Spellcasting Change Motivated Suggestion

[BBQsauce]

Currently: Spellcasting count for Spell Success, Spell power, Spell levels, MP pool and regeneration rate, Spell hunger reduction. It's a "most stat" for both casting high-level, specialised spells (by providing MP and reducing their hunger) and generalist utility spell. Through Spellcasting, mages naturally reduce their need to train in magic schools that aren't their main branch, can effectively make up school restrictions (e.g. Spriggans can be effective conjurers), can re-spec themselves easily, and can gain access to a wide variety of utility spells. 4 level of Spc is worth 1 level of specialised school regarding power and success rate, but there is 12 schools, making a single level on Spc worth 3 levels of randomly selected specialised schools.

Potential problem : Fighter/spellcasters generally can't affoard to get high spellcasting. Transmuters are a fine example of this. They are not good casters and don't wear heavy armor, and because their skill set is too wide, their early game is a real pain. Enchanter gameplay is an exception, they do well because of the super-heavy stab bonus, but they are neither good fighters nor spellcasters. As a high level conjurer, only Frost or Fire is a real choice, Haste/Repell missiles/Statue form or even minor magic such as Blink/Mephitic cloud/Swiftness/Sublimation of Blood etc. is usually too good to pass on, not needing any heavy XP investment in auxiliary schools.

Suggestion : Spell success and spell power formulas could be ajusted to lessen or remove entirely the effect of Spellcasting. It would still be a worthwile investment regarding spell levels, MP, and spell hunger, for anybody which focuses on spells. Different replacement can be made for spell success that Spellcasting used to count for :
- Base spell difficulty can be reduced by ~10%, easing the access of magic to hybrid fighter/mages
- School reduction could be made ~20% more effective, increasing the reward of specialising in a few schools of magic.
- Experience level can be taken into account, avoiding early specialised mages to gain access to high level spells too early

[and into]

Things like this have been suggested before, if you do a search on the forums for "spellcasting skill" I think you can find those other discussions if you'd like to see a bit of the history of this idea.

IMO, the only problem with spellcasting skill is that having it do a bunch of things, some of them overlapping with the other magic skills, is a bit inelegant. It isn't a major problem, though, and it does potentially allow for a bit of diversity in terms of aptitudes—Ogres have good spellcasting, but bad in all the magic skills, and several species have poor spellcasting but good aptitudes in certain specific schools. If spellcasting only increased MP, reduced hunger, and gave spell slots, that differentiation would become (even) less meaningful.

Certain species aren't good for "caster" backgrounds (i.e., backgrounds that start with a book), but I am afraid I really don't know what you mean by saying "transmuters are not good casters." They cast spells, and if you choose a good species for the background they'll do so really well.

Good experience allocation for backgrounds that start with a book but cannot primarily kill through spells alone (like transmuters) can be tricky, they aren't as straightforward as fighters or conjurers, but that has nothing to do with the spellcasting skill. And once you figure out how to prioritize spells vs. offense vs. defense on those backgrounds they tend to play smoothly. In fact for transmuters, skalds, and the like, training the bare minimum of spellcasting skill is usually best. So removing the spell power/success factor from the spellcasting skill would actually affect these "hybrid" backgrounds least of all.

EDIT: Also, I feel compelled to say that a lot of the stuff you say isn't true. I'm not pointing this out to be aggressive or mean, but rather because I get the sense that some misinformation might be constraining how you think about Crawl, and thus what you think is possible about playing. To take but one example: High level conjurers certainly do not only have a choice between fire and ice. Even if at least some of the "power spells" are very desirable for nearly all dudes who cast spells, what (and when!) you have access to, and how you prioritize getting those spells castable, varies a good deal from game to game. And once again I don't think that has much to do with spellcasting skill, anyway. Yes, you can cast repel missiles easily just from spellcasting skill—if you took that away, you'd have to... put in a nominal bit of training in air and charms, and easily cast it just from your int stat and that nominal bit of training. It doesn't really change much.

[BBQsauce]

but I am afraid I really don't know what you mean by saying "transmuters are not good casters."

They gain reliable access to their spell later than pure mages do and have to sacrifice a lot of hunger in their casts. They can't for ex. learn mephitic cloud and use it effectively.

removing the spell power/success factor from the spellcasting skill would actually affect these "hybrid" backgrounds least of all.

Removing spellcasting success will affect them if this is replaced by something else that ease their casting, such as XL or school levels or spells made easier to cast.

