Spellcasters are weak?

[nanoswimz]

First about me: i joined crawl at year 2010 and sometimes do a run once in month. My first three runes hero was minotaur berserker. That was not easy, however.

Then, few years later gargoyle released and TABing have apother meaning. I tryed Ga Fi and i start thinking crawl was nerfed of something, but its just about melee with good race.

My passion is spellcasters, but i simple cant play and enjoy them in this roguelike. Why? Because they are so WEAK compared to tabers.

Tabbers need only hp to continue choping, casters need both hp and mp. Mp 0 means you are in shit situation.

Tabbers have universal "kill them all" button as berserk, which utilize many troubles with uniques. Casters have... oh i need skip this floor, dont wanna feed this grinder.

Good magic races have terrible survivabilty and durable races have terrible magic aptitudes. TABers have both pros: they durable and they have good aptitudes at it.

Playing magic race means you can learn storms and effective use them early, but you still need find this books and the most difficult case is simple SURVIVE. Because a one blinking frog or just this worm can own you in few turns when you did something wrong or just lose some attention, as TABer you just cant do something really wrong beside just pressing wait turn: you hold tab and everything choped like a boss.

Playing as durable race means you have a little better time with survive, but soon you reach the "skill wall" when you simple cant learn spells you need, so you cant progress without enormous risk and your main quest is not orb, but just finding weaker enemies in dungeon to grind some more exp.

Next, spellcasters are more item dependent as it may seem. Tabbers are "okay" most of times and utilize most item cases by help of trog or okawary. Hovewer, casters more like in gamble state even if they have sif muna or vehumet. I remember when i running with first wizard book at d10 and simple cant do nothing.

So what about this thread? i think casters are much weaker, much risker and more frustrating to play than most melee characters. Maybe its just a feature, but i think casters should a more good time.

[PowerOfKaishin]

Spellcasters aren't weak, but they are harder to play the game with because they do not want to let enemies close and enemies have a bad habit of doing just that. You're right about that.

I don't know how you are getting away with spamming tab because fighter characters eventually meet enemies they cannot tab through, even Gargoyle. D:2 Gnoll pack anyone? Spellcasters have options and in many cases these are far better than tabbing through stuff.

The exception is of course Berserker as I'm sure you're well aware, but that class starts with a god and piety so of course they have options.

Simple fact of the matter is that blaster mages, that is, mages that do nothing but blow shit up with magic, just don't cut it in DCSS. Even Deep Elf Fire Elementalists who do nothing in lair but toss Fireball at everything that moves have problems. They still have some +2 dagger of venom that they use to deal ridiculous damage with an untrained skill to some poor sods that lived through the Fireball onslaught. They still invest heavily in Fighting and Dodging because those give you Max HP and EV respectively. And of course, they do not start out strong, as you said.

I think you're under the impression that magic users are meant to invest in many different schools. They aren't. They're meant to pick one or two or three based on what they find in the dungeon that meets their needs. You don't need to play DE to be a spellcaster. 0 apts are just fine.

Try Spriggan enchanter (generally considered OP despite terrible HP), since you still feel like a wizard but you trivialize pretty much every threat until lair. Even then, the top half of lair is pretty free and the bottom half isn't too bad (yeah running woo). Orc's is a cakewalk but it takes a while if you play it properly. Despite low HP, nothing that isn't super out of depth is going to one shot you, so if you're patient you can just confuse-stab everything. Also deep water tiles have never felt so ridiculous than when playing as a SpEn.

Alternatively, you could just go right back to the race you gave in your post: Gargoyle. Run an Earth Elementalist.

You're right about the item dependency, but that's why you simply have to adapt to what the dungeon throws at you, no matter what it is. You use a god choice to circumvent as much of this problem as you can. You can't have guaranteed books with a god that isn't Sif, Veh, or Kiku. Sorry.

[jalala]

You can't have guaranteed books with a god that isn't Sif, Veh, or Kiku. Sorry.

