Move some spells out of Conjurations

[ontoclasm]

The Conjurations school has thirty-eight spells in it. For comparison, the second-most common school is Summonings, with 21 spells. Poor little Earth Magic has eleven. Many Conjurations spells are only half Conjurations, sure, but the same is true of every other school, and Conj has its fair share of pure spells, just like the others. And conversely, the elemental schools are almost entirely taken up by Foo/Conj spells; out of 12 Fire spells, only 3 are not also Conjurations. Theoretically Conjurations is just about direct damage, but in practice it includes plenty of vaguely damage-related utility, e.g. Battlesphere, Servitor, Conjure Flame, and the cloud spells. Not to mention, spells can have any combination of schools, and doing so can push the player into exploring unusual builds... but actually like 90% of the combinations are just Foo/Conj again, so the only push is "focus on Conj." There are no Earth/Ice spells, for instance, or Fire/Summoning or Poison/Hexes or etc.

The effect of this is that conjurers and elementalists of all stripes (not to mention plenty of Wz and Ne) quickly converge into bland jacks-of-all-trades once past the early game, due to very easy access to whatever spells they want from other elements (Vehumet is also partially to blame, of course). If you can cast Bolt of Cold, you can probably pick up Sticky Flame and Battlesphere and Iron Shot for minimal investment. In a sense, Conjurations is the cross-training equivalent for magic. However, while weapon cross-training is there because weapon types are mostly interchangeable (so it's not terribly valuable to have both axes and maces), branching into another elemental school has major benefits in terms of avoiding resistances and picking out the best spells from each school. In addition, it's generally not worth training e.g. Fire or Poison nearly as high as Conjurations, since they net you the same amount of spellpower/fail rate, but there are tons of non-Fire Conjurations, and barely any non-Conjurations Fire spells.

So, I suggest shifting some of those spells around to other schools, or just removing Conj from them (obviously this occasionally requires changing their levels to keep them at a similar EXP cost).

Here are just a few ideas along these lines:

• PCloud: Poison/Air.
• FCloud: Ice/Air.
• Conjure Flame: Pure Fire, despite the name.
• Sticky Flame: Pure Fire, or maybe Fire/Hexes.
• Meph. Cloud: Air/Poison, maybe Air/Poison/Hexes or Air/Hexes.
• Stone Arrow: Pure Earth (this is EE's only Conj spell, but it's such an important spell for them that they mostly go heavily into Conj anyway, which is kind of disappointing to me)
• CBL: Air/Summoning

[tabstorm]

You realize that the Conjurations part of */Conjurations is (presumably) there to be an XP sink, right?

[ontoclasm]

That's why I said that the levels would need to be adjusted. If Conjure Flame needs to cost as much as a level 4 spell, it should be level 4 Fire, not level 3 Fire/Conj just because. (I don't know the exact ratios of the costs; maybe a level 3 dual-school spell costs the same as a level 5 single school? The spell level system is kinda silly)

[tabstorm]

The other thing is, most of the spells you are complaining about are used by conjurers who don't focus on that school because their damage depends very weakly on power (e.g. Cloud spells) and are eligible for Vehumet wiz bonus or Sif miscast protection. Air and Poison are still good schools to train outside of your main school for resist coverage, so I don't see this change doing a whole lot.

[lethediver]

OP, what are your thoughts on making Firestorm lvl 9 fire, Glaciate lvl 9 ice?

I agree with most of your logic here and I think the number of spells that have conjuration attached is a bit much. Sticky flame could stand to be pure fire, for instance.

[Jeremiah]

Make all the Cloud spells Transmutations (they are transforming the air into bad stuff rather than creating bad stuff in the air...)

[duvessa]

I don't like this idea. Direct damage spells being in Conj is the entire reason for the school to exist at all. If there are too many spells in Conj it means there are too many direct damage spells. And battlesphere/servitor aren't "vaguely damage related", doing immediate damage is their single and only use. Cloud spells can be used to exploit AI but I would rather remove that "smart" AI than move cloud spells to another school, since damage is still their main purpose.

