Make Sticks to Snakes not so tedious to use.

[John Milferton]

I guess there is a macro around it but if you're like me and have no technopathic abilities, using Sticks to Snakes involves manually wielding and unwielding arrows/javelins over and over again...

Can't the game just do it for you when you cast the spell?

[Sar]

Currently transmuters start with arrows in b slot IIRC. Pressing ' will switch between slot a and slot b. In case on of those slots has something unwieldable, it will switch to empty hands. So, press '

Edit: wow, it doesn't work in 0.15, ignore please.

[RBrandon]

Honestly it should just use arrows from your inventory without having to wield them or just be removed. This spell is super tedious.

[leparfum]

I agree.

I love to play transmuter but i stopped using that spell for this.

[XuaXua]

Yet, this is the transmuter's "ranged weapon/ranged defense" spell.

[XuaXua]

Do the snakes last till killed or do they time out? If they time out, they should turn back into their source sticks.

[and into]

Do the snakes last till killed or do they time out? If they time out, they should turn back into their source sticks.

They do time out, they do not turn back into their source sticks, and it is a good thing that they do not do so, as that would make the spell even more annoying to use, and this thread is about doing the opposite of that.

[XuaXua]

Do the snakes last till killed or do they time out? If they time out, they should turn back into their source sticks.

They do time out, they do not turn back into their source sticks, and it is a good thing that they do not do so, as that would make the spell even more annoying to use, and this thread is about doing the opposite of that.

I swear I read in this thread about someone being annoyed that they'd run out of ammo to use for the spell; having expired snakes turn back, with the items set to "auto-pickup" (like a thrown missile) would alleviate much of any annoyance, IMHO. Still, doesn't address the "wield-to-cast" aspect of this faux-summon spell.

[velleities]

Just want to chime in that I completely agree. I often gain access to this spell while playing as a VM but rarely use it because of the annoyance of wielding arrows, etc. Using arrows in your inventory would be great. Maybe to prevent accidental snake-ization (that's a terrible word, I'm sorry) of valuable ammo there could be a question asked when the player's trying to convert a branded arrow type- asked only once. It would STILL be more convenient than constantly wielding arrows.

[Wahaha]

I swear I read in this thread about someone being annoyed that they'd run out of ammo to use for the spell; having expired snakes turn back, with the items set to "auto-pickup" (like a thrown missile) would alleviate much of any annoyance, IMHO. Still, doesn't address the "wield-to-cast" aspect of this faux-summon spell.

That would encourage swapping places with almost dead snakes and/or telling them to retreat to prevent them from dying. Not sure how it's annoying to run out of ammo for this spell anyway.

[Arrhythmia]

I swear I read in this thread about someone being annoyed that they'd run out of ammo to use for the spell; having expired snakes turn back, with the items set to "auto-pickup" (like a thrown missile) would alleviate much of any annoyance, IMHO. Still, doesn't address the "wield-to-cast" aspect of this faux-summon spell.

That would encourage swapping places with almost dead snakes and/or telling them to retreat to prevent them from dying. Not sure how it's annoying to run out of ammo for this spell anyway.

I don't see any reason why having a dead snake also turn back into an arrow wouldn't solve this problem.

[and into]

Well, I think if you move S2S into automatically taking arrows from your inventory, then you would need to lose the power distinction between branded and non-branded arrows for this spell (my apologies if this has already been removed). This may be the best thing to do overall.

You could have the spell use any arrows that are quivered; this would let one retain the whole "branded arrows tend to create better snakes" thing, and that would be better than current implementation for most characters. However, it would actually be more annoying than status quo to any characters that happen to be dabbling with thrown weapons, which overall would make it kind of a lateral move in terms of design. So the first way is probably the best, ultimately.

I swear I read in this thread about someone being annoyed that they'd run out of ammo to use for the spell; having expired snakes turn back, with the items set to "auto-pickup" (like a thrown missile) would alleviate much of any annoyance, IMHO. Still, doesn't address the "wield-to-cast" aspect of this faux-summon spell.

