Charms change (once again)

[mps]

You can always make changing body armor cancel charms effects. Just throwing that out there.

[bel]

I think there is a misunderstanding here by dpeg.

The reduction in max MP for charms (appropriately adjusted based on spellpower or success rating or ER or whatever) is functionally *identical* to the current situation, with the advantage of no annoying interface prompts. It is not being claimed that it fixes all the other things which are bad about charms.

I don't really see any downside, and there is some upside. So why not do it? Let the other things wrong with charms get fixed later.

(By the way I don't see much support for removing charms as spells. Not that what the people in Tavern think matters, which is totally fine)

[kuniqs]

What about characters who don't use spells as a main attack? The max-mp cost is nothing to them.

[KoboldLord]

I think there is a misunderstanding here by dpeg.

The reduction in max MP for charms (appropriately adjusted based on spellpower or success rating or ER or whatever) is functionally *identical* to the current situation, with the advantage of no annoying interface prompts. It is not being claimed that it fixes all the other things which are bad about charms.

I'm afraid that's not quite right. In the current system, you can start your buff timer and then manually rest back the mp with . before you resume exploring. That way, any monsters you uncover during exploration will be encountered with your buffs still active but still with your full mp pool. This is super-tedious and I don't know if anybody actually does it unless they are preparing for a difficult fight that they have forewarning against due to stealth, monster detection, or vault spoilers, but just the fact that it is sometimes best to rest with . instead of 5 is a minor problem.

[Sandman25]

I'm afraid that's not quite right. In the current system, you can start your buff timer and then manually rest back the mp with . before you resume exploring. That way, any monsters you uncover during exploration will be encountered with your buffs still active but still with your full mp pool. This is super-tedious and I don't know if anybody actually does it unless they are preparing for a difficult fight that they have forewarning against due to stealth, monster detection, or vault spoilers, but just the fact that it is sometimes best to rest with . instead of 5 is a minor problem.

I do something similar: evoke staff of energy or CBoE after casting buffs before using stairs.

[Siegurt]

Really any form of channeling accomplishes this with minimal tedium. (Lowering the max MP is *not* the same)

~~

We can look at it this way, the problem that's intended to be addressed here is:

"It is tedious, but useful to recast buff spells over and over again outside combat"

There are many ways to defuse that problem, The suggestion at hand is to remove the having to recast part. This leaves us with
"It's useful to cast buff spells outside combat" (because it's the recasting that's tedious)

My personal suggestion is to remove the "outside combat" part, so we are left with:
"It's useful to cast buff spells during combat" (This fixes the problem, IMHO, because casting spells during combat is part of combat, and therefore interesting.)

Dpeg's suggestion is to remove the spells entirely, this leaves us with:
"It's not tedious to not cast spells" (Which fixes the problem, because there's nothing to cast, therefore there's no problem)

Now the particular problem the OP proposes to solve is not the *only* problem with charms and buff spells in general. Some other problems include:

"It's possible to get a large benefit for small investments and little to no sacrifice, therefore it's nearly always optimal to do so" (This is solved by Dpeg's suggestion, obviously that isn't the only way to solve it though)

I would suggest personally "It takes a larger sacrifice to get significant benefits from charms spells" which is more work (obviously) but within the realm of possible.

I think the point here is that solving only part of the problem with charms isn't something that the devs are terribly interested in doing. And doing a lot of work to solve a problem that there's an easy solution to isn't really all that attractive to many devs (although I'll keep pushing for my preferred solution, even though it may never happen)

[dpeg]

Siegurt: Thanks for the nice summary.

We can look at it this way, the problem that's intended to be addressed here is: "It is tedious, but useful to recast buff spells over and over again outside combat"

You can put it like that, but in my opinion, that's a bit too much stress on the interface. Yes, that is tedious, but my point is that it's also unbalanced. (To give a more abstract reasoning: if we have a no-brainer that achieves a gain through tedious grinding, then the solution is not to ease the tedium.) Of course, you mention the other points later on, but I won't quote your whole posting

I should also say that I am not attached to status quo: okay, so some spells might go -- but spells come and (less often) go all the time. I am only interested in maximising decision density. There are arguments about how replacing buff spells with buff potions (say) kills some currently existing decisions, and I've been trying to understand them. (Very little time these days, so I might easily miss something.) My hope is that moving buffs somewhere else achieves to add more decisions (and more meaningful ones) than it removes.

