Enchanter and Conjurer are way too luck dependent. And more.

[PowerOfKaishin]

My favorite classes are Enchanter and Conjurer because they have massive DPS and crowd control (Enchanter + Vehumet is amazing), and I play Spriggans because I like kiting things and generally being OP (yay Nethack class balance). In case anyone is confused, I'm not knocking the class balance.

Tengu are also cool because I get to play Falco from Star Fox dressed in wizard robes, but that's besides the point.

Anyway, here's a few problems I've been having.

Let's start with the enchanter. If you play an enchanter, your number one spell in the early game is Ensorcelled Hibernation. No exceptions. This bad boy makes an enchanter able to, in such a short amount of time, do damage to a single target that berserkers and fighters could only dream of. And the opponent can start out fully aware of them too. Spriggan enchanters trivialize killer bees with this bad boy (mostly because Spriggans are amazing, but this spell definitely helps). There are, however, a few problems with it:
1. Enemies wake up too soon.
It's not safe to cast this spell in melee because enchanters are squishy. This is fine. Mages are supposed to be squishy in melee. Nothing strange here. The problem is that the spell doesn't guarantee sleep for enough time to cast it out of melee range and go in for a kill. Currently, I have to either cast the spell in melee or take a risk that the enemy won't wake up when I go for the kill. And as you know, you cannot blast something with EH that just woke up from it. Ridiculous that I could just get randomly screwed over by the RNG for really no reason at all. I don't think I've specifically died this way but it has been the source of many frustrations trying to kill ogres since I suddenly have to turn tail and run the other way.
2. There is no way the spell succeeds 50% of the time when it says 50%.
This is more of a bug fix and me being a little salty. I have had numerous times where I will cast the spell nearly 10 times in a row with decent success chance and it will not connect. This isn't a rare occurrence. It happens a LOT. I will call that calculation into question. I don't think it's just my bad luck.
3. I had a third one but I forgot it. I'll edit this later.

Now, let's crack on conjurers.
The basic conjurer spell is magic dart. It's efficient MP wise (at least, in the early game) and doesn't carry any or much spell hunger with it. At the start of the game it is the only spell that conjurers (and wizards) have access to. I have constantly complained to my friends that I will use this spell on an enemy several times and a health bar won't even show up. I think the best example was connecting three hits on a hobgoblin and only after the last one did it's health bar appear, still mostly full. The damage just isn't reliable. Why does this spell do 1dX instead of 2dY or 3dY (where Y is lower, obviously). It's just not right that I can cast this spell and only do one damage three times. The spell is called magic dart and not magic nuclear missile, sure, but conjurers are known for blowing shit the fuck up. This spell should have a higher minimum damage so I can actually rely on it. How can I play a mage and not be able to rely on my own spells?

This is even worse for wizards since it's their only direct attack spell (I think).

Next up, let's crack on ghosts. This is a very bad feature, for the sole reason that you cannot turn it off. You knock nethack ghosts for giving players a ton of free (albeit mostly cursed) stuff, yet you leave in the thing about player ghosts that players hate the most: their lethality. A way to disable ghosts would be cool. It's not fun getting annihilated because your players ghosts are just as OP as your player character (Conjurer ghosts just rip Conjurer players to shreds). I have gotten numerous characters killed because I forgot to delete my bones file for the 193984th time. Ridiculous. Ghosts add nothing to the game IMO and there should be an option to play without them.

Lastly, let's talk about success rates for certain spells like EH and Corona when targeting enemies. I like that this information is displayed. It's cool that I know my percent chance of seeing an enemy fall to sleep right before I send it to it's untimely demise. Since putting those numbers in doesn't seem to violate the "too many numbers" rule, why don't we have them for player attacks as well? Or the magical attacks that can miss, like magic dart? Fire Emblem is a game that keeps it simple with numbers and they do this and it works just fine even with a multitude of battles happening at once.

I also think it should apply for enemy attacks to, so new players can get a better idea of how effective their EV is at evading blows and for seeing what exactly can be evasion tanked and what can't.

[triorph]

1. Typical strategy with EH is to use it if the enemy is close to you, going more on squishyness. Again it depends on the monster, but there are definitely times when you should consider other spells (confuse, Tukima's) or just running away (which spriggan is very good at).

2. If the monster is wearing something with MR+ and you don't know about it, the % chance is probably wrong. I don't think this is really a bug but its definitely a tricky thing to deal with.

3. Magic dart isn't really so bad at XL1, and by XL2 you have searing ray (or call imp if wizard). You're right that it is the only direct attack spell for wizard's, which is why a lot of people consider wizard a melee background.

[PowerOfKaishin]

1. Typical strategy with EH is to use it if the enemy is close to you, going more on squishyness. Again it depends on the monster, but there are definitely times when you should consider other spells (confuse, Tukima's) or just running away (which spriggan is very good at).

Right, but it's not guaranteed to keep them asleep long enough if it's used from any range other than melee. THIS is the problem. It should be guaranteed for enough time (1 or 2 auts). It is a magical sleeping spell, I should be able to rely on it to safely get me out of a jam if it connects. After all, you don't see people missing stabbing opportunities on sleeping opponents. Why not have it guaranteed as I walk the one space to get to that point in the first place?

2. If the monster is wearing something with MR+ and you don't know about it, the % chance is probably wrong. I don't think this is really a bug but its definitely a tricky thing to deal with.

Wha...? Why is this not taken into account in the percentage? You might as well not even display one at all.

3. Magic dart isn't really so bad at XL1, and by XL2 you have searing ray (or call imp if wizard). You're right that it is the only direct attack spell for wizard's, which is why a lot of people consider wizard a melee background.

