Class/magic feature branch

[Tibarius]

Yeah, that looks pretty good. In fact, I'll have a go at actually splitting up all the elements (I largely did it in an earlier post, but let's try and have a definitive list):

• Nature - poison (maybe death gets to use this too), water, ice, gravity, sound, plasma, meteors
• Arcane - missile, mana, arrow, force, nexus
• Holy - light, holy orb
• Death - dark, nether, chaos, disenchantment

This leaves

• acid, electricity, fire, cold - I kind of want to leave all these available to either nature or arcane (and maybe even death, for fire and cold)
• shards - a bit like the previous, they could be used directly by nature or as the outcome of an explosion by arcane
• inertia, time - could really be anything.

How is this looking?

Looks good so far, even tho i would say mind based spells are more arcane than nature. But ok.

I agree that not every type must be available for player realms.

I see the base elements clearly as nature type. And that would be the difference to arcane realms - having the option to use the vulnerabilities of monsters to a larger degree. I think it is a good idea to keep the realms unique in some way.

Poison is death in my eyes because the motive is already damaging, while the elements in themselves are neither good nor evil.

I agree that fire and cold are elements also fitting for death theme.

For the hybrids:
battlemage = fighter + arcane (mage)
rogue = fighter + death (necromant)
ranger = fighter + nature (druid, that name is ok for me)
paladin = fighter + holy (priest)

detections:
arcane: monster (the opposite of living would rather be non-living, but thats too few from game mechanics point of view i guess)
nature: living
holy: evil
necromant: good?

unique powers:
arcane: mana attacks (unresistable) / teleport other
nature: elemental brand (ranger) / meteors
death: haste self / improved sneak / (rogue, for that reason time fits best for death)
holy: enchant armor / enchant weapon / rune of protection / holy orb

I guess healing is nature (low/medium) and holy (medium/high).

For the sake of gameplay i think banishment and mass banishment should be removed. They totally break the game mechanics. And Morgoth should be evil so that holy spells do double damage.

I wonder if detections / haste / resistance are required from all magic types because of game mechanic balance.
For the same reason i wonder if reducing the number of books from 9 to 5 is a good idea either.

[fph]

Designing a new magic system is surely fun, but what is your final goal for the game? Making magic more Tolkien-esque? Introducing new classes to add variety into the available caster options? Fixing some drawbacks with the existing mage/priest classes (and if so which ones)?

I don't mean to sound critical --- I just think it's good to have a direction in mind, when brainstorming and playtesting. It seems to me that the previous changes all had a clear goal of fixing a deficiency of the game (the ID minigame, the tedium of constantly detecting traps...), but I don't see one immediately here.

[Derakon]

Designing a new magic system is surely fun, but what is your final goal for the game? Making magic more Tolkien-esque? Introducing new classes to add variety into the available caster options? Fixing some drawbacks with the existing mage/priest classes (and if so which ones)?

I don't mean to sound critical --- I just think it's good to have a direction in mind, when brainstorming and playtesting. It seems to me that the previous changes all had a clear goal of fixing a deficiency of the game (the ID minigame, the tedium of constantly detecting traps...), but I don't see one immediately here.

The main issue I can identify is that we have, very broadly speaking, three classes in the game right now: fighter, mage, and priest. The hybrids aren't very well-distinguished from either end. Sure, rogues are stealthy and rangers have great archery, but playstyles are pretty similar within a given magical realm. Bringing stronger differentiation into how different classes use magic ought to allow the game to support more playstyles, in theory.

That in mind, I wouldn't necessarily leap to the conclusion that every magical realm should have an associated hybrid class...or at least, hybrids don't have to be "fighter, plus they can also cast spells from X realm". For example, you could have a "swamp mage" that casts spells from both Nature and Death realms, or a, uh, Channeler, who gets only one or two hand-picked, powerful spells from each realm, plus great magic device skill. I dunno, I'm just throwing ideas out there.

[clouded]

The Zangband design of many small realms (2 town books, 2 dungeon books) and mages/priests choosing two realms, hybrids choosing one etc is quite good and provides a decent amount of character customization without going too overboard.

[Nick]

Designing a new magic system is surely fun, but what is your final goal for the game? Making magic more Tolkien-esque? Introducing new classes to add variety into the available caster options? Fixing some drawbacks with the existing mage/priest classes (and if so which ones)?

I don't mean to sound critical --- I just think it's good to have a direction in mind, when brainstorming and playtesting. It seems to me that the previous changes all had a clear goal of fixing a deficiency of the game (the ID minigame, the tedium of constantly detecting traps...), but I don't see one immediately here.

Good question.

The first thing that prompted it was a discussion (back in the old magic thread) about the fact that current classes have a whole bunch of spells that never really get used (or got superseded). This, plus recognition of the "mages/priests get a spell like this, let's give priests/mages one too to make it fair" phenomenon led me to want to cut the number of spells, and make the whole collection more coherent.

So, along the lines of what Derakon said, we get a small number of fairly distinct magic realms. Next question is, what should they be? Obviously we have mage and priest, but do we need any more, and if so what? The answers I have put forward in this thread are totally not just from copying Oangband, but from thinking about what types of "super-nature" were evident in Middle-Earth in (among others) Feanor and the other elven smiths, the wizards, the ents, Sauron, Luthien.