I also concur that the radical solution is not the only one, and in some sense, perhaps not the best one. However, it is one with the following benefits: (1) shouldn't be too much work, both in design and in code, (2) I am fairly sure it will work out, (3) I have seen very many complicated systems, reforms, overhauls and agendas over the years (a good bunch of them mine) and it is a lot of work to set them up, and subsequently polish them until they're fine (sometimes we had to roll back, which is at least psychologically painful). That's why I have come to cherish the power of simple (in design and in code) solutions.

[acvar]

So charms are cumbersom, overpowered, and ubiquitous. Other then tradition what is the reason to keep them?

[Berder]

Aside from regen, who actually repeatedly casts buffs outside of combat? Does anyone walk around casting stoneskin every 50 turns? I sure don't. I cast buffs in combat or in immediate preparation for combat. Also, the number of spell buffs I cast in preparation for combat is generally no more than two or three - e.g. statue form and stoneskin. For more buffs I drink potions etc. So I don't think buffs are annoying. Channeling MP - now that's annoying. Resting and pressing 5 while your allies shapeshift or attack plants - that's annoying. Buffs? Not annoying.

A reminder of the main reason to keep charms and similar spell buffs: they give melee fighters a reason to learn spells. This means they want some int, they don't necessarily want to use the heaviest possible armor, and they don't always just take trog. They also have to decide when is the right time to grab the buffs they want. Without spell buffs, melee characters would converge to the same kind of heavily armored troglodyte. This would reduce the diversity of the game and make it more boring.

[duvessa]

Does anyone walk around casting stoneskin every 50 turns?

yes

[Arrhythmia]

Does anyone walk around casting stoneskin every 50 turns?

yes

no, you fool! you've now invoked power-word: SEQUELL; you don't know what you have just unleashed upon this thread!

[bel]

I'm afraid that's not quite right. In the current system, you can start your buff timer and then manually rest back the mp with . before you resume exploring. That way, any monsters you uncover during exploration will be encountered with your buffs still active but still with your full mp pool. This is super-tedious and I don't know if anybody actually does it unless they are preparing for a difficult fight that they have forewarning against due to stealth, monster detection, or vault spoilers, but just the fact that it is sometimes best to rest with . instead of 5 is a minor problem.

That is correct, but I did not stress the point because the discussion was mostly about the fact that this max MP idea will not work for melee chars because they don't use their MP. Well, if that is the case, it doesn't work now either, so that's no reason at all.

Leaving aside the tedium, the current situation is strictly better than the reduction in max MP idea, because you will regen the MP while exploring. So, stoneskin is almost always free. I would not mind this "nerf" to remove the tedium, since it is one of crawl's design goals to remove stuff which is tedious but optimal.

[Sprucery]

In dangerous areas, I constantly recast stoneskin, phase shift and Ozo's armour if I have some of those (and have enough MP and MP regen so that it works reasonably well). (Of those Only Ozo's is a Charm.)

[johlstei]

It's be easy enough to remove them when you put on new armor, though that does take away from my simplicity argument. I agree it stresses the balance issue more - it's not meant as the final change, just a simple one to do right now to let me play ice elementalist without going nuts while we think up the proper solution.

ps: good guess on the last letter of my name

Does anyone walk around casting stoneskin every 50 turns?

I certainly did it with old swiftness and repel missiles, I haven't bothered as much lately but yes, I cast it a lot when I have it.

[Berder]

Does anyone walk around casting stoneskin every 50 turns?

I certainly did it with old swiftness and repel missiles, I haven't bothered as much lately but yes, I cast it a lot when I have it.

RMSL now doesn't need to be recast except after combat. Swiftness is now strictly situational.

In dangerous areas, I constantly recast stoneskin, phase shift and Ozo's armour if I have some of those (and have enough MP and MP regen so that it works reasonably well). (Of those Only Ozo's is a Charm.)

Even out of combat? Instead of resting? If you do this you are in the extreme minority, considering the short duration of those buffs. It doesn't make sense to remove an entire school of magic because a very few experienced players abuse it in an annoying way for a very small benefit.

[Sandman25]

Even out of combat? Instead of resting? If you do this you are in the extreme minority, considering the short duration of those buffs. It doesn't make sense to remove an entire school of magic because a very few experienced players abuse it in an annoying way for a very small benefit.

Why extreme minority? My current character casts Flight and Stoneskin in Swamp every time one of them is going to time out and I learned that typically Stoneskin times out twice or thrice before the Flight times out. The duration is not that small since I am always at max MP when one of them times out.

