How are summons different from buffs?

[amaril]

How is a spell like Ice Beasts different from a spell like Phase Shift? In the sense that it is always correct to cast each of them before combat, assuming that hunger and ~5 mp is not a huge concern.

I guess that one answer is that Ice Beasts' power level depends on the situation at hand/ your positioning tactics, whereas phase shift provides a linear boost to power, and is therefore more 'boring.' This may be a big enough difference for one type of spell to be 'good design' while the other is 'bad design.' But even if you ignore your own positioning, casting ice beasts is still optimal. I often see 'it is optimal to cast this prior to every fight' being used as an argument against buffs, whereas I rarely see this as an argument against summoning. Are summons 'interesting' in part because it is assumed that you will be casting many of them, so therefore each cast's mp cost is significant? Would a school of summonings with summon limit 1 be so different from a school of straight buffs, like ozocubu's armour, phase shift, shroud of golubria, etc?

[crate]

edit: Actually I seem to have misread your post. I don't really have any answers to what I now think you're asking, since the fact is that all offense in crawl is something you just cast or otherwise use a bunch of times per fight and this really isn't any different from buffs.

Orignally I had assumed you were talking about keeping summons around between fights (which is an actual problem with buffs, though not the one referenced in recent buff removals). This is a problem with summons also. It could be fixed by reducing duration (no one casts summon hydra between fights, because it doesn't work).

[ion_frigate]

You could also fix the "cast-before-combat" issue by making summons rapidly time out if they don't have anything to fight. Like, all summons would have a very short timer (say 5-10 turns at most) that gets reset every time they attack a monster, are attacked (successfully or not) themselves, or move towards an enemy they can see.

[dynast]

Phase shift doesnt steal half of the exp from the monsters it kills.

Just to be clear, i oppose the removal of phase shift, even though it never added anything to my games, it makes the whole translocations shool a lot less appealing.

Also, keep in mind it is an important aspect of some summon spells to have higher or lower or just plain random durations. Whoever gets bored from repeateadly casting summoning spells is playing the wrong background.

[amaril]

The intent behind this post was to question the design decision that 'straight buffs' are bad design, seeing as many types of effects are worth using whenever you have the opportunity to. In hindsight, though, it might really just be the +numerical bonus spells that devs (and players) object to, rather than all 'buffs' of any sort.

Crate: I didn't think about these spells in terms of out-of-combat use, but 'spells that you want to keep around between fights' is a pretty good way of defining 'buffs' as I am using the term. I see why having that sort of spell around is problematic, but I am unsure that lowering the duration of such a spell makes it much better from an 'optimal play' standpoint, as long as there are ways to regenerate mp (sif etc) faster than a buff/summon expires.

[ydeve]

There are a lot of people who think that the current implementation of summoning is problematic. If you're trying to argue that removed buffs (and some existing ones) aren't problematic, you picked the wrong example.

[crate]

The costs of regenerating 7 mp each time you cast summon hydra before hydra expires are much higher than the costs of just not walking around with a pet hydra, since you will take like 3 times as long to get anywhere. Spending that many more turns generates a lot more monsters which are also more dangerous than average and (since you have to be worshipping Sif to do this) probably starves you unless you are undead.

Reducing duration absolutely solves the problem. It might be that you reduce durations to, say, 20 turns, but that's good enough and actually doesn't affect using summons in one individual fight very much except against abjuration (and the easy fix there is just remove abjuration).

[dynast]

Im pretty sure summon hydra is one of the least "problematic" summon spell and im glad you used it as an example. I gotta keep my summoning secret tech hidden for as long as possible.