Well I can't discuss much viability of X or Y well when it's played really well, I'm crappy player myself. I just have fun playing and don't pretend I know in and outs of everything. Just from my experience : First time playing gargoyle, take fighter with a mace, pray to Okawaru altar, made it to level 15 investing in 2 skills no problem whatsoever. When I take a wizard, with almost every race I have an easy in at ecumenial temple, not even speaking of DeCj which is well, fairly boring, and every time I get a book I'm getting much stronger very fast. When I take a transmuter background, I can choose any specie and have a very hard time, and if I choose the right one, then maybe with a luck helping I will make it to the temple. Don't have any transmuter that made it further than the early levels of the Lair personally (but again, I suck at this)

And well, this is more about opening up the gameplay to new players, making more hybrid choices easier to play for replayability and everything, my 1st attempts to DCC weren't with the easiest race/backgrounds and it would have sucked if i did quit the game thinking it's too frustrating simply because I would have been misguided. A chance I discovered fairly quickly how Spriggans can do everything, tho

[galehar]

Potential problem : Fighter/spellcasters generally can't affoard to get high spellcasting. Transmuters are a fine example of this.

How is that a problem?

Suggestion

None of those things actually address the problem you stated. But, probably I misunderstood the problem to begin with. You need to explain more clearly what you think is wrong and why.

Also, it seems that this proposal is motivated by you having a hard time playing Transmuters. Maybe you should start by posting in advice or yasd forums to better understand how to play them well before suggesting changes.

[pratamawirya]

They gain reliable access to their spell later than pure mages do and have to sacrifice a lot of hunger in their casts. They can't for ex. learn mephitic cloud and use it effectively.

Well, it's true that casting Blade Hands earlier in the game makes your transmuter go hungry rather quickly and there's hardly anything you can do to change that (you can't spare too much xp on spellcasting), but then he only needs to cast it once to murder a gang of enemies (an orc pack with warriors, for example). On the other hand, you usually have to shoot two or more fireballs or bolts of fire to wipe out the same gang.

(BTW, what does mephitic cloud have to do with transmuters?)

[Sar]

You can also not cast Blade Hands in the early game because Spider Form kills everything, gives you movement and evasion bonus and leaves you XP to put into UC and Dodging and other stuff, but this is a topic for Dungeon Crawling Advice.

[XuaXua]

Check the dev wiki. I have a proposal there for the eliminating of Spellcasting by distributing it across the spell skills and enhancing Evocations to compensate.

[BBQsauce]

Transmuters is a complete digression tbh. I find them harder than most backgrounds but it's off topic. I'll try to elaborate more about what I find problematic, it's a bit more abstract than what I've earlier said.

Imagine we have 3 schools of magic A B and C, that are completely mutually exclusive. In every school of magic you design a coherent spell set, let's say 7 spells. In every school you put 2-3 damage spells, 2-3 disables and 2-3 buffs, with an utility that balances well, so that each school have it's own strength and weaknesses. When the player choose a scool, he makes a decision purely based on his playstyle : whether he fantasies his mage as a highly damaging conjurer, a powerful invocator or necromancer, or a sneaky poison/escape gameplay, you will grant him buffs and disables that fit his specialisation and make the game appropriately challenging for him. If you however did let him choose freely 7 spells in the whole 21 set, he would obviously choose the most powerful/the ones that have the strongest synergy. The best conjuration, the best escape etc. no matter what he really likes. Because you left the player choose his spells, you know that 14 of the spells you designed are doomed to be unused/newbie trap/fun challenge.

Crawl system is hybrid, have spell levels, have thoughtful design about low level spells. It's a lot more subtle than this, yet, a bit of this inherent flaw limit the possibilities of what can be done with spell sets. You mostly train schools because of spells you aim for, rather than the other way around, which I find problematic in terms of filling the fantasy of the player to complete a challenge with his own style.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

You mostly train schools because of spells you aim for, rather than the other way around

First of all, not if you're good at Crawl, you don't.

Second, what in the world do you mean by the "the other way around"? Training spells because of the school you aim for? What would that even mean?

[Siegurt]

I suspect "the other way around" means "Aiming for spells because of the skills you've trained"

Which *is* a way that some games work (Where your abilities are unlocked by training skills up to a certain level) I'm not sure if this is a complain that crawl doesn't work that way, or an expectation that it should, or merely a comment that this is not now crawl works.

Spells in crawl are generally more like equipment (That is to say things you obtain through adventuring rather than things you obtain through training) and you should be training to use the stuff you find in the dungeon, at least the ones which will be effective for you to use. You should not be training skills for things you *might* find in the dungeon, that way leads towards madness, and death.