[johlstei]

Does anyone walk around casting stoneskin every 50 turns?

I certainly did it with old swiftness and repel missiles, I haven't bothered as much lately but yes, I cast it a lot when I have it.

RMSL now doesn't need to be recast except after combat. Swiftness is now strictly situational.
t.

Yeah I know, that was supposed to be old (swiftness and repel missiles).

[Jeremiah]

OK, how about a radical (and probably quite silly) idea:

Each buff spell can only be cast once per dungeon level - so if you use haste in the first fight, you won't have it for a later dangerous monster or vault. Also, if you use all your buffs while descending, you won't have them available on the orb run.

Would require some interface weirdness to keep track of which spells have already been used on which levels, so probably not really a serious suggestion, whatever...

[hannobal]

I wonder if it would be a lot of coding to fire up experimental branch or two to test some of the options?
The devil must be in the details of course. Unfortunately i don't have the skillz.

I remember there was a heated discussion about rm/dmsl changes too (around same time when swiftness was nerfed), but in the end someone just made the change to current model and it stuck without getting reverted.

Actually rm/dmsl being permanent was sort of inspiration for starting this discussion about other charms too - i liked the change that stopped the need to spam rm/dmsl, but if all buffs worked similarly, they would be too strong overall and so require some nerfs to balance it.

Just one(or N) buffs at same time, max mp reservation, constant mp/hunger drain, swiftness style drawbacks (while buff is active or when it ends) - there are many ways.

Here's one more possible solution (swiftness style) that someone else brought up earlier in thread.
All buffs permanent, but different drawbacks:
Rm/dmsl: flat X% change of missing/miscast while active. Should be same X% for both, and Dmsl should give better protection for same penalty as Rmsl. X may be 10% or whatever feels balanced, doesn't have to be same for spells and attacks.
Shroud: flat X% change of missing/miscast while active. X Stacks with rm/dmsl. Probably lower X% than rm/dmsl.
Flight: -EV unless species has wings (difficulty to control yourself in the air).
Battlesphere/summons: Dissipate if no hostiles in sight
cTele/Haste/Excruciating wounds/warp weapon/ring of flames: No changes?
Portal projectile: -EV for next turn after firing (have to concentrate)
Phase Shift: flat X% change of missing/miscast while active. X Stacks with rm/dmsl. Should cancel shroud since they have same purpose?
Stoneskin: -EV or +0.1 movement/action delay

Or something else for each of them.

[Sprucery]

It doesn't make sense to remove an entire school of magic because a very few experienced players abuse it in an annoying way for a very small benefit.

First of all, I'm also not in favour of removing charms or other buff spells. Second, in dangerous areas constant recasting maybe more than just a very small benefit. It's effectively one or more turns spared when fighting a nasty monster or pack.

I'm quite fond of Siegurt's idea about buffs tied to location, myself.

[edgefigaro]

Have (non regen, special) charms be like berserk. They expire quickly if you aren't fighting things i.e. if you are exploring. If you berserk when nothing is around you will end up stunned. If you cast ice shield when nothing is around you slowly build up contaminaton. If you never see a monster, you get a nasty miscast effect. Similar with stoneskin. Idea is to encourage use of buffs in combat *and make them cost a turn while enemies are in vision* also, stealthy chars can game it a bit.

[acvar]

So still no reason other then tradition for keeping charms? At least get rid of the school if not all the spells. There is no reason a single skill should give you huge boosts to dodging+armour+every weapon skill+other bonuses including the most powerful spell in the game.

[mps]

. . .

As it stands, in most cases, the existence of the charms skill increases the amount of XP needed to make the spells we're talking about useful/improve their spellpower, since many charms are dual school. The spell that increases evasion (dodging) is in translocations. You cannot get boosts to weapon skill by using charms. What are you even talking about?

[Sar]

Spectral Weapon is kinda-sorta weapon boost, I guess?

[johlstei]

I was thinking haste honestly.

[KoboldLord]

It is not that charms are bad in crawl. It is that charms a bad in any system. They fall into the everything is better with me catagory. If you really want to be good at anything you need charms. Who is better at dodging arrows a characther who sinks everthing into dodging or a character who diverts some fo their experience into repel missles? Who is better at sneaking past monsters a character who sinks all their experience into stealth or somebody that sinks a sizable portion into charms for invisibility (hell even most of your experince). Anything you do if you want to be really good at it you need charms. People who only train stealth should be better at stealth then people that train stealth and charms. People that train only dodging should be better at dodging then people that train dodging and charms. People that train to cast fireballs only should be better at casting fireballs then people that train casting fireballs and charms (haste).