Gozag #1 ignored god

[jalala]

And for the OP, i recommend playing hybrids first and take some 3-rune freebie gods like fedhas and yred if it is too hard for you. My mfsk took 70 tries before i discovered fedhas. There are better gods than oka.(trog is trog)
full on mage is hard, but not that weak. Just need patience, running away, resting, running away, spam spells, run away, stair dancing and run away. Its just that u have to run earliera dn faster than tabbers.

E:if u play op mage backgrounds, yeah u dont even have to run. But play mummy and appreciate no spell hunger and running

[PowerOfKaishin]

You can't have guaranteed books with a god that isn't Sif, Veh, or Kiku. Sorry.

Gozag #1 ignored god

I knew someone would post this. I thought about including him, but he technically doesn't guarantee books.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Spellcasters are not weak, they just require higher skills from player. Current world record belongs to DECj of Vehumet. I am sure the character wasn't running away often, otherwise it wouldn't get 15 runes in 19k turns.

[KoboldLord]

Assuming you're making at least a half-baked attempt to play well and try to win, the good book backgrounds are generally better than the majority of melee backgrounds. Being able to kill things effectively from outside of melee range is extremely good, and that's hard to come by in the pre-Temple part of the game that results in most of the character deaths.

If you want to alternate autoexplore and tab until you lose a fight, I suppose you're better off with a melee background. Nothing wrong with playing that way, even. But the game is not designed around the assumption that you can do that, and probably shouldn't be. It's probably best to take the Trog Drinking Game as a happy accident, not as intended gameplay.

[Rast]

You can't have guaranteed books with a god that isn't Sif, Veh, or Kiku. Sorry.

Gozag #1 ignored god

Floorgod #1 ignored god.

[tabstorm]

Assuming you're making at least a half-baked attempt to play well and try to win, the good book backgrounds are generally better than the majority of melee backgrounds. Being able to kill things effectively from outside of melee range is extremely good, and that's hard to come by in the pre-Temple part of the game that results in most of the character deaths.

If you want to alternate autoexplore and tab until you lose a fight, I suppose you're better off with a melee background. Nothing wrong with playing that way, even. But the game is not designed around the assumption that you can do that, and probably shouldn't be. It's probably best to take the Trog Drinking Game as a happy accident, not as intended gameplay.

Killing enemies outside melee range is useless unless the enemy is fast or has ranged attacks. Enemies which do not meet these conditions should be treated as nonexistent - pure dungeon decorations. Magic-oriented characters will have weaker defenses against actually existing enemies because they have to divert more experience into magic schools and can afford less into weapon, armor, fighting, dodging. Warrior characters can just wait around a corner against ranged attackers. and are also more able to make use of the most valuable drops in the game - artefact weapons and body armor. They can also better use marginal floor drops like enchanted body armor, enchanted but unbranded weapons, and so on. Book characters usually can't get any value out of book drops because the spells will be in the wrong school and are more or less reliant on help from a god to either supply high level spells or carry them during the transition to a medium-armor warrior type.

I'm not sure that the game being designed around autoexplore + tab until you lose a fight isn't the case, for a suitable definition of "lose". It's how melee characters are played in practice. I mean, there are like 6 different mechanics regulating magic use for a reason, one assumes...

[lethediver]

The only situations that really matter in dcss are the ones where you are about to die. ive found spellcasters to have more options in those situations. I also find killing things from range a lot safer in this game. Your mileage may vary tho.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It is weird to call those monsters non-existent, many characters die to them soon after they become adjacent (jackals, gnolls, plain orcs as shield for orc priest etc.). Usually casters kill those monsters at range while melee characters need to get into melee range. Or do you mean we should get less XP for killing a monster the farther it is from us?

[tabstorm]

two of the three listed are fast or have ranged attacks, and D:1 gnolls are dangerous because you can't retreat to a cleared floor. the point is that if you're reasonably trying to win, you shouldn't die to a speed 10 melee only monster, because you can always run away unless you are a naga.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I meant plain orcs, not orc priests. You couldn't run away because you would be stopped by those "non-existent yet" monsters.

[tabstorm]

why don't you just not get surrounded...

