The best OpTm spells

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Essential:

• Animate Skeleton (Necr 1): Early on it's a superb buff, after Statue Form it's still quite nice but not more than that.
• Repel Missiles (Chrm/Air 2): Superb against centaurs, keeps being useful even after Statue Form, as every dodged bolt, large rock, or Crystal Spear is great for survival.
• Regeneration (Chrm/Necr 3): Great early on to counter poisoning, remains good throughout the game, great again in Hells where resting to heal up without Regen isn't safe.
• Statue Form (Tmut/Erth 6): Steamroll over everything and fetch all the runes. The ticket to 15 runes. The only spell you really need.

Great:

• Ice Form (Tmut/Ice 4): Do more damage before statform.
• Blade Hands (Tmut 5): Do more damage before statform.
• Aura of Abjuration (Summ 5): Why waste turns fighting summons, when you ought to kill the summoner instead?

Nice to have:

• Irradiate (Conj/Tmut 5): Debuffs monsters, so it's a nice "opening salvo" if you get surrounded. That can happen in Snake Pit, and almost definitely in Hells. With statform you'll already have high Tmut, so only a few Conj levels will put it to low fail. The debuff might be useful against Pan lords as well but it's just a guess.
• Silence (Chrm/Air 5): Disables elves and (ancient) liches. Free pass to clear the Elf:3 vault. Have a !cancellation at hand if it runs out too early.
• Dragon Form (Tmut 7): If you want to kill Orbs of Fire even quicker. Or Elf:3.
• Tornado (Air 9): A statformer in extended doesn't really need any other skills than UC, Fighting, and Dodging. With high enough Int and Wiz+, you can easily pour the excess skill points to Tornado, and with a statformer + Makh, it's the best spell to clear a Ziggurat as well.

Situational: All the others.

[dracos369]

Dispel undead? Blink? Butterflies? (Maybe also LRD.)

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Dispel undead? Blink? Butterflies? (Maybe also LRD.)

Good suggestions. My take:

• Dispel Undead: Nice to have, but a statform UC kills quick enough.
• Butterflies: Maybe against malmutators, so a good add-on to the nice-to-have list.
• LRD: Useless after statform. A punch will do the same.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Dispel undead? Blink? Butterflies? (Maybe also LRD.)

Blink: what kind of melee dude uses blink? To get away? A statformer never needs to get away, or if it does, it'd be ?tele or ?cblink to stairs.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Being in Statue Form changes things. You'll gain superb melee damage and good defenses, but become Slow, so may spells become comparatively worse. Your main way of dealing damage will outshine every other way: melee in Statue Form. Being Slow makes all the other attacks do 0.66 as much damage.

But Tornado will still do its thing every 10 auts, so it remains as good as ever. And being a statformer means that you won't really need anything else than melee. So you can just put Air on, kill everything, and after Tornado maybe even switch to Makh (if you weren't already) and get some gear and free XP.

[Turukano]

Great:

• Blade Hands (Tmut 5)

I don't think so.

With (often) 1 AC Blade Hands is a dubious choice. It greatly increases your damage output but doesn't help your defense at all.

Every tMut spell which buffs octopodes' AC (ice form, statue, even dragon form) is better.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Great:

• Blade Hands (Tmut 5)

I don't think so.

With (often) 1 AC Blade Hands is a dubious choice. It greatly increases your damage output but doesn't help your defense at all.

Every tMut spell which buffs octopodes' AC (ice form, statue, even dragon form) is better.

I've used Blade Hands (BH) as an Op, and it works great. Killing dudes fast is also a great defensive ability.

As a though experiment, what if you could one-shot every dude in melee? How much defenses would you need? In practice, Blade Hands kills dudes so fast that the though experiment becomes almost the reality, even with low-AC-dudes like octopodes.

In my experience, BH wipes out everything quickly enough that one can even disregard defenses.

[dracos369]

I've been one-shot the turn I cast blade hands once...

Oh, and I forgot Shroud of Golubria!

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

I've been one-shot the turn I cast blade hands once...

Oh, and I forgot Shroud of Golubria!

If you count in SoG, we'd have to count in every book start, and most of them have a good spell to clear the first few levels of the dungeon. A melee Op would love an Sk start for one.

[Turukano]

In my experience, BH wipes out everything quickly enough that [an octopode] can even disregard defenses.