I had been ignoring this post because it seemed like it was intended as a joke, but it's been name-dropped by a couple other posters and the poster is doubling down on it, so I suppose I'd better address it.

Making skill investment marginally complicated makes the game more interesting, not less. Yes, technically we could reduce all skills down to a Kill Stuff and Don't Get Killed By Stuff. It's definitely possible. But in the game we have now, you maximize your Don't Get Killed By Stuff by carefully balancing your investments in fighting, dodging, armour, stealth, shields, charms, translocations, and evocations. The 'optimal' investment in these skill varies according to the random loot generation of the particular game, and is therefore a recurring challenge to solve. My current game is an earth elementalist going through Depths with 0 charms, because the floor hasn't deigned to give me any yet. I make do. Maybe next game I'll get some good charms early, and I'll sacrifice something else for them, or maybe I'll get some nice early artefact plate and decide to roll with it. I won't know until I actually play, and that experience is kind of one of the major reasons to play a roguelike in the first place.

Spell buffs are only a game balance problem in a couple cases, which are the same ones that keep getting brought up over and over. Haste will probably never stop being a balance problem as long as it exists in spell form, sure. For most spell buffs, no game balance problem exists. The only problem is the interface.

Technically, you don't even need a separate Kill Stuff and Don't Get Killed By Stuff skills. Both of those just improve the player's damage ratio of damage inflicted to damage suffered, and by the same reasoning that acvar uses to call for removing charms, you shouldn't need to invest in extra skills when what you really want is to improve your Kill Stuff Faster Than It Kills You skill.

So charms are cumbersom, overpowered, and ubiquitous. Other then tradition what is the reason to keep them?

Charms and charms-likes include the majority of effects in the magic system, with examples in every magic skill. If you gutted them all out, all characters are Trog characters because the only spells left are direct damage, which perform worse than launchers while costing more xp investment. And you still haven't gotten rid of all charms-like effects, because evocations still exists.

[bel]

For charms there are two relevant design goals to be kept in mind:

a) something should not be tedious but optimal
b) something should not be a no-brainer.

For a) I mentioned the reduction in max MP idea, won't repeat it here.
For b) some people are suggesting that charms is a no-brainer. One must keep in mind the opportunity cost of training charms.

Low level charms like repel missiles might be no-brainers, swiftness as well, though it has downsides so must be used correctly. Ozocubu is also relatively no-brainer (assuming you're wearing light armour). Regeneration is also a relative no-brainer, but low-power regen sucks, so it needs a fair bit of investment.

But high level charms like Haste, (or like Ring of Flames) require a massive investment. Often you can just acquire wand of hasting. Also haste is not too common now, since it is only in one book. I might be in favour of removing haste as a spell, but that is a separate discussion.

Also there are many "charms" which aren't charms. Like invis, which is a hex, and phase shift, which is Tloc. So there is no "get one skill to make your character overpowered".

There does exist one skill which satisfies the last statement: Evocations. Since it covers so many different things. As it is, it is a no-brainer to get a bit of evo on any character. But that is a separate issue.

[mps]

For charms there are two relevant design goals to be kept in mind:

a) something should not be tedious but optimal
b) something should not be a no-brainer.

For a) I mentioned the reduction in max MP idea, won't repeat it here.
For b) some people are suggesting that charms is a no-brainer. One must keep in mind the opportunity cost of training charms.

Low level charms like repel missiles might be no-brainers, swiftness as well, though it has downsides so must be used correctly. Ozocubu is also relatively no-brainer (assuming you're wearing light armour). Regeneration is also a relative no-brainer, but low-power regen sucks, so it needs a fair bit of investment.

I would add that when you talk about something being a "no-brainer," you have to ask at which points in the game it's true. Even low level charms that you should obviously get on higher level characters that can cast them aren't no-brainers when you pick up the book on d:3 and have no relevant skills yet.

Totally agreed that higher level charms require nontrivial investment.

[edgefigaro]

Evocations isn't a no brainer. The best wands (Heal Wounds, Tele, Haste) require no evocation skill to be useful. Evocations the skill is super useful is varied and useful, but is item slot hungry, and frequently I don't find a good reason to build it up at a reasonable time.

Melee chars nearly always are hungry for the utility evocations provides. Other chars not so much, and you may not need to train evocations to get the marginal utility you want. It also depends on what drops and when.