[amaril]

Spells are powerful, but looking at the game in terms of caster vs tabber is creating a dichotomy that magic users are bound to lose. If you are training magic in order to get hypothetical endgame spells online, you are wasting xp and making the game much more difficult for yourself. Train things that make you more powerful right away.

[amaril]

why don't you just not get surrounded...

too busy pressing tab

[archaeo]

Moved to DCA.

[VeryAngryFelid]

why don't you just not get surrounded...

Does your question mean you are never surrounded by normal speed monsters? You know I love to use online morgue files of people I am arguing with to prove my points, don't you?

[BabyRage]

Killing enemies outside melee range is useless unless the enemy is fast or has ranged attacks. Enemies which do not meet these conditions should be treated as nonexistent - pure dungeon decorations.

This meme is getting quite old.

[Psieye]

OP: if your point is "book starters are harder for new players to understand than melee backgrounds", then that's true. Are they weak when you actually know what you're doing? No. Fortunately, this community is willing to teach - post character dumps and ask for advice.

why don't you just not get surrounded...

Does your question mean you are never surrounded by normal speed monsters?

You are making the standard mistake of assuming someone's ideology comes after they've first perfected their behaviour. No, just because someone doesn't fit their own ideal doesn't invalidate the merits of that ideal.

In this case, the ideal is "if you get surrounded by speed 10 melee monsters, you made a mistake". That's a fair ideal to judge your play with. It's also fair to not believe in it - we're not trying to enforce homogenous ideaology alignments.

[VeryAngryFelid]

In this case, the ideal is "if you get surrounded by speed 10 melee monsters, you made a mistake". That's a fair ideal to judge your play with. It's also fair to not believe in it - we're not trying to enforce homogenous ideaology alignments.

This is a wrong ideal. For example, it is easily possible to get surrounded in a long corridor, no matter if autoexplore or not, you just need some bad luck. Elven halls often do that.

[jalala]

*watches in fascination as thread evolves to discussions of homogeneous idea enforcing"

sniping everything in range is not better than meleeing but i guess its sad to miss out the fun

[tabstorm]

it's not a meme, it is not that hard to not get surrounded by speed <= 10 melee only enemies. you can do so if you want to, like if you are using axes with cleaving, but at the end of the day you shouldn't get your escape cut off by them, especially when you have tele scrolls, blink scrolls, fear scrolls, and so on. all you have to do is take action at like 50% hp and not 5% and not outsmart yourself with Tactics (tm). If you think about it, there are really not that many speed 10 melee only enemies in the game, though - once you get past early game and Lair almost everything is either fast, has a ranged attack, or has some other kind of spell like Vaults humans.

[tabstorm]

In this case, the ideal is "if you get surrounded by speed 10 melee monsters, you made a mistake". That's a fair ideal to judge your play with. It's also fair to not believe in it - we're not trying to enforce homogenous ideaology alignments.

This is a wrong ideal. For example, it is easily possible to get surrounded in a long corridor, no matter if autoexplore or not, you just need some bad luck. Elven halls often do that.

Tell me more about these speed 10 melee-only monsters in Elf.

OP: if your point is "book starters are harder for new players to understand than melee backgrounds", then that's true. Are they weak when you actually know what you're doing? No. Fortunately, this community is willing to teach - post character dumps and ask for advice.

why don't you just not get surrounded...

Does your question mean you are never surrounded by normal speed monsters?

You are making the standard mistake of assuming someone's ideology comes after they've first perfected their behaviour. No, just because someone doesn't fit their own ideal doesn't invalidate the merits of that ideal.

In this case, the ideal is "if you get surrounded by speed 10 melee monsters, you made a mistake". That's a fair ideal to judge your play with. It's also fair to not believe in it - we're not trying to enforce homogenous ideaology alignments.

It's not an ideology, you literally have complete control over every engagement with speed 10 melee-only monsters up to energy randomization, so you can almost always run away safely. If you don't want to die to energy randomzation, just start running a little earlier. You can even use a blink scroll if a random enemy approaches you from behind and cuts off your escape route!

