Remove Spell Buffs


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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 03:25

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Siegurt wrote:I don't think numerical buffs *automatically* tedious and boring, Crawl is a game of numbers, it's *ALL* numbers all the way down, accusing the *numbers* of being tedious and boring strikes me as accusing Crawl as being tedious and boring at it's core (and really if you care to extend it far enough, it accuses all computer games of being tedious and boring).


I think the problem with numerical buffs is the type of decision they create.

Really, it feels like the whole, core objection to many buffs in this thread is that using a buff should be an interesting tactical or strategical decision (this is true of anything in the game, of course, but right now the specific objection is that many buffs aren't). If activating a buff is not an interesting tactical or strategical decision, then, as suggested by the OP, they may as well be passive effects instead. And in general, casting a spell is a tactical decision, because very, very few spells have strategic costs to cast.

And the type of tactical decision that numerical buffs create is a purely numerical one. While Crawl is effectively numbers all the way down, it generally makes a significant effort to provide enough layers of abstraction to avoid requiring the player to think in terms of numbers too much. This is especially true at the tactical level. But numerical buffs with no strategic cost don't interact with those layers of abstraction at all. The decision involved in purely numerical.

Let's make this simple test for determining if a decision is too numerical or not: can you reasonably make the optimal decision without a calculator or any knowledge of the underlying math involved in the game? I think the vast majority of decisions in Crawl trivially pass this test.

But let's apply this test to the decision of whether or not to cast phase shift on a character who does not heavily rely on mana (so the mana cost is largely trivial). So the decision is, will having 8EV for the current fight make a bigger difference than anything else I can do this turn? I don't think that decision passes that test. It requires having a strong understanding of exactly how much having 8EV benefits your character. There's no real way to put an effective layer of abstraction over it that makes it anything other than "is this number big enough?"

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 05:13

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

dpeg wrote:I've said it a couple of times: the problem is not so much about the effects themselves, it is about putting them on spells.

And I (and others, I believe) don't see why spells are special in this regard. While some halfhearted attempts have been made in the past to justify spells being special somehow, I ultimately feel like the ultimate reason has little to do with whether or not they're problematic and is mostly just that the developers don't want spells to work that way.

And it's fine (but maybe a little disappointing) if that's how it is. But as long as it's couched in terms of "here are problems with spells working that way", us opinionated types will always be focused on how to fix the things we think are problems and explain away things we believe really aren't actually problems so we can have good spells working in ways the developers don't want them to.

So if that's how it is, it would help a lot if the developers could try and put together some sort of explanation of their vision of what spells should be, so the rest of us can get on the same page.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 05:24

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Quazifuji wrote:Let's make this simple test for determining if a decision is too numerical or not: can you reasonably make the optimal decision without a calculator or any knowledge of the underlying math involved in the game? I think the vast majority of decisions in Crawl trivially pass this test.

There are a lot of prominent decisions that really fail this test, though. Which weapon should you wield? Will training fighting, dodging, or armour do more for my survivability? When is spellcasting the best skill to train for improving miscast rates? Should I be spamming Flame Tongue or Throw Flame at things? I want this thing next to me to die quickly, but it's not an emergency; should I keep swinging my dire flail, or will spamming stone arrow go faster?

Your example of phase shift is at least the question of taking a defensive action versus, say, whatever offensive actions you have available.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 05:46

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

You are overcomplicating this. Just think of this situation: you are on a flight of stairs. There are no monsters around. You want to use the stairs. There might be monsters on the other side of the stairs. You have [Phase Shift/Ozocubu's Armour/Stoneskin/Condensation Shield/Infusion/Shroud of Golubria/Repel Butts/Haste]. Do you cast it? Of course you do! There's a benefit to doing so (you get more [EV/AC/AC/SH/damage/HP/personal space/speed]) and no drawback. That is the very essence of grinding, even though it's not killing easy stuff for xp, or selling items to shops.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 12:39

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Hurkyl wrote:
dpeg wrote:I've said it a couple of times: the problem is not so much about the effects themselves, it is about putting them on spells.

