How to play a caster without gift-books

[Spencer]

I've got a few weeks experience playing crawl now, and I tend to die around XL 10 or 11 going rambo at things when I have no idea what they are or what they can do to me. I'm pretty okay with that sort of death atm because I know I'll start surviving longer when I learn how to play as if I value my own life. This time, I think I'm just going to die in mid game with no idea how to develop my character.

I'm running a DDNe of Mahkleb, and just barely escaped by the skin of my ass after getting pinched in between a couple of many headed Hydras on D:11. (The entrances to Orc and Lair are on that floor, so I'll have some fun playing tag with them for a while yet.) Anyway, I've realized that my starting book is getting pretty weak, but the only random drops I've found were one book of summon butterflies (pretty nice) and a book of the sky. I've got no intention of learning Air magic on a Dwarf, and spamming all my xp into charms for insulation and deflect missiles seems like a poor investment... But now I've got no idea how I can improve my offensive power to reliably deal with anything like a hill giant or an electric eel. My current plan is to train invocations and evocations in the hopes that scrolls, wands, my staff of channeling, and god powers can get me through difficult situations until I can find a decent spell book.

So what do you guys do when you run casters with non-caster gods? General advice is welcome, and I'll include a dump in case anyone wants to go in depth for my character.

[BlackSheep]

First, welcome to the forum. It will be easier to assess your character if you paste the contents of your morgue file between [code] tags instead of attaching the file to your post.

In the case of a necromancer you'll want to play more of a melee hybrid. Train a weapon, (axes are easiest for DD, but most types work fine, and polearms will let you reach over your allies) use Lethal Infusion liberally, and fight alongside your undead pets. Use your god abilities and consumables when you need extra help. You'll find more books eventually, though there's no guarantee they'll contain higher level Necromancy spells. Adapt to what you receive, and keep an eye out for stuff that's generally useful like most Charms and Translocation spells.

[defen]

If you have TP scrolls to spare, get a hydra at the edge of your LOS and summon a greater demon. (You should be at relatively high hp to do this). It should single-handedly eliminate the hydra. If it's hostile, TP and try again later.

You should also train a primary weapon for most encounters (axes are the norm, but you have an electric whip, so M&F is the clear choice here). Wearing a robe (unless it's your sole source of rF) is generally inferior to leather/troll leather/MDA, since these hardly penalize your spellcasting and grant some GDR.

Your investment in evocations is a gross waste of xp. The shield is awful - there are very, very few circumstances where it's desirable to use one bigger than a buckler. Spellcasting is also a waste beyond ensuring sufficient spell slots for your needs, with spriggans being the notable exception.

Don't be stingy with your wand and recharging ability - the big mana pool does you no good if you're dead.

[KoboldLord]

The thing to keep in mind in this case is that necromancer isn't precisely a caster. It's more suited to being a hybrid. Specifically, it's what the skald would be if the skald wasn't kind of bad. You've got a solid weapon brand, a highly-damaging attack spell that you have to use in melee, three spells that make minions that let you swap places to withdraw from melee, and a ranged popgun so you don't have to waste xp on stuff like throwing or crossbows.

Most caster background have really solid starting books, and you can definitely make it all the way to Vaults and Elf using nothing but the starting books for the majority of them. Rapid Deconstruction, Fireball, and Throw Icicle don't have trouble keeping up, even if you get unusually screwed on book drops or for some reason can't retrain.

Even if your book isn't one of the ones that lasts, hybridization is always, always an option. You can get screwed on early book drops, but to get screwed on weapon drops you'd somehow have to have a dungeon without orcs in it, and I'm pretty sure that simply doesn't happen. Great maces, battleaxes, and great swords are all pretty common and acceptably decent, and if you've got nowhere to go with magic training you'll be surprised at how fast they train up when you're killing hydrae and spiny frogs and all the xp is pouring into the same place.

[Spencer]

Thanks guys.

So it seems like I'll have to train up a weapon skill here. My play style thus far had been kiting with my my blow gun and sling of frost to supplement pain as my ranged ability, letting me save my mana and spam vampiric draining when they eventually closed and prioritized me over my minions. I could then back off and channel a bit as anything that lived tore their way through my zombies, and finish them with my refreshed mana. With such a good melee range spell it seemed a bit redundant to physically attack anything that didn't resist. I was hoping the points in evocations would improve channeling, but the improvement seems to be very small.

