Singularity in current trunk is way OP.

[Tamiore]

I've been testing singularity (with my lich MF of Vehumet) and It's pretty obvious (for me, anyway) that it needs serious balancing at this point.

Don't get me wrong, it's an awesome spell and all, but it's just TOO good at this point.

I'll try to list issues from MOST game-breaking to those less obvious.

1) Singularity can be used to block narrow points. This is 100% reliable, 100% safe, nothing can plausibly go past it or destroy it (without a blink or something). This means that you can just block anything (Cherebov, Antaeus, serpent of hell — you name it) by placing singularity in one-tile-wide doorway. And then you can stand to the side so that you can see the doorway itself (so you can re-cast singularity as needed), but you don't have LOS to anything on the other side (so nothing hostile can target you or blink to YOU or whatever). In the end anything and everything on the other side of the doorway is blocked and takes constant irresistible damage, while you are free to just channel MP (or heal, or whatever).
Proposed fix — make singularity blink enemies around it's center when they are next to it. That way everyone will be blinked to the other side of the choke point (every other turn, at least).

2) Singularity BOTH roots and works outside of LOS: you can just cast it and and move safely out of LOS of whatever is being turn apart, then "rinse and repeat". It's not unlike firestorm or summons hitting things out of LOS, except that it's much easier to pull and roots it's victim for long enough to allow player to move away, heal and channel MP as needed. Proposed fix — singularity should expire in one turn when out of player LOS.

3) Singularity has smart friendly fire. This is just uncalled for — firestorm damages you, so should gravitational collapse. Proposed fix — make singularity hostile to everything (just make sure XP for it's kills goes the right way).

4) MAYBE it's worthwhile to make singularity a "channeled" spell (like searing ray) on top of everything above. Say, 4(?) mp/turn, starting fireball-sized and gets more powerful and larger the longer you channel it, but then it quickly (1-3 turns depending on how large it is at that point) loses power and disappears if you stop channeling for more than a turn or two. This way player has the choice between keeping things safely rooted and under constant damage OR casting some other spells (moving, getting MP, healing, etc) at the cost of quickly losing the singularity.

[kuniqs]

I'm just pointing out that singularity counts as summoned - so you don't get back hp with Makhleb, and get half xp for things that die from it.
But yeah, currently it's ridiculous - it doesn't even have any meaningful drawbacks, maybe except that it can be abjured (I haven't tried).

[duvessa]

it has the drawback of being level 9

[mps]

So by "blink around the center" you mean just move the monster through the singularity. Seems like it would be more straightforward for the singularity just to be an AOE effect with a center monsters can walk through normally.

[Tamiore]

I'm just pointing out that singularity counts as summoned - so you don't get back hp with Makhleb, and get half xp for things that die from it.
But yeah, currently it's ridiculous - it doesn't even have any meaningful drawbacks, maybe except that it can be abjured (I haven't tried).

I doubt it can be abjured (I would guess all the PAN and HELL lords would have done just that if they could), and I double-doubt if SHOULD be abjure-able (it's a gravitational collapse after all, not a "regular" summon).

it has the drawback of being level 9

That's one of the reasons I think "core" functionality (Root + forced move + heavy force damage) is perfectly fine. It's the blocking/friendly fire/out of LOS that needs to be fine-tuned.

So by "blink around the center" you mean just move the monster through the singularity. Seems like it would be more straightforward for the singularity just to be an AOE effect with a center monsters can walk through normally.

Well, yes.
I just assume the whole "summoning" thing was coded in for the reason of NOT being a simple thing to code otherwise (i.e. I assume that the way internal code works now it will not be easy to code proper forced motion without a "reference" creature). If it's easy to re-write the code without any "summoning" workarounds that would be better, I guess.

[Tamiore]

To clarify a bit:

points 1-3 in OP are something that, in my opinion, just needs to be addressed.