[VeryAngryFelid]

Tell me more about these speed 10 melee-only monsters in Elf.

Probably you missed my point. I was talking about a situation when you retreat from a monster in a corridor and suddenly you get another monster from the opposite side of the corridor who is blocking your retreat path. It does not matter if the monsters have ranged attack or are slow/fast.
If you brought up scrolls of tele/fear, I don't see why we are arguing as it means you recognize it is sometimes impossible to avoid being surrounded without consumables which was my point.

[Sprucery]

Also, scrolls of blinking and fear are not too common, so you might not have one. Fear is not guaranteed to work nor is teleportation guaranteed to teleport you to a safe place. In fact, teleportation can make you surrounded with speed 10 melee-only monsters!

[VeryAngryFelid]

By the way it's very easy to get surrounded by 8 slow/fast monsters without ranged attack. Or by 8 normal speed monsters. I am sure you know branches where it can happen.

[amaril]

This argument is tangential. Tabstorm's right: you shouldn't get surrounded by speed 10 melee monsters in a vacuum. The 'big dumb monsters' that exist after the first few floors of the dungeon are typically made dangerous by other enemies (guardian serpent : naga = orc wizard : orc)

Magic-oriented characters will have weaker defenses against actually existing enemies because they have to divert more experience into magic schools and can afford less into weapon, armor, fighting, dodging. Warrior characters can just wait around a corner against ranged attackers.

Magic-users can also retreat and wait around corners. They can even cast ice beasts, conjure flame, etc. to make themselves more likely to survive the fight at high hp. It's also worth noting that sometimes the best armour you find by lair is a ring mail, and depending on your start it can often be right to learn animate skeleton/corpse rot/whatever even if you are primarily a melee character.

[VeryAngryFelid]

This argument is tangential. Tabstorm's right: you shouldn't get surrounded by speed 10 melee monsters in a vacuum.

Correct, assuming vacuum means "you have no nearby walls". People get surrounded by speed 10 monsters in a corridor, especially if they pretend those monsters don't exist and just avoid them by "smart tactics". Have you never tried to reach D:15 as Sp without killing anything? Levels with lots of corridors and no open terrain are awful for the challenge. Now remove Sp speed and try to see my point.

[amaril]

Have you never tried to reach D:15 as Sp without killing anything?

No. But that's not a particularly applicable scenario. You avoid getting surrounded by picking off individual monsters near the upstairs, and only venturing farther when you are pretty sure you have a clear line of retreat. Ofc monster spawns/teleport traps exist, so you can't be certain that you won't get surrounded, but edge cases are what consumables are for.

[VeryAngryFelid]

so you can't be certain that you won't get surrounded

Bingo! Also some monsters are wandering so they can get to the previously cleared area too.

but edge cases are what consumables are for.

What's your point here? I am not saying all characters die with no path to retreat. Some are lucky and never surrounded, some have enough consumables to avoid the situation, some are lucky to survive when they could have been killed.

Basically I claim 2 things:
1) treating normal speed melee only monsters as non-existent is bad for win ratio.
2) it is impossible to guarantee you are never surrounded. That's why 1) is true also. If you kill those non-existent monsters, you decrease your odds of being surrounded.

[kuniqs]

To OP: Conjurer with Battlesphere and Magic Dart is as close to 'tabbing' as you can get with a mage. Maybe that's what you're looking for?

[Psieye]

you literally have complete control over every engagement with speed 10 melee-only monsters up to energy randomization, so you can almost always run away safely. If you don't want to die to energy randomzation, just start running a little earlier. You can even use a blink scroll if a random enemy approaches you from behind and cuts off your escape route!

In other words, you and VAF have been talking about different things but because the words were vague enough, everyone thought there was an actual discussion going on.

"Don't STAY surrounded in the unlucky cases" vs "the theoretical chance of getting surrounded is non-zero" in the theorycraft scenario of "there are only speed 10 melee monsters to think about".