And I (and others, I believe) don't see why spells are special in this regard. While some halfhearted attempts have been made in the past to justify spells being special somehow, I ultimately feel like the ultimate reason has little to do with whether or not they're problematic and is mostly just that the developers don't want spells to work that way.

So if that's how it is, it would help a lot if the developers could try and put together some sort of explanation of their vision of what spells should be, so the rest of us can get on the same page.
Haven't I done exactly this, right here and several times?

There is no universal design goal what spells in Crawl should be like. But let's look at the cues: you invest in spells by (a) training dedicated skills, (b) spending spell slots, and (c) using a *separate* health like resource. The latter is the most important part, in my opinion: MP is quickly regenerated *by resting*. So MP cost should matter for spells. This is not the case if spells are permanent but have no permanent MP cost (that's true for current Repel/Deflect Missiles). There is the age-old proposal of adding permanent MP costs to buffs. I am quoting archaeo's quote of Bart's succinct reasoning. This is not just talk; at least one developer actually tried to make this work. So we won't do that.

I can put it another way: spells that are cast outside of combat have a lot of explaining to do: for those spells, success matters less (wizardry items), you can swap armour/Int items to improve success, and you can swap in MP+x items before casting the buffs. (Don't tell me this is theoretical nonsense, because I have done all of these.) Note how in-battle spells have none of these problems.

You people can cry about losing a "playing style" all day; there are actual, sensible reasons why those spells are detrimental and I am certain that Crawl becomes better if those spells get removed or nerfed. The game may get harder for some builds along the way, that is alright.

I feel like I'm running in circles because I'm repeating things already said. If there is another nerf/removal, I will mention it here, though.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 13:00

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

What about making more spells work like Portal Projectile and Infusion work now?

So it costs some MP whenever the buff has an effect (when you get hit for AC buffs, when a missile is fired at you for repel/deflect, when you attack for offensive buffs, when you do anything for haste, etc.) If your MP gets to 0, the buff stops working. It could make players think more about which buffs are the most important rather than having as many as possible active.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 13:31

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Jeremiah: That's an interesting concept! Bart's point still stands, however: for someone not using spells, it is reasonable to enable such buffs anyway -- but maybe not indiscriminately anymore. It does address my complaint about meaningless MP. This effect would also make sense on something other than a spell, e.g. an evokable item.

I still think the cleanest solution for keeping buffs as spells is by reversing object and subject: instead of casting the spell on yourself, and have it act passively on what monsters do to you, you should cast such a spell on a monster and thereby make it shoot/hit you less hard/often. It would be possible to distinguish this from Hexes by suppressing HD and MR. However, I am not convinced that you get genuinely interesting spells this way, and that's why I haven't pushed this further.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 16:40

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Building on Jeremiah's idea, what if all buff spells worked like this...

Any spell marked as a buff does not cost MP to cast, and were always 100% successful when cast.

Casting the spell would give you a permanent status which would only stop when the spell was cast again.

To replace the normal MP cost, these spells would have a use cost, like Jeremiah suggested.

To replace success to cast %, these spells would reduce your max MP by their failure chance.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 17:34

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

phobetor wrote:Building on Jeremiah's idea, what if all buff spells worked like this...

Any spell marked as a buff does not cost MP to cast, and were always 100% successful when cast.

Casting the spell would give you a permanent status which would only stop when the spell was cast again.

To replace the normal MP cost, these spells would have a use cost, like Jeremiah suggested.

To replace success to cast %, these spells would reduce your max MP by their failure chance.


This feels like a really good way to still have buff spells in the game.
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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 18:22

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I actually really like Jeremiah's idea of buffs steadily draining a bit of MP (preferably very little) each time they are successfully used. It would give them a more meaningful feel--rather than a passive number, the player would realize exactly how much the buff was helping and could decide if the drain was worthwhile. It makes sense thematically as maintaining concentration and just in general feels like a tidy solution.

for someone not using spells, it is reasonable to enable such buffs anyway

This actually sounds like one of the strongest aspects of it. They have the resource of MP available--even if they're not built around using it, things like Guardian Spirit or Invocations are still designed to drain it, so it wouldn't be a bad thing to have that resource used more.