It's not a bad spell, but I'm tired of dealing 1 damage with it. The damage variation should be like... 3 to 6 instead of 1 to 8 (at max power) like it is now. Conjurers are supposed to be strong offensively, and they are, but their damage just isn't reliable. I have a limited pool of MP. If I magic dart something four times in the early game (that isn't OOD), it should die 100% of the time, provided I don't miss.

[scorpionwarrior]

magic dart never misses, which is one reason why the damage is low

[Wahaha]

You're supposed to use EH when the monster is adjacent, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Spriggans can use it 1 tile away because of their low hp and being able to reset the fight if the monster wakes up.
I never had a problem with magic dart damage. Sometimes you will spend all of your mp and the monster isn't dead, this can happen with every mage background. In this case you have to walk away to regen mp or fight with a weapon.
I strongly dislike single player ghosts but I like online ghosts from other players.

[CanOfWorms]

It is a magical sleeping spell, I should be able to rely on it to safely get me out of a jam if it connects.

Unless you lucked into an early IE starting book and can pump Ice exclusively, Confuse will always have higher spellpower than EH and land more often. If you're trying to escape it's definitely the better spell. EH is something I'd use if the enemy closed up on me and I can afford wasting 1-3 turns trying to put it to sleep for an instakill (e.g. an adder/rC- monster.) If the monster is waking up you should also consider training some stealth, since whether a monster wakes up is dependent on that, and it also boosts your stabbing damage.

Wha...? Why is this not taken into account in the percentage? You might as well not even display one at all.

That doesn't make sense. Just because there might be a 1% exception to a 99% rule doesn't make the rule worthless; if that ogre is somehow not getting put to sleep after 5 50% rolls you should be thinking "Maybe I should use an exit strategy" instead of "This not not within a standard deviation of the mean, obviously the code is faulty".

It's not a bad spell, but I'm tired of dealing 1 damage with it. The damage variation should be like... 3 to 6 instead of 1 to 8 (at max power) like it is now. Conjurers are supposed to be strong offensively, and they are, but their damage just isn't reliable. I have a limited pool of MP. If I magic dart something four times in the early game (that isn't OOD), it should die 100% of the time, provided I don't miss.

As mentioned before, Magic Dart can't miss to begin with, and Searing Ray is much better at actually killing things (in fact, the first ray deals 2d(3-6) damage...) 4 MP is also the exact amount of MP for a full use of Searing Ray. The only reasons you'd want to use Magic Dart over Searing Ray is either its range (since it can reach anything in LOS) or its accuracy.

[Hurkyl]

2. There is no way the spell succeeds 50% of the time when it says 50%.

Where is your data? People are well-known to be absolutely terrible judges of this sort of thing; if you're just going by how it feels to you, you are almost certainly wrong.

If you need an explanation, how often do you notice the times when you successfully EH three 50% monsters in a row? You probably don't pay attention to that at all (especially since they might not have even been consecutive monsters). Now, how often do you notice when you fail EH there times in a row? Those events stand out more, thus the failures feel more significant to you.

(also, people are well known for underestimating how often streaks happen at random)

[Jeremiah]

Don't forget, magic dart is affected by AC so if an early monster is wearing chainmail or a weapon of protection, it's very hard to do any damage to it. In this case it's almost certainly a better idea to leave the level and come back and kill it later (or never.)

(An early monster with good armour or a weapon of protection is pretty hard to kill as a non-berserk melee character too, so it's not just mages that can have a problem)

[jejorda2]

There is no time component to how long enemies stay asleep. They stay asleep forever unless something wakes them up. If other enemies can see you, they wake up the sleeping enemy, even if they are asleep themselves. So don't try to sneak up on groups unless you have lots of dex and stealth and the enemies have fairly low HD.

[Berder]

I would recommend not relying too much on Searing Ray, as it requires you to be close to an enemy (already bad) for several turns (bad) and tempts you to keep attacking, waiting for that final shot, instead of retreating when you should. It's better to shoot things from a distance with Magic Dart, or not fight them.

Don't underestimate Magic Dart. It's totally ineffective against anything with armor, but good against things that lack armor. Train conjurations 100% early on and max out the power of Magic Dart, and it will take down orcs and orc wizards and gnolls and crocodiles.

[PowerOfKaishin]

I'm not doubting magic dart. It's great when it rolls high. It just sucks when it doesn't and at those moments it shouldn't suck so much. Even if it can't miss, if I magic dart a hobgoblin or a jackal 4 times, it should always, 100% of the time, kill. I want the spell to do 2 + 1dwhatever so it always does 3 damage minimum. As I said before, mages should be able to rely on their spells.

No time component to sleeping huh... no kidding. Then can it be made that the opponent is simply forced to stay asleep for enough time that I can EH them out of range and go in for the kill? Even the stealthy spriggan gets caught eventually. Currently, EH'd opponents are guaranteed to stay asleep for your next action, even if all hell is breaking loose, but not anything after that. I just want that to be extended slightly by one or two auts.

I don't mind the success chances displayed. What I mind is them being incorrect.

Posting on phone so I'll make a better reply later.

P.S. A full seering ray takes 5 MP.

Edit: Did my topic get moved? I thought I posted this in the design board. No wonder I couldn't find it earlier. Had to use the CP.

[jejorda2]

No time component to sleeping huh... no kidding. Then can it be made that the opponent is simply forced to stay asleep for enough time that I can EH them out of range and go in for the kill? Even the stealthy spriggan gets caught eventually. Currently, EH'd opponents are guaranteed to stay asleep for your next action, even if all hell is breaking loose, but not anything after that. I just want that to be extended slightly by one or two aums.