[Siegurt]

The questions of power "are conjuration users weak" are three fold: 1. Are they more likely to die than a melee weapon user in a threatening situation, 2. Are they more likely to *be* in a threatening situation. And 3. Does that dichotomy shift over time.

So some relevant points which may have been made and possibly glossed over:

Heavy spellcasters tend to use light armour lowering they're protection.

Spells attacks generally speaking are ranged.

Spell attacks also often come with area effects.

Spell casting takes more xp away from your base defensive skills than weapons do. (Weapons use fighting and a weapon skill, where fighting contributes defensively, spells take spellcasting plus often more than one spell school, spellcasting rarely contributes defensively)

Spells can sometimes be used in place of or as supplements to defense (or as escape mechanisms), so some of the xp loss might be ameliorated in this fashion. (Note that some of the charm reforms have reduced this slightly)

Killing things (regardless of move speed) at range is better than killing them close up, range is an advantage, anyone who tells you differently is lying. There are ways to *reduce the penalty* for not having a ranged attack and creatures that can attack you at range will not be *as* weak against ranged players as ones that can't but given two otherwise exactly equal attacks, the one with more range is better, and a longer ranged attack is better than a shorter one.

Area effect attacks are better than single target attacks for similar reasons.

Now spells and melee attacks are *not* equal, spells have both an additional tactial cost as well as a strategic one, and have different damage distributions. So asking "are the costs and benefits balanced, or clearly in favor of one over the other" is a real question, and not one with a simple or obvious answer.

Now as to the tangentially related "things that move speed 10 but can only kill you with melee aren't dangerous" thing, in a vacuum that is true, if you are playing well those things should never kill you (regardless of whether your primary attack is melee or not) but there are a segment of those that *would* be dangerous *if* you let them attack you in melee (e.x. an early ogre) those go from "you should escape from this, and need to expose yourself to a very small amount of risk in case something else cuts off your escape" to "a bag of xp that you can kill without any risk" if you are a spell flinger. this gives the spell flinger a little more xp early, a very very tiny amount less risk (certainly cancelled out by the things with ranged attacks) and as was pointed out, these sorts of creatures become less common as you get further into the game.

In my estimation, spell flingers are more likely to die when things go bad than melee users, but are less likely to get into bad situations in the first place (and often have access to a larger toolset for dealing with problems when they appear), overall i think the aggregate risk avaraged over many games is very similar when both are played well, however playing well means very different things for each type of build (down to nitty gritty like "how do i explore to expose myself to less risk")

One thing from up thread i would like to correct, fireball is usable against creatures who are in melee range, you just have to target cleverly:

  Code:

..X
.M.
.@.


To hit the monster M with a fireball the player @ should target the square X, it would be nice if the auto targeter knew to do this.

[Magipi]

the good book backgrounds are generally better than the majority of melee backgrounds.

This is practically equivalent to: some book backgrounds are better than some none-book backgrounds. Not very informative

[poot112]

DCSS casters are some of the most impressive, fun, and strong (bordering overpowered) mages I've played in any game. The sheer amount of spell options and nukes is staggering.

You might be playing it wrong.

[mattlistener]

I sure am glad that DCSS has ways of playing that are non-optimal yet interesting and qualitatively different.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Utis]

The questions of power "are conjuration users weak" are three fold:

Thank you, man! That's the kind of post that makes me come back to the tavern.

Wait! Maybe that means I shouldn't thank you ... Great post, anyways!

[severen]

the good book backgrounds are generally better than the majority of melee backgrounds.

This is practically equivalent to: some book backgrounds are better than some none-book backgrounds. Not very informative

Ignoring certain species combinations (i.e Sp/Vp En etc)

IE, Su, and Cj (some people would say FE/En but I think that is less reliable although strong) are better than probably all melee background except Be, As and possibly Fi.

For the most part the IE and Su books are a guaranteed clear of Lair barring bad mistakes or very unlucky things. Every species not matter how bad their equipment drops can kill Hydras and death yaks with these books and, for the most, do so in a way that is reliably survivable. Even extremely delicate species like Op.