[tasonir]

I thikn he's saying that transmuters are relevant to his argument because if spellcasting was just for spell hunger, mp, etc, then hybrid classes could largely skip spellcasting and only train the 1-2 schools they use. Ie, play a transmuter who's cleared lair and maybe has 10 transmutations, but has 0 spellcasting. Pure mages would still pick it up, but just casting a few buff spells wouldn't need the mana/hunger reduction as much. But current spellcasting also is needed for failure rates?

In any case, I don't think it's that big of a problem, and on another note, I often do go for quick blade hands, but that's mostly a chei thing. You can get blade hands online VERY quickly with the int boost on a good transmutations race (merfolk) because it's a single spell school. But that's offtopic.

[and into]

I thikn he's saying that transmuters are relevant to his argument because if spellcasting was just for spell hunger, mp, etc, then hybrid classes could largely skip spellcasting and only train the 1-2 schools they use. Ie, play a transmuter who's cleared lair and maybe has 10 transmutations, but has 0 spellcasting.

This is almost the case now. This is what is so weird about BBQsauce's claims. Unlike conjurors and I guess fire elementalists and certain ways of playing air elementalists and earth elementalists, etc., transmuters want the absolute bare minimum of investment in spell casting skill. Full stop. There is no good, or even decent, way of playing transmuters that would make spell casting skill even a medium-priority investment. You cast exactly one spell for every tough encounter, unless you need to throw out some snakes—which is a level 2 spell so the hunger cost and spell slot cost are basically covered by native intelligence and the character levels that you automatically accrue.

So most transmuters really should typically have something like 12 UC, 10 dodging, 4 spell casting, 12 transmutations, plus a bit in poison (spider form) and ice (ice form) by the time they reach Lair. (Exact values will vary depending on your stats, aptitudes, and what level generates Lair branch.) That is how it stands currently. Needing 0 in spell casting is 1.) not all that different from how things are now, actually, and 2.) still an unnecessary buff / power creep to a *lot* of backgrounds, not just Tm.

Now the fact that this is typical might not be obvious, as I said before. Transmuters and skalds and the like are a bit more opaque and harder to figure out in terms of good skill allocation, for newer players, because they are less straightforward. But that is fine, it is good to have some backgrounds that are powerful, non-challenge classes but which nonetheless have a (slightly) steeper learning curve.

[BBQsauce]

I suspect "the other way around" means "Aiming for spells because of the skills you've trained"

Which *is* a way that some games work (Where your abilities are unlocked by training skills up to a certain level) I'm not sure if this is a complain that crawl doesn't work that way, or an expectation that it should, or merely a comment that this is not now crawl works.

Spells in crawl are generally more like equipment (That is to say things you obtain through adventuring rather than things you obtain through training) and you should be training to use the stuff you find in the dungeon, at least the ones which will be effective for you to use. You should not be training skills for things you *might* find in the dungeon, that way leads towards madness, and death.

So let's compare this 3 characters

Random conjurer with 12 Spc 12 Conj 5 fire/5ice or whatever by mid game
Random fighter with 15 weapon skill 10 fighting 5 armor 5 shield
Random transmuter since you like this topic with 12 UC 10 Ddg 4 spc 12 Trm

You are saying that you can't train skill for things you might find in dungeon, but what does exactly is skilling 1 comparing with the 2 others ? Precisely generic skills that will be useful for things he might find later
Leveling Spc unlike leveling anything else allow you *not* to make a definite choice and adapt to the most powerful thing you will come accross. Imagine it would be optimal for fighters to level Fgt very far and just grab their weapon spec according to the best randart they find by mid game, that would be really lame IMO although if it was how it worked, some would think it's "fine", "the way it works in crawl, contrary to other games" and "making a challenge about adapting to the situation". But in terms of game design, this isn't a clever idea. This is making the early game a grind. This is providing a generic challenge that is unrelated with what you wanted to play in the 1st place. It is melding a bunch of different potential gameplay into a single, that one may find more complex or more challenging, but is not reaching the player fantasy about building his way to victory, and destroys potential replay value that would be gained through trial of different early specialisations.

By the way I don't like the ongoing comments implying that because I'm bad and new I'm immediately not suited for making design proposal. Being new to a game is the best place to be to see things nobody else sees, even if that may be contradictory with how you see the game and how it currently works. Assuming it's not completely dumb like "removing hunger" or w/e

e/ i also want to mention, I don't care much about droping this idea as long as I explained it properly. It didn't seem to be the case though
e2/ It would be a big hit for spellcasters, but this proposal is unrelated with my own playstyle. Naga wizards are by far the race/background I had the most fun with. But like any nerf to a strategy, it's a good occasion to re-ajust other factors and make alternatives compensate for the loss of power of a strategy (this is where I originally thought Transmuters would be relevant, but failed to explain it).