Every action has a chance to wake them up. So you need to get as close as possible before hibernating them to minimize the chance of waking them up. You have to balance the chance of the spell not working, the chance of the enemy approaching faster and attacking you, the chance of the enemy making noise to attract more enemies, and the chance of the enemy waking up after you hibernate them. And the chances of the enemy waking up are action based, not time based, so being fast doesn't help.

If you can lure one enemy away from a group, then you can safely hibernate and stab that one.

Confusion and petrification are duration based, as are wands of paralysis. Use those if you want to walk up to something after disabling it at range. EH is a different mechanic, and isn't as safe. I like that some options are more dangerous and others are more consistent, and it makes sense to me that the cheap level 2 tactic is the one with a disadvantage that makes other options more attractive.

Or you can raise your defenses so you can tolerate being in melee range more easily.

[Sar]

P.S. A full seering ray takes 5 MP.

Absolutely worth it. Searing Ray is my favourite Cj spell.

[advil]

Edit: Did my topic get moved? I thought I posted this in the design board. No wonder I couldn't find it earlier. Had to use the CP.

Well, the thing is that En and Cj starts are among the strongest caster backgrounds, if not the two strongest, so I'm assuming the mods moved the thread to where it would get more eyes. Of course in a game like crawl, strong still equates to a 0.5% to 1% winrate.

So, hexes: the art of stabbing is about a) getting next to something that is b) at the same time unaware of you. It may be useful to mentally decouple these. EH is not a spell for moving about with impunity (since sleep is so easily interrupted, especially when anything else is already awake), and it is probably best to think of it as a damage multiplier for a (susceptible) monster that is already next to you. It also can't be recast immediately (not sure if that is accurately displayed with the hex %.) Confusion provides a better balance of these two factors (and a lot more things are susceptible to it), but of course the monster might move itself, or do other things. Confusion is the bread-and-butter En spell, not EH. There aren't really any tools for fully moving with impunity in crawl, since that would be unbalanced (I suspect you're underestimating just how powerful this would be), but both invisibility and Dithmenos's shadow step come a lot closer than EH/confuse, despite their various downsides. The tools of an En are already extremely powerful overall, but not a substitute for good tactics or defenses. In fact, the devs apparently decided they are too powerful and in trunk they have nerfed invisibility.

Magic dart: this is probably [strikeout]the best[/strikeout] edit: ok, my overall favorite L1 damage spell in the game of the ones that I use, with good range, ok damage (seriously), and perfect accuracy. If you think hitting all the time is unimportant or doesn't merit lower damage, try a VM or AE start. Unlike other L1 spells, magic dart is useful throughout an entire conjurer game because of battlesphere; in a recent conjurer game of mine I see that I cast it nearly 7000 times, using it at every stage of the game. (One thing to note is that despite the similarities you can't compare this to magic missile, crawl damage spells don't tend to scale that way. If you want to do more damage you need to get more powerful spells.) Like everything else in crawl though this isn't a silver (magic) bullet, you'll need to combine even the best L1 spell with appropriate tactics. My guess is that you are trying to engage too many enemies at once, not retreating appropriately, not training defenses, not using higher damage spells (searing ray!) when appropriate, etc.

On that note I wouldn't necessarily try to import notions like "crowd control" into crawl. Your typical goal in crawl with respect to crowd control should be to use movement, positioning and tactics so that you aren't ever engaging a crowd (in the ideal).

[advil]

Also, I do agree with the intuition that sometimes the hex % display is buggy. I've found it pretty hard to pin down exactly what the problem is (because bad luck is possible and people are bad at judging randomness), but sometimes (not always) it doesn't seem to appropriately factor in MR items. This feature is pretty new (before 0.16 you just had to guess) and so if you can find a way to replicate it or identify the exact problem I'm sure the devs would appreciate a bug report.

[Sar]

Freeze and Pain are absolutely better than MD, there are other L1 attack spells that might be better but those two are the obvious ones.

[advil]

Freeze and Pain are absolutely better than MD, there are other L1 attack spells that might be better but those two are the obvious ones.

Well, I have to admit I've never used pain, so sure. But I think I just outright disagree about freeze to the extent they are comparable, yes it's a good spell and slowing things is good but don't you think its generality is handicapped by range 1? Maybe even L1 damage spells are qualitatively different enough that it was a mistake to try to compare them in objective terms. If I have to choose one on a hybrid then yes it's probably freeze, but on a SpEn of vehumet or whatever it probably isn't.

[Hurkyl]

if I magic dart a hobgoblin or a jackal 4 times, it should always, 100% of the time, kill. I want the spell to do 2 + 1dwhatever so it always does 3 damage minimum. As I said before, mages should be able to rely on their spells.

They can now! IIRC, retreating to regain MP to cast another Magic Dart is still better than hitting it with an unskilled trident*, in terms of damage done per damage received.

*: IIRC, trident and rapier are the best 0-skill weapons against the kinds of things in the early dungeon that aren't wearing armour. (barring ridiculous finds like a demon trident)

[Sar]

@advil: Freeze ignores both AC and EV and deals more damage than MD. Slow isn't really that important, and it lost the additional ministun recently. It's still probably the best level 1 damage spell. Pain ignores AC and EV too, it checks MR but the check is amplified, like with Agony.