Point 4, however, is more a general suggestion to implement the whole spell differently: as a channeled effect.
In my opinion a "growing" singularity is more fun and more flavorful and creates a much-need variety (being channeled will set it apart game-mechanically from being "yet-another-firestorm/freezing cloud/shatter").
Plus with channeling it's possible to add shatter-like wall destruction and HUGE radius for later stages (when channeled for 10-20+ turns) without making the spell overpowered otherwise.
And without friendly fire there will also be a interesting point where — if you channel it for too long — it will be able to suck in the caster himself (just imagine the morgue files of being turn apart by a black hole you were overcharging to suck into the whole CHEREBOV's castle ).

But, again, "channeling" part is an idea that's quite a overhaul of the spell as such, where points 1-3 are more of fine-tuning.


EDIT:
That being said, what I suggest:

- as you cast singularity (9MP) "anchor" creature is summoned (as it is now) and it gets 3 ticks of "power", while player gets white-colored "singularity" status effect that stays on the player for as long as this "anchor" creature is alive.
- for every turn player spends 'waiting" while player has "singularity" status effect (and "anchor" is within LOS) 2 MP are used up for channeling and "anchor" gets 1 more tick of power (same mechanic as with searing ray).
- singularity's radius is 1 (fireball-sized) at 3- power ticks, 2 at 4+, 3 at 6+, 4 at 9+, 5 at 13+, 6 at 18+, etc (i.e. every next radius is gained for 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 extra ticks).
- damage is linearly proportional to radius, gaining the same multiplier it has now at radius 3.
- if you DO NOT channel the singularity for a turn it loses 3 tick of power instead of gaining 1, disappearing if it reaches 0 ("singularity" status effect remains on player while the "archor" still has 1+ ticks left, so you can RESUME channeling if it's still within LOS).
- starting at radius 6 "anchor" start casting shatter-like effect every so often (with increasing spellpower), thus damaging and removing walls around it.

[mps]

So by "blink around the center" you mean just move the monster through the singularity. Seems like it would be more straightforward for the singularity just to be an AOE effect with a center monsters can walk through normally.

Well, yes.
I just assume the whole "summoning" thing was coded in for the reason of NOT being a simple thing to code otherwise (i.e. I assume that the way internal code works now it will not be easy to code proper forced motion without a "reference" creature). If it's easy to re-write the code without any "summoning" workarounds that would be better, I guess.

I would think it's there to make it more distinct from fire storm, glaciate, and tornado.

re: Point 3, it's not clear that there's a huge problem with singularity being compatible with summons and allies. The blocking and LOS are problematic in combination. Singularity is particularly hilarious combined with scrying, but even that would be much less serious without the blocking part.

[Tamiore]

re: Point 3, it's not clear that there's a huge problem with singularity being compatible with summons and allies. The blocking and LOS are problematic in combination. Singularity is particularly hilarious combined with scrying, but even that would be much less serious without the blocking part.

While I agree from purely game-balance point of view, it just makes no sense that a gravitational collapse is somehow able to tell friends and foes apart (twice so when it's NOT a summ/Tloc spell, it's PURE Tloc).

[Sandman25]

(twice so when it's NOT a summ/Tloc spell, it's PURE Tloc).

Maybe change the spell to Sum/Tloc? Sum does not have level 9 spells.

[Sar]

DRAGONCALL!

Edit: also, I dunno, corridor singularity allowing you to kill enemies without even being in your line of sight (and, as such, not being even theoretically endangered) seems like the kind of thing Crawl specifically tries to avoid, even taking such unobvious measures as clouds disappearing outside of LoS much faster. So it's kinda weird to me that Singularity still allows that.

[Tamiore]

(twice so when it's NOT a summ/Tloc spell, it's PURE Tloc).

Maybe change the spell to Sum/Tloc? Sum does not have level 9 spells.

But do we really want some weird "sapient" gravitational singularity instead of good-old black hole that has neither hair nor care for what to consume?

[Tamiore]

DRAGONCALL!