If you can cast Bolt of Cold, you can probably pick up Sticky Flame and Battlesphere and Iron Shot for minimal investment. In a sense, Conjurations is the cross-training equivalent for magic. However, while weapon cross-training is there because weapon types are mostly interchangeable (so it's not terribly valuable to have both axes and maces), branching into another elemental school has major benefits in terms of avoiding resistances and picking out the best spells from each school.

Iron shot damage is almost linear with spellpower. Without earth magic skill, it sucks complete ass and there is no reason to learn it. "Major benefits in terms of avoiding resistances" is just not true. When your bolt of fire does much more damage than your bolt of cold, and is also much more accurate, it is just as good as bolt of cold against rF+ monsters. Even if it weren't, there's IMB for avoiding resistances anyway.
The only place where this is an actual problem, instead of an imagined one, is with spells that don't scale their damage with spellpower: cloud spells, sticky flame, etc. Given that this is a problem regardless of the schools involved, I don't think shuffling schools around will solve it.

In addition, it's generally not worth training e.g. Fire or Poison nearly as high as Conjurations, since they net you the same amount of spellpower/fail rate, but there are tons of non-Fire Conjurations, and barely any non-Conjurations Fire spells.

This is definitely true but I don't think the solution is to split the direct damage spells across the 3 different direct damage schools. I'd rather get rid of the 2 redundant direct damage schools.

I do think meph should be moved out of conjurations (and the clouds should lose the damage component since there's really no reason to have it). I suggest that it would be a lot better to cut some direct damage spells entirely than to move them out of conjurations. My choices for this would be battlesphere, servitor, dazzling spray, force lance, glaciate, iood, fcloud, pcloud, bolt of magma, bolt of cold, bolt of draining, and throw frost, in that order. Maybe imb too.

[tabstorm]

So basically cut the Cj background, mostly remove the Ice school above level 4, make En worse again, make people learn Earth magic for non elemental damage, and cut one of the few conjuration spells with some interesting positioning (OOD)?

[ontoclasm]

I'm fine with just removing a bunch of attack spells, too. Or the Conjurations school, for that matter. It's a school for attack spells in a game where like 90% of what magic is used for is attacking stuff; it'd be like having a Melee Weapon skill and having all melee attacks be based on half Melee half whatever type they are.

Purifying Fire Storm and Glacial is fine as well.

Basically the idea is to a) make it less obvious to go heavy conjurations on every character that casts attack spells ever, and b) encourage currently ridiculous combos like Air/Ice with no Conj.

e:

Iron shot damage is almost linear with spellpower. Without earth magic skill, it sucks complete ass and there is no reason to learn it. "Major benefits in terms of avoiding resistances" is just not true. When your bolt of fire does much more damage than your bolt of cold, and is also much more accurate, it is just as good as bolt of cold against rF+ monsters. Even if it weren't, there's IMB for avoiding resistances anyway.

I thought about this for a while, and I sort of agree, but sort of don't. Sure, you can use Bolt of Fire to kill rF stuff, but it won't kill OoFs, and similarly for like Bolt of Draining vs. undead etc. And as you say, IMB exists for such cases. Well, IMB is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about; you get easy access to this non-elemental spell, or indeed whatever attack spell you want from another element, just... because. It's the free set of steak knives packaged in with your Bolt of Fire. What if all the Fire/Conj spells were instead something like... I dunno, Fire/Summoning? (Obviously I'm not suggesting that, it's just to show what I'm talking about.) Now IMB is still a thing you can go for, but you're training Summoning for the spellpower on Fireball; why not break into summoning?

For a more reasonable example, the only Earth/Conj spells are Stone Arrow, Iron Shot, and LCS (but of course that's enough to make build a Earth/Conj character very very common). What if those three were Earth/Tmut or pure Earth instead?

[Tiktacy]

I think you could get away with removing "conjurations" spell school and replacing all instances of pure conjurations(like OOD) with being based on your spellcasting level as the main effect on spellpower and spell success as though it was just another spell school. They could be called "Plain" and the description of conjurer could explain that spellcasting is their main spellschool for casting "plain" spells.

Aside from that, I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to fit much of the current "SCHOOL/Conjurations" spells into some other category. Also, please make spell schools maximum 2 instead of 3, it adds tedious skill management for extremely common spells like Mephetic cloud and Freezing cloud.