The ettin hits you with a giant club!!!! (2x)

[Vajrapani]

Essential:

[list]
[*] Animate Skeleton (Necr 1): Early on it's a superb buff, after Statue Form it's still quite nice but not more than that.

I never really got why people like this spell so much, it creates very shitty allies for a small amount of time. Even when I've got like 5-6 skeletons with me, I don't notice any substantial difference is damage taken/done in combat.

[papilio]

You missed Lesser Beckoning.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

You missed Lesser Beckoning.

It seems to take quite a lot of Tloc investment to get more than 3-4 range, so it's not that much better than just walking towards the enemy, but it's good for better positioning for sure. So another one in between "nice to have" and "pretty good".

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

I never really got why people (Animate Skeleton) spell so much, it creates very shitty allies for a small amount of time. Even when I've got like 5-6 skeletons with me, I don't notice any substantial difference is damage taken/done in combat.

It's cheap, doesn't depend on spellpower, and even a weak skeleton makes for a great escape. Stronger ones are even effective as killdudes. Have you tried it in Lair? Spiny frog skeletons, and many others, are pretty damn effective.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Early on, lots of starter book spells are good and I sort of forgot about them. So here:

• Shock > Sting / Magic Missile / Flame Tongue. All the 1st level ranged spells help to either kill or weaken dudes from distance, even without training the relevant spell skills any further. But a hunting sling works almost the same. Especially useful when you don't have enough UC in the non-Tm starts.
• Infusion (Chrm 1): If you have it, worth using in every melee fight early on.
• Shroud of Golubria (Chrm/Tloc 2): As dracos369 pointed out. The common wisdom is that it's worth 10 HP or so, and if it works on a single adder attack that would otherwise poison you, it's done its job. A useful buff for every fight before statform.

Spells that I have thought would be nice but rarely end up using, with the assumption of having Statue Form:

• Dispel Undead (Necr 5): A situationally great spell for many builds, but just tabbing through works fine. Against ancient liches I'd rather have Silence, but they go down so quickly in statform melee that it's more of an insurance to be extra safe.
• Iron Shot (Conj/Erth 6): A good killdudes spell, but as a statformer you're slow so it's only 0.66x as effective turnwise. Has spell school synergy with statform, so it's almost nice to have, but quite unnecessary. If I memorize it, I mainly use it for convenience against those annoying red devils with polearms who flee from you.
• Controlled Blink (Tloc 8): Requires a big Tloc investment. When I've memorized it I've barely used it, because I tend to have that spare blink scroll anyway. In extended I'd rather go Air Magic for Tornado. Maybe worth it to gain some range with Lesser Beckoning as well.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

With (often) 1 AC Blade Hands is a dubious choice. It greatly increases your damage output but doesn't help your defense at all.

Every tMut spell which buffs octopodes' AC (ice form, statue, even dragon form) is better.

Ice Form also reduces your EV so it's not just a defense buff. Both Ice Form and Blade Hands have their strong points, and one usually has both, so using one over the other is situationally better. Without rPois, Ice Form is often better in Lair and its rune branches, with rPois BH is often better.

[papilio]

You missed Lesser Beckoning.

It seems to take quite a lot of Tloc investment to get more than 3-4 range, so it's not that much better than just walking towards the enemy, but it's good for better positioning for sure. So another one in between "nice to have" and "pretty good".

Nope, just having range 3 is enough to rate the spell as "Essential".
If you're fighting with fiends, hellions, etc, Beckoning is invaluable because you're using Statue Form.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Nope, just having range 3 (with Lesser Beckoning) is enough to rate the spell as "Essential".
If you're fighting with fiends, hellions, etc, Beckoning is invaluable because you're using Statue Form.

I've used it with one statformer in extended and I agree it was nice to have, but by no means essential, i.e. absolutely necessary, or even highly important. It is quite useful against the monsters you listed though, so I just may have underused it to find it that valuable.

[Sar]

even dragon form

"Even" dragon form? Squids are one of the best DF users - you only lose 1 point of your natural AC (only the difference between DF and SF, and doesn't DF allow you Ozo Armour nowadays?), and your ring slots allow you to easily plug the resistance holes (and stack AC/EV rings after that's done) in exchange for the most damaging non-stab melee attack in the game.

[prozacelf]

Yes, you can use Ozo's in Dragon Form. Or at least it carries over if you cast it before casting DF. I don't remember if you have to do it in a particular order or not.