So in practice, we have caster classes with fewer, more focused spells - which means more reliance on devices and consumables. Luckily we can cut down the number of books.

The other thing that's worth mentioning here is that there's a revamp of the monster list going to happen too, and one of the things I want to do with that is think of monster spellcasters in terms of the realm landscape. There's also the possibility of adding monster spells inspired by player spells, and vice versa.

I hope that answers your question

The Zangband design of many small realms (2 town books, 2 dungeon books) and mages/priests choosing two realms, hybrids choosing one etc is quite good and provides a decent amount of character customization without going too overboard.

True, and that would have been an alternative approach. It's possible that aspects of that approach could be included at some later stage, but I'll try to stick to not too many things at once

[Antoine]

So what I'm taking from this thread, Nick, is that you need to think in very concrete terms about how each class's spell selection influences its playstyle. Particularly in terms of its access to detection, escapes, monster removal, healing and DPS at the various stages of the game. I mean the thematic stuff is important too, but the playstyle is really the sharp end of this.

A.

[Nick]

New builds are now available for macOS and Windows (the top ones on this page).

I've reworked the first three books for the new mage. Magic Missile is now as with old mages, but in the second book; this way it keeps the thematic nature of those two books, and the player has a choice of how to start out.

Things to note:

• Nexus attacks now have a chance of blinking or teleporting monsters, and new mages get one in the third book;
• The Detect Monsters spell currently only detects visible monsters; the intent is top have that upgrade to detecting invisible too at around CL25, but I haven't implemented spell upgrades yet;
• I had forgotten Identify Rune and Trap/Door Disable/Destroy, so they get those now too.

I feel like these guys are really plenty powerful, especially at high level, but we'll see.

So what I'm taking from this thread, Nick, is that you need to think in very concrete terms about how each class's spell selection influences its playstyle. Particularly in terms of its access to detection, escapes, monster removal and DPS at the various stages of the game. I mean the thematic stuff is important too, but the playstyle is really the sharp end of this.

Yes, absolutely. I've just kind of thrown damage values, mana costs and levels in there at what seems about right to me, but there will need to be balancing.

Also, Happy New Year!

[Antoine]

So what I'm taking from this thread, Nick, is that you need to think in very concrete terms about how each class's spell selection influences its playstyle. Particularly in terms of its access to detection, escapes, monster removal, healing and DPS at the various stages of the game. I mean the thematic stuff is important too, but the playstyle is really the sharp end of this.

A.

In particular, you need to be careful with ideas like "capability X clearly falls within the domain of realm Y". Because while it may make thematic sense, it leaves every realm _except_ Y completely without access to capability X.

A.

[Antoine]

> Yes, absolutely. I've just kind of thrown damage values, mana costs and levels in there at what seems about right to me, but there will need to be balancing.

I wrote my last post while you were drafting this, so we may have crossed to some extent.

Happy New Year to you too!

A.

[Nick]

In particular, you need to be careful with ideas like "capability X clearly falls within the domain of realm Y". Because while it may make thematic sense, it leaves every realm _except_ Y completely without access to capability X.

This is in some ways an intended consequence - part of the current silliness, IMHO, is both classes getting a full suite of teleport spells. So I'm intending for pure spellcasters to have to rely on scrolls/potions/devices a bit more for things outside their realm; obviously a balance has to be struck here, though.

[Tibarius]

test play

Ok, the latest build is playable. You can start with either usefull kit or not. You can with a little collecting or straight buy the attack magic book. Magic missile as low level spell. Feels ok to get frost / fire bolt slightly later than before. Currently CL 16. Did not expect that missing light and spear of light spell would be such noticeable. Currently the detect invis monster is again the main point for this character. The missing create food spell forces slightly more often to recal to town, and (which is much more risky) recal back to dungeon without being on stairs. Stone to mud is not missing, even tho it was very handy in some situations. What feels a bit odd ... fire ball spell available before fire bolt spell (which in my imagination is easier to learn / control).

[kaypy]

I'm a version out of date, but I just got Dimension Door, and it appears to teleport the player to the current location of the player. That was a bit of a disappointment.

edit: fix: give TELEPORT_TO an aim flag in list-effects.h

Oh, also, without a haste spell I have been using a bunch of slow monster wands. They seem to work on pretty much anything- did they get a major buff at some stage? I don't remember them being that effective in the past...

[Nick]

I'm a version out of date, but I just got Dimension Door, and it appears to teleport the player to the current location of the player. That was a bit of a disappointment.

edit: fix: give TELEPORT_TO an aim flag in list-effects.h

Thanks for find and fix - fix is pushed, new builds should be up soon.

Oh, also, without a haste spell I have been using a bunch of slow monster wands. They seem to work on pretty much anything- did they get a major buff at some stage? I don't remember them being that effective in the past...

There was a big change to monster status not long before 4.1.0 came out (IIRC).

[takkaria]

Oh, also, without a haste spell I have been using a bunch of slow monster wands. They seem to work on pretty much anything- did they get a major buff at some stage? I don't remember them being that effective in the past...

See https://github.com/angband/angband/b...ttack.txt#L171 Yes, slow monster works on most things. But it only reduces speed by 2, rather than 10.

[Gwarl]

Iow don't bother; confuse is similarly useless