The Tavern

Trying to not overload GDD with less massive proposals, so posting here.
In Charms change(once again) topic about aforementioned spells school, among many other ideas, someone mentioned that spells should be situational and not "passive".
So what I bring for consideration:
Combine both of those spells into single 4th level one (so it's harder to learn it just for everyone) but change the spell mechanic.
Instead of a buff, spellcaster creates a hemisphere surrounding him (3x3 tiles, placed on ground) inside of which he gains benefits of a bit stronger RMsl/a bit weaker DMsl. You gain benefits only as long as you stay inside this "bubble" and (as possible downside for consideration) all ranged attacks from this hemisphere also gain malus to accuracy.
Thoughts?

I think it's an interesting idea, but would't it mean that you would want to keep recasting the bubble so that you were always standing in it while exploring?

I would prefer to see more reasons to move during fights. Killing 30+ elves standing on the same tile is boring, your suggestion makes it even worse since here even as magic/ranged user I would have to stay on the same tile.

Hunger, MP. Casting it every time you move one screen away is non-optimal to say the least.


3x3 is a 9 tiles. 9 times more than 1 tile.
Kill-holes, corridor fights etc. is a completely different topic isn't it?

No, it is related to your suggestion since you are encouraging to stay in 9 tiles.

Crawl already has a bunch of similar spells as proof of concept. Leda's Liquefaction, for instance, or Summon Forest. How many of you have ever been happy to see one of these show up in your games? How many of you have even actually ever used one in a game that you were playing seriously, as opposed to a 'Hey, I'm sick of streaking, so why don't I see if I can make Leda's Liquefaction useful somehow?'

If your fixed-location spell is powerful enough that it's better than a one-tile corridor or kill-hole, it's probably overpowered. If it isn't better than a one-tile corridor or kill-hole, it's probably worthless. This is not an easy needle to thread, and the practical result of trying is most likely just to be the removal of Repel Missiles and its replacement with nothing.

Summon Forest is pretty nice IME.

Summon Forest is probably one of the better Summoning spells, TBH. Most the power of Malign Gateway; none of the self-harm. AND it's far lower level. The only thing annoying about it is needing to wait before recast. (IE: I killed everything with my Summon Forest, Monstrous Menagerie, etc. on my DESu; I need to 5 before I can o because of the cooldown time on Forest.)