[One-Eyed Jack]

Imagine it would be optimal for fighters to level Fgt very far and just grab their weapon spec according to the best randart they find by mid game, that would be really lame IMO

Yes, that would be dumb, just like how it would be dumb if it were optimal to level spellcasting instead of training spell skills related to spells you can actually cast.

It's not.

Being new to a game is the best place to be to see things nobody else sees, even if that may be contradictory with how you see the game and how it currently works.

There is very little evidence of this being the case and a lot of evidence against it

Assuming it's not completely dumb like "removing hunger" or w/e

please don't slander crawl light

[Siegurt]

So I re-read the topic here to try to get a sense of what is actually the crux of the perceived problem.

Here's what I intepret the OP's problem with the way things are:

The OP feels that spellcasting's current effect makes it too easy to be a 'generalist' spellcaster. The point being made is that if you are a generalist, and can select from all available spells, you will naturally choose from only the the best regardless of school, meaning all the things which are *not* the optimal spell are naturally going to be ignored. The OP's point is that in a system where the role you choose has a larger impact over your available abilities, you'd be confined to choosing some of the less-effective spells simply because of the role you'd chosen, thereby increasing the distinction between different chosen roles, and allowing less effective versions of similar spells to have a place by virtue of them occupying a school which might be chosen for another sort of spell.


What I think about that:

Every character is and by design *should be* able to pursue whatever is most appropriate given what is given to them by the RNG. What's more, the limitations imposed by the floor drops and by the limit of available exp as well as the need to be (nearly) as effective as possible throughout the game means that being a generalist is functionally implausible. You have to pick a thing to be good at, and get good and better and better at it, anything less will just get you killed. Trying to "just train fighting until you get a nice randart" will get you killed before you get a weapon worth investing in, as will getting 27 spellcasting with no spell school skills.

Getting over your notion of a "chosen role" is the thing that is *most* important to playing crawl well, having to balance adaption to what you get in the game against where you've already allocated your exp what distinguishes crawl from other games.
Furthermore, ideally there would be no "bad spells" that were pretty much universally ignored and no "good spells" which were always desirable. However, in practice there are a few spells which are more advantageous than they probably should be, and a few spells which aren't as good as they probably should be, and don't get used often, Spellcasting's contribution doesn't really influence the choice to memorize or not memorize those spells much if at all, and those spells themselves probably need some work.

[and into]

Siegurt is right, and put it well. All that I'd add is to point out explicitly (it is implied in Siegurt's post) that when you adapt to what the RNG generates, there is a lag there. Suddenly it makes sense to branch into something new, but (usually) you don't immediately start doing that and drop whatever you were training, rather, you reconsider your priorities and integrate the new with your earlier plan.

For the most part, characters in Crawl are already very adaptable (certain species, worshiping Trog, and other exceptions obviously exist) so you don't have to make yourself adaptable by training a bunch of spell casting for some reason, you just have to adapt strategically to new developments.

Oh and just to also spell this out, when it comes to spell success rate, spellcasting skill is about 1/4 as good as training the relevant spell schools. So you need 12 spell casting just to get the equivalent of 3 levels in necromancy, say. Now those 12 levels of spell casting apply to all spell schools—but generally you don't have 4 or 5 spell schools that are an equal priority for you to train. So it still does not make sense, in general, for spell casting to be the main way you get spell success down.

Now there is an argument to be made for making spell casting just about MP, spell slots, and hunger, but it has nothing to do with spell casting skill being too strong or making spell generalization too accessible.

[and into]

Also:

You don't have to be an expert in Crawl to make good suggestions in GDD. However in particular cases, if those suggestions are based around claims about reasonable strategies being bad because they result in X, Y, and Z problems, then two things are important: 1.) are X, Y, and Z problems; but also 2.) are the things being talked about actually reasonable strategies that reflect how someone would play the game under normal conditions? So while a bit of Dungeon Crawl advice seeped into this thread, it wasn't irrelevant or really off-topic.

If someone wants to train spell casting mostly and only put a small amount in conjurations while killing guys with conjuration spells, that's his/her prerogative. If they can make that work as a sort of self-imposed challenge, more power to them. If they make it work and try to claim it is reasonable or good play in Tavern, several people will correct them. If they come into GDD and try to claim that the possibility of doing this is a problem in Crawl I will still fail to see why it is a problem.

And so shall the wheel of history continue to turn.

[Lasty]

Siegurt and and into covered the most important parts of the response to BBQsauce's proposal, but since it seems like the proposal stems from some misunderstanding about how magic skills work, I think it's worth laying things out a little further.