Anyway OP must be doing something wrong, not sure what without spectating a game. Some people say "pure" spellcasting is a mistake but that can work quite fine with IE start (not claiming its optimal). I got a DsIE to glaciate and cleared Hell without any special trying etc with nothing in a weapon skills until I had like 7 runes and that was only for Clarity with autumn katana.

I think the biggest mistake some would be mages make is not really fully taking into account how to manage MP. Finding an early MP ring or staff is actually extremely powerful. Spamming nukes to kill something is actually extremely MP inefficient, this doesn't mean don't do it, but the way MP is balanced in this game is odd and very atypical. Due to the way MP vs damage works out its often the case you just case glaciate or firestorm instead of something slightly less MP similary you can get like 5 or more Iron shots out of a Spellforged Servitor for the cost of 1 iron shot. Things don't line up really.

This is one of the many reason IE and Su are very good starts. If we just look at Summon Ice Beast vs Throw Icicle they are both lvl 4. Three casts of TI will often kill a hydra. Three casts of SIB will also usually kill a hydra, but it will also kill, for example, a whole herd of blink frogs as well. Thus SIB is radically more efficient MP-wise. And this is a key point here, early on MP efficency is also safety. This is why I do not put FE on the level of IE. Yes Fireball eventually outpaces TI as a nuke (same damage formula, but FB can scale higher later on but it unavoidable) but if you purely nuke thing and run out of mana and then something else comes into view from the noise then you can easily die fast. For example you FB nuke a hydra and are out of MP then a mamba shows up, its faster and you can't run and it hits hard, fast, and poisons. Even if you had a smidge of MP left for conjure flame that will only save you if you happen to be in very particular terrain. Or instead your ice beasts just move forward and either kill the mamba or buy you enough time to get away and you used less MP summoning them anyway and can probably summon a replace or finish it with a TI nuke.

To get a good view on how MP and damage do not really relate just compare TI to FB. At 100 spellpower they both do the same damage, but at spellpower 200 (which many characters never get to) FB is double the damage. But really FB is more damage since its unavoidable and its longer range. TI has the advantage of not being entirely resistable so its more verstaile and its quieter. They are only 1 MP difference. But in either case if you nuke everything to death you will probably burn 15 MP or so which in the early level is a lot of MP. For a herd of yaks you probably just do not have the MP to kill 6 of em with TI and with FB only if you get them clustered up. There are various ways to deal with this; MP regen, use summons, use some persistent things + terrain (conjure flame), supplement with melee and disable effects (dazzling spray + a good dagger is actually surpringly effective even on hydra).

In general although I am not convinced Sif is the best overall god for a spellcaster. I would reccomend that people having trouble with being "pure" mage try to run an IE of Sif. Just rush Summon Ice beast ASAP (for hard things make sure to have 3 IB attacking at once not one at a time), once its at like 10% work on Ozo armour or TI, skip throw frost and rely on Freeze spam early on (freeze always hits so its short range is not nearly as bad as it seems). Sif Channel Magic and +cast will help you with the MP problem and even if you wind up dying you should get a better idea of where things fall short or not. By going Sif you can mitigate MP related problem via MP regen which is the most straight forward way but more importantly it should give you a better idea of early game spellcasting in that every time you need to use channel magic you should realize "Ok, this is the point I should have done something different" or "I can't nuke done a situation like this and should use a different tactic" or "Run!" etc. If you are still dying a lot then you need to work on threat assessment and retreat tactics.

[kuniqs]

^ Summoning is tedious, unreliable and the summoning cap makes summons terrible against mobs

[ximxim]

Something that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet: stairdancing, or frequently retreating upstairs, is very beneficial for spellcasters in particular. Unless you are fairly sure you have killed most of the dangerous stuff on the level you probably should move back upstairs to regenerate mana each time you've spent a substantial amount. This also has the advantage of giving time for wandering monsters to wander into view as you retreat through explored territory, which means you don't have to face them when you're exploring. Investing a bit into stealth makes this tactic even better, making monsters who might have heard your spellcasting more likely to forget you and not try and follow you.

