Buff spells drain mp while active

[TheDefiniteArticle]

So you're flat-out refusing to justify your position in any way.

So you're flat-out refusing to read my post in any way.

Or maybe you think spells that are not interesting SHOULD exist?

old Deflect Missiles shared all of the same drawbacks as the old Repel Missiles except it had a marginally larger up-front xp cost.

If by "marginally" you mean "INFINITELY." a typical robe-wearing character can cast Repel Missiles with ZERO investment, just running off the 5 levels of spellcasting you started with by picking Wz.

[dck]

I think magic in general and self-effect spells in particular should have serious impact in the game. If the game is about fighting then they have to do things while fighting, and the first thing every spell must do is to be cast.
If you remove the "casting" part of the spell when you're actually playing the game (fighting) then you remove at least half of the impact of the spell itself in the real game because you've split it in half and thus made the spell have no cost in practice.
This means that by training magic you get a passive increase to X facet of your character that does not influence your actions in combat but just passively helps. I think there are enough skills that do that without needing to have spells that give you the same effect by training other skills.

Tangentially I doubt someone who says old RMsl and DMsl shared all drawbacks actually cast both RMsl and DMsl.

[Siegurt]

For rMsl/dMsl what makes sense to me (personally) is:

Replace rMsl with wind wall, A lower level effect, which is both location specific (it generated clouds that have a chance of blocking ranged attacks, the clouds don't move with you, meaning casting prior to combat is not useful), and not effective against higher-level attacks (i.e. spells, throw icicle and the like, I might also like to see it not block elemental-branded projectiles if it needs an even further nerf to make it truly level-2 worthy)

Deflect missiles I'd make short-duration (Like super short, say, around 10 turns, short enough that max duration would expire by the time you put platemail back on.), and make it's chance of deflecting attacks dependent on spellpower (Ranging all the way up to 90% protection at max spellpower)

I believe that would make *those two spells* not problematic, I do think that something should be done to make charms not-optimal to spam incessantly out of combat, but I don't think MP drain is the way to go for every spell, I think each buff should be reviewed and *something* should be done with it to make it not-optimal to recast them over and over forever, I think MP drain makes some sense on spells that are high enough level that you can still use them effectively with other spells when it's appropriate to cast them (Particularly on spells which have no drawback *other* than MP) But adding MP drain to say, swiftness in it's current form, would take it to an 'tactically and situationally useful low-level spell' to a 'spell I will never cast' I also think adding MP drain is a VERY uninteresting (and actually counterproductive) way to try to resolve the "cast this prior to combat all the time" problem.

Some examples of things that I think would be better than MP drain at accomplishing the goal of "making these tactical and in-combat spells":

Phase Shift:-> Illusionary Aspect, all creatures in LOS when you cast the spell lose 8 to their attack rolls on you for the duration
StoneSkin:-> Meld with stone, You gain an increase in your AC by melding with the stone floor under your feet, any movement cancels the spell, can't be cast while flying, gives some trample resistance, being forcefully moved also cancels the spell.
rMsl->Wind Wall
dMsl->As above
Ozocubu's Armour-> Freezing the air around you solid, giving you maxium protection for a spellpower-dependant short period, then Slowly melts off over the rest of the duration of the spell (You can't recast until it's completely melted away) The ramp-up/ramp-down means casting it prior to combat leaves you unable to have it's best effects when you encounter something, better to cast it when things creep into LOS for maxium protection. I'd probably have the melt-down period be much longer than the inital max protection period.

All the forms have significant drawbacks already which makes it not-optimal to wander around in say, ice form, all the time.

These are all examples of ways to make the buff spells not be useful to spam out of combat, and those are also all off-the-cuff not really well-thought-out suggestions. I'm sure many of them have holes and are not perfect suggestions, but if I can quickly come up with off-the cuff suggestions of ways to fix broken buffs in 10 minutes, I'm sure with actual drawn-out discussions with multiple creative and competent people we can have solid ways to fix the problems with these spells.

