana Storm just because it's a mana storm. Still, wasn't as reliable as acid balls wand because of the high fail rate.

Thrust Away spell had too short range to be even closely competitive with the wands. Well, at least I killed Khamul with that because he appeared to be omni-resistant.

I know the wands have always been great for a mage but now they are just overwhelmingly better compared to this new spell set. And rods? Why bother carrying those when Recharging spell barely fails at all?

[Nick]

Just having finished a high-elf mage I can certainly back up Moving Pictures here.

Thanks for the feedback - note that there is a new build up which probably changes the experience quite a bit.

[Sphara]

Thanks for the feedback - note that there is a new build up which probably changes the experience quite a bit.

I'm playing on angband.live so those changes were probably not there yet.

Started to test a ranger. Not a clear big picture yet about it but I think I found a game bug (unless it's already fixed or noted but still present on angband.live):

Successfully casting a spell for a first time gave ridiculous amount of experience. I was already at CL 21 and casting Sense Surroundings for the first time gave me over 800 experience points and got me to CL 22. Right after the level-up I did cast Stone to Mud for the first time. Again over 800 exp and now pretty close reaching CL 23.

[Moving Pictures]

Annihilation is an endgame wand; it's traditionally one of the weapons of choice for mages vs Morgoth. If you managed to pull one early and recharge it many times without explosion, of course you shredded everything.

A point to be made, though: the WOA was probably a vital reason why he char was able to avoid grinding incessantly, dying, or both.

[bron]

So I was randomly looking at "class.txt", and I noticed that Warriors have "strength-multiplier:5". Shouldn't this be '6' ?

[Nick]

So I was randomly looking at "class.txt", and I noticed that Warriors have "strength-multiplier:5". Shouldn't this be '6' ?

Short answer is "No, that's max-attacks".

Longer answer is that strength multiplier is part of the calculation of how many blows the player gets; specifically it adjusts the value that is used to look up the strength axis in the blows table. So it's really a relative thing between classes, and you can think of it as a measure of how quickly the number of blows for a class increases with STR. Currently it's 5 for warrior, paladin and blackguard, 4 for ranger and rogue, 3 for druid, necromancer and priest, and 2 for mage.

[kaypy]

Are mid-level mages supposed to have effectively limitless mana?

If not, then recharge/tap is probably a broken combination.

But I also note that !mana are reasonably plentiful and eg FA has an outright give-me-more-mana spell, so it may be working as intended...

Possible fixes if needed:
* make recharge drain mana per added charge, limited by player pool- still good for prepping items in advance, but uneconomical for tapping

* make tap able to destroy target item (the recharge phase can destroy items, but its pretty rare, which is probably best for the 'recharging items for actually using them' case)

[Nick]

Are mid-level mages supposed to have effectively limitless mana?

If not, then recharge/tap is probably a broken combination.

But I also note that !mana are reasonably plentiful and eg FA has an outright give-me-more-mana spell, so it may be working as intended...

Possible fixes if needed:
* make recharge drain mana per added charge, limited by player pool- still good for prepping items in advance, but uneconomical for tapping

* make tap able to destroy target item (the recharge phase can destroy items, but its pretty rare, which is probably best for the 'recharging items for actually using them' case)

Good point. I think it's probably a good idea to make tap able to destroy the item, even if it's a small chance.

[kaypy]

Dimension door: Unlimited range, pinpoint accuracy, works in vaults

This is a placeholder that will get balanced a bit better eventually, right?

[bron]

My $0.02 from the comp 216 experience:

1 ) Remove Wands of Annihilation. Drain Life is sufficiently good.

2) Change allowable targeting. Right now, a character one space into a corridor can target like so:

     # #
     #@#
     #.#
     ...
    .....
   .......
  .........
 ...........

i.e. the full 45 degrees from the mouth of the corridor, same as if they were standing at the mouth of the corridor rather than one space in. I think this should be changed to only allow targeting like so:

     # #
     #@#
     #.#
     ...
     ...
    .....
    .....
   .......

i.e. 30 degrees from the mouth of the corridor.