As for armor choices, I had a few nice options and initially started training the skill, but adding a shield killed my spell success rate so I switched back to a robe. I guess I made the wrong choice here. I've got a +2 leather of magic resist, +3 Dwarven ring mail, and a +6 rF+ MR Str+3 chain artefact. I can cast reliably in everything but the chain if I don't wear a shield, and now that my skills are higher, it looks like I can even go leather + shield with decent success rates. My question here is how heavy should I go, and would skilling up armor or my magic schools be a better way of improving spell success?

[Davion Fuxa]

When it comes to spells for a Necromancer, you can wear as Heavy an Armor as you want - assuming you can keep your spellcasting success to decent levels that avoid miscast failures on those spells 'You Need To Work Now', while you aren't giving up anything major with a lower tier armor in terms of increased stats, abilities, status effects, or resistances. I'm currently playing a Kobold Artificer of Kiku, and I have the option wearing a +2 Fire Dragon Armor, a +4 Ring Mail of Magic Resistance, and +1 Artefact Leather Armor with rC+, and a +2 Artefact Leather Armor with Dex+1 and Int+3. I'm currently using the +4 Ring Mail of Magic Resistance simply because it doesn't hinder my spellcasting abilities as badly as the Dragon Armor does, and I don't feel I'm giving up too much in regards to Magic Resistance over Increaed Stats or Cold Resistance.

[Psieye]

Magic skills to improve spell success. Never train armour for spell success as it has minimal effect until endgame levels of EXP have been poured into it (and even then, it never fully negates).

The staff of channeling never was that fast at getting you mp. To my awareness, evocations lets you fail less with that staff but don't expect to get lots of mp from it - that's what sub.blood and CBoE are for.

Incidentally, a Wz without gift-books does well to pick up a bow in my experience - sort of like picking up a sling and some stones to ease with killing jellies at D:6, the bow helps kill things while waiting for better spellbooks. But a Ne definitely wants to pick up a melee weapon.

[Davion Fuxa]

Incidentally, a Wz without gift-books does well to pick up a bow in my experience - sort of like picking up a sling and some stones to ease with killing jellies at D:6, the bow helps kill things while waiting for better spellbooks. But a Ne definitely wants to pick up a melee weapon.

Unless of course they get Portal Projectile from a Translocations Book and have a good aptitude for Crossbows instead of Bows.

[Psieye]

Incidentally, a Wz without gift-books does well to pick up a bow in my experience - sort of like picking up a sling and some stones to ease with killing jellies at D:6, the bow helps kill things while waiting for better spellbooks. But a Ne definitely wants to pick up a melee weapon.

Unless of course they get Portal Projectile from a Translocations Book and have a good aptitude for Crossbows instead of Bows.

Addendum: you would also need to have actually found a crossbow, which is rarer than a centaur by the time magic dart starts to be insufficient.

[Wahaha]

Magic skills to improve spell success. Never train armour for spell success as it has minimal effect until endgame levels of EXP have been poured into it

This is false. If you're trying to cast in armor with 3 EVP (or even 2 really) or more, training armor will help a lot. Possibly more than training spell schools.

[cerebovssquire]

No, spell schools help more in general. Of course there will be a point where training Armour will help more (like, going from Charms 26 to 27 won't help you more than going from Armour 0 to Armour 10), but in many realistic gameplay situations spell schools will contribute to your success chance more. Which doesn't go to say that you shouldn't train Armour because the AC is obviously still useful. By the way I can't think of much EVP -2 armour worth wearing if you have spells (elven ring mail not having these penalties so I'm not counting it) with the exception of some very rare situations. MDA is miles better than swamp dragon armour, because the penalties are so much smaller, and fire dragon armour/ice dragon armour likewise, having more AC and actually useful resistances.

[BlackSheep]

Additionally, training spell schools will raise your spell power, which will usually make your spells more effective.

Along the lines of what cerebovssquire was saying, the amount of XP you'll need to spend is really the key factor. Raising a single spell school from 26 to 27 costs a lot and only benefits spells of that school. Raising Armour from very low levels costs relatively little and impacts the failure rate of all spells.