Additionally there are a bunch of spells I think are fine and it isn't optimal to spam out of combat:
Ring of flames (works as-is, only because it's so situationally useful and so expensive)
Deaths door (works as-is)
Regeneration (works as-is)
Swiftness (Works as-is, casting it prior to when you need it leaves you slow when it's disadvantageous to do so)
Spec Weapon (Works as-is)
Portal Projectile (Works as-is)
Silence (Works as-is)
Haste/Invis (Works as-is yellow contam prevents continual spamming)

And here's some that I didn't have ideas for:

Battlesphere (probably optimal to cast out of combat all the time, should probably be addressed.)
Beastly appendage (technically it's optimal to spam this out of combat, however it's useful for a very short period of time in the game, and during that time period the 1MP mana cost is actually a significant, I suppose if we find that high level characters (that can't wear helmets or boots) are all about spamming BA to get an extra aux attack something aught to be done..)
Sure blade (I never cast this spell, so I am not really sure how to make it more pointful in a way that doesn't just turn it into corona)

Flight (This is a special case, this is useful out of combat, but not really useful *in* combat, except when you have to fight around shallow water, spamming this out of combat isn't really something that's useful to do most of the time)

[Hurkyl]

old Deflect Missiles shared all of the same drawbacks as the old Repel Missiles except it had a marginally larger up-front xp cost.

If by "marginally" you mean "INFINITELY." a typical robe-wearing character can cast Repel Missiles with ZERO investment, just running off the 5 levels of spellcasting you started with by picking Wz.

X Charms + Y Air + Z Spellcasting < infinity experience.

[Wahaha]

But adding MP drain to say, swiftness in it's current form, would take it from an 'tactically and situationally useful low-level spell' to a 'spell I will never cast'

Swiftness is possibly the most boring spell in the game right now because it's only useful if you're about to move to up stairs and rest. That's the only situation I would ever cast it in. Adding mp drain and removing the slowness would make it useful in a lot more situations while giving it a fair drawback. It's hard to imagine why you would never cast it (unless you thought the slowness remains, but I said it wouldn't remain in the opening post, but then again judging by our earlier exchange I'm not sure if you read it). It's ok if you think mp drain is "VERY uninteresting (and actually counterproductive)" because in the end you can just say it's a matter of opinion, but please treat the idea fairly.

To answer the earlier post about rmsl, I don't know why you removed the quote about the centaur in your reply when it's probably the best counter-argument to your claim. I think it shows that a low level air elementalist would benefit from using the spell sometimes, and if that's the case the spell is useable even in the "worst case" scenario of a low level character. BUT I do agree that wind wall is probably a better spell.

[Hurkyl]

Adding mp drain and removing the slowness would make it useful in a lot more situations while giving it a fair drawback. It's hard to imagine why you would never cast it (unless you thought the slowness remains, but I said it wouldn't remain in the opening post, but then again judging by our earlier exchange I'm not sure if you read it).

What situations are those?

I mean this as a serious question. This spell would not be cast in many of the common situations one would think about buffing movement speed:

• This change would make Swiftness completely useless in a "I'm low on MP and need to get away" situation, whereas you can use it now to escape.
• For those "I'm high on MP and need to get away" situations, you're trading escaping with full MP but a brief slowness penalty for escaping with no MP but without the slowness penalty, so either way you're leaving yourself in a dangerous situation (but hopefully in a safe place) if you're an MP-dependent character.
• Both the current version and your suggestion make Swiftness a terrible choice for "this battle would be easier if I could move faster" situations for MP dependent characters

I suppose "I don't use my MP and I'm waiting for an enemy to come into range, so I might as well do something other than hit '.'" is a lot of situations , but I got the impression you weren't thinking of that case (and certainly not exclusively).

[crate]

Swiftness is possibly the most boring spell in the game right now because it's only useful if you're about to move to up stairs and rest.

This is the case where it is the most obviously strong but this is not the only use for it. If you have any sort of ranged attack, generally it is beneficial to cast swiftness if a monster closes in on you, run away until the edge of los, and then fight without moving while under -Swift status.

Unfortunately, crawl will always have stairs, so people won't even consider things like this very often.

[Patashu]

Unfortunately, crawl will always have stairs, so people won't even consider things like this very often.

Let's team up and make a roguelike with no stairs or screen transitions in it~ (It strikes me that these things only exist due to technological limitations of early games, and they continue to exist because older games also did them!)
The only one I can think of is Meritous (which isn't strictly a roguelike, but you could play it like one if you pretended the lives system didn't exist)

[KoboldLord]

Let's team up and make a roguelike with no stairs or screen transitions in it~ (It strikes me that these things only exist due to technological limitations of early games, and they continue to exist because older games also did them!)
The only one I can think of is Meritous (which isn't strictly a roguelike, but you could play it like one if you pretended the lives system didn't exist)

I don't know about that. The Abyss is fine and good in moderation, but I don't think I'd like it if that was the entire game.