[Siegurt]

Quick synopsis:

Pain (25 power max): level: Auto hit, Resistable with MR, does self-damage, range 5, 1d9 at 25 spellpower
Magic Dart (25 power max): Automatic hit, Damage reduced by AC, range 7, 1d8 at 25 spellpower
Shock (25 power max): May be evaded (11 to hit at 25 spellpower), Damage reduced by 1/2 AC, range 7, penetrates, may attack twice (when bouncing), 1d9 at at 25 spellpower
Flame tongue (40 power max): May be evaded (15 to hit at 25 spellpower), Damage reduced by AC, range 2-5, 1d14 at 25 spellpower
Sandblast, no stones (50 power max): May be evaded (13 to hit at 25 spellpower), Damage reduced by AC*3, range 2, 1d14 at 25 spellpower
Sandblast, with stones (50 power max): May be evaded (15 to hit at 25 spellpower), Damage reduced by AC*3, range 3, 2d12 at 25 spellpower
Freeze (25 power max): Automatic hit, Damage is not reduced by AC, range 1, 1d11 at 25 spellpower
Sting (25 power max): May be evaded (13 to hit at 25 spellpower), Damage reduced by AC, range 6, 1d8 at 25 spellpower + poison stack

If I was to try rank them, I would put them in this order for personal preference:

Sandblast (stones)
Freeze
Shock
Pain
Magic dart
Sting
Flame tongue
Sandblast (no stones)

[dowan]

I'd have to disagree with having magic dart above flame tongue. Flame tongue's damage is great, while magic dart... is not so much. Freeze is just great, range 1, but it's worth it.

As far as the OP's concerns...
1. EH is great, use it in melee range, stab for the kill. If you cannot afford to take 1 hit, you also can't afford to cast it outside range and walk in anyway. If things look bad, just walk away. You're a spriggan, so walking away works extra well.
2. I can't speak to spell success %. It's always seemed fairly accurate for me, but I've never crunched the numbers or anything.
3a. Magic dart is weak, but so are most level 1 spells. For a wizard, it should hold you until conjure flame and mephitic cloud are castable. A wizard with a dagger and mephitic cloud shouldn't have much problem with non rpois enemies, and you've got conjure flame for them. Also melee is a good choice, although you can get by without it on a wiz, it's just going to be somewhat painful.
3b. I also dislike player ghosts, and wish there was an option to disable them. At least you can delete the single player ones, but you're right that it gets annoying.

Confuse is an absolutely awesome spell for an enchanter. Unlike EH, it works great from a range, unlike EH, the enemies can hit you, but they're not terribly likely to. Same rules though, if you can't take a hit, just walk away. It's absolutely phenomenal for shutting down orc priests and wizards, making centaurs act silly instead of killing you, and getting lots of free stabs.

By the way, do you have a character dump? Maybe seeing some characters you've been playing would help people give helpful advice. Enchanters aren't the simplest characters to skill.

[Sar]

Another thing to consider is XP investment. Freeze, Pain and MD are single school spells, which means they gain spellpower faster than Conj/Foo spells.

[Siegurt]

I'd have to disagree with having magic dart above flame tongue. Flame tongue's damage is great, while magic dart... is not so much. Freeze is just great, range 1, but it's worth it.

Like I said, personal preference, I would rather have to hit something 5 times with magic dart than 3 times with flame tongue (magic dart gives me 6 chances at range, flame tongue gives me 1-4, and can miss)

[Jeremiah]

I'd say that it partly depends on species - Freeze is quite risky for a fragile species like DE because you have to stand next to the monster and let it hit you if you don't kill it with one cast, but is less risky for something tougher like Dr, similarly the self-damage from pain can be dangerous if you have very low HP.

[tasonir]

If I was to try rank them, I would put them in this order for personal preference:

Sandblast (stones)
Freeze
Shock
Pain
Magic dart
Sting
Flame tongue
Sandblast (no stones)

While I agree with this ranking assuming sandblast has 25 spellpower (which is what you quoted for the ranges above), I think sandblast should be moved up considerably if you consider the 50 spell power version of it. Lately I've been considering it more or less equal to stone arrow - stone arrow has the huge benefit of much better range, but at triple the mana cost, it's not really straight up better for characters who still have less than 20 mana. Hang on to your sandblast, EE's!

[Siegurt]

If I was to try rank them, I would put them in this order for personal preference:

Sandblast (stones)
Freeze
Shock
Pain
Magic dart
Sting
Flame tongue
Sandblast (no stones)

While I agree with this ranking assuming sandblast has 25 spellpower (which is what you quoted for the ranges above), I think sandblast should be moved up considerably if you consider the 50 spell power version of it. Lately I've been considering it more or less equal to stone arrow - stone arrow has the huge benefit of much better range, but at triple the mana cost, it's not really straight up better for characters who still have less than 20 mana. Hang on to your sandblast, EE's!

Well, stone-using sandblast is already at the top of my list, and by the time I have 50 spellpower I usually have enough stones that I would never even consider using a stoneless sandblast, also that is about the time frame where things start to have ac and 50 spellpower isn't all that much better than 25 (2.5 more average damage on stoneless)

[Reptisaurus]

Everything you dislike I consider a plus.

1. Enemies wake up too soon.
It's not safe to cast this spell in melee because enchanters are squishy. This is fine. Mages are supposed to be squishy in melee. Nothing strange here. The problem is that the spell doesn't guarantee sleep for enough time to cast it out of melee range and go in for a kill. Currently, I have to either cast the spell in melee or take a risk that the enemy won't wake up when I go for the kill. And as you know, you cannot blast something with EH that just woke up from it. Ridiculous that I could just get randomly screwed over by the RNG for really no reason at all. I don't think I've specifically died this way but it has been the source of many frustrations trying to kill ogres since I suddenly have to turn tail and run the other way.

It's still a really good level two spell! I actually quite like the sneaking-and-hoping-that-the-monster-doesn't-wake-up-mechanic and then having to figure out something else if it does. One of the things I really like about Crawl is that NONE of your options are 100% successful, and you often have to totally re-calibrate your strategy on the fly.

And it's only a level two spell.