The rule of thumb is that you should raise spell schools to reduce failure rate, all other things being equal. But all other things are very seldom equal.

[Wahaha]

No, spell schools help more in general.

Good thing I didn't say armor helps more than spell schools then? The point I was trying to make is that armor is worth training too. "training armor will help a lot" was probably excessive though. I wouldn't train spell schools only until I got good success % in heavy armor while ignoring the armor skill, because I'm going to train armor anyway and it helps spell success too (why are you wearing heavy armor if you're not going to train armor). Which is why "Never train armour for spell success" is wrong, even though spell schools do help more than armor. Also one thing to note is that armor is one skill and spell schools is often many skills (unless it's just charms). If you're using 3 spell schools I'd expect armor skill to be quite relevant.

[crate]

"Never train armour for spell success" is kind of wrong but it's wrong in a way that if you follow it as a rule you will not do things that are grossly wrong. I give advice like this often, because it is simple and easy to understand. Giving a more-correct answer is also giving a more-confusing answer, and in my opinion crawl has enough complexity that keeping things simple is better than trying to be perfectly correct.

[rebthor]

No, spell schools help more in general.

Good thing I didn't say armor helps more than spell schools then? The point I was trying to make is that armor is worth training too. "training armor will help a lot" was probably excessive though. I wouldn't train spell schools only until I got good success % in heavy armor while ignoring the armor skill, because I'm going to train armor anyway and it helps spell success too (why are you wearing heavy armor if you're not going to train armor). Which is why "Never train armour for spell success" is wrong, even though spell schools do help more than armor. Also one thing to note is that armor is one skill and spell schools is often many skills (unless it's just charms). If you're using 3 spell schools I'd expect armor skill to be quite relevant.

I'm sorry but your post is wrong. Never train armour for spell success might be an (slight) oversimplification, but other than edge cases like those mentioned above by cerebovsquire, it's true.

What you're saying is that since you're going to train armour for increased AC anyhow and it does benefit your spells, so you should train armour for spells. That's just not correct. You're training armour for AC, the fact that it also happens to help your spells is really irrelevant. And even given a 3 school spell like freezing cloud, you're still better off training the other schools to reduce your fail chances and boost your spell power than training armour up.

[Wahaha]

What you're saying is that since you're going to train armour for increased AC anyhow and it does benefit your spells, so you should train armour for spells.

Yes, training spell schools and armor to a good level to get good spell success rates. Instead of training spell schools to get good success rates and then armor, making the last few levels of charms or whatever you trained a waste. Not all spells need spell power by the way.

You're training armour for AC, the fact that it also happens to help your spells is really irrelevant.

YOU are training armor for AC and ignoring its effect on spell success. That's fine. I choose to not ignore it because it lets me train skills more efficiently. But like crate said it was perhaps not worth pointing out in this thread.

[KoboldLord]

YOU are training armor for AC and ignoring its effect on spell success. That's fine. I choose to not ignore it because it lets me train skills more efficiently. But like crate said it was perhaps not worth pointing out in this thread.

The question of whether you get those last few percentage points on your Haste spell for your late-game melee character from armour skill or charms skill is not likely to affect whether that character wins or loses the game.

The question of whether an early- or mid-game hybrid (e.g. skald type or Kiku hybrid) should be training armour or magic skills for those percentage points is a very important question to that character, and is likely to have a non-trivial impact on whether that character makes it to the end of the game. And for this sort of character where the answer to the question actually matters, the right answer is training magic skills.

Making a statement like, "This is false. If you're trying to cast in armor with 3 EVP (or even 2 really) or more, training armor will help a lot. Possibly more than training spell schools," without any sort of qualifications will be parsed by the newbie player reading this thread for advice as meaning that training armour will help their characters when it matters. This is misleading. A XL10 or 11 deep dwarf necromancer should not be expecting their spells to move into castable terrible by training armour skill. It would be a more useful true statement if somebody was asking for advice on their hill orc fighter that had Haste at 10% failure, but there's currently nobody asking for advice on that character.

Context is actually very important, and a fact that isn't relevant to the current context is often useless.