[Siegurt]

But adding MP drain to say, swiftness in it's current form, would take it from an 'tactically and situationally useful low-level spell' to a 'spell I will never cast'

Swiftness is possibly the most boring spell in the game right now because it's only useful if you're about to move to up stairs and rest. That's the only situation I would ever cast it in. Adding mp drain and removing the slowness would make it useful in a lot more situations while giving it a fair drawback. It's hard to imagine why you would never cast it (unless you thought the slowness remains, but I said it wouldn't remain in the opening post, but then again judging by our earlier exchange I'm not sure if you read it). It's ok if you think mp drain is "VERY uninteresting (and actually counterproductive)" because in the end you can just say it's a matter of opinion, but please treat the idea fairly.

To answer the earlier post about rmsl, I don't know why you removed the quote about the centaur in your reply when it's probably the best counter-argument to your claim. I think it shows that a low level air elementalist would benefit from using the spell sometimes, and if that's the case the spell is useable even in the "worst case" scenario of a low level character. BUT I do agree that wind wall is probably a better spell.

Sorry about excluding that quote, it wasn't intentional just bad editing (I started to rearrange and reply part by part and then realized I just wanted to reply to the whole thing.)

So here's what (I percieve) happens when an early (Like you are level 4ish and on D:3) centaur comes into view, and you rely on MP to do damage:

When you *don't* have rMsl:
* You attempt to get out of LOS and get around a corner, if you can't (Or believe you would die before you got there) then you use consumables to escape, or failing that you slug it out and try to kill it before it kills you.

If you have the *current* version of rMsl:
* You walk into LOS of a centuar, you already have rMsl up, so you duck around a corner if you can, but probably you can just kill the centaur (or approach it and kill it at point blank range if there's no way to get out of LOS) Maybe you use consumables if you really are just that underpowered, but you have your full MP to kill it with, so you can probably kill it.

If you have the *prior* version of rMsl:
You *might* obsessively cast rMsl, but you probably don't, both because it's annoying and because it leaves you down MP and might leave you short of MP you need to kill things. If you don't already have it up, you cast it as soon as the centaur shows up, then you pretty much follow the current rMsl strategy, except you probably have less mana, but you might be able kill centaur, if not you're in the same boat as "you don't have rMsl"

If you have the proposed version of rMsl (which drains mana):
You can cast rMsl to reduce your odds of dying, however you don't have enough mana to use your MP to kill the centaur *and* use rMsl to keep you alive, so you must now use a consumable to escape or get out of LOS (because you can't simply walk away from centaurs) Your next action if you do get out of LOS is to either kill the centaur or escape using a consumable (This is the same set of choices whether you cast rMsl or not, except casting rMsl gives you more turns to get out of LOS) the problem is that if you do get out of LOS, and you *don't* cast rMsl, when you get adjacent to the centaur, you have MP with which to kill it (as with the current version of rMsl, and with the "you don't have rMsl at all"), if you *do* cast the proposed version of rMsl, you almost certainly do not have the MP to kill it, so you must escape using a consumable (or perhaps try to beat on it with an untrained shortsword or something) In short what casting rMsl does in this situation is delay the number of turns before you must use a consumable to escape (from immediately to "a few turns later") So ultimately what this version of rMsl does for a character in this exact situation is "cause you to use some turns"

Now there's some alternatives, you could reduce the additional MP drain to the point where it would not be significant to make the difference between whether a level 4 character would be able to kill said centaur or not, however if it was that insignificant, it would certainly not be a deterrent large enough to cause a *high level* character to have to make a tactical decision about whether to use the spell or not, it would still be a "no-brainer" just as it is now. You could also possibly get in a situation where rMsl would give you enough turns to get to a staircase or something, which means it's not "no use" but it's certainly not as useful as it is for non MP-reliant, or high level characters.

Now the situation I described *only* applies to characters who are sufficiently low-level that they've really only had the chance to train one sort of "killdudes" and who also have a very small MP pool, *and* who have a killdudes skill which relies on MP.

It's my opinion however, that these are the *exact* sorts of characters who *should* be able to use said type of spell to good effect. In fact it's my opinion that these are the *only* sorts of characters who should be able to maximally use a low level buff, and that the further you are from "A low level primarily spellskill trained caster type" the less useful a low-level buff spell should be. That is to say, if you're high level, low level buffs should be nearly useless, and if you don't have XP in spell casting skills, *all* buffs should be nearly useless.