2. There is no way the spell succeeds 50% of the time when it says 50%.
This is more of a bug fix and me being a little salty. I have had numerous times where I will cast the spell nearly 10 times in a row with decent success chance and it will not connect. This isn't a rare occurrence. It happens a LOT. I will call that calculation into question. I don't think it's just my bad luck.

Google "clustering illusion." Basically when gambling or playing crawl or whatever we tend to pay more attention to periods of statistical unfavorability and ignore the times when we are lucky.

The basic conjurer spell is magic dart. It's efficient MP wise (at least, in the early game) and doesn't carry any or much spell hunger with it. At the start of the game it is the only spell that conjurers (and wizards) have access to. I have constantly complained to my friends that I will use this spell on an enemy several times and a health bar won't even show up. I think the best example was connecting three hits on a hobgoblin and only after the last one did it's health bar appear, still mostly full. The damage just isn't reliable. Why does this spell do 1dX instead of 2dY or 3dY (where Y is lower, obviously). It's just not right that I can cast this spell and only do one damage three times. The spell is called magic dart and not magic nuclear missile, sure, but conjurers are known for blowing shit the fuck up. This spell should have a higher minimum damage so I can actually rely on it. How can I play a mage and not be able to rely on my own spells?

Yeah, I hate magic dart. But it's an interesting challenge to use it to level two (for Wizards) or three (for conjurers) where you get some decent spells. (And why is everybody bagging on Sting? It's my favorite l1 spell on Spriggans and great against everything with average or less movement for any other character type.)

But, again, I like the variability of the fact that Magic Dart doesn't work all the time with 100% efficiency - Often it works to kill your opponents, sometimes it fails and you'er in a challenging situation where you have to consider other options. And the latter is where the fun comes in!

Next up, let's crack on ghosts. This is a very bad feature, for the sole reason that you cannot turn it off. You knock nethack ghosts for giving players a ton of free (albeit mostly cursed) stuff, yet you leave in the thing about player ghosts that players hate the most: their lethality. A way to disable ghosts would be cool. It's not fun getting annihilated because your players ghosts are just as OP as your player character (Conjurer ghosts just rip Conjurer players to shreds). I have gotten numerous characters killed because I forgot to delete my bones file for the 193984th time. Ridiculous. Ghosts add nothing to the game IMO and there should be an option to play without them.

I never understood the deleting bones files. If you wanted to play an easier game with easier monsters there are plenty of 'em. Player Ghosts are a rare but particularly tricky element of a very hard game. The difficulty is a plus for me, and I assume for most players. Conjurer Player Ghosts are another situation where you have to consider all your options, really think, and use every resource at your disposal. They are good and interesting challenges and, like most challenges in Crawl, have a very, very low chance of ending the game if you play absolutely optimally.

[Hurkyl]

But it's an interesting challenge to use it to level two (for Wizards) or three (for conjurers) where you get some decent spells.

You're really underestimating Searing Ray; the whole blast does the damage of a decently powered level 6 spell*, but only costs 5 MP, only risks 2 MP to miscasts, and suffers less from overkill since you can stop it in the middle or let the remaining rays kill other things. Heck, the last two rays individually roll better damage than dazzling spray does if it was at the same power.

Yes, the range, duration, and the fact AC gets applied 4 times are all drawbacks, but that's why the spell is level 2 rather than level 6.

(And why is everybody bagging on Sting? It's my favorite l1 spell on Spriggans and great against everything with average or less movement for any other character type.)

I think it's less that Sting is bad, but the other spells are good. I was going to complain about Flame Tongue in the same fashion until I decided that was the intent.

*: Okay, that's vague. Some actual numbers are:

The full Searing Ray blast averages approximately 22 + 0.446 * Power damage, for 5 MP, but caps at 50 power.
Iron Shot averages a mere 12 + 0.375 * Power damage for 6 MP.

and for comparison,

Flame Tongue averages 4.5 + 0.125 * Power damage for 1 MP, but (damage) caps at 25 power.
Magic Dart averages 2 + 0.1 * Power damage fro 1 MP, but caps at 25 power.

[mps]

I think this is a case of a normal person used to the conventions of normal games thinking a little more about crawl damage and spell mechanics than you're supposed to. Yes, obviously damage in crawl has way too much variance and would be improved by using smaller dice in larger numbers, for example. You will never convince most players of that, though, since if they bought that kind of reasoning, they wouldn't play the game. If you can't accept damage formulas like 1d22 * 1d(complicated skill dependent number)/(other magic number) - 1d(AC), sorry. You're out of luck.

Similarly, yes, damage numbers should be more transparent, like they are in, say, D&D or Final Fantasy or Pikmin. It's a game you play on a god damn UNIX terminal and we're pretending that hiding numbers improves usability or "immersiveness." Apparently the focus group experts at Nintendo don't share this reasoning, but who needs those bean counters? Ya, hit "q" to "quaff" a potion, you know, like you quaff a beer... wait, damage numbers? Let's not get arcane here!

As I've always said, I'm pretty sure the reason numbers like this aren't made more available is that they're all over the place and would immediately draw criticism to the bizarre formulas behind them. "Why do so many attacks miss or do zero damage? Why are most attacks doing such low damage while a few, the ones that actually count, do such high damage?" Hiding the numbers behind arcane punctuation that few players understand and some don't even notice nicely avoids this problem.

e: Also notice that about the only common vocabulary that exists for discussing randomness is linking to the wikipedia page for "clustering illusion." The prevailing attitude is that discussion of probability is fundamentally futile, human beings simply have no intuition for probabilistic phenomena, and this is an unavoidable aspect of using random numbers in roguelike games. You will note, however, that constant reference to clustering illusion is very special to discussion of crawl, even among roguelike games. Could this be related to the complexity and high variance of random processes in crawl? Something to ponder.

