Why is there an MP cap?

[Hurkyl]

Why is there a cap on the MP a character can get naturally? It seems needlessly restrictive and punishing to +MP% species to have that aspect go away in the endgame, particularly if one wishes to play a magic-heavy build.

[PleasingFungus]

Magic-heavy deep elves are notoriously weak in the endgame, so this seems like a reasonable complaint.

[Aule]

I would never have dared to bring it up, imagining it to have been put in place after much consternation and argumentation.

But, yeah, the cap is pretty punishing.

That said, when I had a level 27 DEWz running around, I was able to somehow make it work under the strictures in place, even being as poor a player as I am. Give me more MP to make bad or brainless choices with, and I might just be able to finally win this game.

[dck]

I believe the MP cap serves pretty much no purpose and could be removed without any further tweaks (because it already in practice does nothing).

[Gene_]

I legitimately can't think of a counterargument, since it's nigh-impossible to continue to gain MP pool size indefinitely anyway.

[nagdon]

I agree that this is a simple annoyance-reducing change because in the lategame most spellcasters use channeling (Sif Muna, staff of energy, Sublimation of Blood, crystal ball of energy), and even with larger mana pools most spellcasters would still use channeling. The main effect of this change (besides simplifying mechanisms and removing an ugly special case) would be reducing the frequency of mana refilling retreats, and this is a good change.

The only effect of this change which modifies the outcome of battles would be that now some enemies (for example Antaeus) can survive if a conjurer unloads his full mana pool at them, and channeling is almost completely neccessary to kill them; but this is a minor change (most spellcasters have channeling) and I think that it would be better to not require channeling in these situations.

[snow]

You have infinite MP by the time you hit the cap anyway. The soft cap is there to confuse players and nothing more.

[Floodkiller]

I would love to see this changed. One thing that would need to be checked if this was implemented is Deep Dwarves: without an MP cap, this could give them an even bigger buff than normal (as the current system subtracts MP they spent recharging after calculating the cap, which gives them a mostly hard limit on recharging).

E: Nevermind, I'm wrong (I should check wizmode first)

[duvessa]

(as the current system subtracts MP they spent recharging after calculating the cap, which gives them a mostly hard limit on recharging).

Uh, no. It doesn't. (They also have to mutate in order to reach the cap in the first place...)

[ElderVIII]

The only thing I can think of that may cause issues is interaction with Spirit Shield, and that's mostly a minor thing dealing with very rare scenarios e.g HP and MP about equal leading to a 1:1 split, creating a nearly double health pool.

Outside that, I don't see the problem with casting 9 Firestorms before you have to back off. It's already enough of a challenge to get Level 9 spells up and running; mana limits shouldn't be a further impediment.

[EugeneJudo]

I like this idea and how it would place less reliance on channeling later on in the game. It could follow the same formula as felid lives where after level 27 you would follow the same formula as level 14 - 27 and so on.

[o_O]

Mana could just have its own stepdown function like spellpower and what not. No need for a cap.

[nicolae]

Mana could just have its own stepdown function like spellpower and what not. No need for a cap.

I might be wrong, but I think that's already how it works: a heavy stepdown on MP which in practice functions much like an explicit cap. I think it is technically possible to get higher than 50 MP but it requires a lot of effort.

[Hurkyl]

Mana could just have its own stepdown function like spellpower and what not. No need for a cap.

I might be wrong, but I think that's already how it works: a heavy stepdown on MP which in practice functions much like an explicit cap. I think it is technically possible to get higher than 50 MP but it requires a lot of effort.

If the explanation on the wiki is accurate, the practical effect is that you suffer three independent penalties for having high natural MP (i.e. from spellcasting/evocations/invocations and species/role):

• There is a stepdown function on your natural MP gain
• Your natural MP is capped to 50
• The effect of any modifiers to your MP (mutations, jewelry) that pushes your MP beyond 50 gets halved

[XuaXua]

Does anything affect the "natural" rate of MP regeneration.

[tasonir]

your MP regeneration is entirely based on your max mana, so anything that lowers your max mana lowers your regen. A DE with a staff of power if there was no cap on mana would regenerate mana quite a bit faster.

I'd like to see it removed. Crate mentioned there's a bug with going over 128 mana which should probably be fixed as well (store mana as a short rather than a signed byte), since it'd technically be possible to beat that with octopodes and 8 magical power rings, however rare that is.

[crate]

It's already possible to have over 127 mp, though it's unlikely to come up in actual play.

(How do you think I found the bug?)

[PleasingFungus]

It's already possible to have over 127 mp, though it's unlikely to come up in actual play.

(How do you think I found the bug?)

I have a fix for this that I've tested & will merge into trunk in 0.16. I don't suppose there's a mantis ticket?

[Galefury]

I don't suppose there's a mantis ticket?

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=5781

[PleasingFungus]

I don't suppose there's a mantis ticket?

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=5781

Ah, thanks!