Class/magic feature branch

[Nick]

Hmm, i played a few new mages to around CL 25 DL 30. Without taking numbers it seemed to me that it even got harder than before. Now i took a look at the coming books #4 / #5 which i never found so far.

light / spear of light were very much used before from me, didn't expect them to be such good to keep early dungeon control up

i miss stone to mud a lot in the mid game, making new shortcuts or the like, or creating new tunnnels for the bolt spells

now i see #4 and #5 start dropping from DL50 on. That totally breaks with the exponential power curve to my understanding. And there is no in-between power level between #2 and #5. That is a major design fault in my eyes.

And there is no haste self anymore. That was a major compensator to negate the very weak physical abilites, because you were quicker than most monsters. And only a little number of monsters could double-move you.

I still think banishment / mass banishment are no good from game mechanics point of view.

So i sadly classify the new mage as badly designed. I cannot realy understand the changes. To make mage class more interesting it is required to increase the relevant number of drops, not to reduce them. The spell power does not grow exponential anymore.

If that is the way the game will develop i encourage to take out banishment / mass banishment, add haste self to book 4, move mana bolt from #5 to #4 and almost double damage of mana bolt. Mana bolt and mana storm damage should be based on CL so that early dropds to not destroy game balance too hard. 1/4 damage fix 3/4 of it CL based.

Thanks for all your excellent feedback. I'll rework new mages again, along the following lines:

• Book 5 will probably start dropping at DL70 (I'm not sure what I intended, but it wasn't 4 and 5 at 50);
• I want to keep Banishment and Mass Banishment, but they need to be late;
• At least one of the book 5 spells needs to be earlier, probably Mana Bolt.

For your other issues, Spear of Light and Stone to Mud I expected players would miss, but they can be replaced with wand/rod use. Haste is an interesting one which I haven't solved yet.

And badly designed - yes, but we're not finished yet

[Tibarius]

improvement suggestion

I was editing my earlier post because i recognized that it is not enough to just claim a bad design, but also suggest something better instead. But Nick already replied while i was editing. So here are the improvement suggestions ...

Book drop level should be something like
1: shop
2: DL 10
3: DL 20
4: DL 30
5: DL 50
6: DL 80

No good is the thematic order because gaining books should influence the char power level more than adding certain kind of spells.

So my proposal (spell level, spell name):

#1 Path of the Mage (available in shop)
01 magic missile
02 detect monsters
03 find doors, traps & stairs
04 recharge (must have realy low rate to explode wands / staves)
05 frost bolt (mana 2)

#2 Arcane Patterns
06 phase door (mana 2)
07 identify (should also identify potions & scrolls)
08 disable traps & destroy doors
09 probe monster (as if you had a rod of probing, only for a single monster tho)
10 fire bolt (mana 3)

#3 Wizard Visions
11 reveal monsters (mana 3)
12 acid bolt (mana 4)
13 fire ball (mana 5, range 2)
14 detect treasures
15 teleport self

#4 Arcane Control
16 stone to mud
17 teleport other
18 resistance cold
19 resistance fire
20 shield (+AC & nothing in the inventory can be destroyed anymore by secondary effects)

#5 Sorcerer's Force
21 resistance
22 explosion (mana 8, range 2 shard ball)
23 word of recall
24 teleport level
25 mana bolt (mana 10, damage CL*5, additional hold effect if monster fails saving throw)

#6 The Warlocks Tome of Power
26 greater recharge
27 telepathy
28 Dimension Door (teleport to location)
29 globe of protection (immunity cold, fire, acid, electricity + monsters can enter melee range only if they succeed a dice roll vs CL)
30 mana storm (mana 15, range 3 mana ball, damage CL*10, additional hold effect if monster fails saving throw)

The mage's special is that at CL 20 and CL 40 the mana regeneration is doubled (making it x4 at CL 40).
Chance for beam instead of bolt is CL/2.

[fph]

Haste is an interesting one which I haven't solved yet.

If the problem is thematic, and you believe that haste self is a nature spell because it "affects the player directly", then a cheap fix would be having a "slow the passing of time around the player" spell, which is clearly arcane in theme...

[Tibarius]

slow

If the problem is thematic, and you believe that haste self is a nature spell because it "affects the player directly", then a cheap fix would be having a "slow the passing of time around the player" spell, which is clearly arcane in theme...

*laugh* i actually considerd that too!

But again *beg* please remove Banishment / Mass Banishment, i think the proposed globe of protection spell fits more thematic AND game mechanic like.

[Ighalli]

04 recharge (must have really low rate to explode wands / staves)

Can I sneak in a suggestion here? Can we make all recharging effects display the percentage chance of failure? And remove curse too (instead of the strengths vs. dice)?