[TonberryJam]

I think skill levels is the primary attribute that determines difficulty. For reference try wiz mode with 27 skills at the start, and just tab with what you got on to see how far you can go. Leave unarmed combat at 0.

Biggest trouble for casters is running out mana. Next big trouble is being pelted by centaurs. Next big trouble is being squished by monsters that throw large rocks. Packs are always a problem

Just have to realize that tabbing is not good for casting as it depletes mana.
You might have noticed every caster tends to train Dodge by default.

A typical fantasy style caster is not really safe to play as. Charms/Hexes can help out a lot.

[duvessa]

I think skill levels is the primary attribute that determines difficulty. For reference try wiz mode with 27 skills at the start, and just tab with what you got on to see how far you can go. Leave unarmed combat at 0.

Biggest trouble for casters is running out mana. Next big trouble is being pelted by centaurs. Next big trouble is being squished by monsters that throw large rocks. Packs are always a problem

Just have to realize that tabbing is not good for casting as it depletes mana.
You might have noticed every caster tends to train Dodge by default.

A typical fantasy style caster is not really safe to play as. Charms/Hexes can help out a lot.

Don't take this the wrong way, but this almost reads like a Cerekov post

[edgefigaro]

Most of the spells have a tremendous amount of utility, but the highest levels of utility of spells really depend on the player having alot of experience with the individual spell and the game as a whole.

There are many spells that are zone-specific, incredibly useful in one or two areas and then marginally useful in the rest of the game.

Casters become more and more powerful once you learn how to get lots of utility out of the entire fleet of spells in the game. You only really do that with experience.

I highly recommend watching experienced players play spellcasters. There is a lot to learn.

[severen]

^ Summoning is tedious, unreliable and the summoning cap makes summons terrible against mobs

In regards specifically to Summon Ice Beasts and clearing up to lair. This is entirely wrong. SIB is entirely reliable, its 3 summon cap is enough to do anything you need, and generally you simply summon all three immediately and is not particularly different than casting a direct damage spell three times. If you are fairly stealthy it goes from very reliable to incredibly reliable.

If you want to argue that using the entire Su book to its fullest advantage is tedious I won't argue that. I generally don't play that start and do IE because I mature out of SIB into full nuking and/or hybrid (melee + casting or transmutations whatever).

No the real problem with SIB up to lair is that you get less XP.

[edgefigaro]

Summoners (both the background and other classes who hybrid into summoners when convenient) are absurdly powerful. Less XP does not bring them out of the absurdly powerful category.

On a tactical level, the most significant summoner drawback is that they fight so poorly around staircases and have to retreat up staircases frequently.

OTOH, summoners suffer from higher cognitive load and slower, exhausting play. They certainly aren't straightforward o-tab characters.

[amaril]

If you believe you've won once you've reached lair, the best spellcasting classes are (*race dependent) the best starts in the game, bar berserker. If you lose after reaching lair, str-based characters become more appealing because they have more mid-game fault tolerance.

[tabstorm]

I'm not even that convinced that spellcasting classes are actually among the best starts in the game. I think this is true for Su, IE, and maybe FE. But if I had to streak a game, and I am not playing a very frail race like DE, Te, etc. I would take my chances with Fi or Gl instead. I truly do not think spellcasting classes are as powerful as they are made out to be. It only takes a miscast or two, or walking around the corner into a centaur, to ruin your day. Look, let's consider what can actually kill a player exercising some level of caution early on:

D:1 - jackals, energy randomization, geckos, too many goblins/kobolds to pillar dance
D:2 - adders
D:3 - orc priest/wizard
D:4 - worker ant, centaur
D:5 on - Killer bees