Adding MP drain to buffs makes them less useful for everyone (with sufficiently high MP drain, it might in fact, drop them below the "no brainer" threshold), however it makes them the *most* less-useful for low level characters who primarily focus on spell skills, which is why it's the opposite of what I'd like to see. I believe that a better change is to make buffs rely on sufficient training, and have a natural drawback which makes them obsolete once you've gone sufficiently past their intended level-use range (For example Shroud of Golubria's usefulness is inversely proportional to the amount of damage that a creature can do, so it's great against a hobgoblin, but near-useless against a stone giant)

Regarding swiftness: It's actually still pretty darn useful to get around a corner or into a choke point so you don't get surrounded by packs (it also helps drawing individual members off a pack so you can kill them singly), I actually still use it quite a bit and believe it's actually probably still too powerful as a level 2 spell for this exact reason. It's certainly less useful than it used to be as an escape spell, however even if you can't get to a staircase, using less turns to re-position yourself tactically is still pretty good (and the slow movement doesn't matter if you aren't moving and are just killing stuff) You're correct though I didn't read carefully enough (and actually just not recently enough) to notice you proposed removing the slow down while adding the MP drain. That would still mean that it wouldn't be useful as a repositioning tool for low-level MP-reliers, which is counter to my opinion on who should be able to use low-level buff spells, although it might be useful as a high-MP escape (depending on what the MP drain actually was) as long as you weren't running from something faster than you, but it wouldn't be useful as a low-MP escape (or at least it'd be less useful than it is now).

In short I believe that adding MP drain to low level spells doesn't address "low level charms spells being a no-brainer to learn and cast for high level characters with no XP investment" it does address "Its optimal (and tedious) to cast some buffs out of combat, in some cases to spam them continually" it also hamstrings the *intended target audience* for those spells.

I believe there are better ways to address the problem that adding MP drain addresses, which might also address buff spells other problems, or at least retaining their use in the one part of the game where they *aren't* broken (i.e. Casting by level-appropriate characters with skill investment used tactically, because it's optimal to do so, because your MP budget is so low)

[Hurkyl]

Sigh, I don't think wizmode can test ranged combat. I'm actually curious to look up the expected number of times you'll get hit by spending N turns within the LOS of a Centaur without repel missiles versus (N+1) turns in LOS with repel missiles. (I was going to assume the Centaur attacks every turn; if someone knows how often it will move towards you instead, I would have liked to adjust by that too)

[Wahaha]

post

Thank you for a serious reply. I don't agree with a lot of things you said, like the centaur example still, but to keep it short: Mp drain does have balance issues which would be solved with enough balancing, but it's too much balancing to be realistic right now. The point of this thread initially WAS to discuss ways to balance mp drain, so it's a little annoying when people (repeatedly) say "it can't work because x" and leave it at that, but this general discussion on buffs is good too. Making low level buffs worse for low level characters is not the intention, although repel missiles could easily stand being worse even for low level characters. I do think mp drain makes buffs very well balanced for high level characters even in its current state, but anyway it doesn't matter. It's easier to change each buff individually like you suggested and I support that. Except if the change is like the change to swiftness, because it made it less overpowered and yet still left it overpowered, which is kind of funny.

One thing in your post that I want to specifically talk about is that you say that low level buffs should not be useful for high level characters. I typed and erased a paragraph about this four times now, so just basically, if the effects of low level buffs are not available at higher levels, high level characters have few buffs to work with given crawl's current buff selection.

[Siegurt]

Well, I wasn't going for "aren't available at all" so much as "aren't as comparatively useful"

Imagine a level 2 spell that gave you 2 AC, and that's all it could ever give, and which would only work as long as monsters were in your LOS, at level 2 that's a significant buff to your defenses, at level 14 that's.. Ok, but you might have better things to do, at level 27 it's probably not worth sacrificing even a single round of combat on (given what else you could be doing with that action) and you probably have more useful things to spend the MP on as well.

Now if that same level 2 spell gave you 30% more AC, that'd be great at level 2, great at level 14 and great at level 27, the problem is that at level 27, a level 2 spell comprises an insignificant investment, and should therefore comprise an insignificant benefit. It would therefore be optimal in *all* situations where it's remotely possible to cast this spell, and to cast it all the time, and to cast it in as heavy armour as possible, and you could do so with such an inconceivably small investment for a level 27 char, to the point where you couldn't even call it an investment at all.