Keep the new mechanics, except magnify the effects the more slowed/confused the monster is. So, using slow as an example, slowing something once reduces its speed by 2, but you can keep doing that and it will keep getting slower - and then gradually speed up as the effect wears off.

Remember that this would make subsequent slow effects last much longer than the initial ones, which would lead to stacking slow possibly being much better than stacking confuses. Of course, you could make the additional slow effects shorter and shorter to compensate. Come to think of it, how many turns is a monster expected to lose per slow effect right now?

I've not yet had a chance to try out the new mage. Probably won't since I'm an Angband newbie and won't have the best feel for balance and so forth, but the conversations around it are quite interesting.

[wobbly]

The major problems with banish exist in scroll form too. If you were going to do something about them I'd look at them in general rather then removing it from mages. Look at the Morgoth fight for instance. Morgoth summons. You send all of Morgoths summons away. Now it's just damage/round+healing consumables. Not a huge amount of room for tactical play.

[Derakon]

The major problems with banish exist in scroll form too. If you were going to do something about them I'd look at them in general rather then removing it from mages. Look at the Morgoth fight for instance. Morgoth summons. You send all of Morgoths summons away. Now it's just damage/round+healing consumables. Not a huge amount of room for tactical play.

As long as your resources are sufficiently constrained that you can't do this frequently, there's still decision-making in terms of what amount/kind of summons you're willing to tolerate before you hit the nuke button. And speaking of nukes, Destruction is just as bad as banishment on that front, when talking about the final fight at least. It's less useful for clearing vaults of course, but it's entirely feasible to just clip a few tiles of a vault with Destruction, clearing out the worst enemies (if you're able to lure them to the edge) and coincidentally creating some LOS obstructions.

[PowerWyrm]

Morgoth summons. You send all of Morgoths summons away.

You use your turn. Morgoth acts again.

No the real problem with banishment is that as a spell it has unlimited uses, so you can use that to clear all vaults without trouble, as other classes that don't have access to it must burn a precious consumable item for that.

My idea: just turn the spell into a "mass teleport away" effect, just like priest's Banish Evil does. And leave the scrolls/staves as they are now.

[PowerWyrm]

I'm dubious about these changes. I was expecting something more radical, which would break all the spells into distinct realms and attach those realms to actual classes... a bit like what I did for the Elementalist class in PWMAngband (fire magic, earth magic, air magic... and a spell tome for each). Clearly I don't think using arcane/nature/holy/necromancy is enough, there are many spells that don't fit in that scheme. So at this point I see two paths:

- path 1: reorganize current spells in atomic realms (fire, ice, mana, divination, death, time, healing...), assign one or more realms to classes, one spellbook per spell (available in shops), one tome per realm containing all the spells for that realm (findable in the dungeon)

This is more or less the path taken by ToME/TomeNET (minus the skill system, with a multiplier on each realm for each class which tells how much a class is attuned to that realm).

- path 2: trash current spells, create arcane/nature/holy/necromancy realms, rethink new spells for these realms, make one class per realm

Then you would have:

the melee class (or "6bpr" class)

- Warrior -- pure melee

the spellcasters (or "4bpr" classes)

- Mage -- pure arcane spellcaster
- Druid -- pure nature spellcaster
- Priest -- pure holy spellcaster
- Necromancer -- pure necromancy spellcaster

the hybrid classes (or "5bpr" classes)

- Ranger -- melee + ranged + some nature spells (sub-realm: tracking)
- Paladin -- melee + some holy spells (sub-realm: blessings?)
- Rogue -- melee + stealth + some necromancy spells (sub-realm: shadow)
- Warlock (?) -- melee + some arcane spells (sub-realm: battle magic?)

The easier route is probably the first one, and that's the one which would make life easier for variants with many spellcasting realms (and many corresponding classes). The second choice would be more thematic and would open the road to new base classes, but would also require more thinking/balancing with the new realms/spells.

[Philip]

If you keep the staff effect of Banishment the same but take away the spell from Mages, you do make them burn a slot on it and make it slightly less reliable, but you've done nothing to limit its abuse around vaults, since Mages have Recharge as a spell. There is a trivial way to make Banishment less effective to clear vaults, which is to protect vault tiles from Banish/Destruct.

Note that if Druids were given old slow/confuse etc. then they would be mostly useless against uniques, and since a lot of uniques really kind of have to be killed, like Sauron and Morgoth, that would make them quite aggravating to play.

Old slow/confuse was balanced well enough for the depths where you would find the wand or have just gained the spell - a cheap way to run away from some monsters or get a tactical advantage, at a point where the cost of failure was relatively minor. Unfortunately, the value of one turn goes up as the game goes on, and the value of predictable behavior does too. I can't really comment on new status effects though.