[partial]

RE: Enchanters

Confuse is very very powerful. It has a higher hit% than EH, lasts longer and enemies don't "wake up" randomly.

Plus it affects the undead and enemies w/ rC+

[zxc23]

Enchanters:

Your bread and butter spell is confuse, as mentioned earlier. EH is just a reliable way to kill enemies when you aren't in much danger. By training stealth, you make it less likely that an enemy will wake up when you step to them. Regardless, you will want to be using EH either in melee range or one tile away. Against strong enemies, you want use confuse. Against enemies that can oneshot you, such as playing a SpEn vs early ogre, you want to confuse, then EH, so they will wander around while asleep, and then you can stab them without any fear. If you only use confuse, there is a chance they enemy will bump into and attack you while wandering around confused, or it might break confusion the same turn you move in. Against ranged enemies you will want to use confuse from max range, and then engage as you wish. Confuse + blowgun is also effective. Against ranged enemies that can oneshot you, you don't want to fight them at all. This includes uniques that can paralyse you and then kill you during paralysis. Use tukima's dance on anything non-trivial wielding a weapon, and you can also use it on trivial enemies with nice weapons to create allies against tougher ones. This especially includes using tukima's dance on distortion weapons, chaos weapons, elec weapons, and anything nasty in general. Be careful about Dithmenos penance for flaming weapons if you worship him. Spriggans make especially good enchanters because you can kite anything and run away from anything if it wakes up.

Conjurers:

This is one of the most reliable and least luck dependent backgrounds in crawl. This is because magic dart is a very good early spell, which works against pretty much everything early-game, and soon after you get IMB, which does decent damage, and sphere, which can carry you through midgame. Magic dart never missing makes up for its damage. Against armoured targets, look at using sphere, IMB, blowgun, or running away. There is not much else to say here.

Wizards:

Wizards are a fairly weak background that is reliant on conjure flame and mephitic cloud. It works better on races that can take a hit. If you are a beginner, don't play wizards.

Ghosts:

Ghosts are enemies that you should almost always run away from when you first meet them. Use multiple staircases to clear the floor without fighting the ghost, or just skip the floor if it's too hard. Berserkers are exceptions in that they can usually just berserk / BIA the ghost down, but most characters can't do something comparable. It's very rare that a ghost is actually very dangerous to you, even early ones. If you try to fight one and die to it, then it's really your own fault. If you insist on fighting one, do it while standing on a staircase so you can leave whenever you want.

Hex success rates:

An enemy wearing MR body armour will display the hex success chances that it would have without the MR armour. It really must be this way, because you can't know what ego their armour has, if any. Be aware of this possibility when you see an enemy with ego armour resisting your hexes. There are a lot of biases involved with humans evaluating probabilities as others have pointed out. One thing to note is that probabilities in this game have been wrong before: rMut was supposed to give 90% chance to resist mutations, but for a time it gave 81% chance (http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/trunk ... ruary-2015).

[Sar]

You are underselling EH, it gives you a much higher tier of stab than confusion. Confuse is good when EH fails and vs. enemies that are immune to EH.

[ajon]

I tend to like using tukima's dance a lot. Pretty safe for you. Also the weapons can be ordered to attack other targets. So TD a few orcs abs have the weapons all hit the priest or ogre. They have a shorter life if the wielder dies so you get more uses too. Then again, TD the ogre and club all the orcs is also a good approach

[zxc23]

You are underselling EH, it gives you a much higher tier of stab than confusion. Confuse is good when EH fails and vs. enemies that are immune to EH.

If this is directed at me, then I don't think so. EH is excellent of course, but confuse is the spell to reliably stop highly threatening monsters from hurting you. Early on this means enemies like centaurs, orc priests and orc wizards. For instance, if you engage a centaur in the open, with no good way to break LOS or escape, you would use confuse and then close the distance and EH if you want before stabbing. Or you can confuse and then retreat in safety, or confuse and use a blowgun or wand. OP was clearly making heavy use of EH but under-utilising confuse.

[archaeo]

For the purposes of the thread itself, I think it's worth pointing out that En and Cj are both book starts that have essentially no reliance on luck until well into the midgame. Used well, both books have all the spells you need to finish Lair and Orc quite reliably, assuming you have decent hexes or conjurations apts. After finishing both branches, virtually any **En or **Cj will either have Sif/Veh gifts, floor books, or some other damage-dealing method to get them through the next stage of the game. I consider both to be very reliable starts, though Cj is a bit more flexible than En.

As I've always said, I'm pretty sure the reason numbers like this aren't made more available is that they're all over the place and would immediately draw criticism to the bizarre formulas behind them. "Why do so many attacks miss or do zero damage? Why are most attacks doing such low damage while a few, the ones that actually count, do such high damage?" Hiding the numbers behind arcane punctuation that few players understand and some don't even notice nicely avoids this problem.

Uh, except they're not actually hidden, since this is an open source game? It's not like dpeg guards the source code at his German castle or anything.

The devs aren't keeping anything a secret here. From what I understand of the reasoning, there's just some point in between "give players all information" and "say nothing about the game's mechanics" where they think you can find a happy medium where players have enough information to make decisions but not so much that crawl becomes less about playing the game and more about exhaustive minmaxing.

e: Also notice that about the only common vocabulary that exists for discussing randomness is linking to the wikipedia page for "clustering illusion." The prevailing attitude is that discussion of probability is fundamentally futile, human beings simply have no intuition for probabilistic phenomena, and this is an unavoidable aspect of using random numbers in roguelike games. You will note, however, that constant reference to clustering illusion is very special to discussion of crawl, even among roguelike games. Could this be related to the complexity and high variance of random processes in crawl? Something to ponder.

