Some thoughts about spells

[awldune]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Given that, devices deal excellent damage -- comparable or exceeding the damage you get from your own spells -- and they don't cost any mana to use.

I think this was touched on in another thread, but this needs to be reflected in the item description when examining the device. If my spellbook says Acid Bolt does 12d6 damage and the rod of Acid Bolt says it does 6d6 damage, then I don't bother with the rod. If the rod actually does more damage than my spell, then I will be tempted to use it.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by awldune

I think this was touched on in another thread, but this needs to be reflected in the item description when examining the device. If my spellbook says Acid Bolt does 12d6 damage and the rod of Acid Bolt says it does 6d6 damage, then I don't bother with the rod. If the rod actually does more damage than my spell, then I will be tempted to use it.

Working on it. I have a branch on github where this works. However, it took considerable work to rewrite this, and I'm paranoid that I might have broken something in the process. The problem lay in that it was impossible to query the device damage without making the effect. The damage was hardcoded into the effects. I got around this by extracting the damage to list-effects.h with the eventual goal of making function pointers and removing the giant switch statement in effects.c altogether.

I actually need some dev guidance on whether my approach was a good one or not. But most everyone is busy with real life right now, so it'll have to wait.

[Scraper]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Scraper: Mage damage should not be comparable to melee damage, reason being that mages don't have to stand in melee, so they aren't getting whacked on the head all the time. If you're fighting a monster that likes to summon, well, you also have the facilities to deal with summons (c.f. Banish, Teleport Other). Breath attacks happen with exactly the same frequency in melee and at range (in Vanilla anyway). So you really should be staying out of melee range as much as possible. Given that, devices deal excellent damage -- comparable or exceeding the damage you get from your own spells -- and they don't cost any mana to use.

Thanks for the info. I didn't know that about breath attack frequency. I once wore a double breath from Glaurang when trying to cross a large room to get into a corridor to fight him. Took me about 2 months to get that pally competitive and I've been paranoid of the big breathers ever since... also haven't tried to fight Glaurang since. In my current game I think I can take him down now though.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by awldune

For priest, I never could figure out what Sanctuary even does. I see that the 'P'eruse command has a description now. Not sure why this spell is not renamed to "Sleep Monsters" like the staff.

It only works adjacent to you. It is kind of radius 1 ball spell centered at you, not LoS like a staff or mage better of two spells.

[EpicMan]

Sanctuary would actually be a decent spell provided it was guaranteed to work or at least had a very good chance of working.

Maybe it should be changed to always work, but only sleep monsters for a turn (or two?). That way it becomes a breather spell or gives you an opportunity to escape. I guess maybe two turns, that way it gives you the option to use an escape with a failure chance. To prevent abuse make it cost more since it would be a useful spell as opposed to a worthless one.

[awldune]

Originally Posted by Scraper

I once wore a double breath from Glaurang when trying to cross a large room to get into a corridor to fight him. Took me about 2 months to get that pally competitive and I've been paranoid of the big breathers ever since... also haven't tried to fight Glaurang since. In my current game I think I can take him down now though.

Remember to always get a double resist (permanent + temporary) when facing heavy fire/cold breathers.

[awldune]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

It only works adjacent to you. It is kind of radius 1 ball spell centered at you, not LoS like a staff or mage better of two spells.

Hard to imagine someone deciding that regular Sleep Monsters would be overpowered... I wonder if it used to work better in some old version of the game.

[bulian]

Just played a hobbit mage (comp char). A few thoughts:

MB8 looks rather silly for mages with only 2 spells, one of which is rather exploitive (brand). I didn't check but I think rogues and rangers have access to all of the spells in this particular book. Considering mages only get 4 blows per round, melee damage is pretty low to begin with - why were heroism/berserk removed from mages but left for the classes where the spells are not very useful?

At the end game, carrying books 1-7,9 was necessary as at least one spell was needed from each book:

MB1
Phase door

MB2
The occasional teleport self

MB3
Identify

MB4
Haste self

MB5
Resist

MB6
Rift

MB7
Recall/Tele level

Its been a long time since I've looked at paladins or priests, but late game priests can get away with far fewer books while maintaining the same utility due to redundancy within the spell set. I wouldn't be opposed to buffing mages slightly by adding a couple redundant spells to dungeon books.

bless durations are cumulative. So are berserk and hero. Unless that has been changed recently? Haste and resistance are not, for who knows what reason.

Resistance and shield spells are cumulative as of 3.3.1. Haste is not. I'm actually OK with haste not being cumulative as an exception since speed is so powerful, but recasting the spell should reset the duration and not add a piddly +5 turns or whatever the current behavior is.

Mana Storm (really needs to get to zero fail)

When I switched from rift to manastorm, things started dieing significantly faster. Mana storm crushes the alternatives. The main problem with manastorm and MB9 in general is its such a large jump in power. The same is true of MB6. Finding MB9 is almost a prerequisite for winning the game as a mage. No other class is as dependent on drops as mages.

IIRC at level 50 and max INT its failure rate is something like 9% or 13%,

Would it be unreasonable to remove the CL dependence of failure rate on all spells above a certain CL, such as CL35? Otherwise grinding a few levels to reduce failure rate is encouraged.

[artes]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

All elemental ball spells, shards, meteors etc. destroy items at floor. There also is (too) wide variety of them, which causes annoyance in picking the right one (you can do only so much macros).

When I played a mage I actually liked to destroy loot, because I was too lazy to identify everything when looking for artifacts. (Artifacts were not destroyed. I don't know if that has changed.) Though the number of spells that destroy loot can be reduced, because I only need one, ha ha.

[kaypy]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Rend soul and chaos strike. I don't recall what these do, so I probably have not used them much. Weaker than other same manacost spells?

Rend soul is a nether bolt. Half damage vs evil makes it worthless against huge swathes of opponents, but against eg Angels it is your most effective spell for a reasonable time.

Chaos strike is competitive with manastorm, possibly right to the endgame, depending on the exact failrates. The problem with chaos strike is that it may polymorph the target, which also heals all damage. Thus you really only want to use it vs lone uniques.

Attached is what I believe is from the endgame of my last 3.3 mage playthrough. (I've been being brutally murdered in frogknows for a while, so my recollection is a little hazy). It is damage per mana vs damage per turn, including failrates and beaming.