Remove battlsphere duration

[ololoev]

I was playing DECjs many times and battlsphere is surely a very good spell. But I have to mantain it while I explore because on conjurer characers you have to use every turn to devastate enemies before they do the same to you. It's very tedious and doesn't add a diversity to the game.
As for me, charges system is quite enough. When it shoots 5 or 7 times it dissipates. You can charge it, say, up to 8 charges. Anyway, in the tough fight duration is not the limit to battlesphere, but charges are.
Please point at some things that make this overpowered or game-breaking, if I mised some.

[Siegurt]

It's the MP cost that makes it balanced, if you could simply cast it outside of combat then walk in with a full bar of MP it would well and away make this an overpowered spell. Casting it while exploring is simply making yourself worse off, while simultaneously making yourself crazy with tediousness.

Particularly when you obtain this spell early, and it takes 25% or more of your MP bar.

[ololoev]

Yes, casting this spell when you have 25MP makes sense, and hunger cost too, but later I found myself casting it, waiting until full mana and then engaging into the battle. With battlesphere. Anyway, this spell has been moved to lvl5 that already makes it inaccessible too early for most characters.
Is this early problems really worth later tediousness?

[Hurkyl]

It's the MP cost that makes it balanced, if you could simply cast it outside of combat then walk in with a full bar of MP it would well and away make this an overpowered spell.

You can. It doesn't cost enough MP to prevent you from casting it every time your mana bar gets full. And once its hunger cost is gone, there is no compelling gameplay reason to not do so.

The only limiting factor is

simultaneously making yourself crazy with tediousness.

which is the sort of thing crawl intends to eliminate, and thus the point of this thread.

[hannobal]

It could have infinite duration, but drain 1 (or more) MP every time it fires, and finite HP of course.
Cast the spell again for 1 turn and zero MP to dismiss it (normal MP cost to summon).

That should eliminate re-casting and keep a meaningful MP cost.

[crate]

I would suggest instead lowering battlesphere duration to something like 10 turns (quite possibly even less, maybe even 5), and remove the charges thing completely. Of course then this would make the problematic positioning aspects of the spell even more apparent, so I would actually further suggest making battlesphere just a buff (that causes the player to shoot the battlesphere shot when using an appropriate conjuration) instead of making it create an actual battlesphere (for gameplay reasons).

[jejorda2]

What if the battlepshere couldn't leave LOS of where you stood when you cast it, and would dissipate when out of view? That would prevent casting while exploring.

[Baldu3]

I agree that crate's solution would make battlesphere much more balanced but it would make it much less fun too. If buffs that reduce max MP while active ever happen battleshpere could use that system, otherwise I worry that any solution will reduce it's fun more then anything else.

[Leafsnail]

Dancing to get your battlesphere into place is basically never fun

[crate]

Reducing the duration actually does nothing (or very little) if you use the spell the "intended" way; i.e. you cast the spell when you see monsters you want to battlesphere, and then it shoots. In fact if it's set at 10 turns I would argue this is often a buff (for "intended" usage): you almost never get 10 shots from a single battlesphere currently.

The only change that matters is you can't walk around with battlesphere up any more, and even if you tried there's barely any benefit since you'd be casting it only 2 or so steps out of LOS of the monster you attack with it.

The suggestion to remove the separate battlesphere (and turn it into a buff) is mainly because I agree with Leafsnail as far as battlesphere positioning goes. It's obnoxious at best (and personally I'd argue the actual gameplay changes encouraged by having it separate are bad, but in practice this is not a big deal so I'm not going to elaborate here). This could be a separate suggestion though.

[Hurkyl]

Reducing the duration actually does nothing (or very little) if you use the spell the "intended" way; i.e. you cast the spell when you see monsters you want to battlesphere, and then it shoots. In fact if it's set at 10 turns I would argue this is often a buff (for "intended" usage): you almost never get 10 shots from a single battlesphere currently.

In fact, this is a major part of the reason why I feel I should be keeping battlesphere up continuously: as far as I can tell, a single casting doesn't give a full "charge", so by keeping it up, not only am I getting the time and mana benefit of having it prepared, but I get a more effective battlesphere.

[PleasingFungus]

In fact, this is a major part of the reason why I feel I should be keeping battlesphere up continuously: as far as I can tell, a single casting doesn't give a full "charge", so by keeping it up, not only am I getting the time and mana benefit of having it prepared, but I get a more effective battlesphere.

Checking the code, this is true. At the very least, this should not be the case.

[Hurkyl]

The only change that matters is you can't walk around with battlesphere up any more, and even if you tried there's barely any benefit since you'd be casting it only 2 or so steps out of LOS of the monster you attack with it.

This attitude towards charms has confused me for a while. Okay, it's great if you manage to avoid being noticed and for ranged threats ducking out of LOS gains you time.

But if you are noticed by a dangerous melee monster,most of the time most characters gain no time by pulling back before buffing: if you spot a hydra 5 tiles away from you, then you either get 4 blasts or battlesphere + 3 blasts before it closes to melee range, whether or not you duck 2 steps around a corner. You even lose time against fast threats like spiny frogs and black mambas.

[crate]

The only change that matters is you can't walk around with battlesphere up any more, and even if you tried there's barely any benefit since you'd be casting it only 2 or so steps out of LOS of the monster you attack with it.

This attitude towards charms has confused me for a while. Okay, it's great if you manage to avoid being noticed and for ranged threats ducking out of LOS gains you time.

But if you are noticed by a dangerous melee monster,most of the time most characters gain no time by pulling back before buffing: if you spot a hydra 5 tiles away from you, then you either get 4 blasts or battlesphere + 3 blasts before it closes to melee range, whether or not you duck 2 steps around a corner. You even lose time against fast threats like spiny frogs and black mambas.

I think you misunderstand. In the hypothetical situation I was talking about with 10 turn dur battlesphere, I was talking about a character that would do the following:

Cast battlesphere, channel MP, move once or twice, re-cast battlesphere (to refresh dur), channel MP, move twice, etc.

Of course no one would actually do this, but this would be a way to still move around with a constant battlesphere at 10 turn duration. You get the battlesphere 2 turns before you ever see the monster. (And of course for every race but Mu there are prohibitive costs to attempting to do this.)

[siprus]

The only change that matters is you can't walk around with battlesphere up any more, and even if you tried there's barely any benefit since you'd be casting it only 2 or so steps out of LOS of the monster you attack with it.

This attitude towards charms has confused me for a while. Okay, it's great if you manage to avoid being noticed and for ranged threats ducking out of LOS gains you time.

But if you are noticed by a dangerous melee monster,most of the time most characters gain no time by pulling back before buffing: if you spot a hydra 5 tiles away from you, then you either get 4 blasts or battlesphere + 3 blasts before it closes to melee range, whether or not you duck 2 steps around a corner. You even lose time against fast threats like spiny frogs and black mambas.

I think you misunderstand. In the hypothetical situation I was talking about with 10 turn dur battlesphere, I was talking about a character that would do the following:

Cast battlesphere, channel MP, move once or twice, re-cast battlesphere (to refresh dur), channel MP, move twice, etc.

Of course no one would actually do this, but this would be a way to still move around with a constant battlesphere at 10 turn duration. You get the battlesphere 2 turns before you ever see the monster. (And of course for every race but Mu there are prohibitive costs to attempting to do this.)

Of course this would ruin your score if you care about such things.