[kuniqs]

I'd rather have each elemental school be distinct in it's damage dealing:
Fire: piercing bolts, keeping in nature with the 'destructive' nature of the school
Ice: AOE spells and clouds
Air: risky and self-damaging effects, good against groups
Earth: very costly spells good agains single threaths but bad against groups

Or something like that. Having essentialy 4 iterations of the same thing (lightning bolt, bolt of cold, bolt of fire, bolt of draining) is boring

[duvessa]

fire: damage
air: loud damage
earth: damage and AC
ice: damage and more AC

[Rast]

Stone Arrow, Iron Shot, and LCS (but of course that's enough to make build a Earth/Conj character very very common). What if those three were Earth/Tmut or pure Earth instead?

What if we didn't have three spells that do exactly the same thing, just with different amounts of damage and mana cost?

Or, if we are going to keep them, at least rename them to Earth Bolt I, Earth Bolt II, Earth Bolt III, to make it obvious to newbies.

[all before]

Just to emphasize a point that's already sort-of being made: whether or not you want to eliminate conjurations, the problem with the current spell-school system is that it's actually two systems smushed together. On the one hand, there are schools like conj, summoning, or charms, that at least in theory only involve one kind of spell (damage, allies, buffs). On the other, there are the elemental schools that are each meant to provide a diverse package of spells, so that at least in theory you could focus on one school and still have all the tools you need to win. I don't know which is better, but both existing is bad design.

[wizzzargh]

So long as we keep the best-designed direct damage spell (Orb of Destruction) I think this is an excellent idea

[Quazifuji]

Just to emphasize a point that's already sort-of being made: whether or not you want to eliminate conjurations, the problem with the current spell-school system is that it's actually two systems smushed together. On the one hand, there are schools like conj, summoning, or charms, that at least in theory only involve one kind of spell (damage, allies, buffs). On the other, there are the elemental schools that are each meant to provide a diverse package of spells, so that at least in theory you could focus on one school and still have all the tools you need to win. I don't know which is better, but both existing is bad design.

Alternative proposal/thought experiment: Keep conjurations, eliminate elemental schools, clean up redundant spells now that having equivalent spells in different elements does literally nothing.

[dynast]

fire: damage
air: damage that always misses, damage that never misses, damage you can resist completely, damage that you cannot resist at all, buffs that makes ranged not be able to hit you, buffs that makes melee not able to reach you.
...

[Kaelii]

It might just be me, but I am not exactly sold that the numerical input to outputs of spellfailure and spellpower are the best, or even "helpful" to players evaluating spells or designers balancing spells.
How much experience does it take to get a level 3 dual school spell working and casting compared to a single school level 4 spell?

Spoiler: show

I think the edge goes to the dual school spell, because it costs less mana and fewer of your memorization levels, but a similar amount of experience, and you can favor the school with more spells you want to learn/use?

[Elystan]

I'm fine with just removing a bunch of attack spells, too. Or the Conjurations school, for that matter. It's a school for attack spells in a game where like 90% of what magic is used for is attacking stuff; it'd be like having a Melee Weapon skill and having all melee attacks be based on half Melee half whatever type they are.

This is called fighting?

[viggolo]

No.
"The Conjurations school has thirty-eight spells in it." is not an argument for starting to mess with spells. If anything, other spell schools could use more spells rather than messing with a currently functional one.

[ontoclasm]

This is called fighting?

Yes, because Fighting, by itself, is just as meaningful to their damage output of every weapon in the game, all at once, as the individual weapon skills are to individual types. And, as such, every melee character ever made puts vastly more XP into Fighting than any other skill. Oh wait, that's not true in the slightest (mainly because the weapon skills improve your attack speed).

No.
"The Conjurations school has thirty-eight spells in it." is not an argument for starting to mess with spells. If anything, other spell schools could use more spells rather than messing with a currently functional one.

Good thing that wasn't my argument then. I didn't say it wasn't "functional," whatever that means. I said that it's too good an investment of XP compared to other schools, and that as such it's obvious to pour the bulk of your XP into it on any character that casts attack spells. That's bad, just in case it wasn't clear, and it remains bad even though you personally enjoy playing conjurers and don't want them nerfed for any reason. Other people have pointed out another, related problem, i.e. that Conjurations is actually only like 8 spells,just repeated 4 times over, which is also bad.