What is the advantage of classes other than IE or Su here? Your range is not particularly amazing on your conjurations early game, and throw X is not mp-efficient. Your cast rate on level 3-4s is not that good. You have poor defenses and poor body armor. IE's level 1 can't miss, which is extremely valuable, and you can get more AC, and a summon at XL 4. Su gives you summons. But you can much more easily die to centaurs, ants, bees, and so on in the event of a miscast or bad roll, or turning a corner into a bad position. A warrior character, I think, is not too likely to die to any of these except bees (which can destroy everyone), unless it is an especially frail race, because you can have slightly more HP and better defenses. For example if you run into a killer bee pack and have no escape scrolls, you might be able to power through it with berserk or lignification. Maybe you can get owned by bad rolls against an adder on D:2. But so can a mage that isn't an IE. The mage backgrounds are good on certain low-HP characters because they are so frail that they really do not want to be in melee at all until they are a few XLs higher - Elves, Tengu, and Octopodes to an extent (I now think Op melee is underrated if you have a shield especially with a good god choice). Like, if you think about it, there is a pretty damn big dropoff between all the other "decent" races and DE/Te/HE in earlygame melee power - Op has constrict, VS has a massive damage boost, Gr has rPois and AC, Ha and Ko have an evasion bonus.

[VeryAngryFelid]

D:1 - jackals, energy randomization, geckos, too many goblins/kobolds to pillar dance
D:2 - adders
D:3 - orc priest/wizard
D:4 - worker ant, centaur
D:5 on - Killer bees

There are 2 aspects of being a caster here:
1) running out of MP
2) having inferior defense.

I believe inferior defense is not exactly obvious, IMHO caster does not have worse defense than gladiator at this point (yet).
Adders kill with poison (melee attack 5, poison 4-8), I would prefer to have a bit higher EV than a bit higher AC.
The same for worker ant.
Also I would prefer to be a caster vs hasted orc wizard or Centaur in the open because then I can shoot back at range instead of walking 7 tiles forward into unexplored terrain.
Some casters have very nice spells (Meph. Cloud for VM/Wz, Conjure Flame for FE, Searing Ray for Cj) which help a lot with orcs, centaur and killer bees.

I treat running out of MP as somewhat unlucky situation unless it is on D:1 where it can be deadly indeed. Attacking a monster with melee and missing 3+ times in a row is very similar to casting Throw X spell 3+ times and still having the monster alive with important difference that as caster you still can retreat upstairs, restore MP and try again because the monster is not adjacent yet while melee guy would need to pillar-dance to restore lost HP.
Actually I prefer to be a Cj instead of Gl with balanced species like Ds or Hu.

[Siegurt]

What is the advantage of classes other than IE or Su here? Your range is not particularly amazing on your conjurations early game, and throw X is not mp-efficient. Your cast rate on level 3-4s is not that good. You have poor defenses and poor body armor. IE's level 1 can't miss, which is extremely valuable, and you can get more AC, and a summon at XL 4. Su gives you summons.

Note that jfyi, cj level 1 spell cant miss either (and is full los range) it takes 1-4 magic darts to kill an adder (usually 2 or 3) and you'll usually have 5-7 mp and a < 5% fail rate when you encounter your first. I would say that conjurers (and wizards) actually have the easiest time with d2 adders of any background, (followed by ie) possibly excepting a berseker, which might be better.

AE's level 3 spell also ignores evasion and hits more than one critter giving them solid performance against bee packs, once you have the mp and skills to support it (ae's level 1 spell is also full los and penetraing, making it effective against packs and those pesky smiting priests)

EE, while the worst off of the "mage" background types still does solidly against the early adder, because a single hit from a rocky sandblast (sometimes two) will kill one, and you have decent enough accuracy that you will hit some of the time, 4-5 casts is very very likely to make an early adder dead.

If anything conjuration focused book backgrounds are weakest against a different set of things than warrior backgrounds are, a single early nasty, properly handled, is less likely to kill a spell flinger, but a pack of things that a meleeer wouldn't break a sweat on, is problematic.

A good example is robins goblin crew, a fighter or gladiator will probably mow down the lot without much trouble, a spell flinger has to be very careful to draw stragglers back, preferably upstairs, or they will rapidly find themselves out of mana and with no retreat options. (While i have plowed through the whole crew with an ae using shock, that is not recommended) On the other hand that first ogre is probably going to die without ever swinging their gsc against a spell flinger, an early melee user is probably safest just fleeing.