I still think the cleanest solution for keeping buffs as spells is by reversing object and subject: instead of casting the spell on yourself, and have it act passively on what monsters do to you, you should cast such a spell on a monster and thereby make it shoot/hit you less hard/often.

It's a clean solution, but I don't know how much sense it makes to have one set of spells give maluses to enemies according to HD/MR and another set just... skip over that. A lot of meaningful fights happen with groups, as well, where something like this would lose a lot of efficacy compared to current charms--whether that's an issue or not, I don't know.

But yes, I would love to see experiments done with Charms draining MP.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 18:59

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

dpeg wrote:I can put it another way: spells that are cast outside of combat have a lot of explaining to do: for those spells, success matters less (wizardry items), you can swap armour/Int items to improve success, and you can swap in MP+x items before casting the buffs. (Don't tell me this is theoretical nonsense, because I have done all of these.) Note how in-battle spells have none of these problems.


Note that *this* is, I believe, the crux of the problem, and why I believe it has *nothing at all to do with whether a buff is numerical in nature or not*

Every time we've looked at what the problem is, the complaint returns again and again, restated in a different manner "It's optimal and without cost to cast these spells out of combat" It doesn't matter what the effect is, would a buff spell that *wasn't* a direct number buff , but was still optimal to have on all the time for little no cost (XP or MP) other than tedium be a good spell? No, no it wouldn't.

I agree that many of the buff spells on block for removal/revamping aren't good, but I don't think it matters whether the numerical advantage they give is printed on the screen or not, it's entirely about whether it's optimal to cast them out of combat ongoingly.

Here's (IMHO) a list of things that a spell must have at least one of to be a good spell:
  Code:
1. Effects a monster or monsters.
2. Provides some sort of long disadvantage for having it on continuously, some examples of currently used options include:
    Draining
    Contamination
    Ponderousness (Also related -Swift)
    A hard timeout (similar to a breath timer, this isn't used on anything other than swiftness, but it certainly could be)
3. It is tied to the area in which it's cast, and quickly dissapate if you leave that area (e.x. clouds)

There's probably other ways I didn't mention to make spells tactically relevant, but I think that covers most of the basics.


I *suspect* that the issue with *numerical* buff spells isn't that the number part is bad, it's just that buff spells that you can cast optimally out of combat are generally bad and simple numerical bonus spells are the least interesting positive to outweigh that bad design (Not that even the most interestingly designed effect would be good if it's not tactically relevant) Conversely a spell that gave a simple numerical buff *but was tactically relevant* would still be a decently designed spell, if not super interesting. (Not all spells have to be super interesting, simple damage based conjurations aren't super interesting, nor is melee, nobody says melee is badly designed because it isn't interesting and just does some damage)
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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 21:33

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

dpeg wrote:
Hurkyl wrote:So if that's how it is, it would help a lot if the developers could try and put together some sort of explanation of their vision of what spells should be, so the rest of us can get on the same page.
Haven't I done exactly this, right here and several times?
...
There is the age-old proposal of adding permanent MP costs to buffs. I am quoting archaeo's quote of Bart's succinct reasoning. This is not just talk; at least one developer actually tried to make this work. So we won't do that.
...
I feel like I'm running in circles because I'm repeating things already said. If there is another nerf/removal, I will mention it here, though.

You can decree that everyone shall wear underwear on the outside of their pants. You can even repeat it a bunch of times to drive the message home. But without providing a clear rationale, you can't expect people to make proposals that align with your goals, so you're dooming people to blindly divinate upon your true intentions. And that one dev already tried it doesn't say much; there was square los; maybe the dev didn't consider a particular way of going about it.