I believe this would reduce the worst of the abuses, since monsters in a room approaching the player will do so along the 45 degree vector, and so not be targetable. This would still allow, e.g. indirect fire (area-effect spells landing nearby), and, importantly, preserve the ability to safely teleport-other a monster from "around the corner" when it appears at the mouth of the corridor. I by no means claim this to be a perfect solution or anything, but it seems like it would be an improvement over the current state of affairs.

3) Artifacts are just generally overpowered, and there are too many of them

4) Despite what I just said in (3), there is a relatively powerful thing I'd like to see added. Rand-Arts are fun to play, but I often find myself with difficulties because the gear doesn't mesh together, e.g. 8 things with Resist Nether, but nothing with Confusion Protection. So I'd like to see something, I'd suggest Cloaks of Aman, have an Activation that allows the player to *choose* a resistance or ability. It would have a huge Recharge time (10,000 or 100,000 turns), and of course, only *one* resistance/ability. But it would let the player plug some important hole in their kit, and make Rand-Arts less frustrating.

5) The Paladin's "Single Combat" prayer seems too strong. As an alternative, I'd propose a prayer that protects against Drain Charges for a short time. Such a thing of course has its own set of tradeoffs, but seems (to me anyway) to be very powerful but less disruptive.

6) I really like the way the spells/prayers have been condensed into fewer books.

[Sky]

Come to think of it, a temporary Hold Life spell would be cool.

[Nick]

Dimension door: Unlimited range, pinpoint accuracy, works in vaults

This is a placeholder that will get balanced a bit better eventually, right?

I guess not being able to land in a vault would be fairer.

1 ) Remove Wands of Annihilation. Drain Life is sufficiently good.

OK, a look at balance might be in order. Should mages keep their dmagae boost with attack wands?

2) Change allowable targeting. Right now, a character one space into a corridor can target like so:

     # #
     #@#
     #.#
     ...
    .....
   .......
  .........
 ...........

i.e. the full 45 degrees from the mouth of the corridor, same as if they were standing at the mouth of the corridor rather than one space in. I think this should be changed to only allow targeting like so:

     # #
     #@#
     #.#
     ...
     ...
    .....
    .....
   .......

i.e. 30 degrees from the mouth of the corridor.

I believe this would reduce the worst of the abuses, since monsters in a room approaching the player will do so along the 45 degree vector, and so not be targetable. This would still allow, e.g. indirect fire (area-effect spells landing nearby), and, importantly, preserve the ability to safely teleport-other a monster from "around the corner" when it appears at the mouth of the corridor. I by no means claim this to be a perfect solution or anything, but it seems like it would be an improvement over the current state of affairs.

That looks sensible. I do need to have a proper look at LoS.

3) Artifacts are just generally overpowered, and there are too many of them

All artifacts, or just randarts?

4) Despite what I just said in (3), there is a relatively powerful thing I'd like to see added. Rand-Arts are fun to play, but I often find myself with difficulties because the gear doesn't mesh together, e.g. 8 things with Resist Nether, but nothing with Confusion Protection. So I'd like to see something, I'd suggest Cloaks of Aman, have an Activation that allows the player to *choose* a resistance or ability. It would have a huge Recharge time (10,000 or 100,000 turns), and of course, only *one* resistance/ability. But it would let the player plug some important hole in their kit, and make Rand-Arts less frustrating.

Interesting idea.

5) The Paladin's "Single Combat" prayer seems too strong. As an alternative, I'd propose a prayer that protects against Drain Charges for a short time. Such a thing of course has its own set of tradeoffs, but seems (to me anyway) to be very powerful but less disruptive.

I'm kind of fond of the effect, though - maybe there's some way to nerf it a bit.

6) I really like the way the spells/prayers have been condensed into fewer books.

Oh, good! It was one of the main features, and nobody's really mentioned it

Come to think of it, a temporary Hold Life spell would be cool.

Potentially, although it would only be useful between starting to need HL and finding a permanent source of it.