Why do we need spell slots?


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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 13:57

Why do we need spell slots?

GDD thread about wielding books made me thinking, why do we need scrolls of amnesia and spell slots overall?
Is it so bad that you can try/use all spells you found and decided to learn? What am I missing? You still need corresponding magic schools for spell power and failure chance...
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 14:20

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

The bad thing about unlimited spells is interface and usability, in my opinion. There are a lot of spells. With nothing stopping you from memorizing them all, you get a long, paged menu and possibly an unreasonable number of possible player actions per turn. If there were fewer, it wouldn't be a problem.
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 14:28

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

watertreatmentRL wrote:The bad thing about unlimited spells is interface and usability, in my opinion. There are a lot of spells. With nothing stopping you from memorizing them all, you get a long, paged menu and possibly an unreasonable number of possible player actions per turn. If there were fewer, it wouldn't be a problem.


I am not suggesting any changes except removing scrolls of amnesia (and arguably introducing a new ability, though it is not necessary if spell can be forgotten from its description screen). So you still will need to learn spells in a normal way, automatic learning of all available spells would be a bad idea indeed.
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 14:36

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

If you have a limited number of slots, but no limit on exchanging what spells occupy the slots, then the player is encouraged to switch those spells frequently. This is also bad.
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 14:42

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

watertreatmentRL wrote:If you have a limited number of slots, but no limit on exchanging what spells occupy the slots, then the player is encouraged to switch those spells frequently. This is also bad.


Current limit (21 spell as far as I remember) can stay.
I am not sure what you mean as switching spells frequently. Typically you can learn Venom Bolt for Spider or Meph Cloud for Orc and this is what many players already do. Nobody is going to train 5+ magic schools just because scrolls of amnesia are no longer used. At least if we are talking about games for win.
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 15:00

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

If you have a limited number of levels but unlimited ability to switch, how often the player will want to switch depends on how limited the levels are and how costly it is to get more. One could very well change spells on a per-encounter basis and it might be a good thing to do from the perspective of winning bad characters consistently or doing some conducts.

If you are talking about a fairly high limit on number of spells with no explicit limit on spell levels, then there would be little reason to switch between different sets of spells. You could have everything that you'd have any use for all the time.
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 15:06

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

Why do you need to switch per encounter basis? Just learn those 21 spells you want
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 15:09

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

This was my original question - why little switching is bad. My last character had level 6 spells of 6 different schools and it was enjoyable. I wouldn't be able to have all those spells if spellcasting wasn't my highest skill.
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 16:05

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

I think I've explained my perspective on this very carefully.
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 19:00

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

limited spell slots but infinite exchange is the same thing as infinite spell slots, you are just moving the spell slots to your inventory/the floor in the form of books and arguably making it more tedious to access specific spells

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Post Tuesday, 18th July 2017, 11:06

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

So to summarize, are their any reasons why we can't remove spell slots and instead have up to 25 spells memorized at any time without scrolls of amnesia and weird Vehumet's piety management?
I can see pros:
1) Vehumet becomes more enjoyable/powerful. You no longer need to press 5 in Temple or overtrain spellcasting.
2) You can try any spells you like and later you don't feel sorry about it (because later you found a great spell but cannot use it immediately due to your curiosity with new spells which left you with not enough spell slots)
3) You don't need to keep books in your inventory until very late game (and most characters arguably will never need it)
Cons:
1) Vehumet becomes more powerful (arguably good as it is seen as weak god by some players)
2) Some bad spells will be used less (previously they were still used after a better spell was found due to spell slot restrictions/economy). Arguably it can be seen as pro, those spells really need a buff
3) "Optimal" players will think long and hard about spells optimization. Again it won't happen until very late game and by then you usually have enough scrolls of amnesia
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Post Tuesday, 18th July 2017, 15:05

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

So the question is *do you view more flexibility as more power* if you don't then not having spell slots makes sense, if you do then this is a massive power buff for early characters.

Personally I come down on the "more tools in your toolbox makes you more powerful" side of things, to me, having all the spells in the game I've found available (and yes, there's some training restrictions, but you can cast a lot of level 1-3 spells with very little or no XP once you have a baseline of spellcasting and some int, or a wizardry ring)

Obviously once you start eyeing the level 5 and up spells you'll want to specialize, XP wise, but giving characters a large bump in flexibility without requiring an XP cost to go with it (in the form of training spellcasting) doesn't sound good to me, personally.
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Post Tuesday, 18th July 2017, 16:08

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

Assuming that every spell you encounter is learnt, I do not see how it would lead to inventory or interface issues.

Currently, I keep my spells in easy-to-memorize spell slots a cloud spell is usually "c", lvl 1 spell (Magic Dart, say) is "z" and so on. I can still keep these spells in these spell slots. All the "extra" tedium would come from spells which you are currently not allowed to memorize at all. Therefore, for a person who wants to eliminate this tedium, they can simply not memorize the spells they don't want.

