Sangband and spell realms

[Pete Mack]

Blade of Chaos artifact = Doomcaller. It's a wonderful weapon, second most damage in the game, behind Deathwreaker.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Just destroyed Morgoth and Sauron, best spell used (Wraithform). This spell is almost to good. It was a great advantage, going through walls and attacking enemies, it seemed like breath and ball spells weren't really effective from enemies while I was in wraithform. It was almost too easy this way, Sauron and Morgoth was a cake walk. If you hide in the walls most enemies do not summon minions to aid them, nor do they teleport away most of the time, I defeated Sauron and Morgoth both without them ever summoning any help at all. I don't know if it is desighned this way but enemies seem confused when you are in wraithform and attacking from the walls, Qualythugs just keep getting hit till they die as if they don't know your there, but you have to sneak up on them from the walls. Most monsters just try to melee you. Sauron never teleported away, just kept meleeing me till his death, things are much harder if you step out of the walls. Wraithform was the tactick of choice, but in a way things got too easy at the end. I was looking for a certain artifact for my character, I got it one time from Cantoras the skeletal lord, didn't find it this time. I think it was a Blade of Chaos highly powerful but aggravated enemies does anybody know which one it was? I am thinking now starting a dwarven warrior and turning artifacts off, relying on forging skills, without any spell abilities, any suggestions?

[Malak Darkhunter]

Now I'm seeing a real problem with some spellcasting. Have my spell casting spells at 80% A few spells, detect trap, stairs, and interogation, have as of right now about a 25% fail rate. But it acts now as if it's really 50% I get as as many as 4 fail rates at a time when casting these spells, and half the time the spells fail, I would think you would get a majority of the spells to work, if your fail rate is only 25%.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Surprisingly this character build is becoming very powerful, now on dlevel32, and starting to find scrolls of aquirement and some artifacts, stat gain potions help to. Earlier on had some trouble staying alive as he wasn't very powerful with mixed up skills, but now that all the skill levels are pretty high he has become nigh well indestructibule with careful play. Swordsmanship is at 60, spellcasting, magical power, and blood dominon is at 55. What I can't kill in melee I can with spells, has a mana rating of 28 currently so can cast several high damaging bolt spells. Conserve mana for combat only, detection is done by rods. Can cast sense are with high perception, and high magic device skill for that extra backup.(love wands of acid bolts). Without the level cap the character may become overpowered as I have chosen to take no oaths. Might be better balanced with the weaker races as I have chosen to play the race of Dunadain for that extra badness.

[Magnate]

Okay Now I'm confused, I haven't talen an Oath of Black Mastery, double checked to be sure, but I am going past skill level 50 now have skill level 52 in spellcasting, magical power, and blood dominon. Anybody know what's going on? The help file say's you can't go past skill level 50 in magical power unless you take an oath. I know for sure the last version of Sang v 1.0.0. didn't let you go past the cap, that's why I quit this build last time.

I think as Joshua said, there's no cap any more - but without the oath your casting and/or mana skills are gimped (i.e. only worth half as much, half as effective).

CC

[Malak Darkhunter]

Okay Now I'm confused, I haven't talen an Oath of Black Mastery, double checked to be sure, but I am going past skill level 50 now have skill level 52 in spellcasting, magical power, and blood dominon. Anybody know what's going on? The help file say's you can't go past skill level 50 in magical power unless you take an oath. I know for sure the last version of Sang v 1.0.0. didn't let you go past the cap, that's why I quit this build last time.

[Malak Darkhunter]

That would explain the artifact drops then, I'm currently on dlevel20 doing pretty good with this character build, found an rod of illumination that helps for now. The light spell must be in an artifact book. What I'm finding out is Blood Dominon I can raise to the max, spellcasting I can raise to the max, but magical power dosen't go past skill level 50, so wothout an Oath my character will never get high mana, but It's doable, I find I should be able to cast most spells without a high mana, but he's going to be a 1 or 2 shot wonder for big spells, but he is more warrior-like then a mage anyway. Going to certainly be an interesting class build to play as I go deeper.

