The Tavern

Chicken wrote:It is almost but not quite as hard to learn as Deconstruction

Chicken wrote:Recently, there was one time, fleeing and desperate in Vaults 5, when I happened across Passwall and was actually desperate enough to use it.

It didn't work, of course.

As I understand it (after having it to fool with for the first time in a long time) you can't Passwall through anything much - not stone, definitely not metal, not multiple tiles, etc. It is almost but not quite as hard to learn as Deconstruction, which provides a much more satisfying doorway that doesn't leave you in a really bad spot if you come out to find admirers waiting for you on the other side. And of course you can't use it to kill all the monsters you run across. It is, in short, a spell whose sole purpose is to trick you into trying it so you can read amnesia afterward and try to forget about it. Now I don't think the spell should just be taken out - it's an RPG classic and obviously could make for interesting tactics. Instead, in order of decreasing priority:

* The spell should, at the very least, totally not have a "that is not a passable wall" error, unless maybe you're trying to go through an obsidian statue or something. Rock, stone, crystal, metal, transparent crystal, all should pass. I would say even the indestructible walls near the Orb should be passable; it's not really harmful to the game to let that happen.

* I think it would also be nice to have power levels of the spell that determine how far you can go, so that if you have 4 #'s of power in it you can go through four tiles, etc. (I'm not altogether sure it doesn't have that, as you can guess, I don't use it much). It should be able to go something like 8 to 10 squares at full power - a middling character ought to be able to seriously prospect for new areas in the Orcish Mines and such by casting it here and there.

* If you try to pass a wall that is too thick, you should get a line of generic wall characters on your map (like from magic mapping) to permanently track that logical deduction for later as you explore the level. (If the wall has some other kind of obstacle on the far end, you should get a "there's something on the other side" and the right number of wall characters before it)

If you do all this... I probably won't take the spell. But I *might* take it, if I'm following Sif Muna with free amnesia or having really crappy luck with spell books (which seems to happen surprisingly often). Which is better than the current situation.

Arrhythmia wrote:The suggestion about filling in the map with walls if you can't pass through it is pretty good though, IMO.

Sprucery wrote:

Arrhythmia wrote:The suggestion about filling in the map with walls if you can't pass through it is pretty good though, IMO.

Magic mapping as a spell was removed a long time ago, I don't think a very tedious version of it is going to get implemented...

Sprucery wrote:A) But you don't know the exact thickness of the wall currently.

Chicken wrote:* The spell should, at the very least, totally not have a "that is not a passable wall" error, unless maybe you're trying to go through an obsidian statue or something. Rock, stone, crystal, metal, transparent crystal, all should pass. I would say even the indestructible walls near the Orb should be passable; it's not really harmful to the game to let that happen.

* I think it would also be nice to have power levels of the spell that determine how far you can go, so that if you have 4 #'s of power in it you can go through four tiles, etc. (I'm not altogether sure it doesn't have that, as you can guess, I don't use it much). It should be able to go something like 8 to 10 squares at full power - a middling character ought to be able to seriously prospect for new areas in the Orcish Mines and such by casting it here and there.

* If you try to pass a wall that is too thick, you should get a line of generic wall characters on your map (like from magic mapping) to permanently track that logical deduction for later as you explore the level. (If the wall has some other kind of obstacle on the far end, you should get a "there's something on the other side" and the right number of wall characters before it)

PleasingFungus wrote:yes, passwall was changed to be fixed-range six months ago. (but its range was based on power even before that.)

Arrhythmia wrote:I think, making passwall go through stone and metal, when a lot of vaults use stone and metal with the thought in mind that stone and metal can't be passed through, is an awful idea, unless you want to go through all vaults and fix them.

Siegurt wrote:

Arrhythmia wrote:I think, making passwall go through stone and metal, when a lot of vaults use stone and metal with the thought in mind that stone and metal can't be passed through, is an awful idea, unless you want to go through all vaults and fix them.

Well, such walls can already be bypassed with lrd and shatter, so if they "don't work" if someone can bypass them, they are already in need of fixing...

Arrhythmia wrote:Passwall is level 2, LRD is level 5...

jwoodward48ss wrote:Agree with "LRD shouldn't blow up walls." Would kill two birds with one stone:

a. Now only Passwall and Shatter allow you to pass through walls (along with my hypothetical level 7 or 8 "gell's cavitas" spell). Passwall doesn't work on rock/stone. Gell's Cavitas and Shatter are both high-level. It's fine to wreck vaults with an endgame spell, not with one I can get online before Lair.

b. Now LRD doesn't make walls disappear. Walls are now limitless ammo, instead of nigh-limitless ammo. This, as Shard1697 pointed out, would mean less tedium. LRD making walls blow up doesn't change much tactically, and just means that long battle-sites eventually become unusable.