Of course, it would be "optimal" to memorize everything you see. But there's an easy solution to this problem, if it even exists.

In the z? screen (which currently brings up all spells you have memorized), allow spells to be cast by their full name. So, typing z?"Cause Fear" (with the double quotes) will cast fear. Spellname completion can also be implemented with Tab or something like in a Linux shell. Since these spells would be rarely used, typing them out in full would not matter much, if at all. And it would be much more intuitive than trying to remember spell slot letters.

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Post Tuesday, 18th July 2017, 16:17

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

Siegurt wrote:So the question is *do you view more flexibility as more power* if you don't then not having spell slots makes sense, if you do then this is a massive power buff for early characters.

Personally I come down on the "more tools in your toolbox makes you more powerful" side of things, to me, having all the spells in the game I've found available (and yes, there's some training restrictions, but you can cast a lot of level 1-3 spells with very little or no XP once you have a baseline of spellcasting and some int, or a wizardry ring)

Obviously once you start eyeing the level 5 and up spells you'll want to specialize, XP wise, but giving characters a large bump in flexibility without requiring an XP cost to go with it (in the form of training spellcasting) doesn't sound good to me, personally.

What level 1-3 spells do you mean? As far as I know it is already optimal to learn animate skeleton, blink and either conjure flame or meph cloud asap and then train them to castable level. I believe the buff is not that significant, you will rarely find all those spells when you have no spell slots left while having a wizardry item.
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Post Tuesday, 18th July 2017, 19:24

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
Siegurt wrote:So the question is *do you view more flexibility as more power* if you don't then not having spell slots makes sense, if you do then this is a massive power buff for early characters.

Personally I come down on the "more tools in your toolbox makes you more powerful" side of things, to me, having all the spells in the game I've found available (and yes, there's some training restrictions, but you can cast a lot of level 1-3 spells with very little or no XP once you have a baseline of spellcasting and some int, or a wizardry ring)

Obviously once you start eyeing the level 5 and up spells you'll want to specialize, XP wise, but giving characters a large bump in flexibility without requiring an XP cost to go with it (in the form of training spellcasting) doesn't sound good to me, personally.

What level 1-3 spells do you mean? As far as I know it is already optimal to learn animate skeleton, blink and either conjure flame or meph cloud asap and then train them to castable level. I believe the buff is not that significant, you will rarely find all those spells when you have no spell slots left while having a wizardry item.


Well, without any limitations, it'd be optimal to memorize:
  Code:
Swiftness
Mephitic Cloud
Static Discharge
Infusion
Shroud of Golubria
Song of Slaying
Ozocubu's Armour
Regeneration
Spectral Weapon
Conjure Flame
Dazzling Spray
Passwall
Ignite Poison
Inner Flame
Confusing Touch
Corona
Ensorcelled Hibernation
Slow
Confuse
Gell's Gravitas
Summon Guardian Golem
Tukima's Dance
Animate Skeleton
Corpse Rot
Sublimation of Blood
Poisonous Vapours
Summon Butterflies
Summon Small Mammal
Call Imp
Call Canine Familiar
Apportation
Blink
Lesser Beckoning
Portal projectile
Teleport other
Beastly appendage
Sticks to snakes

Not every one of those is useful for every build or throughout every game (for example beastly appendage is only useful if you have free feet or head slots, and infusion's damage becomes not really worth the cost outside the very early game.

You can get pretty much all of those to reasonable fail rate with middling to high int and/or wizardry and no (or low) body armour penalty, or even with a pretty minimal investment in the relative schools (how much XP is it to get all the relevant spell schools up to say, 2 or 3?) and all of them have a useful effect even at low spellpower. It's unlikely (obviously) that you'll find all (or even a large percentage of) those in the early portion of the game, however by the mid game at the latest (let's say, by the time you've done both orc and lair) You'll easily collect sufficient number of spellbooks with spells that "might be useful in some circumstances" that you'll be unable to memorize due to spell slots with no spellcasting training.

The point isn't that these are all optimal to memorize all the time, the point is *if there's no limit on the number of spells you can memorize* any even potentially useful spell is worth memorizing, because it adds to your ability to handle a situation which it fulfills better than your more generally useful tools.

With spell slots you're forced to prioritize, and anticipate which situations would *most* benefit from the available supply give your character's strengths and weaknesses.

Now the proposal does put a hard cap on the total number of spells available, but before reaching it, there's no incentive to prioritize or be selective about which spells you memorize, and since by that point in the game, you'll have collected as many amnesia scrolls as you could ever want you effectively have an unlimited reorganization available (not *truly* unlimited, but effectively)
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Post Wednesday, 19th July 2017, 06:32

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

I see, spell slots are useful then.
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Post Wednesday, 19th July 2017, 22:02

Re: Why do we need spell slots?

To soak up XP, same reason we have so many */Conjurations spells. It wouldn't be too hard in theory to get rid of fighting/spellcasting as separate skills and have HP/spell level growth depend only on XL and species, but you would have to fiddle with the melee and spellpower formulae.
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