Edit: also, I dunno, corridor singularity allowing you to kill enemies without even being in your line of sight (and, as such, not being even theoretically endangered) seems like the kind of thing Crawl specifically tries to avoid, even taking such unobvious measures as clouds disappearing outside of LoS much faster. So it's kinda weird to me that Singularity still allows that.

Yea, that's my points 1-2.
While some spells (firestorm, fireball, clouds, summons, etc) can sometimes deal damage to targets out of LOS it's clear that a spell that not only does that but ALSO roots the targets (so they can neither move away nor follow the player) is quite a bit overpowered.

[mps]

(twice so when it's NOT a summ/Tloc spell, it's PURE Tloc).

Maybe change the spell to Sum/Tloc? Sum does not have level 9 spells.

Seems pretty extreme for something that's borderline OP and would not be OP if any of the suggestions made here were implemented, especially removing the summon/letting monsters get through the summon. Is it that much better than tornado, for example? It seems to me the answer is an obvious "no," after the points raised in thread are addressed.

(twice so when it's NOT a summ/Tloc spell, it's PURE Tloc).

Maybe change the spell to Sum/Tloc? Sum does not have level 9 spells.

But do we really want some weird "sapient" gravitational singularity instead of good-old black hole that has neither hair nor care for what to consume?

I don't think the thematic point is very strong. A level 9 damage dealing spell that's compatible with allies fills a niche left unfilled by other comparable spells. Without the LOS and pathing issues you rightly point out, I don't see how singularity can possibly stack up to other dual school level 9 spells. It seems likely the LOS and pathing issues will be addressed, though, so talk about Summoning/Translocations seems premature.

[crate]

I don't like singularity because what the heck does tloc need a damage spell for? Especially one that's actually single-school tloc wtf (I had actually assumed it was tloc/conj and got surprised when I went to test it in wizmode just now).

Disjunction is a great high-level tloc spell (heck so is cblink!), so it's not like the school was lacking, either. Making Singularity have a larger AoE (pull in monsters from radius sqrt(37) or something), maybe longer duration, and dropping it to level 8 or 7 sounds interesting and better to me personally, plus solves the "kill things out of los" problem entirely. You'd use it to move monsters around (one of the things tloc is actually supposed to do) so you can get past them (kind of like Gell's Gravitas but with less awful and more actually being useful and also still less "actually this is a conjuration that just happens to be in tloc school"). This is actually a quite useful thing for the parts of the game where you'd be learning level 7/8 tloc spells (pinning lots of orb guardians to a corner of the orb chamber where they can't reach you so you can slip past and get the orb sounds pretty good to me, or pinning Gloorx out of LOS, or...), though yes it's not as good on "generic pan floor #23". But at least it stops the spell from being a misclassified conjuration.

At least add conj to the spell if it's going to stay a damage spell though please.

edit: alternatively add poison to the spell instead so people can stop clamoring for "high level poison spell"; surely you can figure out some flavour that makes sense!

[Tamiore]

I don't think the thematic point is very strong. A level 9 damage dealing spell that's compatible with allies fills a niche left unfilled by other comparable spells. Without the LOS and pathing issues you rightly point out, I don't see how singularity can possibly stack up to other dual school level 9 spells. It seems likely the LOS and pathing issues will be addressed, though, so talk about Summoning/Translocations seems premature.

Well, I do think the thematic point is strong enough that just making gravitational collapse have smart friendly-fire is VERY weird.
I would even argue that if we want to keep it the way it is it SHOULD be re-named something like "Galubria's Force Tentacles", not just "Singularity". Because if something can pull things distinctly that's obviously TENTACLES, not just gravitational well.

That being said, I can't agree that a simple force move/root effect that would keep enemies pinned to the edge of your LOS is underpowered somehow (yes, even for lvl 9). Even without damage simply anchoring enemies reliably to the edge of your LOS will outright put you out of range of glaciate/LCS/etc AND will make it 10 times easier to escape the fight should it start to go in the wrong direction.