[sanka]

This is called fighting?

I said that it's too good an investment of XP compared to other schools, and that as such it's obvious to pour the bulk of your XP into it on any character that casts attack spells. That's bad, just in case it wasn't clear, and it remains bad even though you personally enjoy playing conjurers and don't want them nerfed for any reason.

I always thought that summoning, necromancy, charms, hexes and translocations is better investment for most characters. For some characters ice, air and earth can be better. I can' really imagine where I would train poison or fire more than conjurations tough.

If I understand the problem (and one of the proposals) right, than it is that "dealing damage" is to universal to have it's own school, instead removing it and create (rather, use the already existing) 4(5) elemental schools similarly like weapon schools, so you need to decide which damage dealing spells you want. This sound somewhat interesting, it may be that choosing between elemental schools can be interesting as choosing a weapon class. I am not sure this would work well tough - but it may.

Other people have pointed out another, related problem, i.e. that Conjurations is actually only like 8 spells,just repeated 4 times over, which is also bad.

Redundancy can be decreased, sure, but even if you keep only spells of different flavor, I do not think it will be a good idea to learn many of them, and I think it's worth to keep spells of different flavor. Some spells like bolt of fire/cold or throw fire/frost are almost just copies of each other, so sure, you can remove some of them, but I do not think it can be described as "conjuration is too good", especially, because as long as you keep the spells that are actually different, conjuration really won't loose any appeal (it may even gain some, as the loss for an individual element may be bigger).

[sanka]

Just to emphasize a point that's already sort-of being made: whether or not you want to eliminate conjurations, the problem with the current spell-school system is that it's actually two systems smushed together. On the one hand, there are schools like conj, summoning, or charms, that at least in theory only involve one kind of spell (damage, allies, buffs). On the other, there are the elemental schools that are each meant to provide a diverse package of spells, so that at least in theory you could focus on one school and still have all the tools you need to win. I don't know which is better, but both existing is bad design.

I do not say that you are not right, but I am not convinced completly. I can imagine a system to work where there are schools that contain one kind of a spell (allies, buffs, debuffs, etc.), and 6 schools for damage, simliary to weapon schools. Every school for damage gives you different minor benefits, but the *main*, defining spells are damage. I am not sure that it would be better than the current mixed system, but I fail to see why it would be so bad design - I always tought that choosing/switching between weapon schools are interesting, and maybe choosing/switching between damage dealing spell schools can also be made so.

[Jeremiah]

From reading some of the other threads, it seems to be a design goal (both now and in the past) to remove many of the spells that don't do damage to monsters. Is it really surprising that the "do damage to monsters" school currently has the most spells?

[duvessa]

I said that it's too good an investment of XP compared to other schools, and that as such it's obvious to pour the bulk of your XP into it on any character that casts attack spells.

That's not actually true, though. So many of the best damage spells in elemental schools are missing the conjurations school (airstrike, sandblast, lrd, freeze, refrig), and those schools have non-damage stuff too, so you just as often (way more often in earth's case) want to have the elemental skill higher.
It's also weird to me that you're opposed to this in the first place. Characters based on damage spells pouring the bulk of their XP into the damage spell school sounds like exactly what skills are supposed to be. Melee and missile weapon skills have that "problem" MUCH worse than conjurations ever did.

[ydeve]

If I understand the problem (and one of the proposals) right, than it is that "dealing damage" is to universal to have it's own school, instead removing it and create (rather, use the already existing) 4(5) elemental schools similarly like weapon schools, so you need to decide which damage dealing spells you want. This sound somewhat interesting, it may be that choosing between elemental schools can be interesting as choosing a weapon class. I am not sure this would work well tough - but it may.

Can we stop comparing spell schools to weapon class? The two concepts are very different from each other. Weapons users focus on a single weapons skill, since that skill can kill anything in the game for them (ie you can ignore all other types of weapons). Elemental magic is completely different. The game is set up so that you can't win with your specialized school. Imagine if there were lots of monsters with Maces&Flails immunity, or Long blades resistance.

