Lameador2 wrote:What problem are you trying to solve ?
As others have said: that being a transmuter requires being a unarmed fighter. I think it's weird that the main purpose of the transmutations school is to buff unarmed combat.
One issue with the way transmutations works that I didn't mention before: because transmutations is an incredibly experience-intensive playstyle (unarmed combat is already the most XP-dependent fighting style, and transmutations requires both unarmed combat and a moderate amount of transmutations), it makes it really hard to pick up on a character who doesn't start as a transmuter or unarmed fighter. As people often talk about in this forum, adaptation is a core part of DCSS' strategy. I love it when I find a powerful spellbook or weapon and decide to change the direction of my character so I can use it.
This never happens with transmutations, because it's such a huge investment. I've never found a transmutations spell book and thought "hmm, maybe I'll go transmutations on this character." Because it's almost never worth the experience investment. It's so ridiculously inefficient compared to other utility spells (if you're looking for some buffs to add to a melee character) or weapons (if you're looking for some melee fighting ability on a spell-caster) that it never feels like it's worth it to pick up transmutations on any character who doesn't start as a transmuter or unarmed combat character.
Making transmutations less dependent on unarmed skill would go a long way towards fixing this issue and making finding a transmutations book on non-transmuters more interesting.
Transmutation is fine, it allows to play a non-troll unarmed combattant
So you're saying that you can't really play an unarmed combatant if you're not a troll. I would consider that a significant problem, one that could be fixed by decoupling transmutations from unarmed combat. The fact that transmutations and unarmed combat are so closely coupled means that non-claw unarmed combat has to be balanced around transmutations. Which, as duvessa explained earlier, makes it incredibly difficult to make non-transmutations, non-claw unarmed effective without making transmutations too strong. If transmutations were less tied with unarmed combat, it might be possible to adjust balance non-claw unarmed and transmutations separately.
Trasmutations allow for an interesting, specific and different playstyle, filling an interesting purpose. What's more to ask ?
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I agree. I think transmutations is a fantastic playstyle, which is why I wanted to start a discussion about fixing what I saw as an issue that was holding it back. Hopefully, I've already explained what more there is to ask in the rest of this thread: something that preserves the cool parts of transmutations while allowing it to be used effectively by a larger variety of characters, and also allowing non-claw unarmed combat's balance to be less tied to transmutations.