[Tamiore]

I don't like singularity because what the heck does tloc need a damage spell for? Especially one that's actually single-school tloc wtf (I had actually assumed it was tloc/conj and got surprised when I went to test it in wizmode just now).

Disjunction is a great high-level tloc spell (heck so is cblink!), so it's not like the school was lacking, either. Making Singularity have a larger AoE (pull in monsters from radius sqrt(37) or something), maybe longer duration, and dropping it to level 8 or 7 sounds interesting and better to me personally, plus solves the "kill things out of los" problem entirely. You'd use it to move monsters around (one of the things tloc is actually supposed to do) so you can get past them (kind of like Gell's Gravitas but with less awful and more actually being useful and also still less "actually this is a conjuration that just happens to be in tloc school"). This is actually a quite useful thing for the parts of the game where you'd be learning level 7/8 tloc spells (pinning lots of orb guardians to a corner of the orb chamber where they can't reach you so you can slip past and get the orb sounds pretty good to me, or pinning Gloorx out of LOS, or...), though yes it's not as good on "generic pan floor #23". But at least it stops the spell from being a misclassified conjuration.

At least add conj to the spell if it's going to stay a damage spell though please.

edit: alternatively add poison to the spell instead so people can stop clamoring for "high level poison spell"; surely you can figure out some flavour that makes sense!

As much as I agree with your points as far as game-mechanics and game-play is concerned, I'm really not sure we need to buff CONJ even more by making it have even MORE awesome lvl 9 stuff.
tloc/summoning, maybe.
Tloc/hexes, yes (because the thing restricts movement).
But I'm fine with reduced damage and keeping it pure TLOC.

Or, you know, make it channeled spell (see my suggestion above). That way you can keep the damage part for the larger stages, making it somewhat OP only if you can channel it for 10+ turns.

[crate]

Reducing damage to zero, yes. Translocations don't need to also be conjurations. That's why they're separate schools. Right?

The poison suggestion was actually serious (if it's going to remain damaging) btw.

[Tamiore]

Reducing damage to zero, yes. Translocations don't need to also be conjurations. That's why they're separate schools. Right?

The poison suggestion was actually serious (if it's going to remain damaging) btw.

Well, maybe not 0 (due to flavour reason), but some small amount that will be often negated by monster AC entirely.

I'm fine with poison, too, as long as the flavour explanation behind it makes sense.

[Sprucery]

I don't mind if Singularity damage is reduced to zero but I would just like to point out that Shatter and Tornado aren't conjurations either.

[Tamiore]

I don't mind if Singularity damage is reduced to zero but I would just like to point out that Shatter and Tornado aren't conjurations either.

I think it's worth to mention that simply removing the damage does NOT solve issues 1-3 from OP.
As long as you can block/root enemy just outside your LOS you can still damage it with FS or clouds or summons from complete safety.

[crate]

I think it's worth to mention that simply removing the damage does NOT solve issues 1-3 from OP.
As long as you can block/root enemy just outside your LOS you can still damage it with FS or clouds or summons from complete safety.

You can't hurt anything outside your los with actual summons except for weird circumstances that aren't really repeatably useful (it might be possible to get a dragon/lindwurm/etc. to breathe at an enemy that is in your los and then have the breath continue out-of-los; player summons will never directly attack something outside of your los though). Unfortunately there are a handful of "summon" spells/effects that don't count as summons because reasons (no I don't know why) that would still be able to hurt things. (These should be changed to actual summons for other reasons anyway so...).

Clouds working out-of-los has actually been considered a problem with clouds for a while anyway (personally I don't care about this; clouds + water works the same way already and that's easier to get (hello Fedhas), so if you want to change this then you need to change cloud spells because you wouldn't even be solving the problem ... and of course clouds + haste works this way for (mostly) anything slower than hasted you, and that's less investment, as long as you have a bit of room to move around.)