[Tibarius]

goal of the upcoming changes

I'm dubious about these changes. I was expecting something more radical, which would break all the spells into distinct realms and attach those realms to actual classes... a bit like what I did for the Elementalist class in PWMAngband (fire magic, earth magic, air magic... and a spell tome for each). Clearly I don't think using arcane/nature/holy/necromancy is enough, there are many spells that don't fit in that scheme. So at this point I see two paths:

- path 1: reorganize current spells in atomic realms (fire, ice, mana, divination, death, time, healing...), assign one or more realms to classes, one spellbook per spell (available in shops), one tome per realm containing all the spells for that realm (findable in the dungeon)

This is more or less the path taken by ToME/TomeNET (minus the skill system, with a multiplier on each realm for each class which tells how much a class is attuned to that realm).

- path 2: trash current spells, create arcane/nature/holy/necromancy realms, rethink new spells for these realms, make one class per realm

Then you would have:

the melee class (or "6bpr" class)

- Warrior -- pure melee

the spellcasters (or "4bpr" classes)

- Mage -- pure arcane spellcaster
- Druid -- pure nature spellcaster
- Priest -- pure holy spellcaster
- Necromancer -- pure necromancy spellcaster

the hybrid classes (or "5bpr" classes)

- Ranger -- melee + ranged + some nature spells (sub-realm: tracking)
- Paladin -- melee + some holy spells (sub-realm: blessings?)
- Rogue -- melee + stealth + some necromancy spells (sub-realm: shadow)
- Warlock (?) -- melee + some arcane spells (sub-realm: battle magic?)

The easier route is probably the first one, and that's the one which would make life easier for variants with many spellcasting realms (and many corresponding classes). The second choice would be more thematic and would open the road to new base classes, but would also require more thinking/balancing with the new realms/spells.

I don't know what you refer to with the term sub-realms. We just have 4 magic realms: arcane, nature, holy & death. Pure caster have all spells, the hybrid classes will have a selection of the available spell of their main class.

Anyway, i think this kind of discussion is useless.
1. Define the goals
2. Think about which steps bring the game closer to the defined goals.

Currently we are discussing changes, and there will always be pros and cons.
The only usefull way i see if you do not define goals is to suggest changes and just collect the number of people who like or dislike them. And follow the route the majority likes.

My personal taste is clearly option 2. And i think we already had a good start with the earlier posts. You re-open the discussion about topics which seemed already agreed on to me.

To my understanding currently the spell list for the arcane (mage) realm is under discussion. Since Nick is the game maintainer currently i think he must declare what route he wants to go and everyone else gives input on how to shape out this way.

[Nick]

- path 1: reorganize current spells in atomic realms (fire, ice, mana, divination, death, time, healing...), assign one or more realms to classes, one spellbook per spell (available in shops), one tome per realm containing all the spells for that realm (findable in the dungeon)

- path 2: trash current spells, create arcane/nature/holy/necromancy realms, rethink new spells for these realms, make one class per realm

The easier route is probably the first one, and that's the one which would make life easier for variants with many spellcasting realms (and many corresponding classes). The second choice would be more thematic and would open the road to new base classes, but would also require more thinking/balancing with the new realms/spells.

In terms of adding realms and re-arranging spells and books, both paths can be done almost entirely in data files. I have chosen path 2, you would have chosen path 1, and there are numerous other paths

More interesting is when some of the new realms require new effects or other game mechanics, which adds to the design space accessible from the data files. This has happened in a small way with the new mages (Dimension Door), and is coming in a bigger way with druids and especially necromancers; it's possible even with some hybrid classes (rogues and paladins, for example).

I am finding this thread very helpful in expanding and refining my ideas

[Tibarius]

input from the maintainer requested

Nick, could you please comment the latest list.

a) 6 books, 30 spells => ok?
b) is it ok to leave banishment and mass banishment out?
=> if not, then i guess mass banishment replaces globe of protection in #6
and banishment replaces explosion in #5
c) the name for the mage hybrid class is not fixed yet it seems, while the others seem to be agreed on:
Warlock, Battlemage, other title? Warlock sounds pretty cool tho

[Antoine]

> In terms of adding realms and re-arranging spells and books, both paths can be done almost entirely in data files.

Can you show here a snippet from one of these data files?

A.

[kaypy]

If you have any recent V, you are looking at class.txt in the game data

eg, the first spell in the first book for the new mage

book:magic book:town:[Detection and Escape]:7:arcane
book-graphics:?:R
book-properties:25:40:1 to 100
equip:magic book:[Detection and Escape]:1:1

spell:Find Traps, Doors & Stairs:1:1:20:2
effect:DETECT_TRAPS
dice:22d40
effect:DETECT_DOORS
dice:22d40
effect:DETECT_STAIRS
dice:22d40
desc:Detects all traps, doors, and stairs in the immediate area.