Class/magic feature branch

[fizzix]

I got an ironman hobbit rogue to the midgame. My first attempt died do to misclicking and stepping on a trap on a dungeon level before 10. The trap summoned 5 uniques and phase wasn't enough to avoid death. (Should summon traps really be that deadly?)

Here are my thoughts.

The early game for priests can be kind of brutal. Running into an OoD monster (like grip or fang) on dlevel 1 is usually a death sentence. In fact unless you are playing a strong class, it can be quite hard to kill anything until you get bless online. I would recommend having priests automatically start with bless, or if preferred, making bless the only level 1 spell. (I'd also lower the mp cost to 1).

Priests have a tough time with non-evil monsters, especially fast moving ones like cats. In the past this was mostly ok, because you got portal around level 7. But portal is now in a dungeon book and this makes the early-midgame very hairy. (In normal games you just buy _Tele, so maybe this is still ok) I would recommend giving priest a survival spell early. Something like hold monster or scare monster might be good enough. But if you wanted to be more flavorful, you could imagine a spell called "pacify" which is a single, smite target (ball radius 1) spell that causes any non-evil monster to be healed to full health and fall asleep with max sleep.

Orb of draining is super powerful, but I think a priest spell that devastates undead/demons would be a very flavorful addition and would prevent them from being one trick ponies. Something like "bolt of holiness" which only affects undead and does a healthy dose of damage to undead and demons would be a nice addition. It would be in the town books and maybe unlocked at level 20-25 or so.

Dispel Evil and Dispel Undead are both too costly and too inefficient to be anything but mop-up spells in the late game. They have no business being in the town books I think.

The pointy penalty is still annoying and frustrating. It seems to me that this is a good candidate to remove when doing a major class rebalance.

I greatly miss having access to detect doors and stairs and sense surroundings. There were many levels where I had to explore more than 2/3 of the level before finding a stairs. I had an especially frustrating cavern level, where I had to backtrack through the whole level to find the one stairs, since I was stuck with radius one light. (The cavern and labyrinth levels really need to be either redesigned or removed. They are not fun.)

I also miss (slightly) having upgraded bless spells that don't wear off after so few turns. These spells (holy chant and prayer) were problematic and somewhat pointless in the old version, but maybe we can improve them somehow.

Another spell I miss is resist heat and cold. This was a very important spell for a low-hp class. I feel like priests should still have it.

Also what happened to cure/slow/neutralize poison? This isn't super important, but getting rid of poison helps a lot to avoid the tedium of waiting out poison so you can rest.

I can't cast it yet, but the Heal spell in the first dungeon book is super costly. Maybe this is for the best. If I ever get to the late game, I'll mention how this went.

For dungeon books, it might be worth considering how DaJ did book drops. Basically it dropped, book 5, book 6, book 7, etc. and what book that was depended on what class you were playing. So if you got a dungeon book drop it was always for your class. The other dungeon books just didn't show up. Since we have many more book types, I think this would help cut down on clutter.

One possible bug in gameplay. call light should light up adjacent walls to stairs. I found that it didn't when I was trying to navigate without wielding a light (I've been having some light problems this game... another thing that only happens in ironman games)

[Pete Mack]

Yes. For ironman, you can't plan on meeting early out-of-depth monsters the way you can for ordinary play. There are probably too many things you need to spend extra money on !oil,etc, for the unlikely cases. (And you can't dive as hard either.)

[wobbly]

I didn't have much trouble with kitties on the priest (though half-troll has much more hps) but certainly being fast non-evil they end up in melee range before you know they're there. I used phase followed by light beam down the corridor when I met one. They may not be evil but they still don't eat that many orbs. I did however see a kitty pit which probably would of been fatal without portal (I might of been lucky there 650' boldor's drop).

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21696

Edit: A half-trolls str means I probably had more toys in backup, I'll maybe try a smaller priest after the druid, though I still haven't played necromancer. hmm.

[bron]

I found a tiny bug:

Playing a Half Troll Paladin. I read WoR, then drop all my copies of prayer book one in order to free an inventory slot and pick up some additional loot. While I'm waiting for the recall to kick in, I cast "Bless", using the books on the ground. I then hit "n" to repeat that action until the recall happens. I now hit "n" again (after the recall; standing on the stairs on the surface), and the Bless prayer is cast, even though the book is now M.I.A.