With fire storm you're using the most xp-expensive spell in the game so I really don't think it's a problem, if you want to change fire storm to not hit out of los that's fine with me though. (Preferably coupled with changing all of crawl to squarelos, to justify the change to firestorm.)

So I don't really see this as a problem, and I think that removing the root effect out of los would be pretty disappointing if the spell is changed to be a translocations spell.

If it stays a conjuration though then ok make it vanish outside of los, fine with me.

[XuaXua]

What about allowing monsters into the actual square of the singularity in addition to blinking around it? Then the monster can choose to blink out or throw a large rock, etc.

[Tamiore]

I think it's worth to mention that simply removing the damage does NOT solve issues 1-3 from OP.
As long as you can block/root enemy just outside your LOS you can still damage it with FS or clouds or summons from complete safety.

You can't hurt anything outside your los with actual summons except for weird circumstances that aren't really repeatably useful (it might be possible to get a dragon/lindwurm/etc. to breathe at an enemy that is in your los and then have the breath continue out-of-los; player summons will never directly attack something outside of your los though). Unfortunately there are a handful of "summon" spells/effects that don't count as summons because reasons (no I don't know why) that would still be able to hurt things. (These should be changed to actual summons for other reasons anyway so...).

Clouds working out-of-los has actually been considered a problem with clouds for a while anyway (personally I don't care about this; clouds + water works the same way already and that's easier to get (hello Fedhas), so if you want to change this then you need to change cloud spells because you wouldn't even be solving the problem ... and of course clouds + haste works this way for (mostly) anything slower than hasted you, and that's less investment, as long as you have a bit of room to move around.)

With fire storm you're using the most xp-expensive spell in the game so I really don't think it's a problem, if you want to change fire storm to not hit out of los that's fine with me though. (Preferably coupled with changing all of crawl to squarelos, to justify the change to firestorm.)

So I don't really see this as a problem, and I think that removing the root effect out of los would be pretty disappointing if the spell is changed to be a translocations spell.

If it stays a conjuration though then ok make it vanish outside of los, fine with me.

Here I can only argue that while it's possible to root and block some targets just outside of LOS without singularity it's nowhere NEAR as easy and reliable as with singularity.
Plus, the fact that singularity works to root thing faster than "yourself hasted" is kind of the big deal here.
My point is: rooting at the edge of LOS (but still in LOS) is fine, rooting outside of LOS (twice so when it's "just" out of LOS) is NOT fine.
It may sound like a marginal difference for normal trash mobs, but it makes all the difference for PAN/Hell lords, ancient liches, etc.

[Tamiore]

What about allowing monsters into the actual square of the singularity in addition to blinking around it? Then the monster can choose to blink out or throw a large rock, etc.

I really doubt it will be easy (or even possible) to code given the way spell works right now.

[Quazifuji]

I don't mind if Singularity damage is reduced to zero but I would just like to point out that Shatter and Tornado aren't conjurations either.

Neither are LRD, Freeze, Airstrike, Ozocubo's Refrigeration, Pain, Agony, or Sandblast. The elemental schools and necromancy are sort of a weird case because their role gameplay-wise is less defined. Every other school has both a clear gameplay theme and a clear flavor theme, while the elemental schools (and necromancy)' theme is almost exclusively flavor, besides maybe poison. The only gameplay theme is that damage from spells in the school is usually (but not always) resisted by a certain thing.

Which damaging spells are conjurations and which are pure elemental schools seems kind of weird. Theoretically, conjurations is the "damage spells" category, but then you have to explain why mephitic cloud is in it, and why airstrike, shatter, tornado, etc. aren't. It seems more like conjurations is the "projectile and cloud spells" school, which is a weirder category and still doesn't explain why it doesn't have tornado or sandblast.

Overall, it feels like elemental schools are allowed to have whatever effects they want as long as it's flavor-justified and maybe shouldn't be used to judge what spells should go in the more gameplay-consistent other schools.