Bart wrote:There are two main issues as for me:
- permanent cost is irrelevant for melee characters, but crippling for conjurers.
- the cost does not scale over the length of game - 2MP is a lot at XL7, but nothing at XL27

These are accurate observations. But they are not inherently problems. Referring to something as an issue doesn't make it so. To demonstrate: if we maintain that these are problematic based on the following principles:
1. a cost that is irrelevant for melee characters, but crippling for conjurers, is problematic
2. a penalty that eventually gets mitigated into irrelevance is problematic
...then we have to admit that armor's penalty to spell success is similarly problematic: melee chars don't care, while casters suddenly can't cast anything, and if you overcome the spell success penalty by over-leveling armor and spell schools or being a cheitroll then the cost of heavy armor is "nothing at XL27".

Siegurt wrote:Every time we've looked at what the problem is, the complaint returns again and again, restated in a different manner "It's optimal and without cost to cast these spells out of combat" It doesn't matter what the effect is, would a buff spell that *wasn't* a direct number buff , but was still optimal to have on all the time for little no cost (XP or MP) other than tedium be a good spell? No, no it wouldn't.

It is optimal and without cost to put on armor out of combat. Would an item be good if it was optimal to have it on 100% of the time for little/no cost other than the tedium of putting it on? No, no it wouldn't; therefore, putting on armor is a bad and tedious mechanic, inherently problematic, and should be weeded out of the game. Can you spot the fallacy? Of course, it is that when you put armor on, it stays there, and if charms had a similar mechanic then they would have the same "problems" of being out-of-combat that armor has.

FWIW casting failure for perma-charms (of which there are currently zero since R/DMsl still need to be recast sometimes) would be like spell memorization failure; that is, it could be eliminated to avoid a minor hassle.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 21:39

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Siegurt wrote:
dpeg wrote:I can put it another way: spells that are cast outside of combat have a lot of explaining to do: for those spells, success matters less (wizardry items), you can swap armour/Int items to improve success, and you can swap in MP+x items before casting the buffs. (Don't tell me this is theoretical nonsense, because I have done all of these.) Note how in-battle spells have none of these problems.


Note that *this* is, I believe, the crux of the problem, and why I believe it has *nothing at all to do with whether a buff is numerical in nature or not*

I disagree; these are just symptoms. There have been numerous attempts to directly fix these problems, but (IMO) the main reason they get rejected is not because they fail to fix things or have design problems, but because the developers don't want spells to work that way. That is, anything that manages to fix all of the problems while retaining the 'always have it' nature of the spell would ultimately get rejected (e.g. 'it might as well be an item instead').

Also, in-battle spells do have these problems. You can wear the ring of magical power while autoexploring, then swap it for a ring of evasion after you cast a few spells. You can swap in an extra resistance ring before dropping a mephitic cloud or a fireball or a freezing cloud on yourself. You can swap in the ring of wizardry when you want to cast a higher level spell than you usually need to have ready. You can swap in a staff of energy just before casting Tornado to save on hunger costs*, and then back to your combat weapon to continue attacking... or to your staff of air to empower the tornado.

*: Yes, I've had characters that spammed Tornado enough that I would have starved had I not done so
Last edited by Hurkyl on Saturday, 13th February 2016, 21:49, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 21:49

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

HbG: Wont't waste more of my time talking to you. It is pretty pointless, and in both directions, I am sure.

Hurkyl: Nobody is saying that *only* buff spells are problematic. But for the example you give: are you sure it's not better to explore with more EV? And swapping rings during a fight is meaningful decision for me.

I believe everyone has by now understood what the issue is (or at least what the fuss is about), different parties have different opinions, and that's the end of the story.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 21:54

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

dpeg wrote:And swapping rings during a fight is meaningful decision for me.

Most of the time I've done it, it felt like more of a no-brainer than a meaningful decision. But admittedly I don't do it often because I find it too tedious and will usually prefer to keep it on or off rather than swap a dozen or more times per floor.