It's a meme, sure, but it's the operative one in many cases. It's kind of hard to tell what you're sneering at here.

[Sphara]

Magic Dart --> Searing Ray --> Prism/Dazzle --> IMB --> Battlesphere

I don't see either how this set of spells makes early game luck dependent. As you said, Magic Dart does little damage but you get SRay just when you hit XL:2, which almost always happens on D:1. All the damage you need to deal before starting to hunt the runes, is right there. Only luck dependent thing with conjurer, is going Vehumet, then picking up all these good spells here and then not having amnesia or spellslots when Vehumet gifts you the Poison Arrow.

[PowerOfKaishin]

My comment about Magic Dart being able to deal 1 damage was actually directed at the very, very beginning of the game. Yes, I realize that's a very short time period. No, that doesn't invalidate what I've suggested as an improvement. Pretty much all of my magic dart arguments are acknowledging that scenario.

That is why I mentioned 4 MP. And that's with a Spriggan, who can run away, heal their MP and try again. Tengu only get 3 at level one, and it makes absolutely no sense that any goblin, hobgoblin, or jackal (none of which are armored) should be able to survive 3 unavoidable magic darts from what is by far the strongest Conjuration race (lore-wise, at least) at a mighty +3 aptitude. For reference, Deep Elves, the magic specialists, have only +1 aptitude in that school. Tengu are very clearly supposed to be the "blow everything up" specialists and they should have that ability right out the door without having to rely on dice rolls not screwing them over. Tengus move at normal speed and can't exactly afford to kite and trade enemy melee attacks for magic dart hits thanks to being nearly defenseless in multiple areas. Against jackals, who move faster than them, they're pretty much dead if their three magic darts can't secure a kill. They can't run away and conjurers don't start with a melee weapon, so they can't fight them off until they pick up a dagger. Even if the second option is somehow viable, they are very prone to getting slaughtered anyway. Tengu are supposed to be squishy, but that's not a weakness that should show itself on D:1 when the Conjurer class is being played the way they are meant to be. Maybe on D:2 or D:3 when you run into a Gnoll and you have better control over your options, but not D:1 when the only options are Magic Dart or Death.

I played around with confuse a bit and I see the points of whoever told me it was good. I also discovered that enemies can in fact attack you the turn they wake up (I never noticed before because half the time it wouldn't happen due to Spriggan speed). That's a little ridiculous IMO. I now know you're supposed to confuse things first but if you decide to go for a solo EH you shouldn't be wrecked because of the RNG. Okay, so the enemy can wake up before you get to them. That's fair. What isn't is that they get a free attack and can murder you because you decided to go for the EH stab. What if I decide to EH a Hydra?

Now, as I mentioned before and as you guys suggested earlier, you're supposed to confuse those enemies first. However, wasn't part of the design document making the player choose between options instead of having one that's vastly superior? In this situation, against an early monstrous with absolutely enormous offensive capability, solo EH is never a good idea over Confuse + EH. With my suggestion it becomes an honestly viable strategy without impacting any other part of the game, it doesn't change whether or not you'd be running away (because it still wakes up), and it can't really be abused since you can't double EH a monster. And before anybody gets the wrong idea: no, this change shouldn't apply to the player.

One last thing: why do Demigods have such awful aptitudes? That doesn't really make much sense to me considering the name of the race. Demigods should be overpowered and easy IMO, like the Valkyrie in NetHack. Not crying for some massive change here. I just want to know the logic.

[CanOfWorms]

They can't run away and conjurers don't start with a melee weapon, so they can't fight them off until they pick up a dagger.

Every race begins the game capable of casting "Fist", which has only 1 less base damage than a dagger (not counting mutations.) Tengus also have auxiliary attacks that can trigger every time they make a melee attempt. Jackals and geckos are the only D:1 monsters (other than an OOD adder) a Tengu can't just back away from to regenerate MP.

I played around with confuse a bit and I see the points of whoever told me it was good. I also discovered that enemies can in fact attack you the turn they wake up (I never noticed before because half the time it wouldn't happen due to Spriggan speed). That's a little ridiculous IMO. I now know you're supposed to confuse things first but if you decide to go for a solo EH you shouldn't be wrecked because of the RNG. Okay, so the enemy can wake up before you get to them. That's fair. What isn't is that they get a free attack and can murder you because you decided to go for the EH stab. What if I decide to EH a Hydra?

You should make sure you can take a few hits from a hydra, otherwise you aren't ready to fight hydras. Enchanters start with some points in Stealth, so you can put them to sleep, make an exclusion and walk away. The only way to get a guaranteed stab is to lure into in melee range and potentially give the enemy some free attacks.

Now, as I mentioned before and as you guys suggested earlier, you're supposed to confuse those enemies first. However, wasn't part of the design document making the player choose between options instead of having one that's vastly superior? In this situation, against an early monstrous with absolutely enormous offensive capability, solo EH is never a good idea over Confuse + EH.

Confuse+EH requires passing more MR checks, and costs 3*X+2*Y MP over 2*Y MP, so you might not be able to always Confuse+EH. I don't personally use EH unless I absolutely need the instant kill or the enemy has the potential to deal a lot of damage against you, just doing normal attacks against them and getting the occasional stab damage is good enough.

[PowerOfKaishin]

Is there a way to quickly kill ice trolls? Wandered into one in the ice cave without any rC (don't ask; I was doing just fine until that thing showed up thanks to confuse + dazzle).

And while I find it hard to believe fist only does one damage less, it doesn't really change the fact that a Tengu Conjurer can't one-on-one a Jackal.