[duvessa]

seems to me like elemental schools are "damage, plus maybe a form and a buff or two"
spells like agony, freeze, airstrike, refrigeration, tornado are weird to me - direct damage spells are what I would expect to be conjurations, especially since bolt of cold and lightning bolt are conjurations!

I do not see what design role singularity and gell's gravitas are intended to have if it is not "make translocations more like conjurations" - since there are conjurations that do the same thing.

I don't like the trend of making spell schools less distinct from each other but I guess the general current in Crawl development disagrees with me.

[Wahaha]

Yeah, I don't think that translocations should have a damage dealing spell. Like other people said singularity could pull in enemies without the damage part. Or if the damage is very low that's fine too.

[XuaXua]

Why not a translations that teleports parts of your target away from itself? I could see that.

[Quazifuji]

I do not see what design role singularity and gell's gravitas are intended to have if it is not "make translocations more like conjurations" - since there are conjurations that do the same thing.

I assume "more variety in ways to manipulate enemy positioning." Right now, as far as I know, aside from teleport other, every translocation spell that allows you to reposition enemies strictly just makes close enemies farther away from you - dispersal and disjunction blink enemies away from you, and force lance pushes enemies away from you. Teleport other technically just teleports enemies to a random location, but it's basically still the same idea, take an enemy that is not far away from you and make them far away from you (it just takes enemies in LOS and moves them to a random spot in the level, instead of taking an enemy very close and moving them to somewhere farther in LOS). There's also Tornado, a unique spell that repositions enemies that isn't a translocation at all, because elemental schools are allowed to have whatever effects they want as long as it's flavorful.

I think repositioning or otherwise manipulating enemy position is an interesting design space to explore more. Singularity and Gell's Gravitas both try a new idea, pulling enemies towards a point that is not you (still similar, but not quite the same). The issue, or at least one of the issues, is that they also do other things, and it seems like these other things may overshadow the repositioning component.

[Tamiore]

seems to me like elemental schools are "damage, plus maybe a form and a buff or two"
spells like agony, freeze, airstrike, refrigeration, tornado are weird to me - direct damage spells are what I would expect to be conjurations, especially since bolt of cold and lightning bolt are conjurations!

I do not see what design role singularity and gell's gravitas are intended to have if it is not "make translocations more like conjurations" - since there are conjurations that do the same thing.

I don't like the trend of making spell schools less distinct from each other but I guess the general current in Crawl development disagrees with me.

Flavor-wise conjuration creates stuff that was not there — a bolt, a cloud, etc.
Non-conj-based stuff just moves or manipulates without creation as such — tornado moves air, sandblast moves dust, etc.

[duvessa]

seems to me like elemental schools are "damage, plus maybe a form and a buff or two"
spells like agony, freeze, airstrike, refrigeration, tornado are weird to me - direct damage spells are what I would expect to be conjurations, especially since bolt of cold and lightning bolt are conjurations!

I do not see what design role singularity and gell's gravitas are intended to have if it is not "make translocations more like conjurations" - since there are conjurations that do the same thing.

I don't like the trend of making spell schools less distinct from each other but I guess the general current in Crawl development disagrees with me.

Flavor-wise conjuration creates stuff that was not there — a bolt, a cloud, etc.
Non-conj-based stuff just moves or manipulates without creation as such — tornado moves air, sandblast moves dust, etc.

Oh, that explains why static discharge and irradiate are pure air and pure tmut

[Tamiore]

seems to me like elemental schools are "damage, plus maybe a form and a buff or two"
spells like agony, freeze, airstrike, refrigeration, tornado are weird to me - direct damage spells are what I would expect to be conjurations, especially since bolt of cold and lightning bolt are conjurations!

I do not see what design role singularity and gell's gravitas are intended to have if it is not "make translocations more like conjurations" - since there are conjurations that do the same thing.

I don't like the trend of making spell schools less distinct from each other but I guess the general current in Crawl development disagrees with me.