Now, if this were the case, it isn't too hard to pick up a second weapon, since weapons schools have crosstraining. What is crosstraining? It makes your experience in one skill go into another. Oh wait, this is somewhat similar (though not the same) to what Conjurations does for magic. The idea (as I understand it, I could be wrong) is that it's too expensive to require the players to completely reskill, so you let them keep some of the old experience. The rough parallel being that it's too expensive for a caster to pick up a completely different spell skill, so lets have them keep roughly half the experience (in conjurations) when they use the other spell.

Magic has to deal with immunities, melee does not. Magic has to train multiple offensive skills, melee does not.
If you want different magic schools to be akin to different weapon types, removing Conjurations doesn't cut it; you need to redesign the magic system.

[duvessa]

in theory that's right but in practice throw icicle, airstrike, and the entire earth school exist

i guess you could add some significant cold/elec resistant monsters (currently ancient liches are the only real potential stumbling blocks in a 3-rune game for pure ice/air) to make it true, but it definitely isn't true right now

melee immunity (spriggan defender, merfolk avatar, etc) is probably about as common as cold/elec immunity on actually dangerous monsters

[Siegurt]

Long blades resistance.

"Hydras"

.... just sayin' there isn't one killdudes in the game that has absolutely no challenges at all.

[Quazifuji]

From reading some of the other threads, it seems to be a design goal (both now and in the past) to remove many of the spells that don't do damage to monsters. Is it really surprising that the "do damage to monsters" school currently has the most spells?

Well, I think the real design goal is to have spells be things you can in combat (since casting spells out of combat tends to be tedious), and to have the decision of when/how to use spells be interesting (i.e. not just "cast this at the beginning of every fight"). And creating non-damage spells that do that is tough.

That said, I think there's also another element to this: doing damage is generally treated as the defining element of a character. Characters are often described in terms of their main form of offense. So it makes sense that offensive abilities are prominent. Doing damage is a big deal in this game. A character who uses conjurations to kill things is a "caster". A character who uses melee weapons to kill things but knows some charms is a melee guy, or at most a "hybrid".

Essentially, utility is somewhat option in DCSS, damage isn't (there can be exceptions, but they're more exceptions than archetypes since the Ely rework). You can make a character who never trains any utility skills and just goes around killing things and getting all their utility from gods and consumables. You can't make a character who never trains any damage skills and revolves around utility. So of course it makes sense to have multiple categories of damage spell, because the game revolves around doing damage.

[Axle F]

I wouldn't say all spells fall cleanly into damage vs. utility. Direct damage is a pretty boring dynamic in my opinion, and even elemental damage isn't exactly a stimulating puzzle tactically (albeit maybe strategically). I'd like to see direct damage spells nerfed to allow the indirect damage spells and tactics to become more viable. Fun tactical stuff like Immolation + Discord, Mass Confusion + Clouds, positioning and careful use of terrain (make varied terrain more pervasive), hookshots and other movement dynamics either through magic or tools/weapons, freezing guys then blunt force trauma to shatter them (Ogre Ice Elementalist would be a lot more fun this way, no?), Force-lancing or Gravitasing dudes into your Fulminant Prism, etc.

Right now using a Force Lance + Fulminant Prism is too little damage to justify the MP, but if direct damage were nerfed and maybe these were buffed a bit it it would become a winning tactic some of the time, and involve more thinking about when to use it than than just Fireball, Fireball, Fireball and switching to something else on fire dudes.

[TeshiAlair]

Just have all the pure conj and the conj/hex conj/ench spells stay the same and remove it from the rest. Pure conj has a niche of resistance-ignoring damage at the cost of being a low utility school, and can be picked up more easily by races with poor elemental apts. The elemental schools offer a mix of damage and utility. Done deal.

[agentgt]

I went down this path at one point myself but far more extreme: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=16409

I posted it on Crazy Yuif though because I knew it probably wasn't a good idea.

[eliotn]

Hope this isn't thread necromancy, but I had an idea, wouldn't Fire/Summoning fit Fire Storm better than Fire/Conjurations? But I agree that there is too much in conjurations. Why not make Glaciate Ice/Hexes?