[CanOfWorms]

Fists have base damage 3 with no UC training, daggers have base damage 4. Tengus can try meleeing jackals, Talon 3 is 9 extra damage per attack, Pecks are 3 extra damage and offhand punches are 5 extra damage (jackals have max 8 HP.)

[duvessa]

dagger also has 4 more accuracy unless you began the game with claws

[CanOfWorms]

Does accuracy affect auxiliary attacks?

[duvessa]

accuracy from fighting skill or whatever does, weapon accuracy does not

[Reptisaurus]

We have "enchanter" in the thread title and complaints about how *conjurers* suck at level 1? I've lost sooo many L:1 Enchanters to jackal packs. I wouldn't actually mind making enchanter's a little tougher at level one. Maybe a potion of invisibility?

Also, hey, is Corona ever useful - or more useful than another action - except as See Invisible?

[Sphara]

Also, hey, is Corona ever useful - or more useful than another action - except as See Invisible?

People good with numbers should explain HOW useful it is but I do cast it on every monster on D:1 and they die faster as consequence.

[nago]

Well melee accuracy generallly is kinda bad, and certainly shit on D:1 when you don't have enchanted weapon and skills, so everything increase it early on is good.... and anyway is not like you have much else to spend mp or more worthwhile actions to take while the enemy is approaching on D:1

[jejorda2]

Is there a way to quickly kill ice trolls? Wandered into one in the ice cave without any rC (don't ask; I was doing just fine until that thing showed up thanks to confuse + dazzle).

And while I find it hard to believe fist only does one damage less, it doesn't really change the fact that a Tengu Conjurer can't one-on-one a Jackal.

Was it a troll simulacra? Those are slow, so you can walk away and hit them from a distance. Weak to fire and dispel undead.
I can't think of what else might be confused for an "Ice Troll," which I don't recall being an enemy in the game.

[mps]

As I've always said, I'm pretty sure the reason numbers like this aren't made more available is that they're all over the place and would immediately draw criticism to the bizarre formulas behind them. "Why do so many attacks miss or do zero damage? Why are most attacks doing such low damage while a few, the ones that actually count, do such high damage?" Hiding the numbers behind arcane punctuation that few players understand and some don't even notice nicely avoids this problem.

Uh, except they're not actually hidden, since this is an open source game? It's not like dpeg guards the source code at his German castle or anything.

The devs aren't keeping anything a secret here. From what I understand of the reasoning, there's just some point in between "give players all information" and "say nothing about the game's mechanics" where they think you can find a happy medium where players have enough information to make decisions but not so much that crawl becomes less about playing the game and more about exhaustive minmaxing.

archaeo... dude...

Not all players know that they can look up this information in the source code. Not all players know how to do so if they want to. Not all players who know how to will bother. Those who do will not necessarily easily connect the properties of these complicated formulas with their experience playing because they're pretty damn complicated and relevant information that would help connect these two things is concealed in-game. All of these factors contribute to the difficulty in discussion of crawl combat damage in a way that favors keeping crawl combat damage the way it is.

Whenever you say "Hey, you say something is hidden and that has negative effects, therefore you are saying there must be a nefarious agent responsible for the hiding who wills those negative effects, which sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory and can't possibly be true," you should slap yourself. People say this kind of thing a lot, so we'd live in a better world, but one where people slap themselves a lot more, if everyone followed my advice.

e: Also notice that about the only common vocabulary that exists for discussing randomness is linking to the wikipedia page for "clustering illusion." The prevailing attitude is that discussion of probability is fundamentally futile, human beings simply have no intuition for probabilistic phenomena, and this is an unavoidable aspect of using random numbers in roguelike games. You will note, however, that constant reference to clustering illusion is very special to discussion of crawl, even among roguelike games. Could this be related to the complexity and high variance of random processes in crawl? Something to ponder.

It's a meme, sure, but it's the operative one in many cases. It's kind of hard to tell what you're sneering at here.

Given the complexity of some of the random processes in crawl and the outright admission in some cases that the numbers given to the player are actually wrong, clustering illusion charges are often as unscientific as the observations that prompt them. The conclusions drawn from the existence of clustering illusion are worse, for example the idea that estimation of probability distributions is something human beings are uniquely bad at ("so hey, what can you do?"). Actually, it would be more fair to say that many probability distributions that appear in crawl are hard to estimate based on samples as a matter of mathematics and their being far from normal -- which is arguably a questionable design choice. The clustering illusion trope has a spurious, built-in defense of that choice.

[byrel]

for example the idea that estimation of probability distributions is something human beings are uniquely bad at

It is. And this isn't just a crawl thing. We're hyper-sensitive to patterns, and spot them when they aren't there. There have been studies of V2 bomb targets in Britain, gamblers, etc. It just happens. We're bad at estimating probability distributions.

If you want to talk about probabilities being wrong, there's a valid empirical way to do it. Record 100 consecutive results, and post THAT. That's actually data we can work with. 'I feel like my hexes fail way more than the number' isn't.

[bel]

To the OP, much good advice is already given.

EH and Cj are the least "luck dependent" classes I can imagine (I exclude Be). A SpEn is about the least "luck-dependent" character I can imagine, at least early on. Just run away from anything you can't kill, how luck dependent is that?

EH is fine for monsters you can take a hit from. If you can't take a hit from the monster, confuse it (and then EH it as well, if you want, it will sleepwalk).

Cj: Magic dart is fine. It can do great damage later on: just cast battlesphere. I use it all the way up until my first 2 runes. You can totally play Cj as "blowing shit up". Just worship Vehumet.

I am not sure why Wizard is here. Wizard is not conjurer.