Flavor-wise conjuration creates stuff that was not there — a bolt, a cloud, etc.
Non-conj-based stuff just moves or manipulates without creation as such — tornado moves air, sandblast moves dust, etc.

Oh, that explains why static discharge and irradiate are pure air and pure tmut

I'm not saying it makes perfect sense 100% of the time.
But to be honest static discharge can be viewed as small lighting bolt.
And irradiate has not even left trunk yet.

[Tamiore]

Why not a translations that teleports parts of your target away from itself? I could see that.

Isn't it basically how warp weapon works?

[kuniqs]

How about singularity inflicts translocations miscasts on everything caught in the field (friend & foe alike). Fun!

[Tamiore]

How about singularity inflicts translocations miscasts on everything caught in the field (friend & foe alike). Fun!

Man, abyss level annotation shall be FUN.
But in all seriousness that sounds like a different spell entirely.

[mps]

Wow, this has totally spun out of control since last I looked at the thread. Now people are asking why non-conjurations do damage? Really?

Singularity has some fairly narrow issues that can be addressed by measures like letting monsters walk through the center (not likely to be harder to code than current implementation -- I have no idea where this notion comes from) and/or removing damage to monsters out of LOS. It would make sense to wait for/make a patch that fixes those issues and see if it still seems to be a problem.

Also, the constant talk about flavor is a bit strange. Isn't it generally agreed that flavor is not a particularly important consideration in design of game mechanics?

[and into]

Yes, the point about the distinctiveness of spell schools (in terms of game play, not just flavor) was a general observation, but on topic given that singularity is a pure tloc spell that does significant damage. However, the discussion about flavor that grew out of that is probably not very germane to what works/doesn't work about Singularity.

Please keep discussion focused; let's not wander off into some weird meta-discussion about whether different spells "create" various substances or manipulate "existing" ones in the context of DCSS. Thank you!

[njvack]

the discussion about flavor that grew out of that is probably not very germane to what works/doesn't work about Singularity.

I will throw my hat in here and agree, though, with those who have suggested that one of the things that doesn't work great with Singularity is that it's single-school tloc and does direct damage.

[tasonir]

Imho the damage of singularity is fine - it has the drawback of being level 9 as duvessa said. The only problem I see with it is that it's relatively easy to damage things outside of your LOS with it. I've only had one character find and get singularity online, and I wasn't really looking to exploit it, so I didn't try to position it to kill things outside of LOS. But from the description way above it seems fairly easy to do. I wouldn't even mind a blatant hack where singularity simply does 0 damage to anything you can't see, although more elegant solutions would be nice, I just don't know any.

[Tamiore]

Imho the damage of singularity is fine - it has the drawback of being level 9 as duvessa said. The only problem I see with it is that it's relatively easy to damage things outside of your LOS with it. I've only had one character find and get singularity online, and I wasn't really looking to exploit it, so I didn't try to position it to kill things outside of LOS. But from the description way above it seems fairly easy to do. I wouldn't even mind a blatant hack where singularity simply does 0 damage to anything you can't see, although more elegant solutions would be nice, I just don't know any.

As long as singularity can block/root just outside of LOS the actual damage can be done by firestorm.
So, yea, the blocking and rooting out of LOS needs to be sorted as such.

[duvessa]

I mean, I don't like being able to attack things out of LOS, but I think if you can get 3 schools of level 9 spells, you probably don't need to.

[Tamiore]

I mean, I don't like being able to attack things out of LOS, but I think if you can get 3 schools of level 9 spells, you probably don't need to.

95%+ of trash mobs are irrelevant once you have lvl 9 anything.
The problem with singularity + firestorm is that it makes the remaining 5% irrelevant, much more so than any other combo.

Think about cherebov/serpent of hell/etc — if you have just firestorm (and/or any other lvl 9 for that matter) these guys still have the HP and firepower to take you down. But once you can block or root them just outside of your LOS — bingo, they are about as dangerous as a crimson imp. You don't even have to worry about MP — channel all you want while cherebov is busy being sucked into a tiny black hole.