Now that's obviously an extreme example just to prove a point, but spells which take no investment and are always optimal to cast in all tactical situations present no interesting tactical choices (it's always optimal), and no interesting strategic choices (you don't need to sacrifice anything significant to have this spell available), and are therefore completely uninteresting (and tedious) portions of the game.

[Hurkyl]

Now that's obviously an extreme example just to prove a point, but spells which take no investment and are always optimal to cast in all tactical situations present no interesting tactical choices (it's always optimal), and no interesting strategic choices (you don't need to sacrifice anything significant to have this spell available), and are therefore completely uninteresting (and tedious) portions of the game.

But on the other hand, it's nice to just be able to have something and be better because of it. If I find a pair of unbranded, +0 gloves on the floor, I put them on. Putting them on is strictly superior to the alternative of not doing so. The only reason I would ever take them off if is if I found an even better pair of gloves. I don't need to make any sacrifices to wear them. There is absolutely nothing interesting about the pair of gloves, aside from the excitement of "I found a piece of loot that makes my character better". (even the possibility of enchanting them is more of a matter of Enchant Armour being 'interesting' rather than gloves being interesting)

And yet, somehow, nobody complains about the existence of a glove slot; it's simply too obvious that it's fine to have a glove slot. I find it equally 'obvious' that it's fine to have a missile deflection slot.

That "spell" is the proper adjective to refer to something rather than "armor" is just flavor; it's not a reason to go through great lengths to try and avoid "non-tactical" or "non-strategic" such things.

[duvessa]

Um, I cast stoneskin at xl27 all the time.

[Wahaha]

post

Yes well I didn't want to talk about the reason why you want that, because I agree with the reason already, but specifically about what I said about characters not having access to many buffs at high level. A buff that gives 2 AC at high levels might as well not exist, just like shroud of golubria. Well maybe shroud is worth casting still but I'd never bother. If all low level buffs were like that, well Crawl doesn't have that many level 5+ buffs. I think that low level buffs can be made to scale well into higher levels. The idea of a spell that gives AC works at low level and it works at high level too, so restricting it to low levels might be a waste.

A spell that gives 30% AC is bad yes, but let's look at stoneskin because I think it works well as a low level buff that scales into higher levels with exp invested into earth magic. Let's pretend stoneskin was changed to only work in combat or something so that it doesn't have the permanent buff problem. This spell works well unlike the 30% AC one or repel missiles because a player with no earth magic, or even low earth magic wouldn't learn it (at least probably not after it's changed to not be "permanent"). But if you have high earth magic, is it a no brainer? One could say: "if you have high earth magic, learning stoneskin and using it in every fight is a no brainer". That sounds like a bad thing at first, but it's not. If you have high earth magic, and if stoneskin was suddenly level 5 or 6, learning it is hardly less of a no brainer. The increased mp cost makes it a little harder to use, but not by much. In fact what that argument is saying is that "if you have high earth magic, learning an earth magic spell is a no brainer", which is correct, but not a bad thing at all. "Learning iron shot when training earth magic is a no brainer" "If you have high fire magic and high conjurations, learning fire storm is a no brainer". The decision that was made here is to train earth magic or whatever in the first place. The access to earth magic spells is an obvious and good result. Stoneskin is a little different from iron shot, in that iron shot requires lets say a minimum of 13 earth magic to use, while stoneskin can be good starting at 0 earth magic and going all the way to 20+. What keeps stoneskin from being an actual no brainer is that it becomes worse and worse if the player doesn't keep putting exp into earth magic to match the increasing difficulty of the game. We could say something like: stoneskin requires 13 earth magic to be good at x point in the game. So there's no problem with stoneskin being flexible and working at all points in the game, because it costs exp. Effectively, at high levels, the only difference between the level 2 stoneskin buff and an imaginary level 6 stoneskin buff is the mp cost. Yeah 2 mp is pretty cheap but is that really so different from 6 mp if it's used on a good buff once in a fight? A little different but not that much. Is it worth making stoneskin exclusively good at lower levels just because of this difference? In my opinion no. Furthermore, if stoneskin is too good for a 2 mp cost at lvl 27, just make it scale a bit worse so that it's less good but still worth casting. If stoneskin also has a drawback like "you have to stay still to keep the AC bonus", it can be a great spell (balanced and well designed) even if it costs 2 mp at lvl 27.

