The Tavern

OK, that's very nasty then. Are there other level 4 spells that can do that much damage in a single shot? It's annoying enough to have Wizards swarm you with imps and chain-cast MephCloud, but obviously a lot better than one-shotting your lowbie. Maybe IB needs a nerf for player ghosts (are there any such nerfs for other spells?)

Spells cast by ghosts are pretty much guaranteed to be more dangerous than they would have when cast by the player character at the time it died. At least if a ghost casts Battlesphere that's one turn it's not doing damage to you, giving you a chance to get away. I wouldn't be surprised if you could take more than 28 damage in 1 shot from a ghost with Throw Icicle or maybe Stone Arrow, and you could definitely take more than that from any of the level 5 starting spells.

Question about the Battlesphere, which is an awesome tool and totally a great Crawl-themed familiar.

Do kills from a Battlesphere have their XP neutered in the same fashion as kills from a summoned creature? I ask because it acts like a summon (in that it wanders around and can get attacked), yet it works like a spell enhancer, in that it only does exactly what you do and never acts on its own.

In my opinion, XP from Battlesphere kills should not be neutered like XP from kills by Summonings.

Kiku treats Battlesphere kills as made directly by you IIRC, so I expect the EXP won't be shaved off.

Yeah, so does Vehumet. Also you get the message "you kill the monster" when the battlesphere's shot kills something, so I've been assuming you get full XP.

Someone hit my battlesphere with a teleport spell and I teleported.

Sounds like a bug to me. I'd report it.

Someone told my battlesphere a joke, and I LOLed.

Someone put a battlesphere in my battlesphere, so I could cast while I cast while I cast.

Maybe the battlesphere should be more like a charm and less like a summon. ie, instead of creating a separate entity that moves around, can get hit by monsters and can also block their movement, it just created an "implied" familiar that is assumed to hover above the characters head and not move separately.

I love the current battlesphere mechanism. Yeah, it's got downsides. They're just a lot of what makes it interesting.

If it cannot be destroyed it would have to have its damage nerfed by a lot. The current mechanism is great.