The Tavern

Rather than clutter up the existing thread, I figured I'd split this off into its own thread.

Barrier - Level 9 Translocations.
Creates an impassible barrier around the caster with a radius of 3. Nothing can pass across this barrier - spells, monsters, projectiles, even smites. Other translocations spells (blink, controlled blink, passage of glourbia, etc) can be used to enter or exit this barrier. Times out after roughly 10 turns.

Use cases: Can isolate the user with a few monsters nearby to break up large fights, can trap monsters inside and then blink out of it to escape, can be used as a shield against far away smiters, tormentors, etc. Is somewhat similar to fog, but with a radius of 3 and not 2, and is always in the same place, unlike fog which moves around. You also can't fire out through barrier, like you can with fog. Duration could scale with spellpower, be fixed, or even have an option to end the spell early, although I don't think that's required.

It's a level 9 translocations spell that's very powerful, synergy with using other translocations spells, and deals 0 damage. Most translocations are about increasing movement so one which counters movement is a slightly different flavor, but I'd still consider it something which is movement related, and hence translocations.

Wasn't this basically already a spell that was removed from the game for being too powerful? Not to mention that fog is already considered too powerful to ever be a spell and the only non-consumable activatable source of fog is a randart that has -3 slaying and is still very strong, and this spell is much, much stronger than it.

I'm not aware of a previous barrier spell that worked in this sort of way, and while yes fog is rather powerful, I believe a level 9 spell that doesn't do damage is enough of a cost to balance it. I see three main scenarios:

1) Splitting packs: You cut off the far away monsters, get the nearby monsters "locked in" with you, and tear them to shreds. The spell ends, and now you deal with the remaining monsters.

2) Pure escape: where you have a lot of monsters around you, most nearby and a few further away, you first cast barrier, take damage from anything within 3 tiles that can reach you, and then you blink out. Now the barriered monsters are stuck for 10 turns, but anything further than 3 tiles from you when you cast barrier can still attack/follow you. This cost 16 mana and two turns. I wouldn't say it's much stronger than just double controlled blink, although exactly which is better will depend on the circumstances.

3) Shelter without running: This is probably even more situational, but I can imagine a case where you have several dangerous monsters all > 3 range away, where you're low on health but not low on mana, and you might be willing to spend 9 mana for 10 turns of resting. Combine with regen, quaffing potions, applying other buffs, etc. 10 turns to prep for a battle that you were caught unprepared for.

I think there's a lot of flexibility, interesting decisions, and tactical choices with this spell. It is rather powerful, of course, but that's why it's a level 9 spell.

Can we stop this "fog is too powerful to be a spell" meme? A level 9 spell that did nothing but fog would be total garbage. Fog isn't even that powerful a scroll considering it often takes two or three turns to break LOS. Scroll of blinking is much better, for instance. I rarely find occasion to use more than a couple fogs per game.

We had Tomb of Doroklohe (radius one stone walls and you couldn't blink out of it).

e: spelling

Fair enough, but I'd consider this to be considerably different from tomb - you aren't completely cutting yourself off from the world, but rather bisecting the world into two regions. You still retain LOS and have to fight the monsters that are near you, you just don't have to deal with the ones that are far away.

Besides I dont think tomb was level 9...

Tomb is still in the game. It's just only found in the Deck of Escape. (Evocations; rather than normal spell).

The mechanic is not exactly the same, though. The card does not guarantee all 8 spaces to be walled and it does not destroy items.

Even if it were still in the game as a spell, it wouldn't destroy items any more.

It probably wouldn't guarantee all spaces filled except at very high spell power.

Barrier is temporary and doesn't modify any tiles themselves, only what monsters/players can do on those tiles. This should make it a good deal more conceptually simple, it has no interactions with items/doors/walls at all, for example.

I'd like to keep it at 100% coverage, if it fails to block a few tiles it's really not worth being a level 9 spell. You'll pretty much always have very high spellpower by the time you could cast it without banishing yourself, especially because vehumet wouldn't support it so you can only use regular wizardry, which doesn't stack well after the first source. If it had to have some chance of failing, I'd rather it cover all tiles equally and have some small chance of letting something (monster/projectile/spell) through, rather than covering some tiles 100% and others at 0%. That said with the high cost and short duration I believe 100% effective blocking is fine.

Can light/noise/time pass across this barrier?

LOS is still normal, so yes, light travels through the barrier. It also has no effect on time, things on both sides of the barrier still take their actions as usual. Noise I could go either way on, but it's probably simpler to have it go through, which is fine by me.