So make low level buffs scale like stoneskin and they'll be fine. Btw this post has nothing to do with solving the problem of effectively permanent buffs, in case someone thinks it does.

That "spell" is the proper adjective to refer to something rather than "armor" is just flavor; it's not a reason to go through great lengths to try and avoid "non-tactical" or "non-strategic" such things.

If it has nothing to do with being a spell, and a permanent rmsl effect that you can find doesn't, then don't make it a fucking spell. Make it an item, or an equippable item.

[Siegurt]

True, stoneskin is what I would call "decent" spell design wise, if it further was made so that it wasn't spammable out of combat it would be better.

But stoneskin isn't a no-brainer, in the sense that there is a (strategic, if not tactical) decision to be made, you decide whether to train the earth magic to keep the AC bonus relevant.

That's not *optimal* in terms of spell design, but it's not terrible, I think that tactical choices for spells are better design-wise than strategic ones.

[KoboldLord]

If a buff is powerful enough that it is a serious consideration to actually spend a turn casting it in the middle of combat, odds are pretty good it's overpowered. At the very least, strict scrutiny should be applied, because in a Crawl context there needs to be some pretty heady incentive applied before it's worthwhile to do anything but end the combat as quickly as possible.

There are roguelikes out there where it's viable to have a buff that gives you an incremental benefit that you apply repeatedly during combat. If Ungoliant has 18,000hp for you to carve through, Blessing yourself for a 3% increase in accuracy will shave off a whole lot of turns off your total in the long run, so investing the turns to keep it up pays off. In Crawl, however, you can kill nearly anything in-depth in three to six good, solid hits with your best attack, and a moment's stupidity means that you risk death in three hits, too. There is a much smaller margin of time where buffs can pay for the time invested. Haste is a good example; in exchange for spending a turn casting it, you get a free turn back by the third turn, and an additional free turn by the fifth turn, at which point the battle probably already decided. A buff that gives you +2 or +5 or whatever to AC will absolutely never be worthwhile in combat, because you will mitigate more damage by spending that turn killing the other guy faster so you get hit one fewer times.

I submit the opinion that Haste is more of a problem for Crawl's current design than Stoneskin, or even Permanent Stoneskin. Permanent Stoneskin is like a bonus armor slot that costs a ton of xp and two spell slots. Haste completely shuts down large classes of threats and turns difficult tactical situations into a wild curbstomp in the player's favor. That sort of power is better placed as a consumable than as a functionally unlimited-use ability. Unless buffs are to be removed from spellcasting entirely, they should probably follow Stoneskin's example more than Haste's, and that means they should not be intended for tactical use. A user-interface cleanup is a good thing, then.

[Wahaha]

If a buff is powerful enough that it is a serious consideration to actually spend a turn casting it in the middle of combat, odds are pretty good it's overpowered.

In combat also means "as an enemy is approaching you" so it's not necessarily literally in the middle of trading blows with a monster. If stoneskin gets the drawback of "moving cancels stoneskin" then it becomes used only in combat, and I think you will agree that it's more interesting than a permanent stoneskin. And it's obviously not overpowered either.

The point of this thread is to make all buffs used only in combat. Haste is already used only in combat, so that's great. Haste being or not being overpowered is not related to the topic of this thread.

[Hurkyl]

If a buff is powerful enough that it is a serious consideration to actually spend a turn casting it in the middle of combat, odds are pretty good it's overpowered.

In combat also means "as an enemy is approaching you" so it's not necessarily literally in the middle of trading blows with a monster. If stoneskin gets the drawback of "moving cancels stoneskin" then it becomes used only in combat, and I think you will agree that it's more interesting than a permanent stoneskin. And it's obviously not overpowered either.

I certainly think it would make Earth magic less interesting, if nothing else. (incidentally, we do already have statue form, which resembles what this suggestion is trying to be)

[Wahaha]

Would you like to explain why a spell that requires zero interaction to use is more interesting than a spell that requires a decision on if and when to use it, and then possibly requires more decisions if the player wants to move during a fight?

[Hurkyl]

Would you like to explain why a spell that requires zero interaction to use is more interesting than a spell that requires a decision on if and when to use it, and then possibly requires more decisions if the player wants to move during a fight?

No, because I didn't say anything about how interesting the spell would: I said something about how interesting crawl would be by nerfing the strategic benefits of delving in to Earth magic, or otherwise making said benefits more tedious and awkward to realize.