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Post Saturday, 13th February 2016, 22:05

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

There's some strategy involved in deciding whether to recast a buff or not in battle, though it *is* a big pain in the rear. But before battle it's a no-brainer since you can (probably) get your MP back while most buffs are active, at least if you like Sif or have an energy staff or something. It might be just as strategic to have buffs as spells you just put up, keeping your maximum MP lower as long as they're active but not ever needing to be recast. Then you choose between going into battle with full MP or lower MP, but there's no thinking (and no watching for the lost buffs) during battle. (The spell to take out buffs would have to be reworked, make it something that *bans* buffs on the victim for a period, itself being ironically enough a timed buff...)

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Post Sunday, 14th February 2016, 00:04

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:
Bart wrote:There are two main issues as for me:
- permanent cost is irrelevant for melee characters, but crippling for conjurers.
- the cost does not scale over the length of game - 2MP is a lot at XL7, but nothing at XL27

These are accurate observations. But they are not inherently problems. Referring to something as an issue doesn't make it so. To demonstrate: if we maintain that these are problematic based on the following principles:
1. a cost that is irrelevant for melee characters, but crippling for conjurers, is problematic
2. a penalty that eventually gets mitigated into irrelevance is problematic
...then we have to admit that armor's penalty to spell success is similarly problematic: melee chars don't care, while casters suddenly can't cast anything, and if you overcome the spell success penalty by over-leveling armor and spell schools or being a cheitroll then the cost of heavy armor is "nothing at XL27".

I'm going to start with this, and bring up the rest a bit later.

In regards to #1: Spells are your core tools for spellcasting backgrounds. Summoners, Conjurers, what have you. They care about mana, ESPECIALLY in the earlier stages of the game where these buffs are most relevant. I am not saying they are unimportant mid game and late game, because they are still super powerful tools. But for characters who are DESIGNED to care about spells, having their own special case tools cut off in a period when they should have have them (because of the infeasibility of casting them and the other things they need to cast) while a character who is intended NOT to care could theoretically pick them up? Yes that is a problem. That is a misalignment of design. A spell should be a tool that spellcasters decide if they need/want, while a non-spellcaster should sacrifice much more in order to get something out of their element.
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In regards to #2: The difference between 2 mana at XL 7 and 2 mana at XL 27 is the player has simply played more, and that has trivialized the cost. They did not make a major strategic decision, they did not even necessarily make good or bad strategic decisions. All the player did, was get further into the game. Slightly better, we can argue that by training the SPELLCASTING skill the player makes a decision about how much mana they will have, and here they ARE making some sort of strategic decision to invest more into spellcasting than they might otherwise (thereby possibly having an implied cost of EHP/damage per aut/etc). The armor penalty example on the other hand mentions three different MAJOR strategic decisions a player could have made to get around the penalty. Not even considering if they made good or bad strategic decisions, they at least had to make some sort of decision to trivialize the impact of armor penalty on spellcasting chances. Hell, even deciciding to wear heavy armor and NOT train spell schools/armor exceptionally high is a strategic decision. It might not be the BEST choice, but it is a choice the player can make, and it has consequences that we can enumerate.


HardboiledGargoyle wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Every time we've looked at what the problem is, the complaint returns again and again, restated in a different manner "It's optimal and without cost to cast these spells out of combat" It doesn't matter what the effect is, would a buff spell that *wasn't* a direct number buff , but was still optimal to have on all the time for little no cost (XP or MP) other than tedium be a good spell? No, no it wouldn't.

It is optimal and without cost to put on armor out of combat. Would an item be good if it was optimal to have it on 100% of the time for little/no cost other than the tedium of putting it on? No, no it wouldn't; therefore, putting on armor is a bad and tedious mechanic, inherently problematic, and should be weeded out of the game. Can you spot the fallacy? Of course, it is that when you put armor on, it stays there, and if charms had a similar mechanic then they would have the same "problems" of being out-of-combat that armor has.

FWIW casting failure for perma-charms (of which there are currently zero since R/DMsl still need to be recast sometimes) would be like spell memorization failure; that is, it could be eliminated to avoid a minor hassle.