[wobbly]

Protected a dump in fox form:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21703

Probably should say fox on it somewhere. The claw & biting is cute by the way

[Nick]

I've now got a priest to CL21, DL19.

Originally Posted by fizzix

The early game for priests can be kind of brutal. Running into an OoD monster (like grip or fang) on dlevel 1 is usually a death sentence. In fact unless you are playing a strong class, it can be quite hard to kill anything until you get bless online. I would recommend having priests automatically start with bless, or if preferred, making bless the only level 1 spell. (I'd also lower the mp cost to 1).

Yes, fair enough.

Originally Posted by fizzix

Priests have a tough time with non-evil monsters, especially fast moving ones like cats. In the past this was mostly ok, because you got portal around level 7. But portal is now in a dungeon book and this makes the early-midgame very hairy. (In normal games you just buy _Tele, so maybe this is still ok) I would recommend giving priest a survival spell early. Something like hold monster or scare monster might be good enough. But if you wanted to be more flavorful, you could imagine a spell called "pacify" which is a single, smite target (ball radius 1) spell that causes any non-evil monster to be healed to full health and fall asleep with max sleep.

I didn't have this problem, but OK. Sanctuary was always deemed useless, but maybe with the new status effects some variant of that would be good. More on the spell pacing later.

Originally Posted by fizzix

Orb of draining is super powerful, but I think a priest spell that devastates undead/demons would be a very flavorful addition and would prevent them from being one trick ponies. Something like "bolt of holiness" which only affects undead and does a healthy dose of damage to undead and demons would be a nice addition. It would be in the town books and maybe unlocked at level 20-25 or so.

Dispel Evil and Dispel Undead are both too costly and too inefficient to be anything but mop-up spells in the late game. They have no business being in the town books I think.

I had intended for the Dispels to be staples, but you are quite right that they overlap too much with OoD and are too expensive. I wonder if cutting their mana cost to less than OoD's would be successful?

Originally Posted by fizzix

The pointy penalty is still annoying and frustrating. It seems to me that this is a good candidate to remove when doing a major class rebalance.

I'm not so sure - I actually kind of like the way it works. What do others think?

Originally Posted by fizzix

I greatly miss having access to detect doors and stairs and sense surroundings. There were many levels where I had to explore more than 2/3 of the level before finding a stairs. I had an especially frustrating cavern level, where I had to backtrack through the whole level to find the one stairs, since I was stuck with radius one light. (The cavern and labyrinth levels really need to be either redesigned or removed. They are not fun.)

I see the issue with detecting stairs, but I'm trying to avoid just handing out all the utility spells to everyone. Maybe a scroll?

As for level design, I haven't really played enough to get a sense. I just had a really fun labyrinth, but it was small - maybe restrict both of those level types in size.

Originally Posted by fizzix

I also miss (slightly) having upgraded bless spells that don't wear off after so few turns. These spells (holy chant and prayer) were problematic and somewhat pointless in the old version, but maybe we can improve them somehow.

Bless is supposed to scale adequately with player level - maybe that needs more work.

Originally Posted by fizzix

Another spell I miss is resist heat and cold. This was a very important spell for a low-hp class. I feel like priests should still have it.

I've tried make the resist spells a bit more thematic too, but maybe. When did you notice the lack of it?

Originally Posted by fizzix

Also what happened to cure/slow/neutralize poison? This isn't super important, but getting rid of poison helps a lot to avoid the tedium of waiting out poison so you can rest.

This is a thematic thing too - resist and cure poison I'm seeing as more nature magic things.

Originally Posted by fizzix

I can't cast it yet, but the Heal spell in the first dungeon book is super costly. Maybe this is for the best. If I ever get to the late game, I'll mention how this went.

I can't really tell yet either.

Originally Posted by fizzix

For dungeon books, it might be worth considering how DaJ did book drops. Basically it dropped, book 5, book 6, book 7, etc. and what book that was depended on what class you were playing. So if you got a dungeon book drop it was always for your class. The other dungeon books just didn't show up. Since we have many more book types, I think this would help cut down on clutter.