[severen]

Yes, you can use Ozo's in Dragon Form. Or at least it carries over if you cast it before casting DF. I don't remember if you have to do it in a particular order or not.

You can cast Ozo in dragon form and unlike blade hands there is no casting penalty in dragon. Op are basically the best dragon formers. Draconians are somewhat close but Op are better. Its not that likely that you get as high of AC as a drac will because rings of protection are that rare, but you will very likelu easily get at least 5AC and 5EV from rings and probably more in one of them. An Op will get basically the same defensive bonuses and still have 3-4 ring extra ring slots.

A decent dragon Op with Ozo armor can be somewhere around 30Ac and 20 EV and potentially 35/25 while having Troll level HP and can easily do 3-5 runes.

Statue form is superior defensively vs dragon form but that is acutally more because you can use a shield and will have about 10 more EV due to size penalty dragon + ozo is up to 28 AC which is close to decent spellpower Statue. Statue gets a bit more AC and also some extra slots. For an Op the difference is less than other species but the cloak/hat is roughly 5 ac so statue winds up being like 8 or so AC difference which is nice but not a big deal. 20SH is a much bigger deal. However dragon is much more damage. It hits somewhat harder and considerably faster. Depending on the auxiliary attacks of the species dragon form should be about 66% to 100% more damage. For Op since they have such good auxiliary attacks their statue form auxiliaries are roughly equivalent to the dragon form ones so its about 66% better due to the 50% slow and the extra base damage/+10 str.

Sadly using dragon form in many extended game cases is kind of pointless. Although it can be made to work using it over necromutation or statue form is not really adding much. I have a OpFi of mahkleb that just got his 5th rune he has statue form, dragon form and necromutation. I purposely made this guy to use dragon as much as possible but when I did slime pits I jsut did the whole place in lich form simply because of shining eyes and the removal of rMut. Sadly the way they have changed the game just makes the form situation extremely non-varying or interesting in your choices. The choice between statue form and dragon is often semi-interesting especially with TSO/mahkleb to giving you healing for higher offense this can even make up for torment resistance but since they removed rMut dragon form in abyss/pand/slime or even when summoners are around is not that great since lich form melee is still pretty good although certainly inferior to dragon or statue form. I am pretty sure I could dragon form 15 runes but since you already have the Tmut there is little reason to not get the other two spells and sadly they have neutered that tactical variety in forms as the only good defense on mutations is now lich form since they remove rMut and won't even put it in randarts. And even if you found something like alchemist hat you can't use that in dragon form anyway.

While other characters have similar issues a character with the ability to cast dragon form has only a minor investment to cast necromutation. Similarly although I would love to have dragon form be my goto thing against orbs of fire I just use necromutation instead solely because of malmutate. Its really boring. Yes I know about summoning blockers etc. Why would I do kludgy unreliable tactics when I can just go lich, its just silly. And when I use a summoning tactic I am basically abrogating the massive offensive tactic of dragon form since i have to hide behind things. So yes its boring.

Edit:
As to the OP specifically I don't actually like the Tr start very much for Op. I prefer to start as an OpFi and then find statue form. Statue form is basically the ultimate spell for a melee Op. But in general the melee form spells in book of changes are inferior to an unarmed Op with a shield. An OpFi with can consistently get to about 25/25 Ev/Sh. Neither BH nor IF can use a shield. IF gets some AC but also gets an EV penalty, additionally you lose out on Op auxiliaries (which are basically the best in the game when you train UC) and you lose constriction. So IF is actually similar damage with worse defenses. BH has more damage since you retain and even enhance your auxiliaries but has shitty shitty defenses and you can die to easily.

Obviously IF can be made to work, people do it with all kinds of species. Its just pointless to do on Op IMO. Unless you want the slow for hydra or need poison res or cold res.

Raw Op unarmed at about 10/10 Fighting/UC is generally good enough damage on its own, certainly much better than Spider form. In general conjure flame is more useful than any of the forms in book of changes. Blade hands itself is interesting for non-Op especially if they are chei since they can achieve pretty decent AC, but for Op blade hands sucks IMO. I'd rather use a shield and not have the casting penalty.

A raw UC Op using a shield with necromutation and just meleeing can win all 15 runes (although I would suggest you use statue form in tartarus).

Also lesser beckoning is a spectacular spell for statue formers of any sort especially if you are learning controlled blink anyway since you can get it to range 5-6 at that skill level.