You have a bit of a point here, except in the current system there is almost no competition between various charms, and most suggestions have been for charms to have competition between other spells while they are active. I refer back to my statements about #1 at this point: spells (including charms) are tools for spellcasters. Any competition they have should probably NOT be aggressively competing with other spells, especially when we already have systems in place to make spells self-competing (spell levels, 20 maximum spells memorized, spells of different schools compete for XP for power). Maybe you could design a system where perma charms compete with themselves (in which case they are very similar to another item slot, so why exactly should they still compete with spells?). Armor competes with itself, and at different times you probably should change armor. There is almost no competition between charms themselves; hell almost every other spell school has more internal competition for which things to learn than charms. A conjurer has poison/earth/fire/ice/pure conjurations all competing. Even fire/conjuration has competition between its internal spell choices (fireball, fire bolt, conjure flame, flame tongue etc all compete for being your choice of what to cast). The closest charms has to that is repel/deflect missiles (where deflect is an almost strict upgrade, rarely an actual choice), maybe infusion vs song of slaying. Ozo's competes with FIVE spells (none of which are charms, three are transmutations). Make it last forever? Well, there is still virtually no reason to stop ozo's if you ever decided you wanted it at some point. Virtually any other piece of equipment has an upgrade; occasionally it might only be worth upgrading for a specific area (like rN+++ armor if you're going to tomb instead of rF++ rC++ AC+3).

These are components to charms not fitting as a reasonable spell school, unless you have an idea in mind for charms, that still fits them being a spell (and competing with other spells in a similar manner to other spells), makes them permanent, and care to share it - in which case we are all ears.

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Post Sunday, 14th February 2016, 03:06

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I think charms should compete with other spells.
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Post Sunday, 14th February 2016, 06:29

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Kaelii wrote:I'm going to start with this, and bring up the rest a bit later.


man I was just analyzing what it meant to directly construe the results Bart noticed as "aha, see this? of course it's an issue!" and noted that if you do that, you have to do the same for encumbrance's casting penalty, or find extenuating circumstances for it, which you sought out to do. But of course they're different. They use different systems and interact differently, e.g. XL gives you MP for spells and can give you STR for armor. You can find similar extenuating circumstances for perma-charms. You mention various strategies for heavy armor chars. There would also be various strategies to approaching perma-charms. Whatever is forgivable - nay, not even an issue - about armor's penalty to casting, same goes for perma-charms.

Kaelii wrote:In regards to #1: Spells are your core tools for spellcasting backgrounds. Summoners, Conjurers, what have you. They care about mana, ESPECIALLY in the earlier stages of the game where these buffs are most relevant.


In the early game, these buffs are usually not relevant because you don't have them. What starting books have buff spells? Warpers and skalds start off with buff spells but these backgrounds are not of the summoner/conjurer mold. Repel missiles is in two starting books, plus ice elementalists and arguably necromancers are also, erm, impacted. They're few enough to be individually analyzed and, if necessary, changed. And let's say you find a perma-buff on D:1 that would cripple your caster. Is that so different from finding +0 plate mail, which happens to be bad for your char, not necessarily a caster, on D:1?

Anyway, what's wrong with a starting spell being bad for you sometimes? Some starting book spells are seldom memorized. You talk as if it would be a bad thing if learning a spell was suboptimal sometimes. I doubt anyone would seriously say, "But some air elementalists might choose not to cast RMsl for a while. That is unacceptable."

Kaelii wrote:But for characters who are DESIGNED to care about spells, having their own special case tools cut off ... is a problem.


Changing buff spells does not cut off those characters' tools. Learning and casting a spell that sets your max MP to 1 would be a choice available to the player, which the player can reject. The player already has to make a choice of what spells to learn due to spell slot limits. For example, many people approach Wizard as a hybrid need-to-pick-up-a-weapon background by default, and gladly set aside the spamming of magic dart.

Kaelii wrote:That is a misalignment of design. A spell should be a tool that spellcasters decide if they need/want, while a non-spellcaster should sacrifice much more in order to get something out of their element.