[XuaXua]

I think that if you safely cast both Firestorm and Singularity, you've probably earned it.

While there is a memorization capacity, one way to "resolve" this would be adding a memorization capacity based on spell level.

A standard caster would only be able to memorize up to one Level 9 spell, two Level 8 spells, three Level 7 spells, etc...
Perhaps following Sif would allow you to memorize more than one per level.
Perhaps following Vehumet would allow any Conjuration spell to circumvent this level "cap".

[Tamiore]

I think that if you safely cast both Firestorm and Singularity, you've probably earned it.

While there is a memorization capacity, one way to "resolve" this would be adding a memorization capacity based on spell level.

A standard caster would only be able to memorize up to one Level 9 spell, two Level 8 spells, three Level 7 spells, etc...
Perhaps following Sif would allow you to memorize more than one per level.
Perhaps following Vehumet would allow any Conjuration spell to circumvent this level "cap".

Actually that's a good and interesting idea even besides singularity issues.
Late game is already a breeze for hybrids.

But as far as "earned it" goes — I think that Hell/Pann overlords should not be virtually riskless kill even with lvl 9 spells.

[mps]

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Now we're talking about whether it's okay to have more than one level 9 spell?

[XuaXua]

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Now we're talking about whether it's okay to have more than one level 9 spell?

The complaint was whether level 9 Singularity, in combination with another level 9 spell, was too powerful.
I'm of the mind that the player has probably earned it, BUT if this is something that "needs" to be "fixed", I proposed a fix that very likely won't be considered for anything. If someone else was passionate about it, have at that.

[Siegurt]

What if firestorm or other attack spells would dispel (destroy) the singularity? That would be consistent with most other types of spell created blocking type things.

[Tamiore]

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Now we're talking about whether it's okay to have more than one level 9 spell?

We are talking about interaction of singularity with other spells.
My point is that if some effect is considered undesirable even for lvl 9 spell "fixing" it in a way that allows for the very same result with two lvl 9 spells is not really that much of a fix.

[mps]

There are basically two good points in the thread: The spell easily blocks monsters into corridors/rooms with doors with an essentially indestructible obstacle and that it deals damage to monsters that are out of line of sight, contrary to changes to prevent other spells and effects from doing the same. These two points interact in that singularity allows the player to block or pin a monster out of LOS and run away.

It is far from clear that there is any issue with the spell outside of these points. Much of the rest of the talk has been of a thematic/"flavor" nature. It certainly makes sense to compare singularity to other level 9 spells, but it's much less clear what the point of talking about its interactions with those spells is. At this point you're talking about a large investment in multiple spell schools, making for a late extended endgame character, which one expects will overpower almost all enemies. What can the actual complaint here be? That having 3 maxed spell schools makes megazigs too easy?

The OP seems to be arguing that singularity has problems with pathing and LOS issues AND it's too compatible with summons (why?) AND (later in the thread) it has all kinds of "flavor" problems AND it shouldn't deal damage (???) AND it should be multiple school (without any argument as to why it's a stronger spell, justifying a larger XP investment, than tornado or any argument as to why it's comparable to fire storm and/or glaciate in power either now or after resolution of the pathing and LOS issue).

I think most people who have seen singularity in action can agree there's an issue, but it's not as multifaceted as it's made out to be here. It doesn't call for a restructuring of how magic works in crawl and it doesn't need some broad thematic/philosophical reorientation of the translocations school. It's a simple mechanical thing. First, find a workaround for the blocking behavior -- e.g. open space in place of the summon. There are various reasonable approaches. Does this address the issue adequately? Quite likely it does. If not, then look at whether it should have a damaging effect out of LOS and adjust. Does this address the issue adequately? Almost certainly it does. If there's still a problem, after all that's sorted out, that'd warrant another thread.

[duvessa]

mps, you have a habit of being intellectually dishonest even by Tavern standards. Very clear arguments were given for all the things you listed.