[camlost]

Finally got some luck on level 17 found a Katana of Slay Evil (+1+5), I know sad isn't it? Killed of Grishnak, Golfimbul, and Orfax, found boots 3+8 off Golfimbul, and a mace (+2+4) off of Grishnak and a ring of sustain mind off of Orfax. No artifacts yet, seems to be getting better though, have already found 2 stat gain potions, they seem to be popping up earlier in this version, used to be you had to be around Dlevel35 to find stat potions of strength and constitution. Really need the phial or a rod of illumination, no lights in rooms are causing me to get my but kicked!

Necromancy does indeed have a light spell, in a dungeon book. You're still exceptionally early for artifacts. I generally don't find artifacts until more like dlevel 40 or so. I made no changes regarding artifact drop rates, though. The phial is not a low-level artifact like in many variants. I frequently find the Star before the Phial.

Increasing you intelligence will greatly increase your mana, as would taking the oath.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Finally got some luck on level 17 found a Katana of Slay Evil (+1+5), I know sad isn't it? Killed of Grishnak, Golfimbul, and Orfax, found boots 3+8 off Golfimbul, and a mace (+2+4) off of Grishnak and a ring of sustain mind off of Orfax. No artifacts yet, seems to be getting better though, have already found 2 stat gain potions, they seem to be popping up earlier in this version, used to be you had to be around Dlevel35 to find stat potions of strength and constitution. Really need the phial or a rod of illumination, no lights in rooms are causing me to get my but kicked!

[Malak Darkhunter]

Just an update on my character, I now have him at skill level 40 at spellcasting, magical power, and blood dominon. So far only complaints are weak mana, only has 18 mana points so far. Will this change with stat gain? And boy I could really use a light spell! Necromancy dosen't seem to have one. Just to be curious, playing the new beta version of Sang, I am having a hard time finding artifacts, Have killed several uniques so far, Bullroarar, wormtongue, Lagduf, Grishnak, Smeagol, but barely an ego item one has been found yet. I really need the Phial.

[camlost]

To Joshua: I just thought of something - will the hard cap include 'bonus' points in similar skills? This wouldn't be too bad for the burglary suite (most of which are desirable), but would be a definite nerf for weapon-using builds. If I'm faced with a hard cap of 100 power, I want to be able to refuse the not-very-helpful 'bonus' points in my non-preferred weapon skills.

FWIW, my expectation was always that any hard cap on number of skills would ignore these - so e.g. you could have one weapon skill and five others and count as playing with six skills.

CC

It must have been a while since you've played. Leon removed the "bonus" points, and instead made the skill cheaper to some extent if you choose to take both skills. See most dumps from 1.00 and onward:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=6946

The power calculator should probably take into account the related skills being cheaper. I'm not sure if it does or not.


In general, instead of the hard caps, we are using skill penalties instead for oaths. Thus, you can raise your magic device to 100% as a warrior, but it only counts for 50% (67% in my version) in calculations. There is a penalty for mana for non-oathed characters, and a decrease in *potency* of spells, but I think the spell selection is the same, but it's been a while since I've tried.

I'm trying this again, just to get a fresh perspective on what irritated me last time I tried this build. I'm currently putting a lot of skill points into swordsmanship, necromancy, spellcasting, magical power, magic device, perception, disarming, spell resistance, and a little into stealth.

Your list is too long. This is around 1.5 characters worth of skills. You can make characters like this work, but you've got to realize that you won't be 100% on all those skills at once.

[Magnate]

To Malak:

I think the problem you have identified is the implementation of oaths. To be honest I've never really thought they worked very well, and they seem to have got worse. In previous versions non-oath spellcasters were only limited to half mana (level 50 magic power) - they could still achieve level 100 in both spellcasting and their realm skill.

I think Leon implemented oaths as a kind of incentive to specialise, but it didn't really have the desired effect. I think if a hard cap on skills is implemented (however it's done), there's really no need for oaths. Anyone investing in a skill to a high enough level should get its benefits (e.g. the Oath of Iron specials in martial arts) - because they have forgone the benefits of other skills.

I think it is oaths which create the echoes of class restrictions, and without them it would feel quite a lot more like it's supposed to.

Just my 2p,

CC

[Magnate]

To Joshua: I just thought of something - will the hard cap include 'bonus' points in similar skills? This wouldn't be too bad for the burglary suite (most of which are desirable), but would be a definite nerf for weapon-using builds. If I'm faced with a hard cap of 100 power, I want to be able to refuse the not-very-helpful 'bonus' points in my non-preferred weapon skills.