I don't know what you mean by "misalignment of design" and the rest makes a binary distinction between spellcasters and non-spellcasters (who still cast charms, huh?) and each of their lots, whereas Crawl's system is much more fluid than that.

Kaelii wrote:In regards to #2: The difference between 2 mana at XL 7 and 2 mana at XL 27 is the player has simply played more


man - same goes for regular spells, and anything that uses fixed HP/MP as a cost. Their relative impact is also diminished as you progress through the game. Somehow it's a sign of bad mechanics all of a sudden, if the effect is toggled, rather than activated in combat?

Kaelii wrote:spells (including charms) are tools for spellcasters. Any competition they have should probably NOT be aggressively competing with other spells


Well, why not? You even mention some ways they compete, by design, right after saying that they shouldn't. Though you might think they compete too much. I have no opinion on that. The rest of your post resembles reflective thought rather than persuasive speech, as you explore the idea of perma-charms. Then apparently (I'm not sure tho) you say charms not competing with each other is a problem? Well, why?

Kaelii wrote:These are components to charms not fitting as a reasonable spell school, unless you have an idea in mind for charms, that still fits them being a spell (and competing with other spells in a similar manner to other spells)


But why should charms fit a "reasonable spell school", and why should they compete with other spells like other spells? It does not strike me as a good goal to have every spell school resemble all other spell schools. In fact we do have the spellcasting skill, which is very different from all other magic skills, and the conjurations skill, which has few single-school spells and mostly acts as an XP sink for blaster casters.

dpeg wrote:HbG: Wont't waste more of my time talking to you.


doesn't change much; you haven't really been talking to me. By your own admittance you are repeating your opinion on expiring charms, which I see and agree with. I would not miss seeing Charms go without replacement. I, on the other hand, struggle to find ways of conveying my perspective on perma-charms, and grapple to understand yours. Unsuccessfully. I would welcome you rejoining the conversation. Then again, what is a man if his word means nothing?

Temple Termagant

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Post Sunday, 14th February 2016, 10:26

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

archaeo wrote:There have been numerous efforts to find a way to reform charms and other buffs, and for good reason: pre-battle buffing is tolerable when it's a significant fight, but when literally every fight starts with a series of spells, it becomes fairly tedious. As long as one of these spells is castable, regardless of the spellpower, it is strictly optimal to cast it before every non-trivial fight, of which Crawl has loads.


1. that linked reform uses the number of spells in a spell school as an argument, which is invalid.
2. I always haste myself before going down the ziggurat or entering a portal and it does take a few keypresses (I have ~14 spells macroed for all kinds of occasions) and prebuffing is a thing but I have found myself buffing when I face an overwhelming force that I need every advantage that I can get to fight against. So that a point for the charms spell school.
3. Regarding ozoc's frozen armour, I have actually foregone using it as its effectiveness does not correspond with its duration. That's probably all there is to it: I have to press the macro way too often and divert my attention to whether the spell has fizzled out yet too many times to bother with even using it. I think that its max duration should be increased to match that of repel missiles (or half of it).
4. Putting the charm spell school buffs onto items as possible egos would prevent me from getting the egos that I need in time for me to finish the game. The game suffers from not giving enough useful items when they are needed and with a more convoluted pool of possible egos it would make essential egos become less frequent.
5. Perhaps if some buffs were to trigger when the "threat" level becomes high then the tedium of having to micromanage your buffs would vanish.

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 14th February 2016, 10:30

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

viggolo wrote:essential egos

like rF for Zot and
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Sunday, 14th February 2016, 19:59

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Sar wrote:
viggolo wrote:essential egos

like rF for Zot and


MR for Vaults is nice....

Although it's doable without. I used to think you needed MR+++ for Elf, but as long as you're just ready to go grab yourself an Abyss rune while you're there it's not really necessary there either.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Monday, 15th February 2016, 04:29

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Or if you don't do elf 3 endvault
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 15th February 2016, 08:23

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

One solution to the buffing "problem" in general would be to limit the number of buffs you can have on. In the most extreme case you could only have on spell buff on and if you cast another, the previous one expires.
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