The Tavern

With the removal of sbutterflies from ?uselessness the scroll has become one of the few consumables left with no real value or use.
I'd like if it could be changed to a scroll which gives good bonus alongside some strong drawbacks, so most useful in the early game when stronger consumables don't exist yet, like !ambrosia or !lignification, while keeping is random nature with various different effects possible .

Some effect I've in mind are:
- flashlight: the monsters in LOS may get confused or dazed, player get -scroll for few turns
- freeze aurea: the monsters in LOS may get flash freezed (very low damage), the player get -potion for few turns
- aurea of peacefulness: monsters may turn neutral for some turns, player can't attack or cast directly offensive spells - but any other action is permitted, including e.g. cast summoning spells.
- random blink or even random swap\mass blink
- swiftness
- sbutterflies again, with butterflies being randomly allied or neutrals

How about just making it a scroll of randomness? That is, it simply duplicates any of the non-strategic scroll effects. The omissions can be clearly stated in the description, and it'll be clear and obvious what it does, without having to introduce any new mechanics.

It'd be mostly useless of course, but it could still lead to some fun (in either the DF or normal sense of the word) situations where players use it out of desperation. Xom roars with laughter!

I could swear we've had this thread before, with someone inevitably saying "make it Scroll of Nemelex" with random card effects, etc.

Honestly, I think random scroll sounds silly, and it's not abundantly clear to me why random uselessness exists at all except as a rude joke the developers play on people reading un-ID'd scrolls in dangerous situations. It doesn't really make a big difference in the ID minigame except for those rare circumstances, anyway.

The scrolls should be removed. The old effect of "reassembling in your hands" so that even if you had only one, you'd still have to take the additional step of dropping it or rereading it to get rid of it gives you a feel for the ethos of this item. It is an artifact of an identification system that no longer serves any purpose.

In ancient versions, EXP assignment was done with 'victory dancing' instead of the nice "send all EXP into this skill" UI. Back then, if you weren't a book starter, you had to read scrolls (with skill points in the pool) to reach Spellcasting Lv 1 before you could memorise spells. These scrolls had a use back in those bygone days to help you reach Spellcasting Lv 1.

I totally forgot about that shit