FWIW, my expectation was always that any hard cap on number of skills would ignore these - so e.g. you could have one weapon skill and five others and count as playing with six skills.

CC

[Malak Darkhunter]

I'm trying this again, just to get a fresh perspective on what irritated me last time I tried this build. I'm currently putting a lot of skill points into swordsmanship, necromancy, spellcasting, magical power, magic device, perception, disarming, spell resistance, and a little into stealth. I think what turned me off last time was the level cap and the oaths, I did not want to take any oaths, I wanted to solely invest skill points into what I wanted to learn, having to take a oath to advance a skill blocked me from what I was trying to achieve. I guess you can call my character a "Renegade" sort of like the wizards of dragonlance, who do not owe their allegiance to any realm. I could not get to the more powerful spells that would have made a difference in the game, what I was left with was a character who had a few descent offensive spells at the begining of the game to a character who was weak in spellpower toward the middle of the game, because of level cap on advancing a spell realm without taking an oath of necromancy to advance. I did not aim to make a necromancer to begin with, but I expected to at least raise a skill up to about 75 in necromancy so my character would have some great offensive spells in the latter game, I'm perfectly okay with not being able to learn the most powerful spells, those are reserved for the true spellcasters.
Maybe the level cap on spellrealms without taking oaths need to be bumped up a bit. Once I reached the level cap, I sort of felt like I was wasting my time, because I had reached a roadblock, and should have either just made a warrior, or a true necromancer instead.

[Magnate]

Or I could just let people decrement skills (no getting the XP back, though). It's thematically less pleasant, but I can't think of a good way to handling the calculations in an easy fashion.

Hmm. You've got me quite interested in this now. I was thinking of a screen that looks exactly like the XP screen only with "XP Calculator" across the top. On that screen you can put skills up and down without spending any xp, and see the effect on your total power. I expect we could re-use most of the code from the existing xp screen, with a hack to avoid spending xp and a little bit added to show total power (which IIRC isn't shown until you exit the xp screen).

If you do implement this cap, I might have a look at implementing the calculator.

Honestly, if I were redoing this, I'd probably roll the cost of Spellcasting into the individual realm skills and use that, but that's probably just laziness talking. Either that or invert the uses and costs of "Spellcasting" and the realm skills. I'd really want to support asymmetric casters (i.e. mostly priest with some nature ability)

Ooh yes, that last is an excellent idea, except that it does rather knacker warriors collecting talents. But I fully support the idea of asymmetric casters.

Now, in case Mr Darkhunter is still reading, I lay awake last night running through these in my head:

Sangband 'class' options

First we have the warrior and the four pure casters (mage, priest, druid, necro).
Then we have the four classic semi-casters (rogue, paladin, ranger, assassin).
These are the nine classes available in O, six of whom are in V.

The four semi-casters immediately suggest two new base archetypes: the thief (spell-less rogue/assassin) and the archer (spell-less ranger, who in S can specialise in slings or xbows or even throwing, not just bows). So we now have seven base classes, which offers us a total of 12 semi-casters. The other eight are:

Warrior-mage
Warrior-druid (shaman?)
Warrior-necro (chaos knight)
Arcane Archer
Holy Archer
Dark Archer
Thief-druid (stalker)
Thief-priest (monk?)

Then there are the Warrior-thief (ninja), Archer-thief and Warrior-archer. So we're at 7 base classes and 15 dual classes so far - but Sang offers us two other specialisms: the forger and the zapper. (Yes, you can win S with magic devices alone.) Each of these pairs with the other base classes for a total of 30 dual classes, or 39 options in total.

From those 39 only the archer-zapper seems a completely redundant pairing, though the current oath structure mitigates against a pure forger (and a few of the others could be considered challenge builds). Still, that leaves a lot of interesting combinations. Allowing two-realm casters would add precisely six more, so I don't think their absence can be said to limit the game to "a pre-constructed class-based skill set". Then there are the 84 triple-class combinations, 50 of which don't involve more than one spell realm ...

Having said that, I'd be the first to agree that the Oath arrangements could be improved, and I think Leon has acknowledged that too.

CC