So there are several issues with books in this branch - proliferation of dungeon books affecting level feelings and just cluttering up the place; spells needed early being in dungeon books; mana costs and fail rates. I'm trying to attack them bit by bit. In particular, I think book 3 for mages and priests probably should be town books.

I'm not exactly sure what to do about the proliferation of books thing. I think having the half-casters sometimes getting their own books is good for clarity, but it does create more useless objects. On the other hand, having the other class books around is kind of nice for promoting curiosity about classes you aren't currently playing (for players who haven't played all the classes yet).

Originally Posted by fizzix

One possible bug in gameplay. call light should light up adjacent walls to stairs. I found that it didn't when I was trying to navigate without wielding a light (I've been having some light problems this game... another thing that only happens in ironman games)

OK, thanks.

This was all very helpful, thanks. All the new classes are really still fairly rough around the edges, but I feel like progress is being made.

[luneya]

Originally Posted by Nick

I've now got a priest to CL21, DL19.


I didn't have this problem, but OK. Sanctuary was always deemed useless, but maybe with the new status effects some variant of that would be good. More on the spell pacing later.


I'm not exactly sure what to do about the proliferation of books thing. I think having the half-casters sometimes getting their own books is good for clarity, but it does create more useless objects. On the other hand, having the other class books around is kind of nice for promoting curiosity about classes you aren't currently playing (for players who haven't played all the classes yet).

Sanctuary is useless because it only affects adjacent monsters. It really should affect everything in LOS, just like a staff activation. Perhaps make it low-level and cheap, but with the drawback that it only puts monsters to sleep lightly, so its main benefit is to buy time for escape by teleport spells that have higher fail rates. Or keep it as a higher-level and more expensive spell, but make it put the monsters into the deepest possible sleep state, so that a caster with decent stealth can proceed to fight other monsters without worrying that the slept monsters will wake.

On the book proliferation thing, how about having it so that each class has its own spellbooks, but only two sets of spellbooks are generated per game? For example, say I'm playing as a priest. I'll find my green priest books, and in addition I will find one randomly chosen set of red books. One game, those might be the mage books, next game they might be the rogue books, and so forth. If I were a warrior (and thus had no spellbooks of my own), both sets of books would be randomized. That way, we get the flavor benefits of having unique books for each class, and of people seeing all of the books without actually playing as every class, but there's no increase in junk over previous release versions.

[Carnivean]

Originally Posted by Nick

I'm not exactly sure what to do about the proliferation of books thing. I think having the half-casters sometimes getting their own books is good for clarity, but it does create more useless objects. On the other hand, having the other class books around is kind of nice for promoting curiosity about classes you aren't currently playing (for players who haven't played all the classes yet).

While the motivation you mentioned makes sense, is it really worth the aggravation of all the wrong books? It also makes a mockery in some cases of the level feelings. The wrong dungeon book is either annoying or frustrating, or a case of making the user turn off a feature of the game.

Is there actually a solid case for the retention of wrong-class books in the object generation?

[Sky]

The new spellbooks are breaking the econony for players that like Angband the way god inteded it to be: with selling enabled.

[fizzix]

I think the biggest problem with the dispel spells is that they are costed for having strong effects and average damage. If you have 10 monsters in LoS they are reasonably strong. But how often do you have 10 monsters in LoS? Very rarely. A line of ghouls is one of the better scenarios, and spear of light is a better way to take care of it. The second problem is it uses dXX as damage which is horribly inconsistent. I really dislike spell damage that's just a random number between 1 and N, the variance is far too high for my liking. (This goes for monster spells also.) Turn undead was useless because OoD was a far better option, always.

I think the best solution for these spells is for late game efficient clearing. They are costed appropriately for that, but they aren't useful in the dungeon books.

I disagree with luneya. The problem is not that the priest needs a mass sleep spell that buys them 1 or 2 turns. In fact the 1-2 turn extra was precisely the problem with the old spells. 1-2 turns does nothing for a monster that moves faster than you. The problem is that they need a single target sleep spell that buys them enough turns to get far enough away so that the cat/hydra/beorn won't wake up and track them down. All groups of non-evil monsters (I think) have pack mentality. And since priests have call light, getting trapped by these groups is more your fault (blink dogs/phase spiders notwithstanding). It's the fast moving single monster that's the issue here.

As far as resist heat and cold, I start missing it around the midgame. Which is now for my character.