That would encourage swapping places with almost dead snakes and/or telling them to retreat to prevent them from dying. Not sure how it's annoying to run out of ammo for this spell anyway.

And you would technically be incentivized (in however small a way) to avoid letting snakes time out over deep water, etc. Perhaps more to the point, this would entirely defeat the purpose of having the spell require arrows in the first place....

[John Milferton]

Honestly it should just use arrows from your inventory without having to wield them or just be removed. This spell is super tedious.

Give this man a cookie + implement

[Quazifuji]

I swear I read in this thread about someone being annoyed that they'd run out of ammo to use for the spell; having expired snakes turn back, with the items set to "auto-pickup" (like a thrown missile) would alleviate much of any annoyance, IMHO. Still, doesn't address the "wield-to-cast" aspect of this faux-summon spell.

That would encourage swapping places with almost dead snakes and/or telling them to retreat to prevent them from dying. Not sure how it's annoying to run out of ammo for this spell anyway.

I don't see any reason why having a dead snake also turn back into an arrow wouldn't solve this problem.

If every snake turns back into an arrow, why have the arrow cost at all? As long as you had enough arrows in your inventory to maintain the maximum number of snakes at a time and no snakes died in deep water, the arrow cost wouldn't have any effect (except that you'd have to spend some turns gathering your arrows after each fight). At that point, the only reason left to have the spell cost arrows would be to maintain the flavor and have an excuse to let the spell be transmutation instead of summoning.

[TeshiAlair]

New plan: In order to have it deal with a significant percentage of likely use cases, have it turn Snakes to Sticks instead. Now Spider Form can be used with impunity without fear of adders!

But seriously, can this and sandblast just go the way of the MD already?

[nilsbloodaxe]

New plan: In order to have it deal with a significant percentage of likely use cases, have it turn Snakes to Sticks instead. Now Spider Form can be used with impunity without fear of adders!

But seriously, can this and sandblast just go the way of the MD already?

Snake to Sticks actually exists! One of the "benefits" of Xom in Snake.

[Isaiadrenaline]

I don't see any reason why having a dead snake also turn back into an arrow wouldn't solve this problem.

If every snake turns back into an arrow, why have the arrow cost at all? As long as you had enough arrows in your inventory to maintain the maximum number of snakes at a time and no snakes died in deep water, the arrow cost wouldn't have any effect (except that you'd have to spend some turns gathering your arrows after each fight). At that point, the only reason left to have the spell cost arrows would be to maintain the flavor and have an excuse to let the spell be transmutation instead of summoning.

If the snake times out it should leave an arrow but if it gets killed it should leave a corpse or just disintegrate.

[Mandragora]

I'd definitely be in favor of just drawing arrows from the inventory. The spell exists in a weird place, but transmutations has lots of one-off stuff like it (irradiate, ignite poison).

What if you removed the arrow component entirely, upped the power, and made it use a wielded staff or something? It could choose a snake and/or buff it based on tmut skill, staves skill, and the enchantment level of the staff, then turn back into it on death. Sort of like the old tukima's dance but with less weird fiddly problems that went along with animated weapons. I just support giving transmutations more toys to move them away from unarmed combat.

Or we could remove the spell entirely and make it into an unrandart shortbow with 100% mulch that shoots snakes.

[Pereza0]

Honestly it should just use arrows from your inventory without having to wield them or just be removed. This spell is super tedious.

Yes please.

New plan: In order to have it deal with a significant percentage of likely use cases, have it turn Snakes to Sticks instead. Now Spider Form can be used with impunity without fear of adders!

But seriously, can this and sandblast just go the way of the MD already?

I think sandblast would be fine instead of wielding stones you only had to quiver them. There is no overlap between Sticks to Snales and throwing/ranged which makes it annoying for ranged chars, but in the case of sandblast you will be using one or the other most of the time and not both.