Spellcasting has a very small contribution to both spell success and spell power (1/4th of the contribution of specific magic skill), so getting 20 levels of spellcasting is about equal to getting 5 levels of each spell skill. Higher skill levels cost significantly more than low skill levels, and getting one skill to level 20 costs 13950 skill points, the same amount needed to get 18 skills to level 5. As such, if you choose to play a generalist and put all your experience into Spellcasting instead of specific magic skills, your spell success rates and spell power will be significantly lower than they would be if you redirected some of that experience into the one to five magic skills you will actually be using to cast spells.

Given that that is true, can you see that there is already no actual issue with the amount that training Spellcasting allows you to branch into additional schools of magic, because the mechanics of the game already massively discourage using Spellcasting for "generalist" behavior?

[BBQsauce]

Ok, so forget it. Explained myself, doesn't appeal, suggestion closed

Just going for 1-2 answers rapidly

@OEJ : I'm not a man to give value to claims without arguments. Didn't mean to slander, I don't even know what you talk about
@Siegurt : I respect your point of view, I just have different personal appeal. I don't like adapting to the RNG, I prefer trying to beat it
@Lasty @and into @some others : Being assumed ignorant of facts I made clear I know is insulting. I can grant doubt benefit, but that doesn't cover "oh just so you know" facts that could be downright quoted from my earlier posts
@all that did : thanks for sharing me your personal experience, your strategical knowledge, and your honnest feelings about my suggestion.

[johlstei]

No one means to personally slight you with their posts and the back and forth of being upset by people posting non-obvious things about the game that you may or may not already know is unlikely to generate any further interesting discussion. Chances are they are not going to comb your post to clues as to whether or not you know something, they are just going to type it regardless, and reading personal insult from that is a waste of energy on your part.

[BBQsauce]

Typing "regardless" is against the very purpose of this forum. This forum is about proposal/feedback, not making player education FYI notes. Maybe I'm wrong to be surprised so much answers are unhelpful/off-topic. I happen to find it offensive, but that's just another good reason reviewers should follow the rules, too.

[Grimm]

If there is a problem, pm or report. Do not engage in personal arguments in GDD.

[Lasty]

@Lasty @and into @some others : Being assumed ignorant of facts I made clear I know is insulting. I can grant doubt benefit, but that doesn't cover "oh just so you know" facts that could be downright quoted from my earlier posts

I had no intention of insulting you, and if you feel insulted, I would humbly suggest that you may be predisposed to read attempts to engage as insults. Of course, just saying so runs the risk that you will read this as an insult too, but there's a limit to how far I will go out of my way to avoid the possibility of allowing someone to take offense.

Through Spellcasting, mages naturally reduce their need to train in magic schools that aren't their main branch, can effectively make up school restrictions (e.g. Spriggans can be effective conjurers), can re-spec themselves easily, and can gain access to a wide variety of utility spells. 4 level of Spc is worth 1 level of specialised school regarding power and success rate, but there is 12 schools, making a single level on Spc worth 3 levels of randomly selected specialised schools.

This paragraph makes several claims:
* Spellcasting significantly alters how much you need to train magic schools.
* Spellcasting is an effective replacement for magic schools that have negative aptitudes (such as Spriggan conjurers).
* One level of spellcasting is worth 3 levels of specific school training because the benefits are distributed among 12 magic schools (and, implicit in this argument, all magic schools will be used by any given character)

What I wrote directly contradicts the claim you're making here, and that claim is foundational to your argument for making this change. What I wrote demonstrates that one level of spellcasting is not worth 3 specific schools, because distributing the experience among the different magic schools actually gets you more levels than the virtual ones you receive from spellcasting, even if you distribute over all 12 magic schools. What I wrote demonstrates that raising actual magic schools is much more effective then raising spellcasting, an argument that others had already written, but without providing the data that would demonstrate the truth of that argument. I assumed that you made your inaccurate claim because you were unaware of the not-necessarily-obvious point that I later made in an attempt to share information.

Since you've now written that you were already aware of that information (and that it was insulting for me to even offer it), I have to assume that you were deliberately ignoring that information in order to make your claim seem plausible even though you knew it was not. So, did you propose this just to troll us, or did you have some real reason for thinking this is a good idea that you chose not to share, preferring instead to write a lie?

[galehar]

The OP has backed from his suggestion, so those arguments are pointless. Locked.

BBQSauce: next time, try to be more clear and concise. Notice how many of the first posts were about trying to decipher your proposal and reasoning until Siegurt reworded it clearly.